Monday, December 29, 2008

eyes



In this tutorial I will cover some of the interesting steps of this project.
I will cover modeling and rigging in general, texturing, working with complex hairs, rendering and compositing.
I will also share a few tips and tricks as I show the process.
(click on the thumbnails to see the full chapter's images)


The first step (as always) was to get a good reference. My friend Ella who is actually a model was kind enough to pose for me to get all the reference. I needed. Setting up good reference. for modeling (and for texturing later on) is an important step to do correctly. It is quite impossible to take a "perfect photo reference." because the camera will always have a certain perspective distortion. Also, the front and side images can never align perfectly so I did my best to set them up correctly based on elements like the eyes, nose, lips, and ears. for these reasons, these images only served as guidelines while modeling.
Even though this project is about a head portrait, I've decided to go all the way and make a full body first to save work for my next projects. To maximize my flexibility for later on, I've went ahead and made a quick rig for the model. I've used Biped for bones and did a quick skinning (its not perfect but It's good enough for initial posing, I'll probably use Zbrush to fix badly deformed areas). I've went ahead and created several morph targets to help me find my final expression quickly later on. Since the eyebrows and eyelashes were modeled separately, I found it very frustrating to get them to move correctly with the skin. The only solution that worked well for me was to break them into small groups and attach to.


Monday, December 15, 2008

౩ద్స్ max

1. To create pawn draw these two shapes for the beginning.

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2. Here are 3 sub steps that you have to do. In first select circle and convert it to Edit Spline. Go to Geometry rollout and with selected Refine button create new vertex. In second sub step delete segments like it is shown and attach these two shapes. In third weld vertex that blend and select all vertex without first one and last one. Right click on it and chose Smooth.

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3. Apply Lathe modifier and follow instruction from next picture.

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4. To create knight draw plane in one of the viewports and again follow these three sub steps.

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5. When you create profile of the knight figure apply Shell modifier and set inner amount whatever you like but try to get something like I did. Convert object to Edit Mesh and select outer edges and chamfer them a little bit and apply Turbo Smooth. To create base of a figure, use lathe method.

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6. Convert knight to Edit Mesh and create simple cylinder with 3 sides and place it like I did. Go to Compound Object under the Create Panel and with Boolean operations cut the hole.

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7. Here is a quick creating of the king. You can use this picture as reference.

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8. For the rest of a figure just create little cross and for queen eight spheres. Using same lathe and Boolean method you can create bishop and rook figures.

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9. To create board you must create one half. Here is a print screen of it. Convert to Edit Mesh and detach all sides, one by one.

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10. Here is a print screen how you should place your maps, diffuse and bump( they come with tutorial)

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11. Wood material ( only change diffuse map).

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12. Here is a light setup and. Color of light is light orange.

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13. Very simple VRay render setup.

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14. Go Render Element and Add VRay Zdepth element, click on enable. When you do this go to renderer and turn on VRay frame buffer.

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15. When you save RGB and ZDepth images go to Photoshop for little make up. Copy ZDepth image to channel of RGB like in this print screen. After that is done go to filers and apply Lens Blur to RGB image, in source chose Alpha 1 and set Blur Focal Distance and Radius whatever you like.

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16. For that old picture look import some old paper texture and paste it above RGB image and chose Overlay blend type and reduce opacity a little bit. To finish picture like I did type something like ‘’Chess’’ and blur it.

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Textures used in this tutorial:

black figure.jpg
white figure.jpg
figure bump.jpg
top diff.jpg
top disp.jpg
side diffuse.jpg
side disp.jpg

3dmax

1. For this example we are going to create simple city landscape. So, create this plane as ground.

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2. With boxes do something like this. And there we have our city.

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3. Put VRay Sun light in to a scene like this and set intensity multiplier to 0.035.

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4. Put VRay Physical camera in to a scene and set Type to video camera, f-number to 8 and film speed to 200.

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5. Go to material editor. Click on Get material and chose VRaySky from the list. Click on sun node slot and pick on sun in the scene and set sun intensity multiplier to 0.035.

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6. Here is a print screen of a render setup.

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7. Drag the VRaySky map to the skylight slot.

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8. Under the Color Mapping change type to Reinhard and set Gamma to 2.2.

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9. When you click render you should get something like this. On my computer it last 30 seconds.

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10. But we can cut our render time when we have animated camera. For nice circle camera path create sphere like I did in next picture and place Vray Physical camera on top of the sphere.

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11. With selected sphere go to Hierarchy panel and click on Affect Pivot Only and move pivot to the middle of ground plane so that pivot of sphere is on top of the camera target.

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12. With selected camera click on Select and Link. Hold left click and release it on the sphere. After that you can go frame 100 and click on Auto Key and rotate your sphere. When you finish with animation hide the sphere.

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13. To create Irradiance map set mode to Multiframe Incremental in V-Ray Irradiance Map. Check Don’t delete and auto save for output file.

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14. In VRay Global Switchers check Don’t render final image.This is very important.

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15. Under the Common Parameters in Time Output Set Every Nth Frame to 10 and check Active Time Segment 0 to 100.

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16. When rendering is done ( 10 minutes on my comp) go to V-Ray Irradiance map and chose From file Mode and Browse your irradiance map. Don’t forget to go back to Common Parameters and set Every Nth Frame to 1 and to uncheck Don’t render final image in VRay Global Switchers.
This way you will save a lot of render time. For this particular scene render time was 26 minutes with irradiance map and about 60 minutes without it.

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Monday, November 17, 2008

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

lesson2

3D Mashup Tool Mixes Your Pictures with 3D Models, Introducing 3Dcollage

3D Experience, 3Dcollage, Update 2 Comments »

Here is an application of our 3D technology that we have had almost too much fun putting together. Welcome 3Dcollage, our new picture application for Facebook that will let you overlay 3D models from 3DVIA.com on your favorite pictures to create new “3D mashups”. These new mashups can be published to your profile or, even better, sent to your friends Facebook profiles.

Why would you want to do this?…Not only is 3Dcollage is a great way to dress up your Facebook profile, but it allows you to create stunning new images in a way not currently possible. You can position and re-position 3D models over 2D images in a natural way, making use of 3D effects such as lighting, sizing, and rotation to create your own Facebook works of art.

Check out these 2 pictures as a very simple demonstration of what you can do with the same model over a picture. Models in 3Dcollage can be easily placed, spun and positioned in anyway that you want.

Now I am not making any political statements, but I found an interesting demonstration of the 3Dcollage idea on the campaign ‘08 group on Facebook using a Barack Obama model found on 3DVIA.com.

Interested in trying it for yourself? It’s easy to do…first, login in to your Facebook account (Facebook accounts are free) and then in 3Dcollage,

1. Upload your picture - or search for one on Flickr
2. Import a 3D model from the 3DVIA.com library
3. Position it any way you like on your picture
4. Click the camera icon to publish it to your profile or send it to your friends
5. Rinse & Repeat.