Pro techniques for capturing personality, expressions and emotions.
15. Create tileable pattern textures
Using tileable pattern layers to create maps for jacket texture
I took a decent photo of the pattern and imported it into Photoshop. After removing photo distortion, I traced the pattern onto a layer and made it tileable. For the normal map, I baked the folding of the sculpture from ZBrush in Handplane and then, using my tileable pattern layers, I created a normal map focused just on the jacket pattern. All other channels duplicated the Diffuse one in grayscale, before editing in Photoshop. I painted the dots and the lines in two layers to save as separate patterns to then fill the jacket texture.
16. Make sleeves and inner layer
Tileable pattern painted by hand
I painted this tileable pattern by hand and used it to fill the jacket and the sleeves. For the normal map, I baked the sculpted wrinkles with Handplane and using my three pattern layers, created an additional normal map for just the jacket pattern. This was overlaid onto the basic Normal Map channel. All other channels were from duplicating the Diffuse one in grayscale.
17. Marmoset file setup
Having lights assigned to groups allows for more flexibility
One way I use Marmoset to handle lighting is choosing an HDR environment, but limiting visibility to 0.3. This way, reflections are visible mainly on glossy surfaces, but not so much on rough surfaces. A good tip is if you put all lights into a group, but NOT inside the HDR sub-group, it is possible to spin the lights group and HDR independently.
18. Create the head and hands shader
Glossiness gives skin surfaces an oily finish where required
The main channels of a PBR material are the Normal Map and the Glossiness. I just set the Specular value to 0.04, but didn't add any texture. I spent some time detailing the Glossiness one instead. You'll notice that the forehead, nose tip and areas around the nostrils, lips, and ear tips are more oily than the cheeks, neck, chin, and all the surfaces where hair grows. Scatter, Translucency and Fuzziness textures need some testing to work properly. Depending on your model you could decide to use different values.
19. Make the eyes shader
Eyes need moisture so Glossiness is the tool to use
The bumping volume in front of the iris is one of the most glossy and perfect materials in nature, so Glossiness should be set at 1.0. The actual iris is almost non-reflective. The eyeball is a translucent material, and veins in the sclera are thin but the glossiness comes from the wet layer on top. This blurs the effect, making it look more neat and homogeneous.
20. Add the hair shader
Remember to set both your reflection channels to Anisotropic
I had to do some experiments with the hair. I initially set up my Specular channel with a Microfibre algorithm, but it wasn’t the result I was hoping for. I ended up using the Subsurface Scatter, like the face and the hands. Using the Ambient Occlusion channel, together with the cavity map, helped break the flatness of the Specular highlight along the even polygons. Using a secondary reflection gave the best result on the hairs, more than on the other materials. Remember to set both your reflection channels to Anisotropic.
21. Rings shader
Adding some fingerprint marks in the Glossiness channel helps the final result
The rings were an easy setting. The most important value came from the tone of reflectivity, which can be found online. Everything else is a picky use of Normal Map and Glossiness to create variations along the surface. Adding some fingerprint marks in the Glossiness channel helps the final result. Just remember to model the ruby socket, and then place the gem into it so that they do not intersect. If you model this ring as a unique object, the ruby will end up looking transparent.
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22. Glass shader
Creating a duplicate mesh with a different process produced good glass
The best way I found to obtain decent glass was duplicating my whole mesh for the glass and flask (and ruby), and inverting the normals of each polygon. But this means values of refraction will be calculated twice. Also, in order to make this material more interesting, I suggest adding a lot of details like fingerprints, scratches and water drops on top of it.
23. Wine shader
Changing the colour gradient for more realism
I treated wine the same way as the glass. The only difference is that red wine’s transparency gets higher near the surface. That’s why, in Photoshop, I painted a refraction texture, gradually turning to black as it got closer to the bottom of the flask and the glass. Also, in order to make it more believable, there is some noise in it, so that the final result looks thicker. But let’s face it; it still looks like black cherry syrup! I’ll keep testing Marmoset to see if I can find a better way to handle these refractive shaders.
Claudio works as a specialised senior character artist at Foundry 42 with over ten years experience in VFX and the games industry. When he is not working on some project, he is teaching his workflow.
