How to texture lips and eye edges
 

Hi all

I am in the midst of rendering / texturing my 3D head mesh with the objective of photorealism. I've applied fast skin, Brownian 3D and hair and eye / eyebrow and its looking good. I use PaintFX for the eyebrow and convert it to polygon. I would like to know how to texture/shade/render the lips and eyelid / eye lining area which is normally darker than the facial tone. I am not using UV mapping but directly applying Maya's generic shaders from Hypershade which I think give more realistic and better results. Any ideas ?

Thank you in advance.

Re: How to texture lips and eye edges
 

Sorry no.

Uv mapping and painting your textures either directly (if your good) or using photo reference gives the most realistic result.

You might get something looking ok using procedural textures but never something that looks great or realisitc. Painting is the only way forward really.

Oyu can UV map what you've got then bake the textures down then paint over them, that would probably be the way I would go in your situation

Thanks for your reply, gster123. I used fast_skin directly on the head mesh plus the Brownian 3D displacement map but I understand what you mean about using UV and doing it outside because there's no way to do random spots unless its done that way. I might export the Brownian texture to Photoshop and then add random spots later as in Dr Julian Mortimer's tutorial.

But UV mapping the lips and eyebrows with an external texture file and leaving Maya's misss_fast_skin on the face would be quite difficult I think but I'll give it a try.

As you noticed, I don't have ZBrush (or MudBox) which is why I haven't textured directly to the face in a 2.5D kind of way :-) but hey, you just gave me an idea - why don't I try downloading the trial 3.1 30-day version and see how much better I can make the head with it...

Using photo reference
 

gster123...just wanted to clarify...when you mentioned using photo reference to get photorealistic results, did you mean scanning the photo and then applying it as texture or mapped image? Thanks!

you really need to use hi res images to get this right. There are places on the web where you can down load hi res images to do this. You then need photoshop to edit them for your uv map which will then in turn fit perfect to the model you have. You'll then need to create bump and spec maps from the same image to increase the effect making it more 'realistic'. Try going to 3dsk for some images. or take your own. You necessarily need zbrush either. You need to learn the basics. Theres plenty of tutes available on this site to achieve it as as well

Using the fast skin shader is only a the start of it. Theres alot more to it than that. Dr Julians stuff is good but he is baking that stuff out to a color map that will fit his uvs.

J

Thanks Jay
 

Thanks Jay, I think I got it now. Ok..as many high res photos as I can find...and then manipulate it from there...

These tut should get you started..........dave

UV
http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/3d-...-in-maya-2009/

work flow
http://www.3dm3.com/tutorials/maya/character/

Thanks dave and everybody! I've actually collected all the Maya UV tutorials way back (yep...including the Marlene Dietrich tut by Max the Indonesian artist...and of course...the Joker tut by that Iranian dude) and setup a couple of UVs myself but I didn't realise that you actually need to use UVs to set up a photorealistic face. I know about all those colour , bump, transparency, specular maps and stuff and doing everything in Photoshop but that would mean I would not be able to use misss_fast_skin. I mean, how can you use SSS if the texture you're using is actually a Photoshop TGA or TIFF file ?

However, its much, much easier to do eyebrows and lips in Pshop (with brushes). I might the Julian Mortimer way by baking to PShop, layering, doing the color, bump and specular and then UV-ing them back in Maya... :-)

I'm kind of confused and in conflict here because if the texture maps are all from Photoshop and UV'd on to the Maya mesh, when do we then use miss_fast_skin (it has its own SSS colouring mechanism for epidermal, subdermal and backskin) and when do we use PaintFX for the brows and the beard and the stubble? From what I have read, you don't use fast_skin if you're using color maps for PShop and you don't use PaintFX for the brows but use brushes and bump maps from PShop instead. But fast_skin is kinda vital to get realistic skin, you know...

But I'll try doing it the UV way (because the brows and lips will be much easier to do and finer texturing can be done on the eye edges). I guess then, Maya Hair can be put on the top scalp with a sort of hemisphere hair emitter.

