Well, I’ve been modeling an anime girl that will be my website’s “hostess”. The base figure is already modeled, UVed and rigged but she still needs some clothing. Since I plan to use her for a variety of projects, not only for my website I plan to make different kinds of clothing for her. The first outfit is a plain and simple gstring bikini.
The second outfit is some sort of lycra suit or something like that, like the one of DOA’s Helena. This suit is not finished yet but you get the idea of what I am after. I still have to model 2 or 3 more outfits and then she will be ready for animation.
As you can see, my modeling method of choice is box modeling. I find it to be more intuitive and friendly than NURBS or SubDivs. Next time I will post about skin shading and hair.
Continuing with my lighting experiments for my skin shading, I’ve been experimenting with Image Based Lighting using HDRIs. One can easily use a Final Gather setup to get the “lighting” but the result is only as good. That’s why I decided to mess around with the ibl node instead.
The image above shows the ibl sphere surrounding the “scene”. According to what I read, there is a problem with most HDRIs and their gamma values, so one has to use this “gamma correction” node in Maya to make the IBL lit the image correctly. For this particular scene, I used a gamma setting of 8 on the three channels. The higher the value the lower the lighting values. The default value of 1 always renders a completely washed out image!
The final image shows a render test using the default “crappy shadow and anti-alias” values. I can even decide wether to render a completely diffuse or specular image directly on the node. Layering renders anybody? 
One of the things I am working on right now is rendering semi-realistic human characters. I don’t think it will be possible for me to reach full photorealism but I shall try to get as close as I can. The first image is just a lighting and shading reference that I’ve been using for this.
My first test was to render a realistic character on a generic light setup (no direct sunlight or any kind of outdoor lighting). The result of that first study is what you see below.
For that skin I used 8 different layers ranging from ambient lighting and ambient occlussion to sub-sufrace scattering. This could be used for some “photo shooting” simulation with the model posing for the camera.
The second test was to render a character under direct sunlight. As seen on the first image. Direct lighting conditions yield a stronger terminator and higher “key-to-fill” ratios. I tried to simulate this the best that I could using layered lightings. The final result is the one below.
Someone gave me the suggestion to use a real plate to check whether or not the lighting was working. Although it doesn’t look 100% photorealistic it looks very cool 
Stage 2 will include hair rendering. I will then try to marry it all together for digital characters for either animation or print. We’ll see how it goes. I will post some tech stuff about this some other time.
See you soon.
Hello and welcome. I am opening this blog to publish real-time (almost, hehe) updates on what I am currently working. Whether it’s about cool techniques or tech stuff (or not so tech stuff), I will be posting it here.
Consider this a “WIP blog”
