Thanks for the tips Candy! I’ve given up on GPU rendering, with the exception of perhaps background scenery (which can be render-layered).
So I’m finally back from finals, which went pretty well. Now I’ve got a month off to work on Samus, so updates should be a bit more frequent.
I’m trying to use Arnold’s SSS shader, but I’ve found that makeup and diffuse weight doesn’t seem to work correctly. For example I’ll paint on some eyeshadow/liner with a hard black, but the surface is only dimmed slightly. Isn’t the diffuse layer supposed to just override everything underneath if I have the weight at 1? Here’s a screenshot of the shader currently:
So I think I’m just about finished with the Samus body model. I quickly modeled and shaded some gym-type clothing for her. Any critiques on the hair or anything else? Remember she still doesn’t have proper make up and I pretty sure I’ll have to add it in post if no one knows how to add it to a SSS shader properly. I figured out my problem with the diffuse/sub weights, they were supposed to add up to 1, otherwise it adds shaders together to make a super bright material, which is why the eyes looked so dark in the previous renders.
I’m still not entirely sure if I’m using the hair BSDF shader properly since there’s literally no information online about how to implement it except a cg cookie tutorial (and I’m too cheap right now to buy a membership).
Lol, so this project is taking up so much space, my SSD is at capacity and the scratch disk can’t even hold a screenshot. So I’m going to have to spend a day reinstalling windows and clearing off my OS harddrive, backing up etc. My PC is sooo freakin cluttered right now.
After I’m done doing that I might take a break and do some fun texture painting/shading on the metroid model. Also I’ll be doing some mockups for the actual magazine renders soon.
This is just a suggestion, but maybe you can paint a mask for the make-up and then Plug the makeup into a diffuse. Then plug that into a mix shader with the SSS and the mask image as the factor?
Very fine model ( except the feet ) and nice shaders. I guess Soupertrooper is right with his proposal. A mask could help with the makeup and the SSS shader. A mask could be also used to control where the SSS should be less strong, i.e. in areas where the bones are close to the skin. I dig the hair shader, very nice result!
Thanks @Icon, Trooper, I’ll experiment with that, my only problem is that the spec might start looking strange, and the values/hues might look off without SSS.
@Minorbus Thanks, I didn’t go too into detail with the toes just because I don’t plan on having any final renders without some sort of foot wear (not to mention they would have been hell to retopo).
So I took a break to celebrate the holidays with family away from home. I did spend some of that time traveling, so I was able to write up a rough draft of the magazine interview. With that in mind I wanted to get some feedback on typography choice (just list your fav numbers I guess).
Here are some options:
And then here’s a quick sketch of what the cover might look like (I’ll probably modify the type to delete the bridges in the A characters). I’m open to other suggestions, but most of the famous interview magazine examples I saw had a similar angle as this. I would like to keep at least some of her face covered up to add intrigue, which I could do by either the helmet or some creative posing/lighting.
So I did some more work on Samus’s makeup. It’s a bit subtle, or at least I hope it is. I evened out the skin tones, did a little bit of highlighting on the brow ridge and in the corners of the eye. I added some eyeshadow and liner. I also penciled in the eyebrows a little bit. Lastly I put in the lip gloss which I’ll probably tweak some more until I’m happy with the roughness and color. It was sort of a headache because any makeup messes with the glossy level on the face so I had to tone it down until it looked natural.
(sorry for the low sample size)
Here’s what she looks like from a distance:
And up closer:
I also managed to get the metroid textured and shaded today. It has some quirky materials, particularly on the mantel, since I hooked up the roughness of the glass mat to the fresnel or something like that. Gives it this super intense viscous DoF kind of look I really enjoyed. The brainy bits also have an emission shader masked into the crevices and dotted around the lumps. I’m really happy the way it turned out, I thought it would look way worse.
