v13 more displacement black magic

[OdinsEye2k]

Since there are so many still examples out there, I thought I'd post myself up a moving version.

 

I think others have shown this technique before, but here's my thinking and set-up behind this particular scheme:

 

You have the overall muscle bulk laid out (arm/leg masses, chest, etc). To add definition, you set up complex AM models (which would animate only with difficulty if part of the main mesh) as 'plus-ups.' These models would be good for structures like triceps, all those back muscles around the shoulder/spine area, tendons and whatnot.

 

You could either paint these and try to animate them - or - you could build them out of splines, animate the splines for flex/relax poses. Applying a gradient material would be one way to get elevation data (I don't know where depth buffering is anymore or if it exists, if it has as many levels as EXR, etc.) - just run a flat plane though the 'muscle groups' to be your 128 ('flat') datum. This way, you've got all your stuff in quite an animatable form.

 

Now, the results in this vid aren't close to anatomic, I suck at lighting it, etc. But I'm hoping you can see where I'm going.

flextest.zip