For the eye brows, I'm still not sure whether to use Photoshop brushes, PaintFX, Maya Hair or Maya Fur ? Looks like they're all eligible candidates for great eyebrows :-). Also thinking how I can still keep my fast_skin if I were to use UV and Photoshop.

Hi ezanih
This is the shows the lightwave fast skin but will work the same for maya fast skin, see how the layers are built up.The fast skin shader will work on the maps. any way have a look at the link.............dave

http://www.spinquad.com/forums/showt...ghlight=muriel

The textures and bumps are there for your color (basically) and all the detail too. The shaders are there to help define the property of a specific material, in your case skin. You can use a blinn if you want, but it wont be as good without alot of hassle of making maps for alot of the channels within the shader.

Just take care with the fast skin shader though, its very time consuming the the results can look good if you tweak them enough. The most common mistake with the fast Skin shader is that alot of peopl tend to make theirs look waxy and transluscent. The key is subtlety...have fun

J

Thanks all
 

Thanks all - Jay, daverave!

dave, I'll check out the tut. Many thanks once again! How are your kids doin'?

I checked out all of your work. They're all really fantastic stuff! Keep it up! And Jay...I really enjoyed The Talos Project link by your buddy Poulos. That Greek guy's got TREMENDOUS talent...not only are the renders great but the vision and concept is really top stuff. I'm trying to get up to his level in artwork and Maya. That's the kind of quality I want my movie to be (though I really need to learn ZBrush). He would do great to convert that comic book to a B-movie since all the materials are there already and...I've signed up! :-)

[@Jay : The shaders are there to help define the property of a specific material...]

Jay, I did a post on this long ago on some other forum but really haven't gotten a satisfactory reply : is misss_fast_skin only a SHADER ? Is it actually applied to a Blinn, Lambert, Phong, PhongE or Anisotropic MATERIAL ?

The reply that I got previously is that if you applied Blinn material to my head mesh and then you applied misss_fast_skin later, the misss_fast_skin actually REPLACES the Blinn. My question is then: how can I do UV if I use misss_fast_skin ?

You're absolutely right about tweaking the fast_skin stuff as you can get "waxy" to one extreme and "sweaty" at the other extreme. Have a look at this great tut from lamrug (but please don't fall in love with Globulus :-) :-

http://www.lamrug.org/resources/doc/...n-tutorial.pdf

I am using the settings recommended by the above author and I am using the fast_skin for both skin and eyes (as explained in the tut) and the results are great stuff! Just make sure you use moderate values (in the teens) for the epidermal and subdermal and check the reflection box.

Again my question is : how can you use UV if I you're using the fast_skin shader? I mean the baking approach. The only way I can see is : let the color map and specular be fast_skin but you can still use external bump files for fast_skin.

Ezani

("Watched Avatar in 3D at midnight the other day and watched my second rerun of Beowulf last night on cable")

Yeah the Skin Fast is a shader (mental ray). You can plug your textures into it just as you do on a normal shader like a blinn. The channels are named slightly different for the color textures, I believe its called Diffuse Color and Overall Color.

Yeah Lamrugs stuff has been about for a long time and its always a good place to start.

cheers
Jay

Yup, you are correct Jay. For the overall color, you can click the button on the right and apply your Photoshop color texture file. I just don't know how it will affect the sub-surface skin scattering effects because fast_skin has its own three native individual color attributes in epidermal, subdermal and backskin so applying an external Photoshop color texture file would probably nullify those and you will lose the SSS effect. I dunno...have you ever used misss_fast_skin on a face before the UV technique you mentioned? I checkout ZBrush and that direct 2.5D texture applying technique plus ability to touch up to and from Photoshop is a million times better! :-)

Yeah I know Im correct, I was answering your question.

Yes I have used it several times. I will post more on it later as I am working right now....got a city to build for a film...

cheers
Jay

Wow
 

[@Jay : "got a city to build for a film..."]

Wow !!! I'm only using planar images but you're building a whole city out of polygons and meshes !!! Major wow! Definitely would love to see it :-))

My WIP face
 

Hi all

I've learnt that the only way to really get a awsome look with texture is either zBrush and photoshop and that you should uv map humans because if you use the Maya procedural shades and apply them directly to selected vertices or faces, then there's no blending. Now I understand a little more what UV is about and why it's extensively applied to human faces especially.

