I see you have Bump mapping a new shader and your experimenting with lighting. It's looking good. What is it with you 3DS Max guys and the blue backgrounds anyway ?
You should look into making the edges of the shadows softer too. If it's ray-traced shadows it'll be more demanding to tweak.
I had to finish up a flash project the past few days so I haven't been able to work on much lol. My little taru project is coming along ok so far, but some coats and the hands have constantly been a minor pain in the neck. One polygon here seperated, knuckle guards falling into the fingers, random polygons completely unattached in odd locations spiking through other polygons with a smooth. Stuff you kinda have to look a little harder for but bother me nonetheless.
I've seen some amazing things done in flash. I never got into it though. Do you practice animation and also going to learn it in school ?
When surfaces start to cross other surfaces i just take the vertices's and pull them in, or blow away more faces like we do.
What i do for body armor that breaks, i duplicate the armor then delete the entire duplicated mesh except for that surface that causes it to break (In other words, I leave behind that flat surface). Then i take the original mesh and delete that surface i saved on the duplicated mesh that causes the break. I then restore the duplicates position back to 0 so it falls back into place. Basically, there is no merge between the polygons in that area, so it will smoothen properly without the unwanted deformation.
It's ok to break apart the pieces for easy access to what your tweaking on the mesh. All you need to do is restore the axis back to 0. One thing I enjoy about 3D is how we get to implement mathematics and get great results.
Motarrisu said:
Yeah I tried modelling fenrir before too and personally didn't really like the way his texture comes through... he looks kinda rocky rather than furry :\ And those lines that are on him... looks like he's got veins popping out in wierd places.
Just don't bring Fenrir too close to the cam. Technically, when making textures for high end CG you want the textures to be the same resolution as the render itself. It needn't be if the texture will never go too close to the camera. Fenrir's is really harsh. Ifrit on the other hand I think can probably go really close to the camera with the bump map and the specularity running.
Motarrisu said:
I started to mess around with actually putting some more lighting around a model, but I obviously haven't figured out how to set everything up yet (I'd been using omni lights before, so figuring out the target lights and decay settings is taking a bit of getting used to). While I'm at it, I have a small question. Even with the alpha source set and an opacity map set for the textures of the monster in the following picture - you still see the shine coming across from the transparent polygons. Is there something I have to set somewhere to fix that or is this just a problem I'm probably getting through 3dsmax itself?
Not just a problem in Max. It happens to me too, with both my render engines might i add. It's been plaguing the pet Wyvern's Mohawk time and time again, and on this last rendering i did, it hit me again. I'm lazy with the Wyvern but if you want to get rid of that there are 2ways i can think of doing it.
1. After smoothening the mesh, split the faces (Draw new edges) along the wanted parts, then delete the faces. (That is actually a terrible thing to do which is why i suggest doing it after you smoothen the mesh)
2. Crank up the Cosine power. This is also a terrible thing to do cause when you turn this up, your specularity will gradually vanish. A shader with specularity control like the one your using (Phong in Maya terms), seem to be the only one that do this.
A note on these types of models, they wern't really intended for what we're doing with them which is why they lack good quality textures and have this transparency originally made for this .dds file type. This is my first time ever ripping this really. I usually make things from scratch.
Motarrisu said:
In case it's not obvious - the transparency I'm talking about is on his back (right hand side of the model on the screen). There are polygons underneath the face that are perfectly transparent and don't produce an obscure shine (of course it's in a shadow too), but the ones on the back receiving a large shine from the specular levels I set and the lighting I put up show the shine from the whole polygon and not just what wasn't transparent.
I'd go with option 1. For the character models I resorted to using a basic Lambert materal for the head and hair, so i wouldn't come accross this issue. But for some reason, it happening like a phenomenon on 2 characters right now.
Motarrisu said:
BTW: Finally figured out why CS3 has been fighting me tooth and nail over this Alpha Channel issue with Targa. Apparently I actually have to save a selection with the alpha area as a channel first. It won't let me just delete pixels and save the alpha channel that's visible from that.
After I'm done cutting away i just not include the alpha channel and save as. Things might be different for us in regards to making targa files cause I'm using Photoshop 7.
A quick note on the Targa file. They rule for video. When you get into batch rendering you'll have many options for output. Go with Targa. You can render out a project in separate passes and layer them back together with Targa. Batch render with anything else and you might regret it. Trust me.
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Here i had trouble with the belt. those things hanging off the belt was having that transparency issue. you can notice the difference in specularity with the belt and rest of the armor. I increased the cosine on it and it solved the problem. Just lost specularity. It's ok cause no one would ever notice if i never brought it up v.v
Might have to build shelves or steps or something soon.
Moving onto the next later on tonight. I never miss an episode of Survivor. ( '-')