Great WIP fusobotic! I like how you rebuild this character and break the fidelity without lost the esency of Samus, I could suggest a solution for makeup and tattoos? the last year Im trying to made my own skin shader based on mia material, and accord to documentation I found on mental ray, for handle that things I understand they used something call “overall color” for that, that overall color is multiply with the colors of the anothers node colors this is how I interpretate his description on cycles:
this is the node color setup, you can use that on the arnold shader setup, because you can see Im only made conection on colors on different layers of sss, Ah is important if you using a diffuse node, you need another node color that multiply the makeup with the difuse color.
PD. Ignore My scale because that is variable on each project depending on size that handle on each proyect, and sorry I dont understand why the image of nodes are duplicate.
Thanks jose! I’ll make use of that when I finalize the shader. For right now I’m just masking the tattoo and makeup over on a diffuse shader according to the alpha of the texture. I’ll tweak it a bit more before I’m done though.
So I spent a few hours tonight working on conceptualizing the tattoo.
I need something based on this:
Only it’s going to look tattooed to her skin and have a bit more of an edgy look to match my realistic take on her. I would like to include some imagery referencing the chozo (bird-like shapes), metroids, a little bit of Egyptian hieroglyphic influence, and some sensually charged silhouettes to contrast the harder angles. The idea is that the suit interfaces solely with her body by recognizing her genetics, so I’d assume that the suit has a sort of socket or attachment point on her body (and spinal column) which is represented by the pink symbol on her back. The tattoo I pick will not only be on her back but will be represented on the under suit, and even surface on the over suit in certain areas. Throughout Metroid lore it mentions how the suit is sort of an extension of herself and this symbolizes that.
I messed around with some concepts in alchemy/photoshop:
And then took aspects of those and composted them for a test render (the final design will be a vector shape and higher resolution, less messy etc):
So hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to get the tattoo done and then move on to concept sculpting the under suit.
Also thinking about giving Marvelous Designer a try for making her some more casual and formal garments, anyone have experience with it? Is it easy to learn quickly?
Anyway, I’d like to hear some feedback on the tattoo design, which you think will compliment her body shape best while still looking badass and reminiscent of the things I mentioned. Thanks!
Thanks pieriko, I’ve spent a heck of a lot of time tweaking the spec and weight values (and they’ll probably vary even more depending on the environments I render her in). Skin can be a real headache. Speaking of which I finally got the tattoo texture properly shaded so the spec works. I separated the tat and makeup layer just because makeup sits on top of the skin and will have a different spec value (thanks again for the multiply tip jose).
I also adjusted the positioning so that it would look good under her sports wear.
Thanks remi! I’ve got a ways to go yet but I like to spend a lot of time on the small things since I’ve got no time limit on this project.
Speaking of which, here is my concept for the undersuit. It’s a bit lumpy at the moment but I’ll be refining it more tomorrow. Its kind of a mixture of hardsurface, latex(?), and the puffy sort of material in winter jackets (on the abdomen and back). My reasoning for using these materials is the hard surface protects vitals and serves as an insertion point for the suit (also helps keep the bosoms from becoming too unruly when running around), the latex-ish skin-tight material provides the most movement in the limbs, and finally the insulated, non-newtonian portions protect wiring underneath and provides flexible armor for her trunk and organs. It also has lead lining to prevent irradiation, since the rest of the body will be covered in regular armor. The stomach and back areas will be the only parts visible underneath the power suit since hard-surface doesn’t accommodate bending over (which is my own deviation from the original in the games). As to how Samus could pull off jumping somersaults with thick metal plating covering her mid section I may never know, but thankfully she will be nice and flexible thanks to this new revision.
(the bumps on the shoulder areas are for the pauldron insertion geometry which I’ll add later)
I’ll probably only be keeping the non-hardsurface geo from the sculpt. I’ll have to retopo the extranenous bits separately because I’m sculpting a multi-res of samus’s original body geometry.
) and nice shaders. I guess Soupertrooper is right with his proposal. A mask could help with the makeup and the SSS shader. A mask could be also used to control where the SSS should be less strong, i.e. in areas where the bones are close to the skin. I dig the hair shader, very nice result!
