hey, missed so much your work, and as i have internet problems, i am aware of your newest addition only now… great to see viggo coming, yes, all the hard modeling work pays now 
hair is always tricky… looking forward to next
Doris,
Provided two renders, – one in Blender internal but with lighting. The previous ones were without lighting.
– one in Cycles, with perspective 80 mm
Still have to do a some sculpting for a bump map and a normal map for the texture. The texture is closer
Worked on poly hair mesh, and did a a once over tune up on the head. Redid eye orbit and upper lid shape and the eye orbit. It seems more accurate on this go-round (IMO) Reshaped the cheek bones/planes? They seem to look more accurate as well (Again IMO)
However I’m uncertain about the chin, whether it might be a bit too wide, or … given that there is a small amount of beard hair, it’s more close to the right volume.
The mouth seems close to the target.
I also re-did the poly hair, so that I have two methods for renders. Particle doesn;t translate to cycles.
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Did a test with particles and a revised poly mesh for the hair. the particle hair was done in blender render
Yeah, his particle hair is a little rough, but not bad.
I tried using the scalp of Viggo’s head for particle generation but it requires an exceeding number of hairs to appear thick enough. I’m still tweaking how to use the children. (Parents? children? field trips? Misbehaving - Yeah)
So I went with the poly hair for an underlay and source for the generated hairs. There are two dilemma I see now
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the hair mesh has to be reduced in volume to allow the particle hair to look more natural. Moreover when they lie with the grain of the poly hair it adds depth and looks pretty good even close up.
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the bottom of the poly mesh needs trimmed to reduce the jagged tips that appear way too regular.
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Also, I know he’s got Slow Eye at the moment, like he’s ready to fall asleep, or didn’t quite get that joke.
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Lastly, in the cycles shots, I can now see his chin is protuding too far forward. He needs a jaw recession to bring the lower mandible more underneath and in line with the upper mandible.
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Lastly, super lastly, it seems to take a butt ton of light to illuminate the cycles renders
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yes, the chin is a tad wide, imo, and too much forward too. …about light in cycles…try put planes around the bust, outside the view of the camera. they will reflect the light from the source, and tremendously brighten the scene, and is what happesn in nature too. of course, it depends from what lighting you want, but for portrait shots this works well… and, yes, cycles still cannot handle particles, so if you wish to use cycles in final render, you either need do a compositing of cycles render with particles hair rendered in blender internal (is possible, i did it, but lots of extra work, and difficult composing), or you stay with blenderinternal, as there you too have sss effect for the skin (which one can fake to some extend in cycles, but again more a difficult thing to get right.)
altogether i am liking where you are heading too
Doris,
Yeah, I thought so. I apologize but I had to restart with another “full head mesh”, not just a face front to go with a hair mesh. I elected to do it once I start using the particle hair. Luckily I had a recent variation of Viggo, so the facial topography was close.
However, I had to go back over your notes on the fine points to tuck and move things around. That’s why the last picture post seemed a bit of a reversion in some areas.
So now I’m getting caught up. In fact, in some ways, better. In these pics I did the following changes/additions
-new eye corneas coloring to better match the facial texture map. It’s from the picture used for the texture. Although it’s not the final eye texture, it’s a more natural look.
- Chin was narrowed and recessed further under the mouth.
- lip polys/verts were made more orderly. The lower lip was moved inward, less prominent, forward-wise.
- The cheek planes were flattened and fattened somewhat to reduce the extreme hollow that was developing.
- The indent in the jaw was made more deep while the adjoining mandible region was expanded … a bit.
- The outer - upper corner of the eyebrows were raised … slightly
- The outer corners of the eye orbits were raised … slighty (same time as above)
I also tried using the children option for the hair particles. Works. Works pretty well, but have to play with it more to see the effectiveness of using it with the hair mesh.
As to lights I created the surround sound light planes for the cycles renders. It does help a lot. Still under illuminates, but that’s likely a function of my sled dog laptop (Intel duo core -Celeron 2.14 and shared memory for graphics) Then I put all the lights and camera stuff in seperate layers to clear out the clutter.
