Xiahou Ba Test Renders

With the textures (probably) finally finished, I decided to do some render tests using Mental Ray in Maya 2015. The shaders are all mia shaders but his skin is not a sub-surface scattering shader because I was having issues trying to get him normal maps to render nicely on it. This is an issue I will spend more time with later on with final renders.

There are several things that need changing on these render, but very few of them now I think relate to the actual data he is created with, such as his model and textures. The faults are with the techniques I used for rendering each area of him, and am I aware this lighting setup has much to be desired also.

His eyes have lenses built over them as a separate layer of polygons; a standard practice in current / next generation characters. This 'lense' layer also have an alpha texture that creates a gradient from transparent black, to fully transparent. This simulates shadowing on the eyes no matter what angle you're at, giving them a deeper, more realistic feel. However, it might be that for proper renders (so not real-time, in-game scenarios), that this technique is not required. In this render it is present, but the way the lighting casts off of it gives the eyes a dull, dead look compared to what was desired. 

Also each individual shader was set up reasonably quickly, some of which using the presets that Maya provides for things like 'Chrome', 'MattePlastic', and so on. The downside to this is that some maps, often specifically the specular maps, haven't had much of a chance to shine. You can see them present in the shirt and shorts the most, but other areas such as the skin really needed them to have a boost. This render below does show them off somewhat better simply because he has no shirt on:

Xiahou Ba Final Model Production

Over the past week and a lot over this weekend, I have been working on Xiahou Ba's textures, cleaning them up and adding a lot more detail through the use of lightmaps, cavity maps, Nvidia's xNormal plugin for Photoshop, various custom Photoshop brushes, and so on. The model is finally starting to come to an end before it goes into rigging and animation / posing stages for final renders.

POST WITHIN A POST: Notice how different the top image is to the bottom image posted here. This is a really irritating problem I've been having for the past month or so with uploading images to this blog and now finally found the answer. In my Google+ account it by default has 'Enhance Uploaded Photos' set to Normal (meaning yes), which has made my uploads look all the wrong colours and have unwanted effects all over them. Turned it to 'Off' and all works fine now. Stupid system. Really should be off by default........

There is still a way to go before he is truly finished here. Notice that his materials all look quite shiny with the introduction of his specular maps, but this will change when more appropriate shaders are applied; currently he is using full Phong shaders. The same can be said for other areas that require more advanced shaders to bring them so life, while still relying on real-time graphics. The eyes particular still look dead and plain, but with real-time reflections on their lenses they should look much better. His thin pink wrist band requires translucency to look right. His metallic parts such as his spikes and belt buckle also all require real-time reflections to be brought to life.

As a side note I also want to change his hair-style a bit to give him more fringe, but this is as far as I will take him on this fine night :) Also I found 'Depth-Peeling' transparency sorting in Viewport 2.0 is by far the best type now, reflecting the results your would expect to see in games.... so that's good :D

Xiahou Ba - Maya Development

Project Xiahou Ba should be finished within the coming week or so. The finishing touches have been made to the sculpt and polypainting over this weekend, and now all of the diffuse and normal maps have been baked out from ZBrush, combined where necessary, and plugged into his Maya model.

The next stage is to create all of the composite maps to improve the diffuse maps, and create any other required maps such as specular and alpha maps. After that I will begin rigging, which leads to posing and rendering for the final outcomes.

I have baked his belt spikes and his necklace in Maya to give them textures and normal maps (and the alpha map for his necklace), all of which went very smoothly. I also created his hair and completely UV mapped it too. He still needs a few more bits like his mouth and his eye lashes creating properly, but he is now 90% finished on the model-front.

Xiahou Ba Developments

There is still a way to go yet, but hopefully all of this stage, baking of normal maps (whether it be from ZBrush or Maya), texture maps, etc, will all be done this weekend.

These renders still have a few patches on them where the base-colour and very extreme colours are still showing through. These need to be fixed up as I go along. That bug I posted about below is still showing up from time to time even when on new layers so I'm not sure what is happening there. I've largely stopped bothering with layers now, but in doing so I'm getting problems and having to re-sculpt and re-paint some areas a few times over: the exact thing layers are supposed to work properly for.

He now has a tattoo on his arm of 'Jin', the kingdom that he is from in 'Dynasty Warriors'. There will be a few more features like this on his character, but mostly on his clothes now. Soon I'll likely start development on his platform that he will stand on for renders and later, 3D printing.