chris Posted May 22, 2009 Posted May 22, 2009 Hi all, Thanks again to those that helped trouble shoot the problems I was having with the shaders the other day. Now that it's working I was able to find time tonight to tweak some settings and get it MUCH closer to the look I was going for. Some of you may remember this model from a few years ago when I first created it, I'm really excited to be getting back into working with it again. Below is a screen shot of the new and MUCH improved look. Let me know what you think! I've also included a wire frame shot as well. Now for a little more trouble shooting, it looks as though I have a strange thing happening with one of the guide hairs. You can see the anomaly quite well in the finished render above on the bear's right foot and also in the wireframe shot below, the one guide hair (though it shows up as a different colour than the other guide hairs) on the leg does have any control points on it and so sticks straight out. Any thoughts?!? Quote
NancyGormezano Posted May 22, 2009 Posted May 22, 2009 looks like the guide hair is near a 5 point patch - that's been reported as a problem - not sure its still a problem in 15. But if you can't comb it out, ie do some additional combing in that area to hide anomaly - I say live with it. Teddy Bears get mussed as they age - and since this bear is 3?4?100? years old - it makes it more valuable for collectors. How's that for a cop out? Cute bear! Quote
mtpeak2 Posted May 22, 2009 Posted May 22, 2009 What format is the image? I can view it. I've had the same problem in another thread. Quote
Wegg Posted May 22, 2009 Posted May 22, 2009 I'd say its a bit too shiny and the hair is too uniform in length but it is quite nice. Well done. Quote
Fuchur Posted May 22, 2009 Posted May 22, 2009 For PNG -> Use InternetExplorer v7 or up or even better FireFox or Opera. *Fuchur* Quote
chris Posted May 22, 2009 Author Posted May 22, 2009 I'd say its a bit too shiny and the hair is too uniform in length but it is quite nice. Well done. Thanks everyone for the kind words. I agree Wegg it's a little shinier that I intended, I may bring it down a bit further but specular intensity is already at 0.25% and the specular colour is also kind of a medium light tope colour to take some of the edginess of the sheen away. Also the hair is combed all over the place too and has a 10% variation in length in the one particle emitter and a slightly shorter length with another 10% variation in the second particle emitter. I may try to widen the hair length variation a bit more maybe to 15% or so and drop to specular intensity to 0.20% or 0.15%, we'll see, but overall it's getting pretty close to the look of my son's real Teddy bear that I modeled it after. A couple more adjustements and I'll try placing him into the scene I'm creating for him. In the image He's standing in a grassy field catching butterflies... and yes the grass it more particle hair. I've tested it it takes a long time to render but it looks gorgeous... I'll post my next render so you can all see the progress I'm making as I go along. Thanks for the input everyone! Please, anyone else, feel free to comment! Quote
Paul Forwood Posted May 22, 2009 Posted May 22, 2009 Nice Teddy, Chris! Being a replica of your son's Teddy do you intend to have some fun with live action footage? I sure would. The hair glitch on the foot definitely looks like the problem you get when using 3 point and 5 point patches as hair emitters. You could remove the offending patches from your emitter group and then insert a small mesh of 4 point patches inside his foot to emit the hairs in that area. You could also compromise your model a little and change the layout of splines to only include 4 point patches. It's a bit of a catch 22 situation. Are you using MuhHair? MuhHair has a number of properties that affect the speculars. Have you tried turning the Blend value down to 0% in both the diffuse and specular properties. I believe that is what they should be set to for short hair. You could also try turning down the primary and secondary specular values and then gradually bring them up until the desired shinyness is reached. Just thoughts. Anyway, great looking Teddy! Hope to see him in action sometime. Quote
chris Posted May 23, 2009 Author Posted May 23, 2009 Here is a test render of an unfinished still shot. Once the Bear is rigged I plan to have him in a running pose and holding a butterfly net while chasing a butterfly a short distance in front of him. A second butterfly will be sitting on one of the daisies in the foreground. Some of the smaller additions will be more leaves on the daisy plant some variation in the petals and some alterations to it's bump maps for a little more realism. There will also be a few more daisy plants on the hillside as a finishing touch. Quote
nino banano Posted May 23, 2009 Posted May 23, 2009 very well done chris...just a little shine ... Quote
TheSpleen Posted May 23, 2009 Posted May 23, 2009 I like the shine. Looks great! Many teddy bears are just that shiney. Quote
chris Posted May 24, 2009 Author Posted May 24, 2009 Below is the other scene I've been working on, this scene is also not finished yet. Bear will be rigged and posed to be looking up at the moon. Bear will be holding a toy rocket ship in his hand. The white cylinder is a place holder for a soon to be modeled telescope. Bear will be standing on a hardwood floor. There will be a wall and a light reflection of the telescope in the window. Quote
Admin Rodney Posted May 25, 2009 Admin Posted May 25, 2009 Chris, Just wanted to say I like what you've got going thus far. Your scenes have a wonderful way of capturing the imagination. Quote
Wegg Posted May 25, 2009 Posted May 25, 2009 Thats a really nice scene. Love the grass and the flower etc. But that fur. . . nothing shines like that. This was the shiniest one I could find. Quote
chris Posted May 25, 2009 Author Posted May 25, 2009 Thanks Wegg. I'm still working on the hair. As mentioned I already have specular intensity down to 0.25% but it's still coming out quite shiny, I have a few other settings in mind but haven't had time to try them yet... I'll post the results if they turn out ok once I've had a chance to try them. Just so you know the Bear I am modeling it after is quite shiny... shinier than the one you found appears, however I've found that when my son's teddy bear is photographed using a flash the specular shine becomes so focussed (due to thee intense focussed light source, i.e. the flash) that it doesn't look as shiny as it does to the naked eye. Quote
