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June 28, 2005
The Model Talks Back
Here's just a quick one I knocked out last night while MAW was out with friends. Mostly I was just trying to play with a new lighting technique and a new skin-realism kit, but I ended up with something reminiscent of the days when I actually had time to do figure study photos. Some of the best moments back then came not in the actual shot, but in the back and forth with the model. Here's one giving me a little sass. (Not Work Safe, so think before you click.)
and let me take the pictures.
The image itself isn't that amazing or inventive, but I think my renders are getting more realistic. There's still some joint problems around the hip there, but that's a common problem with this particular model.
The lighting technique was really just to use multiple, parallel spotlights (5 in a big plus sign) to simulate a larger diffuse light, and then to use ray traced shadows with a large blur radius. I think the lights needed to be a little closer together, but it definitely looks less harsh than many of my other renders.
The skin effects are a new material package that I can't even begin to explain, but it takes the figure, the primary light, and then calculates a shitload of stuff to beef up the material. It goes from one texture map and one bump map to something like twenty shader nodes, ranging from Blinn to Fresnel lighting. For $12, it was well worth the purchase. The skin went from looking mannequinish to looking fairly real.
I'm making slow progress on my next "serious" project (as mentioned in "Mt. Stripmore"), but it's held up over a wardrobe issue -- something clearly not a problem in this instance.
Render by Dan at June 28, 2005 11:48 PM