FMP Blog 19 - Texturing Improvements and Rendering

General / 28 March 2021

I continued with my character's textures, starting with the eye. I watched some more tutorials and took in some feedback for how to push the realism of the eyeball. I learnt about the correct roughnes values, layers of the iris, and using image projection in the scelera for realistic tiny veins in the eye. I later changed the eye colour to blue to match my likeness reference.

Next I worked on the hair. This time I was determined to use Xgen. I looked at some tutorials online as well as got some help from peers and tutors. I also purchased Hazel Brown's Geralt hair breakdown on Artstation marketplace (Thanks for this Hazel!) to see how I could efficiently set up my hair files in Xgen. Once I had enough reference material to help me, I made several hair collections. As the hair was in rollers I didn't need the typical amount of hair clumps as I would for loose hair, but I did need to think about the shapes of the clumps more. For example, how the tension of the hair in the roller affects the amount of tapering and noise level. I used a lot of turnaround reference images for this.

I also set up a light at around 30 degrees and played with the intensity for the render.

I also made some transitional hairs for the edge of the hairline.

I regularly checked the renders as I went.

Once I had my cards I generated normals, roughness and AO. I then tested them in marmoset and was pleased with the results.

Placing the cards was a challenge due to the shape of the rollers. In hindsight I should have used splines to arrange them, but I was pleased with the results regardless.

I went backwards and forwards to test the hair placement.

I also looked up on the marmoset website how to set up skin textures. This helped me to enhance the realism of my character.

After some feedback from my tutors, I had a few things to fix. I needed to fix the size and shape of the fingers slightly, particularly the knuckles.

I was also told how to push my textures further, by adding staining to fabric and creasing to the toe area on the shoes.

I also created a cracking effect on the PVC belt, which slightly revealed the white elastic underneath.

I really loved how this looked! It made my material so much more interesting.

I also played around with the makeup colour and blush colours.

Next was rigging. I weighted a 3Ds Max biped and animated it using an idle animation from marmoset. I then edited the animation so that her right hand would be resting on the barbell.

The final thing I received feedback on was the rendering. Our class had a really cool talk from Jake Waddington, a Character Artist at Playground Games who gave tips on sculpting, presenting and lighting. He did a quick paintover on my character to show me how I can most effectively light.

I'm super pleased with the final results, thanks to everyone for the help on this one!