Wegg Posted May 25, 2009 Posted May 25, 2009 Thanks Wegg. I'm still working on the hair. As mentioned I already have specular intensity down to 0.25% but it's still coming out quite shiny, I have a few other settings in mind but haven't had time to try them yet... I'll post the results if they turn out ok once I've had a chance to try them. I'd try 5%. Just so you know the Bear I am modeling it after is quite shiny... shinier than the one you found appears, however I've found that when my son's teddy bear is photographed using a flash the specular shine becomes so focussed (due to thee intense focussed light source, i.e. the flash) that it doesn't look as shiny as it does to the naked eye. I think your eyes may be getting bedazzled by the hair fibers reacting differently between your eyeballs. Close one eye. . . then the other while your looking at it. Often things with fine detail like that really draw your eye and make you think they are far more intense than they really are. Also try photographing it in a well lit room without any flash. I think you'll be surprised. My daughter has a scarf made out of that super shiny/soft fiber material. Crazy stuff. Quote
chris Posted May 25, 2009 Author Posted May 25, 2009 Thanks Wegg. I'm still working on the hair. As mentioned I already have specular intensity down to 0.25% but it's still coming out quite shiny, I have a few other settings in mind but haven't had time to try them yet... I'll post the results if they turn out ok once I've had a chance to try them. I'd try 5%. That's 4.75% brighter than I have it now, you're going the wrong way. Just so you know the Bear I am modeling it after is quite shiny... shinier than the one you found appears, however I've found that when my son's teddy bear is photographed using a flash the specular shine becomes so focussed (due to thee intense focussed light source, i.e. the flash) that it doesn't look as shiny as it does to the naked eye. I think your eyes may be getting bedazzled by the hair fibers reacting differently between your eyeballs. Close one eye. . . then the other while your looking at it. Often things with fine detail like that really draw your eye and make you think they are far more intense than they really are. Also try photographing it in a well lit room without any flash. I think you'll be surprised. My daughter has a scarf made out of that super shiny/soft fiber material. Crazy stuff. Yes, I understand what you are talking about. I have been looking at it with one eye (I do that a lot when I evaluate things). All I was saying was that my son's bear appears shinier than the one you posted, I wasn't saying it was as shiny as the bear I modeled. Actually I totally agree with you, my modeled bear's fur is WAY too shiny, but since I already have specular intensity down to a 1/4 of a percent I am not sure I am going to get it to the same level as the real bear... but I'm going to try! And I have a few ideas to get me there. I'll post when I've made the change. Thanks for the thoughtful responses Wegg, I appreciate them. Quote
Wegg Posted May 25, 2009 Posted May 25, 2009 Oh I'm sorry. Read that wrong. What does .0001% look like? There MUST be a way of making it more subtle. . . Quote
chris Posted May 31, 2009 Author Posted May 31, 2009 I've always been really impressed by the TOYS project (Buzz LightYear) that comes on the Hash CD. The scene looks great and renders incredibly fast, it's just so professional. In an attempt to try and improve my own scene building techniques as well as understanding some of the lighting types and options I've started to tear apart this scene, really studying the lighting choices and settings, as well as making some of my own changes (note in the image below the change in DOF). As part of my testing I removed the Buzz, spaceship and Binocular models and replace them with my bear model to see how it renders in the scene. My first render had something weird happened with the fur and was wondering if anyone can explain what I'm seeing. Any thoughts?!? Quote
chris Posted June 1, 2009 Author Posted June 1, 2009 Any thoughts on what might cause these types of artifacts? Quote
nino banano Posted June 1, 2009 Posted June 1, 2009 is the toon property on in your render? it looks like toon render hair... Quote
chris Posted June 1, 2009 Author Posted June 1, 2009 Toon Render is "OFF" ...any other thoughts?! Quote
chris Posted June 12, 2009 Author Posted June 12, 2009 I figured out the weird hair render... FINALLY... it was the DOF being turned "ON", it creates those artifacts. But it looks like the lighting settings in this project don't have any different effect on the shininess of the hair though. If anyone has thoughts as to the shininess here are my settings for the two hair emitters: Quote
agep Posted June 12, 2009 Posted June 12, 2009 Starting to look very good. What does the "Brightness" attribute do? Have you tried to lower the "Specular Size"? Quote
NancyGormezano Posted June 12, 2009 Posted June 12, 2009 You will probably have to play with the settings for the Muhair specular render shader (rather than in the surface properties for emitter) - try lowering the primary strength - not sure if you will also have to revert suface properties for specular back to default (leave color set) - In this case I left everything as default except changing the properties of the Muhair specular primary strength - brightness was also default 100%. Muhair can be tricky, sometimes - I have found that I sometimes need to start from scratch with settings. (haven't fooled with it in a long time) Quote
chris Posted June 12, 2009 Author Posted June 12, 2009 You will probably have to play with the settings for the Muhair specular render shader (rather than in the surface properties for emitter) - try lowering the primary strength That's a good idea I'll try that tonight. Quote
chris Posted June 12, 2009 Author Posted June 12, 2009 Well... I think I've got it!!! What do you think!?!?! The shininess is gone... Yippee!! Thanks for that suggestion Nancy! Quote
agep Posted June 13, 2009 Posted June 13, 2009 Very nice! How will the teddy look if you use DOF now? Quote
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