Sentient Computer Program Head

[Lee Fan]

For which Engine - Blender Game Engine
Current Polycount - 3200 tris (low poly) , 1.2 million (high poly; mostly the completely unoptimized eyeballs)
Max Polycount - For the head about 6000 triangles.
Texture Size - 512x512 for the head
Description of background information on piece - For amateur project
Where are you looking to receive criticism - The skin. How to make skin look high quality.
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Hi, I would like to open a dialogue with one or two people who know how to make skin render look really nice. Ive seen lots of cool renders of skin that have little creaces and freckles in it and stuff. And I'm not really sure what approach people take in order to do that. On this model, I basically did an AO render bake, and combined it with a basic diffuse map and it looks pretty good as a starting place but I could use some pointers on what workflow you use for adding those types of cool details to the skin.

So far I've made some custom sculpting brushes in order to place veins and folds and imperfections on its face.

There is no need to show the image maps because they are basically skin toned blobs of color that I painted on inside of the 3d viewport. Unless you really want to see them.

Thanks

plz help - I'm kind of not sure what to do. There are so many directions that one could take but I'm not sure which one is the right one as i have no formal training with 3d. What should I be thinking about with the skin. What workflow is a smart one?

thanks again


Insert Render

[Lee Fan]

gee thanks guys - about the response I expected ; later

[wolfsage]

Well with an attitude like that I'm not surprised!

I've not used Blender but if I was doing something like that first thing I'd do is get some good photo reference. Then either hand paint your textures or use the photo's, that will help you get freckles and moles, pores, spots etc. Using a Bump, Displacement or Normal map will add creases, wrinkles, pore indents etc.

[Craig Lewis]

Cheeky sod, you only left it about 6 hours. Give people time to reply.

As for your model, it's looking alright so far. The indents above the eyebrows look a bit wierd, you might want to either clean 'em up a bit or get rid of them. Also, if I were you I'd take a smaller brush and start adding more details to the face. I think around the eyes mostly need more detailing. Once you've got that done, then you can go onto doing skin detailing with pores or whatever if you want.

[Tiros]

Well, let's not start an argument hetre, or this thread will end up closed and you might end up banned if you're unlucky. You see, sometimes threads don't get too much attention, even if they contain a cool piece. People are rather busy sometimes, just looking at it going, cool, and then runs off.

So yea, you'll have to wait more than 6 hours sometimes to get a decent reply. Especially if you're looking for something specific as someone being good with skin-textures

I'm afraid I can't really help much at that point. But as mentioned by craig, the eyebrows look a bit odd. That's about what I can do for ya.

Cheers!

[Lee Fan]

sorry, didn't mean to rub anyone the wrong way - I only made a post pleading for help once I got to a point where I felt desperate for some insight on the technical aspect of what I need to do next, so 6 hours felt like a couple of days had passed in a way

sorry

later

Oh yeah you should probably note that blender is GREAT, and that's the engine I'm using for this project. But the sculpting tools are somewhat limited in the fact that they only can handle about 1.5 million triangles at a time. Which is the reason I haven't added more detail to his face yet, because in order to do that I'll have to UV his face, and then split his face into segments, Bake the normals to a single image, and then map the normals to the lowpoly mesh.

So I was putting off fine details until I was sure about the overall proportions

you couldn't have known that part though

again sorry sorry sorry

[Lee Fan]

I found this: thank you BenClark, thank you sooo much

I'll post the link in case some one who hasn't seen it yet might want to look: Game Artist - Making of The Giant