My homework thread for October 2018 Lighting class.
First of my assignments for this week. Working on the "dress to impress" portion. Chose the Goblin model (love this character so much). Mostly procedural with a couple of textures thrown in. Redid mats several times but learned tons along the way. Embarrassed to say how long I spent on that candy corn material. Working with a high poly mesh is difficult. I wanted to apply a different material to the interior of the mouth but couldn't get a smooth transitions. And I'm still trying to get the teeth right. I've given them separate mats but since they are triangulated they don't mesh well (no pun intended). Would it make more sense to separate them into their own meshes?
ccthulusan Just curious.. how did you do the candy corn? hand panted texture? procedural? some other?
gradyp All procedural. It turned out to be pretty simple in the end but didn't start that way. I initially tried using the wave texture to color the bands and ended up with a ridiculous amount of nodes to try and control the colors. Combining procedural textures can be a little complicated but I think I'm finally understanding how to do it. At least I feel 50% in control. Here's the final node network.
ccthulusan I know precisely how simple procedural stripes are. :D The only difference between your set up here and the simple stripes I used on 2 of my characters is that I used a wave texture set to Saw instead of the gradient to get the interpolation and used constant interpolation because we were going to be far enough back that you wouldn't really notice the color bleed edges :D
In fact, when I did Herbie last week... I used nearly the same setup for his stripe decal as what you have here, except I used constant interpolation for the stripes (same reason as on the one above)
It's such a simple way to produce stripes, yet can't tell you how rarely you see stripes -- even on things that are supposed to be "modern" or "futuristic" -- and yet, they're everywhere in real life (stripes and stripe based patterns like plaids, checks, ripples, argyles, and more). When I do see it, they've used an image texture, which is a valid way to do it, but far harder to make a simple change if you want to.
Glad to see you found that :D
I think the white to orange flags could be a little further right and maybe slightly tighter on the color blends, but it still looks great!
ccthulusan I like the how bright and colorful he is! Also love the voronoi pattern on his skin. The vignette could maybe be a bit blurred so the transition is more smooth, it's s very harsh circle now. Great work! 😄
Match lighting exercise for this week. I'm finding these to be really challenging. Sometimes I feel like I'm just slapping lights all over the place. I had to change models part-way through as I had a super thin model which made it really difficult to match. Ended up using SuperHuman by David Vidiger from SketchFab. Not an exact match. Getting close but I've run out of time.
ssmurfmier1985 Thanks for the feedback. Definitely challenging to keep the colors punchy when using colored lights. I reduced the vignette on the image as you suggested.
ccthulusan Good stuff this week! I can tell you put a lot of work into procedural material materials/textures for your goblin. Love that and I know it's tricky stuff. Your candy corn looks brilliant - spot on! Really nice leather on the back pouch too.
As I mentioned in yesterday's stream, the big critique from me is that the material colors are a bit too vibrant. The end result produces a rainbow-y color palette which is difficult to make look nice. I think if you desaturated the pants, skin, and boots it woul de step in the right direction. Also dial down the SSS radius since it's blowing out the details.
Overall I gotta give you an A because I can tell you put a lot of work in 👍
Your light match is super close! Like reaaaal close. Just 2 notes:
Pretty minor notes though. Another A from me.
@theluthier Thanks for the critiques. I haven't seen the stream yet but I think I see your point about the colors being oversaturated. Color is something I've long struggled with in my art. I did at least try to select complementary (triad actually) colors so that's something. Would you say these are still oversaturated even for a stylized approach?
ccthulusan NVM. I finally had a chance to watch the livestream where you explained this well. I get the rainbow analogy.
Week 4 Submissions.
This week was rough. After a lot of false starts I finally finished the room. I decided to go with something different for a room since Kent had already demo'd the bathroom. I started with a couple of options but they were either too big or had too many issues. I finally settled on "Room" by Dimmyxv from blendswap. Seemed a reasonable size to work with. I swapped out the chair, grabbed a bed from sketchfab and used the cloth sim to add a comforter. Ended up having to unwrap several of the models and fix a fair bit of geometry. All and all feeling much more confident bumping around and fixing other models now. So that's a plus.
tldr; this took a long time
Still so much I would like to change but only so much time.
ccthulusan I really like your room! I've skipped past this on Blendswap, you've really given it a boost your version looks much better :-D
Nice light match too!
ccthulusan I like that you chose a unique room. And it generally reads quite realistic. It certainly reminds me of a teenager's room. The biggest note I have goes along with what I talked about during the stream: That realism doesn't necessarily result in interesting. While your room looks believable as a common bedroom, common bedrooms aren't terribly impressive or memorable. I'm getting the stream uploaded as I type this and I recommend checking it out (if you didn't see it live) for more info on that concept.
In the end for realism and effort it's an A, appeal C, a B as a compromise. I know a week is not a long time to do this and I hope the critique doesn't come across as overly harsh.
Your light match is very close! Not much to say in terms of critique - It's a solid A from me 👏
@theluthier Thanks Kent. fair point on the room image. Spent most of my energy on making it believable and tangible with the materials and lighting. Didn't spend much time thinking about the composition although I did comment to myself when I was done that it wasn't a particularly interesting composition. So I agree with your critique. Haven't caught the stream yet will look forward to some pointers. Thanks for a fun, challenging class. Hope to join another one soon.
