Opaque3D | Blog

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.