I'm quite disappointed Maya doesn't have the direct 2.5D texturing like ZBrush. It just means CG artists like me have to fork out double the cash to get Maya and ZBrush instead of just one app plus of course, the indispensable Photoshop. If Photoshop itself can be included like a plug-in in Maya, then wow..how much easier would UV and human face texturing be doing everything within one application! I really wish Autodesk, Adobe and Pixologic can cooperate together on this to make a more convenient pipeline for the good of CG artists.

UV-ing or shading the head as photorealistically as possible is only the start for me because my objective is to make an animation of a close-up face to face dialogue (as in a conversation). Can you imagine a (future) time when there will be no need for actors anymore because CG artists can make nearly photorealistic heads for animations? Do you think Avatar is taking us in that direction?

P.S. >>
The sample head I'm working on is actually the sample provided by the ZBrush 30-day trial and it has creases and muscle lines (work from ZBrush can get really detailed). I will need to place muscles and align it with the creases in order to make a photorealistic animation as well as align the bump map carefully in UV. Better to do direct painting in ZBrush (Projection Master?) Any tips?

And voila! here's my head at the current moment. Please comment!

With regard to my city model, you'll have to wait until 2012 when the movie hits the cinema

J

Aw c'mon
 

Aw c'mon Jay, can't we have a preview ? :-) Pleez...pleez (P.S. I thought 2012 has just gone out into the cinemas. Is that the movie you're talkin' about?).

Anyway, I'm building up my "hands-on" time in ZBrush now. I think that's the only way to go now to build awesome human models and monsters and also try my hands at the direct texture painting stuff (pixols, 2.5D and stuff like that...)

Hi ezanih
I hope to do a as near as I can photorealistic head that I will post in WIP in the next few days, I will model first in maya then to zbrush for bump and norm map finish in photoshop. It will be a sink or swim as I was not pleased with the Avatar texture I need to push myself to the next level...........dave

Edit: sorry forgot to ask did you model the head looks good

Thanks DaveRave!
 

Thanks DaveRave! Can't wait to see your head. How are your kids? :-)

I didn't model the head, Dave. I'm concentrating on photorealistic texturing at the moment (especially of human faces). I'm not good at modelling heads (many, many more hours to put in) and I've heard that even for experts, it takes a good 30 minutes (I saw a UTube which speeded it up to 8mins!). Would appreciate your guidance. I got the head from a free URL (Turbosquid, can't remember?). I have got Julian Mortimer's second head modelling tutorial (not the the baked texture one) but haven't gotten around to going through the tut...maybe, tonite.

P.S. >> I saw a cool UTube tut on Photoshop CS4's latest 3D tools and the author seemed to make it so easy to take a real life photo of a human face and distorted it somewhat (using the Liquify filter and Warp Lattice deformer) to fit Maya's UV of that person's human head mesh. He brought it back into Maya and it fitted nicely! But I really don't know about UV. You still can't avoid that stretching because its actually mapping a planar 2D photo (with x,y coords) to a roughly spherical 3D head mesh (with mapped u,v coords) and the sharpness and clarity of the photo is lost during the mapping process. I haven't seen any really photorealistic CG human head so far (despite Beowulf and Liam Kemp but Avatar 3D's is quite good). The skin doesn't really seem to have the texture and the eyes also are not that photorealistic.

Hi ezanih
The kids are fine how are yours, school holidays for easter comming up soon (head ache), You need a good graphics card to do 3d in photoshop alas I do not have one, hope to get a new rig soon, I was trying to find you a tutorial I had that shows you how to use a photo front and side to make the skin texture in normal photoshop alas the link is broken, I think the texture for your head is not to bad but you need the UV to control how your bump works all over the head...........dave

Hi..hi...thanks Dave, you're being overly kind. My kids are fine, thanks. Just dropped them at granny's this morn. Why don't you bring your kids to Brighton? There's a funfair right by the stony beach or bring them to London to see London Eye?

