Doctor Fate (rendered still)

Doctor Fate -Development-

My current personal project is to make a CG version of comic book/DC Universe character Doctor Fate. He appears in many different designs over the years, spanning back to 1940, which allowed me some creative freedom to create the look I wanted, yet still stay true to what makes the character. As far as I can see on the web no one has ever made a high quality CG version of the character. I started by collecting a lot of reference images of him and researching the character, I'm not a massive comic book guy, I just like the character design so much I decided to do this.

My first step was to build basic geo of the character and create the base mesh in a generic pose.

After laying out the UV's is UV layout, using 2 x 4k patches for this project I started to add a detailed sculpt to parts of the geometry, starting with the body/suit. 

I tested out some cloth simulations for the cape, but eventually came back to z-brush to do a sculpt of it so I could get the look I wanted. My goal is to create a CG still for this project, so a high res non animated cape is fine.

Bringing back a medium/high res decimated mesh into Maya allows the possibility of not using displacement and gives more control of the final look. I used UV transfer to move the UV layouts I did on base mesh over to the high detail decimated mesh.  

Now I switched to Mari 1.5 to create colour, spec, dirt, bump and normal maps for the character. Seeing as the characters history comes from Egypt, I weaned to give the gold detail that reflects that ancient Egyptian style. 

High res clay render of Dr Fate. I wanted his main suit to resemble more of the material batman/spiderman have on their suit, as it makes it look very strong.

More texture work in Mari.

Textures complete!

Render set up in 3Ds Max/V-Ray. Using a key light, dome light, GI, and a further light at each hand and each eye. A HDRI was used for soft reflections.

123D Catch

I recently started to experiment with Audodesk 123D Catch. I think it can offer a good solution for mid background assets that are not close to camera, allowing a good result much quicker than modelling and texturing from scratch. The first time I used it I did not have good results with the software, but I got a good tip off Digital Tutors which was to place the object on a cereal box as it can help match points in the solve. This time I got a solid result doing a classic shoe test with my Nikes. It was an overcast day today so perfect for shooting, I took around 30 images to reproduce this. I exported to 3DS Max in medium quality output and did a simple render test. I was impressed with the results.

My main negative issue so far is that it produces 2 texture maps for the asset which are different ratio-resolution and in the same uv space, so they overlap, this makes post tweaks to the texture quite problematic. I will see if I can solve this issue in future tests.

This image below is using high res output option. Looks very nice, and is very accurate to real world object, but very heavy mesh (1.5 million polys per shoe). It also gave me 4 x 4k texture maps all in same uv space overlapping with no sensible way to separate with its random auto UV mapping :(

Mari 2.0 with DT

This week I have been going through this great tutorial about the new version of Mari by Eddie Russell from Digitial Tutors. I have been using Mari for about 2 years now, but I stilll picked up some great general tips here as well as learning the new system for version 2. I really enjoy using Mari, and I can't wait to try out this new and improved version in future work.

ILM - The Art of Innovation

Im currently reading 'Industrial Light & Magic: The Art of Innovation' and its very good and interesting book for those interested in VFX. Im really inspired to watch / re-watch all the films they talk about. Recently I watched Casper (1995), the first hero CG character in a film! I Really have the highest respect for those that were involved in this in the early days.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Industrial-Light-Magic-Art-Innovation/dp/0810998025/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367317851&sr=1-1&keywords=ilm