Concerns and challenges
- The mouth - I’m trying to create some tension/tightness in the lips without making a flattened or lipless grimace. You know kinda like … “I am interested but I’m not sure where you’re going with this story, and it doesn’t sound very promising kind of Look” Sort of like this post.
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Image map for cycles - Will cycles take an image map?
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Normal map for cycles - same question
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Bump map for cycles - also same
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Will cycles use a texture with an alpha map. I could use an alpha map for hair. I know the blender internal can display an alpha map.
The polygon hair for cycles - I have to make the same cylinder rope hair which I used for the stray bangs hairs
And that’s all … for this post.
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I had to restructure the chin more. The chin is pared down more, butt chin reduced to more of a jutting chin. Not sure which looks “better”
Also in both posts, bottom lip was recessed inward further to create more of a prominence for the upper lip.
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hi, here is late, so i answer only short now, and only the tech questions:
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Image map for cycles - Will cycles take an image map? … yes use an image node
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Normal map for cycles - same question …, yes in latest builts,
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Bump map for cycles - also same …,yes
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Will cycles use a texture with an alpha map. I could use an alpha map for hair. I know the blender internal can display an alpha map. … yes, cycles can this too, only way how to tell cycles is different i think. mix shader with transparent, and use the alpha in the factor plug
if light plane is still not light enough, enlarge the light emitting planes. the size of the plane also effect the amount of light emitted. …will be back later, after some sleep…
Thanks a ton. Will impliment
I refined the color of the eyes, meaning the whites. I added an actual map of the white of the eyeball with blood vessels and some detail. Then I tinted the map bluish and desaturated the red in the blood vessels a bit. Kept his eyes from looking like something out of Twilight.
Now he looks less jaundiced and sickly.
Then I adjusted the “angle” of the right eye. Added a very slight rotation of the whole outer lid area and tear duct, as a group. This was done to match the alignment of tear ducts and line of the left eye. Seems to look better.
Also broadened the line of the face running down from the frontal cheek bones, outside the corners of the mouth and then ties in with the lower jaw near the chin. Not certain what it’s called, but I thickened it some.
All in all he looks … healthier. Now I’m crashing.
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Doris,
Did some face watching and observation of people out and about, as well as watching various faces on TV. I was able to compare your comments again real facial topography. I saw what you were trying to impart about the mouth region, as well as some other points about the jaw and chin line. So, I’ve worked on it for three days and I know the mesh is now much more accurate. I added a cycles update.
I do like cycles, particularly when I can get the full image texture to post. But it doesn't happen every time. Also it seems cycles doesn't really like a texture map that isn't square. I keep getting the map but you can see its distorted. Squashed like its trying to fit a very wide map.
Anyway here’s the updated and adjusted facial mesh. I provided a series of pics to better see the facial structure. I really think it’s in there. It’s back to where you were steering it. The mouth needs some adjustment and the nose bridge as well, but brother, it’s almost all in the black. Viggo is there.
I made a normal map for a test. And I’m gonna start sculpting detail for a bump map.
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yes! you learned a ton with this project, your sculpt has come a long way, and everything you do now is bringing even more preciseness. viggo was there already, but in your latest images he is coming out much clearer still. great work. … one point to check, maybe the mesh is odd there: in front view and 3/4 view you see a very hard step under the cheakbone, on the front face plane. it looks to me, as if there is a pole in the mesh, that creates this unwanted effect. if so, try to smooth it out as good as possible…
no, something seems missing in your material setup when cycles distorts maps. cycles takes any imageformat and any aspect ratio you provide. … how to set up the material in node editor… just to get the colormap (you can add all sorts of nodes gong from there). this assumes your object has uv coordinates. if not, you can use cameraprojection (works fine sometimes) and add between the texture coordinate node and the imagenode a mapping node which lets you tell cycles how how want the images sized on the object… hope this helps.
Yeah, I had to learn a ton, in order to dig up Viggo.
But it would have taken ridiculously longer (if at all) if I had to riddle it out on my own, through simple trial and error. Having a guide/tutor like yourself providing quick feedback greatly shortened the learning.
… I implemented the node changes and now the image appears in the material setting of cycles. However it is still distorted in the final render setting.