I've put the same image up in WIP and most of the commenters agree that the Brownian texture is a bit too strong as well as the SSS. The lips and eyes could do with a bit more work :-)

I totally agree with you over the graphic card thing..and new rig..wow..wouldn't I like to have a state of the art system like Windows 7 64-bit, 16GB RAM, Maya 2010 64-bit and the whole Entertainment Pack (with Mudbox), ZBrush, Adobe CS4 Extended, Premiere and After Effects.

Still not sure whether its better to have a Linux rig because with Linux, if you had 32 or 64 gigs RAM, Linux can use all of it! Those Hollywood guys used to use Iris or Silicon Indigo rigs with 128GB RAM and a UNIX system for their Hollywood blockbusters.

A word about UV though. If you stretch a great clear photo of a man's face over a 3D spherically curved head, wouldn't there be distortion and stretching? I have not yet seen a UV head that is believable up till now (Beowulf is a case in point) - its either the skin is too blurry or the eyes are too blurry.

Cameron's Avatar 3D UV texturing is great by leaps and bounds. I think if they did try to texture a human head mesh or a human body, it would be believable but alas, Sam Worthington might be out of a job!

Probably its the UV technology they use - the software apps and advanced, expensive computers. I think a step forward for me to do more photorealistic human heads and human bodies is to start using ZBrush right now and use their direct painting (because ZBrush's UV mapping technique is very sharp and accurate and uses very small accurately mapped tiles instead of the normal planar, spherical or cylindrical mapping in Maya).

And hey, let me know how you're getting on with your head! :-)

Bye!

Hi ezanih
To make a photo realistic model you need a lot of photos of that person, hi res if possible front and side but that is only one part, lighting, hair,spec, model, bump, so much...............I will post soon if just that I have not tryed this before and do not want to make a ass of myself and am doing a lot of work before I post, we have got a guy called bullet because he is fast you can call me snail.....................dave

[@daverave : I will post soon if just that I have not tryed this before and do not want to make a ass of myself and am doing a lot of work before I post...]

[@daverave : I think the texture for your head is not to bad but you need the UV to control how your bump works all over the head]

Hi...hi....hi...a strange statement comin from an Avatar 2010 Gold Medal Winner. WAY TO GO DAVE !!! IT DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU'RE THE LAST MAN STANDING. JAMES CAMERON CAN SUBSTITUTE YOUR AVATAR WITH ANY OF THEIRS AND I DON'T THINK WE'D SEE ANY DIFFERENCE! A JOB VERY WELL DONE!!! YOUR KIDS WILL BE PROUD !!!

About UV though, I still stand by my previous statement : " If you stretch a great clear photo of a man's face over a 3D spherically curved head, there will be distortion and stretching. I have not yet seen a UV human head that is believable up till now (Beowulf is a case in point) - its either the skin is too blurry or the eyes are too blurry - I'm not talking about an alien head or something, I'm talking about a human head

But your UV of your avatar head is a good illustration of UV technique well employed - its pretty photorealistic. Your hairs are great and so's your eyebrows.

And you know what ? I've been searching everywhere for a Maya eyebrow tutorial until I read your Avatar WIP forum post. THANKS A MILLIION DAVE !!! :-) :-)

Dave The Avatar Gold Medal Winner 2010, I really have two special requests - I really want you to share with me your technique for making that superb looking hair. Are you using Joe Alter's Shave N Hairbrush ? And those beautiful texture for your Avatar especially the lips ? Were they painted directly in ZBrush ?

Many thanks and C-O-N-G-R-A-T-U-L-A-T-I-O-N-S !!! Never thought I could have a SM Gold Medal Winner as a friend ;-)

Some useful references for head
 

Hi Dave

Since you're doing a human head and UV texturing it, I thought you'd find these tuts useful (I certainly did and have kept them for my UV references) :-

Search for

(1) Potrait of an actress (Marlene Dietrich) by Indonesian CG artist Max Wahyudi

(2) The Station Master

(3) The Last Joker by an Iranian CG Artist

(4) Making of The Kid by Rakesh Siddhu

(5) The Last Elf (very photorealistic)

(6) www.liamkemp.com (A Wonderful Life)

Here's the URL : http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tut...tutorials.html

P.S. >> Oh ya, I noticed you're using Maya 2009 Unlimited. Did you find the Maya Muscles feature useful ? (I only have 2008). Another great CG tool you should get is PShop CS4 Extended - its got 3D tools built-in and seamless import/export into Maya

Hope you find them useful!

