been playing with head shapes, can get some cool alternate looks
I used some extra morphs to widen and raise the cranium on my image Exile Portrait. :). Someday I'll pick up the creature morphs for G3M which (I think) have a headcrest/ridge in them. At least the female version does, IIRC.
Although, honestly? It's just easier to use a duplicate. That way you can put any morphs you want, get a skin that is mostly the same, and there you go. Just need a little touching up with heal brush.
The problem is that there's just not a good way to translate lots of morphs to geograft arms, and it limits textures a lot.
Although, honestly? It's just easier to use a duplicate. That way you can put any morphs you want, get a skin that is mostly the same, and there you go. Just need a little touching up with heal brush.
The problem is that there's just not a good way to translate lots of morphs to geograft arms, and it limits textures a lot.
I've tried using multiple figures and hiding the parts I didn't need; I never got results that looked good. Care to share how you do it?
Duplicated figure, hid everything but arms, moved it down and scaled it until the base of the arms was somewhat intersected with the lower chest. Narrowed the chest a little to finish placement, parented it to the main figure's abdomen.
Then set second figure's collision to be first figure.
Pose, render.
Bring it into Photoshop and use some Heal brush and droplet to smooth over the transition.
Duplicated figure, hid everything but arms, moved it down and scaled it until the base of the arms was somewhat intersected with the lower chest. Narrowed the chest a little to finish placement, parented it to the main figure's abdomen.
Then set second figure's collision to be first figure.
Pose, render.
Bring it into Photoshop and use some Heal brush and droplet to smooth over the transition.
Ahhh, the collision part was what I was missing. I figured I'd need to do some postwork, but I never got to the point that I had anything I felt was worth rendering. Thanks for providing the missing piece.
The nice thing about the method I outline is that it's fast, you retain any weird skins/morphs/whatever for the limb, you can apply it across figures (like if you want a horse body on a Genesis, Genesis 2, 3, blind demon... who cares!). Like, I made a reptilian figure with a dragon centauroid lower bit.
But the BEST part is that it's way way way way WAY flippin easier than properly doing a geograft. Shudder.
Experimenting with texture painting (in Substance Painter 2), came up with this.
The texture on skin is mine, eyes and nails are from original.
Admittedly, on this experiment, there wasn't any painting as such, it's all generated stuff. Took a lot of work to figure out how to get good AO-based effects that didn't show obvious seams. Mutter.
Experimenting with texture painting (in Substance Painter 2), came up with this.
The texture on skin is mine, eyes and nails are from original.
Admittedly, on this experiment, there wasn't any painting as such, it's all generated stuff. Took a lot of work to figure out how to get good AO-based effects that didn't show obvious seams. Mutter.
Looks very cool, I like that extra bump you gave it. Did you find Substance hard to work with because of the non udim support? I'm still waiting to invest in it until it gets to a point where you're able to paint across seams.
Yes. The seams thing is a real fudging nightmare that makes me want to punch babies.
What I find works best is relying on World Normals to base procedural stuff on, or fractal patterns. Those will flow decently across seams, and then just be careful with painting. It's not ideal, but it's about 1/2 to 1/4 the price of everything else I'm looking at.
Within those bounds, the actual procedural/texture generation really sits nicely in my interest range. It's easy and fun to set up masking layers and do funky things.
I was really confused until I noticed that if you scroll down in the texture pane in the middle there are a bunch of options for baking textures, which you can then use as the basis of other stuff.
In the above, I used a combination of 'skin bump' normals fed into height map + a 'dirt mask' to get all the nooks and crannies.
The first dozen attempts I tried... stunk, hard, because I was using stuff based on Normals or Curvature, and both had really obvious disjoints at the seams. See aforementioned frustration.
Ultimately I went with SP2 because everything, and I mean everything, I was looking at has drawbacks or puzzling gaps (like 3d Coat, which costs twice as much, doesn't have a blur/blend tool for surface painting. Man, wut?)
This might be of interest, Josh Crockett... I used SP2 to generate a Normal map from a Subd1 version of Exile, baking from the Subd4 model. The Subd1 Exile with Normal maps isn't EXACTLY like the Subd4 version, but it's pretty darn close.
Experimenting with texture painting (in Substance Painter 2), came up with this.
