yeh mate I did...I didnt get past that as I had to bolt for work...trying now

Yep I concur mate.......nothing coming through...no upload/download on my connection either!

cheers bullet

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bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

Tch. Hmm. Typical of my luck.

Appreciate ya trying. Im off today and tomorrow, so i'll see if I cant make any progress.

No surprise. No joy

Big sigh. Ah well, in the meantime, I thought id run a couple of my own tests. Adjusting different settings in the fast skin shader for the subdermal and epidermal weight yielded little tangible results other than the guy got a bit lighter overall, or darker. I tried adding a skin texture I found into the colour slots for the inner and oter skin layers, but this did little also, although I was expecting that really, as I understand, it's not as simple as that. However, sticking the normal map I have into the spec layers altered some of the spec shading, which brought some more the veins running over his wrist, and gave me some nice extra subtleties elsewhere I think, noticeably around the chest which will be nice when that area gets brought out more in the final mix.

What I should do is spend some more time detailing the tops of his fingers and his chest/abs area.

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Hi Ben
You have the specularty a bit to high, I looked for one of the models I have done with sss skin but are on my old rig. I found most of the setting were to high try working one the layers one at a time. The top layer should be a bleached skin look (think some one with all there blood gone). The next layer should be a darkish red with blue vain (UVs). Then the back scatter layer a red not so dark again with vains think were you should see this with a light behind (ears fingers some times the nose)..........dave

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ah. Thanks Dave. Cheers man. I have just been playing around and came on here to post. I will add your comments in when I next sit down to work, but going off for a bit now. I agree with the spec. Since I last rendered the character for the PS experiments I added some more lights into the scene (directionals at that) which is not helping the specularity. Twiddling with the intensity of these lights has reduced it a bit. I wonder if the problems you are seeing are still evident in this image below? The main offending area was the camera facing part of his hand near his thumb, for me.

I'm really liking this following render. In the beginning when I made the hood, I wasnt too keen on it, it was when people said they thought to keep it in that I did, but I really like the lighting and form on his neck and around, and the little highlights that are evident elsewhere on his face, when theres no hood to shadow it. Im considering keeping his hood off. Im also considering working from this next render to make adjustments to the creature and then make a new background. I dont know.

Time for a break and a walk.

p.s, Dave. I hadnt been thinking about that third layer, ears, fingers etc. Just been working with the epi and sub dermal layers. I hope we are talking about the same shader and I have just overlooked that last layer, as that could be a great addition.

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You may already know this but you can turn off specularity for individual lights if that's what you're having problems with. Just uncheck the specularity and leave the diffuse checked for whichever lights you only want diffuse light for.

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-stwert

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I didnt know that one but I do now..........thanks Stwert

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Cheers Stwert. Yeah, that kind of stuff was covered on the lighting course I did recently. I tried turning the specularity off on the lights actually, but it really flattened out some of the details. Im relying a bit on the spec hits and shadows to help pick out the detail that would be too weak on its own.

Dave, similarly, you can can turn off diffuse and just have the specular on.

I figured if adding directional lights isn't helping your specularity you could try having a single light with spec and the rest of your auxiliary lights you could have diffuse only... but of course it's up to you.

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-stwert

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Do you reckon there is too much specularity then? I quite like the stylized look of it, with the spec hits outlining the forms and details. The directional lights I originally added just to add some general illumination to the background - it wasn't when I went back to rendering the monster I saw how it had affected it, and I was kinda pleased cause I was gonna add some more light to the chest area, which it's done (nicely I think) for me. I like the look enough it kind of outweighs any quest for authentic realism. Im just kind of making it up as I go along, really

I can't really say about how it would look best, but one idea that came to mind if you want to keep all the specular highlights would be to try and make it look wet. It's a bit plasticky maybe right now, but if you managed to capture a glistening wetness, that could be really cool.

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-stwert

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Playing in Zbrush today. Started to add some more layers of detail. I randomly bought Vitaly Bulgarov's character modelling tutorial off Gnomon, and copied him when he got to doing some quick playing with Z renders in PS for concepting. This is what I got. I quite like it, in a, just did it pretty quick, kind of way.

Attached Images

That is a lot better ben IMO. That has changed to look completely mate! wow......

cheers bullet

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bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

whoa dude, it just suddenly jumped in awesomeness!!
it looks way awesome now!

how did you get such a look?

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

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Yes, a big step in the right direction. I was just about to comment about something along the lines of "don't be afraid to make big changes especially with so much time left... I usually set up my image rather quickly and then make little refinements for a long time, which means I miss seeing something if I stepped back and just made some large scale changes"
So you obviously have the ability to do this. Anyway, you're doing great, keep it up.

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-stwert

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