Hi ezanih
Not used the Muscles thing yet, Yes I have maya 2009 unlimited, I used the maya hair system to create the avatars hair, first I create curves in the shape of the hair I wanted then create a nurb sphere then assign a hair system to it from this you can assign the system to the curves, the avatar has 3 hair systems.
1:hair sweeping back
2:eye brow
3:braid
I did not use zbrush for the avatar, but created the texture in photoshop using photos of the avatar and painting. the lips are a cut out photo adjust and made to fit with the Liquify filter then a bump was painted over it.
I have got CS4 but at the moment cannot use the 3D bit because of my graphics card, will have a look at those links..........................dave

Thanks
 

Hi dave

Thanks for sharing that hair procedure, dave. I've also tried Maya Hair (I only got Maya 2008 Unlimited and PShop CS3 Standard compared to your 2009 Unlimited and CS4 Extended Wow!) but I noticed there is also Maya Fur and also PaintFX Hair (where you can choose the different types of hair from Visor). I wonder what kind of hair we can get from these 3 features. I also know the PaintFX hair can be converted to poly for rendering in MR (hair can only be rendered with Maya Software)

Ok, now I know how photorealistic UVs are done...literally from photos! :-)

I'm missing those Maya Muscle and Liquefy commands to really help me make UV-ing easy but have to go the long route for now and see if there's any workarounds until I get some extra dosh.

P.S >> Right now, I'm taking a break from UV and playing around with planar images and camera motion path as well as making explosions in Maya. I have also tried Maya Cloth briefly so if there's anything I can help, just give me a shout :-)

Happy rendering,

Ezani

Hi ezanih
Are you sure you do not have the Liquefy filter in CS3 it might be a update, as far for the muscle you could use blend shape. I dont think I will need to use the muscle thing that much unless I was going to animate some animal, that link was good the best one for me was Making of The Kid by Rakesh Siddhu. Daffs are now comming up soon be summer..............dave

Hi daverave
 

Dave

Will you hit me on the head for a moment ... omigosh... of course there's Liquify command in Photoshop CS3 so that's a big YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO for me. I played around with it for a moment on Saturday and I especially like the Pixel Distort feature (the first button). Hi hi .. now I can do it just like in the UTube tutorial. I'm pretty excited.


And of course how daft of me. You can use Blendshapes and still stimulate the muscles...duh! I'm going to do that in my animations later. Just that I'm worried if my PC can take it as I'm working with high polycounts and with BS, you need to make several duplicate copies of the same head. I think I'll stick with a pair at a time for any individual ma or mb scenes. Thanks for that slick advise. :-)


A couple of questions :-


1. I displayed Polycount details with Display-->Heads Up but I can't get one figure that says what's my polycount. Maya's giving me couple of numbers for Tris, Vertices, Edges, Quads. Which number says what my polycount is ?


2. I know Relax and Merge can reduce the polycounts. I tried that but Maya says I haven't "Prepared" my mesh. I clicked Prepared but I still can't get it to Relax. I can use Merge but I don't want to be selecting individual edges one by one and merge - there hundreds of thousands of them. Is there anyway I can reduce polygon count in one go. I have several high quality but high polycount meshes (one face and one robot) which I need to reduce the complexity as my PC frequently crashes as I work on it.



OK I'm going to UV my ass off now with actual photos I get from the Internet!!! Will post them when I'm done and compare with the black man's head I did using purely Maya's native shaders. I dunno...you tend to lose the sharpness in the skin and eyes with UV..maybe I'll do the eyes separately. I'm pretty excited with UV now!

There's a new brilliant UV tut on The Making of The Potrait of Sheikh Zayed. You should check it out.

P.S. >> Have you decided where to take your kids yet for the hols ?