Also, I’m not certain how to plug the normal map in yet. But Forward progress is commencing once again … Now!
hmm, not sure what the problem with the imagemap is… are you using uv map? if so, is the texture same dimension as uv map? if yes, have you created the uv map in blender or different program. if the latter, try flipping the y-coordinate with a mapping note (scale=-1). this might be the problem, the map looks distorted, but it is only coordinate flip… if this still not fixes the problem, do tell me more precisely what you are doing, maybe with screenshots so i can see…
Doris,
Attached is the cycles setup and the outcome for each setting of cycles.
Also, another quirk … When I shift from object to edit mode, while in cycles “texture shading” the image mapping becomes distorted just like the cycles rendered outcome.
Same outcomes whether texture coordinate UV is linked up or not.
I’m not clear how “you flip a cooridinate” I’ll experiment and try this next.
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Doris - I tried moving both the x and y values in the texture mapping to attempt to match the 6144 x 4096 scale ratio of the texture image. No joy, no value cleared the distortion.
I tried eliminating the projection of alternatively, y, then x in the mapping. I did it just to see, and of course, it didn’t work.
Also, on the side, … Any advice how to “clear out” all the extra image files in the texture box window in the UV editor. I have all these copies of different images I no longer use still attached to the project. I’ve “de-linked them” but they still linger.
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yes, put the image you want remove into the slot, then shift-click on the little x, right where the name of the image is. save file. quit blender , reopen file. now the image is gone.
hmm, the texture distortion is a tricky one to help from far without seeing your whole file… but, hey we will solve it… have you tried the scale value -1?
there is no texture coordinates node in your image, it should be set on uv, and above mapping node,…if that still does not the trick, then, open the uv editor, put your model in edit mode, load the image into the uveditor window, select all vertices. now the uv coordinates should show above the image. do they sit correctly here ?
I didn’t explain what I posted earlier clearly enough. In the earlier post I had a pic of 2 different node setups using the texture editor, both set to “UV” on the left input side of the image. I tried rendering both with and without the the texture coordinator being hooked up to the image. Same results though.
However, when I added a mapping node in line with the Texture coordinator and the image I got some greater improvements in the rendering method in the viewport, but also lost in other areas. When I enlarged the mapping scale it tightened up the image projected. Then I also had to adjust the offset of the x and y values of the image to “walk the image onto the mesh features more accurately” Couldn’t quite get it all the way there, though.
What I also can see is that the image being used is not taking other UV adjustments I’d made to my UV window source image, particularly in the neck area and the left side of the jaw.
Also the material picture in the viewport is very distorted now, while the texture viewport doesn’t even post.
Yet progress is being made, although I’m pretty clueless on the diagnosis or recommendations.
And, I like the look that Cycles can bring to a mesh
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Doris,
Ok, … kinda out of gas. if you’re up for taking a look at the file I can either pass it on a PM (if doable) up forward a dropbox link.
Files are zipped in 7-Zip. 9 MB total.
Also, the tip on clearing out the old image files was handy. So much crap builds up in the texture bins. Thanks.
I think you should take some more meat out of his cheeks. His jaw/cheekbones are pretty chiseled. Looks awesome otherwise. Hope you get the textures sorted.
oh, i am sorry, my fault of not reading good enough…
and, i am clueless as you,sigh …the rendered image looks like as if the uv coordinates are wrong, this could be seen in the uv editor with the texture put as background. …what puzzles me is however that the material view and the texture view are correct. that seems to indicate that the uv’s are correct, but the cycles render shows wrong. it does not look like distorted, but as if the uv islands lie on the wrong places, the eyes are there 2 times, which indicates that several polygons lie over the eyearea in the texture, again indicating wrong uv corrdinates … in the moment, i cannot see how to fix the problem, since i am not understanding what causes this (i am rather new to blender too, actually), as the images seem to say contradiction… maybe you can show in the render problem section of the forum, and ask for help. sorry not helpful.
edit: oh, i can try to look the file, but earliest on the weekend, too busy on work during week. and, as said, i am a blender novice, so dont know if i can fix such a complicated problem. i would try if you wish, however.