Ascension Games

Back!
I don’t know why I’ve had so much time off, but lets finish up this series so I can show you some of the new stuff I’ve been working on, nes pa?

This will be a bit short. At least i think it will be.

So as I left it last, we had just finished working on the body of the new mesh. We zBrushed it, and detailed it out with a musculature, and ridiculous proportions. So from that point, I jump back to geometry level 1, pictured below. The reason here, is because our mesh has changed slightly from the original shape since we’ve brought it in. This will help sell the detail shapes that we created.

After exporting geometry level to an OBJ, I then jump into ZMapper, and load up the default max 7 tangent space settings. I dont find it necessary to tweak too many options here. I have explored some of the cavity mapping to use later as a shadow map / ambient occlusion map. Then I hit the big “MAKE ME A NORMAL MAP NOW SUCKA!” button. Depending on the complexity of the geometry you’re working with, and the quality of your render settings, it could feasibly take a while. Mine only too 30 seconds…probably less. I’m horrible at keeping track of time. I blame beer.

Here’s a look at the tangent space map, and the zBrush normal display together. Sexy.

After exporting the maps from zBrush, I re-import my mesh back into 3ds Max. Sadly, our escapades in zBrush are done with. -Sniff-….we’ll always have the summer in subdivision 4. Anyways. back in 3ds Max, I get busy and assign a random material to it so I can inspect the mesh. At this point, the geometry looks great, its well laid out, a couple of problems that i could fix, but for the sakes of this brief, we’ll keep it brief.

For the sake of full disclosure, here’s what I should do:

-Reduce polygons. There are tons of faces here that dont contribute to the silhouette , and do nothing but weigh our mesh down.

-Redo the geometry around the ears, face and mouth. I would do this in zbrush, with some new magic I just learned. Alas, this knowledge I shall impart in a different post.

Now, to setup the shader. There aren’t a ton of web resources out there on the web to learn shaders from. If I were you, and I found a way to generate shaders online, I would hold it secret and not dare share it with you on this blog.

I used Joel Styles‘ soft light skin shader here, but you should definitely learn how to create some basic shaders, the CG academy DVD’s listed above is an awesome starting resource, and I can’t Imagine a better source then Ben Cloward. Ben is also part of the Lumonix guys, who brought us ShaderFX, and a little game engine called The Vicious Engine. Like I said, great great resources.

So! I load up the shader in 3ds Max, using the DirectX 9 material, and I got to town loading my normal map, my ambient occlusion map, and a mirco normal map which came with the shader, and tweak the parameters a bit. Ok, a lot. I love this shader. Its cool like the other side of your pillow.

Before too long, you’d end up somewhere like the render below. The details on this image? Screen view port render, 1 light, zero tweaks. YAY!

Thanks for hanging in there, I hope it was as good for you as its been for me. You’re a bit shy, but I’m sure you’ll do ok. Just keep plugging away and remember to experiment with your tools. They’ll treat you as good as you treat them. And take it easy with the lube, ok?

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