Cheers
EZANI

Hi ezanih

I am sorry but for you question number 1 I do not know the answer I thought it was fases but think I am wrong
Quetion 2 I dont think I understand the question are you asking how to reduce the polygon count of a model to make it more rendable.............dave

Thanks Dave
 

Hi Dave

Its ok, I manage to reduce my polygon count for that hi-res head (the black man head, the one I actually posted the image of). For the sake of sharing, here's how I did it :-

1. Select the head in object mode
2. Click Mesh-->Reduce
3. Maya complains there are no non-manifold geometry and asks me to cleanup the mesh first
4. I click Mesh --> Cleanup after selecting the mesh object
5. I click Mesh --> Reduce after selecting the mesh object

The mesh polygons are reduced.

This can be done a few times by the way.

NOTE - The face doesn't look as good as the hi-res one but I have to work within my PC limitations!


I UV-d a front and side photo of Sam Worthington / Chris O 'Donnell on to my mesh with Photoshop Liquify and got some weird results like Sam Worthington's been drinking too much or Chris just came out of a bar brawl. Then I realised that the head mesh dimensions has to exactly match the Sam and Chris photo (front and side). Which means I have to modify the black man head mesh a bit to fit Sam / Chris.

In one of the four views, there is a View menu and then Image Plane which allows me to put in the photo as a backdrop as I modify the mesh. How do I make the image plane smaller or make the mesh semi-transparent so I can see both layers just like in Photoshop (without using Layer Editor) ?

If I was good at ZBrush, it would be probably better for me to modify the mesh there.

The other option is to create a NURBS or Polygon plane and attach the front and side image there and scale it accordingly as I work on modifying the mesh to fit Sam's or Chris's photo dimensions.

Any pointers?


P.S >> For Question 1, can anyone else help ?

Hi ezanih


I hope this is use full this is one of my first uvs that I created in photoshop following a tutorial (that the link is broken) You use a front photo and a side photo then conbine them in photoshop. For working with image planes in maya I get a front photo and side photo make the the same size in photoshop then create poly planes in maya the same ratio size.............hope this make sence........dave

sorry forgot


Edited by gster due to very large image.

Dave please keep the image sizes posted down to a useable size, unelss linking to a host.

Thanks again Dave
 

Thanks again, Dave. That's a great UV you got there! Normally the eye meshes need to be separated if you want to do animation such as eye rolling and eye fluttering (teeth mesh needs to be separate also). But for stills its ok.

I did 2 things yesterday :-

1. Watched the Essentials tutorials for ZBrush in the Pixologic Video Tutorials column from start to finish

2. Played around with UV-ing Chris O Donnell's head in ZBrush and Maya and Photoshop for about an hour (I got kids too!)

I think I'm beginning to get a grasp of UV-ing somone's head.

I'm going to have to put in many more hours in order to be competent.

I used a ready head mesh and tried to modify it to match Chris's head. I used both Maya and ZBrush. I converted the head to OBJ and imported it into ZBrush as a Tool for finer sculpting.

I elongated the black man's head so I scaled in the Y-axis. Then I made the upper head rounder, beefed up the cheeks, reduce lips size especially upper lip and finally, made the nose sharper. The finer details were done in ZBrush especially using the Simple, Nudge, Pinch and Smooth and Flatten brushes. I turned on x-axis symmetry in ZBrush. I had lots of photo references of Chris O Donnell front face but very few side face references.

I then imported it back into Maya. I tried to make a cylindrical UV of the head to export to Photoshop but failed. It already had a default UV but when viewed in the UV Texture Editor, the head seems to be broken up into many pieces - not the usual smooth UV like the one you posted above. I have another head mesh which I successfully cylindrical UV-'d. Don't know what's the problem with this one.

My next study will be to try and use Master Projection and ZMapper in ZBrush to try to texture Chris O Donnel's face in ZBrush instead of Maya. I know Pixologic's AUV tiled mapping is pretty accurate with good, sharp results. I also want to UV a lot of heads and build up my UV hands-on hours. I also need to learn to model heads from scratch (you know, Extrude, Merge, Split Polygon, Proxy and all that). Wow...so many things to do using one incredible software application!

Hope to post more of my work later, Dave.