The texture on skin is mine, eyes and nails are from original.
Admittedly, on this experiment, there wasn't any painting as such, it's all generated stuff. Took a lot of work to figure out how to get good AO-based effects that didn't show obvious seams. Mutter.
Looks very cool, I like that extra bump you gave it. Did you find Substance hard to work with because of the non udim support? I'm still waiting to invest in it until it gets to a point where you're able to paint across seams.
You may want to ask Les about it, as he's doing a series on the Substance suite of software for CGBytes.
Experimenting with texture painting (in Substance Painter 2), came up with this.
The texture on skin is mine, eyes and nails are from original.
Admittedly, on this experiment, there wasn't any painting as such, it's all generated stuff. Took a lot of work to figure out how to get good AO-based effects that didn't show obvious seams. Mutter.
Looks very cool, I like that extra bump you gave it. Did you find Substance hard to work with because of the non udim support? I'm still waiting to invest in it until it gets to a point where you're able to paint across seams.
You may want to ask Les about it, as he's doing a series on the Substance suite of software for CGBytes.
No offense, but I'm not interested in anything Les has to offer in the way of textures. Even with great tools like Substance...
This might be of interest, Josh Crockett... I used SP2 to generate a Normal map from a Subd1 version of Exile, baking from the Subd4 model. The Subd1 Exile with Normal maps isn't EXACTLY like the Subd4 version, but it's pretty darn close.
Experimenting with texture painting (in Substance Painter 2), came up with this.
The texture on skin is mine, eyes and nails are from original.
Admittedly, on this experiment, there wasn't any painting as such, it's all generated stuff. Took a lot of work to figure out how to get good AO-based effects that didn't show obvious seams. Mutter.
Looks very cool, I like that extra bump you gave it. Did you find Substance hard to work with because of the non udim support? I'm still waiting to invest in it until it gets to a point where you're able to paint across seams.
You may want to ask Les about it, as he's doing a series on the Substance suite of software for CGBytes.
No offense, but I'm not interested in anything Les has to offer in the way of textures. Even with great tools like Substance...
None taken, since you guys are sort of competitive in your work to some degree.
Now, what's odd is that the release notes for Substance Painter imply that you should be able to paint across the UV seams, but it doesn't semm to work in practice. Hmm.
It comes down to the varying definition of 'seams'. There's the seam where the map is split but the mesh on both sides is the same surface. SP2 is fine painting across that.
SP2 just will not paint from one material to the next. You need to either be very careful painting on one and then the other side, or rely on procedural stuff (which is what I've been doing).
Josh Crockett:
Using the 'bake Normals from high -> low poly model,' the seams are perfect (at least on the intended morph). So A+ for SP2 there.
Otherwise, I've had decent results with masking based on World Normals, but poor results (across material seams) with other baked textures. Like the Redskin job I did, I used Dirt mask (which is based on World Normal baked textures) to capture the nooks and crannies, and it worked like a charm. Everything else looked terrible at the seams. C. ;)
that's pretty cool Tim can you do things like a transparent skin with a layer underneath of another skin tone with a veiny look? Also you every tried texturing teeth and claws like in some creature claws have that sick yellow look blending with blacks and a decaying teeth kind of look?
Comments
been playing with head shapes, can get some cool alternate looks
just a simple basic scene render this is - Bad Date Night
https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/330971
I used some extra morphs to widen and raise the cranium on my image Exile Portrait. :). Someday I'll pick up the creature morphs for G3M which (I think) have a headcrest/ridge in them. At least the female version does, IIRC.
Laurie
Oh, I have that suit. Heh.
The knees under his pants are awesome...
he morphs well with other products
Very cool!
getting into some Lovecraft Deep ones there, I can see them coming out of the sea...
excellent
Although, honestly? It's just easier to use a duplicate. That way you can put any morphs you want, get a skin that is mostly the same, and there you go. Just need a little touching up with heal brush.
The problem is that there's just not a good way to translate lots of morphs to geograft arms, and it limits textures a lot.
Duplicated figure, hid everything but arms, moved it down and scaled it until the base of the arms was somewhat intersected with the lower chest. Narrowed the chest a little to finish placement, parented it to the main figure's abdomen.