Dave, if you've done (or know of) any work on how to do great explosions in Maya, please could you share it. :-)

Many thanks
Ezani

Hi ezanih
I did put a link on your thread to uvs check it out it does explain how to use uv projection to get the best results, you have to understand the work flow between maya and zbrush to get the best out of them, say you have a good low poly base mesh that only needs fine detail like skin porse what you do is first you create UVs in maya (at a later date you could use zbrush UVs) then export to zbrush, in zbrush you divide the mesh to level 6 then create the porses on the model you then move down to level 1 and create your bump map then export your mesh plus the bump map to maya, sorry have not create explosions but should be some thing free on the net.............hope you are well.........dave

Hi Dave
 

Hi Dave

How are you today?

I spent the weekend doing (or trying to do) UVs of head meshes (namely Chris O Donnell's head mesh). I realized I used the wrong UV mapping - it should be spherical mapping for the head (not cylindrical). Once I used spherical mapping, I got the standard UV head mesh used by everybody.

Thank you again for the Maya<-->ZBrush UV tut. I managed to access it successfully and saved a local copy on my hard disk for future ref :-)

You're right - for the moment I will avoid using Texture Master or Projection Master in ZBrush and try to do most things in Maya and Photoshop except probably the finer head sculpting.

I noticed from all the UV tuts I sent you earlier, most of the UV experts actually built up the head mesh from scratch using polygon modelling with a front and side photo. The tut called Creating Sheikh Zayed (the latest) is pretty good and the results pretty realistic.

The problem I'm having now is I'm not that experienced at poly-modelling and I'm using and existing head mesh which I'm trying to deform to match Chris O Donnell's head dimensions. It would probably be better to try to build a head mesh from scratch and I get to learn polymodelling in the process (chuckle) but I'm trying to save time. I'm doing the deforming in Maya and ZBrush from my weekend work, I just realized that the head mesh must be pretty accurate for the UV texture to fit properly.

I think my head mesh is not that accurate enough and I will be doing more shaping this week by referencing photos of Chris until I can get a good UV. One question to you Dave is how can I set up an Image Plane photo ref in ZBrush as can be done in Maya. Another question is how can I move just the eyes lower (literally) in ZBrush - do I use the Move or Transform brush ? The shaping of the nose is also quite difficult. Its a black man's nose and I'm trying to sharpen the nose as well as reduce the size of the nostrils.

At the same time if I get the color map accurate, I just need to make a grayscale monochrome image of the same graphic to make a bump map. Then I will be adding specular, transparency and occular maps. I will later add hair and eyebrow with Maya Hair or from Visor or from Fur.

I noticed that the once accurate photo of Chris becomes a stretched somewhat blurry UV of the head mesh with some significant loss of quality (pls see screenshots below). I have always observed this in UVs (which is why I tried to use the generic Maya procedural shades initially) and it is preventing CG artists from doing realistic human animation. I dunno..I was probably referring to Beowulf but Avatar is pretty realistic! But that UV from Sheikh Zayed is really pretty sharp and realistic.

I dunno..I'll be putting in more hours to this Chris O Donnell UV of mine.

Dave, about the explosions, and to share with you, its pretty hard to do good photorealistic explosions in Maya unless you move into the realm of Maya Fluids and photorealistic particle shaders. You will also need BlastCode (commercial). Also check out Overburn and the Visor fluid projects.

Got a question
 

One question Dave with regards to UV-ing a head mesh - if we have a baked cylindirically mapped UV layout of a human head mesh which has been exported from Maya's UV Texture Editor and we have a photo blueprint (front and side) of a human head and face in Photoshop, we normally manipulate the photo in Photoshop with Liquify filter. Is it also possible to manipulate the UV grid in Maya's UV Texture Editor to fit the photo instead? What would be the results to the rendered head ?

You could but you can get problems with stretching and compression on those areas.

The whole point of UV mapping is to lay out the UV's into useable and constant sized tiles (representitive of the polygon size on the mesh) that you can easily parin on.

Of course
 

Of course! Duh...you hit the nail on the head gster123. What was I thinking. Thanks a lot for that input, gster!!! :-)


Ezani