Then set second figure's collision to be first figure.
Pose, render.
Bring it into Photoshop and use some Heal brush and droplet to smooth over the transition.
Ah ha.
yeah, go edit > geometry > apply smoothing modifier, then select the first figure as 'collide with'
then a little tweaking of smoothing and collision, but 2/5 should do the trick as good as it will get
Nice, I'll have to give that a go
It's a trick people often use for centaurs, combined with an opacity mask so the overlaying figure might blend in better.
Yeah, I've seen similar things done with geografts too
The nice thing about the method I outline is that it's fast, you retain any weird skins/morphs/whatever for the limb, you can apply it across figures (like if you want a horse body on a Genesis, Genesis 2, 3, blind demon... who cares!). Like, I made a reptilian figure with a dragon centauroid lower bit.
But the BEST part is that it's way way way way WAY flippin easier than properly doing a geograft. Shudder.
Experimenting with texture painting (in Substance Painter 2), came up with this.
The texture on skin is mine, eyes and nails are from original.
Admittedly, on this experiment, there wasn't any painting as such, it's all generated stuff. Took a lot of work to figure out how to get good AO-based effects that didn't show obvious seams. Mutter.
Looks very cool, I like that extra bump you gave it. Did you find Substance hard to work with because of the non udim support? I'm still waiting to invest in it until it gets to a point where you're able to paint across seams.
Yes. The seams thing is a real fudging nightmare that makes me want to punch babies.
What I find works best is relying on World Normals to base procedural stuff on, or fractal patterns. Those will flow decently across seams, and then just be careful with painting. It's not ideal, but it's about 1/2 to 1/4 the price of everything else I'm looking at.
Within those bounds, the actual procedural/texture generation really sits nicely in my interest range. It's easy and fun to set up masking layers and do funky things.
I was really confused until I noticed that if you scroll down in the texture pane in the middle there are a bunch of options for baking textures, which you can then use as the basis of other stuff.
In the above, I used a combination of 'skin bump' normals fed into height map + a 'dirt mask' to get all the nooks and crannies.
The first dozen attempts I tried... stunk, hard, because I was using stuff based on Normals or Curvature, and both had really obvious disjoints at the seams. See aforementioned frustration.
Ultimately I went with SP2 because everything, and I mean everything, I was looking at has drawbacks or puzzling gaps (like 3d Coat, which costs twice as much, doesn't have a blur/blend tool for surface painting. Man, wut?)
Been likeing the way outfits look on the Exile.
This might be of interest, Josh Crockett... I used SP2 to generate a Normal map from a Subd1 version of Exile, baking from the Subd4 model. The Subd1 Exile with Normal maps isn't EXACTLY like the Subd4 version, but it's pretty darn close.
http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Exile-Comparison-675291549
You may want to ask Les about it, as he's doing a series on the Substance suite of software for CGBytes.
No offense, but I'm not interested in anything Les has to offer in the way of textures. Even with great tools like Substance...
That looks great :)
That's looking really good man. I'm curious to know how the seams look. I've had trouble with normals baked out of zbrush at the seams.
None taken, since you guys are sort of competitive in your work to some degree.
Now, what's odd is that the release notes for Substance Painter imply that you should be able to paint across the UV seams, but it doesn't semm to work in practice. Hmm.
Daywalker:
It comes down to the varying definition of 'seams'. There's the seam where the map is split but the mesh on both sides is the same surface. SP2 is fine painting across that.
SP2 just will not paint from one material to the next. You need to either be very careful painting on one and then the other side, or rely on procedural stuff (which is what I've been doing).
Josh Crockett:
Using the 'bake Normals from high -> low poly model,' the seams are perfect (at least on the intended morph). So A+ for SP2 there.
Otherwise, I've had decent results with masking based on World Normals, but poor results (across material seams) with other baked textures. Like the Redskin job I did, I used Dirt mask (which is based on World Normal baked textures) to capture the nooks and crannies, and it worked like a charm. Everything else looked terrible at the seams. C. ;)
that's pretty cool Tim can you do things like a transparent skin with a layer underneath of another skin tone with a veiny look? Also you every tried texturing teeth and claws like in some creature claws have that sick yellow look blending with blacks and a decaying teeth kind of look?