Skin Texturing - Astro Girl
Character Design: Astro Girl Firstly, allow me to clarify this project and its process with a disclosure: I am relatively new to 3D art. Prior to working on this piece, I was still sort of figuring out just exactly how texture maps worked, what SSS is along with all of the nitty gritty 'know-hows' involved with rendering in Arnold 5. Nevertheless, the challenge was simple and clear for me: I wanted to figure out how to make a full blown character, without holding back on details, and in space. So here is a little breakdown of how I created her, including some annotations discussing the pros and cons of the strategies I employed at the time. Modeled In Zbrush and Maya Expressions using Blend Shapes Texturing: Mari and Arnold Rendering: Arnold
Test Render Version 2:
I revised "Astro-Girl" over the weekend, focusing on lighting, and tweaking some of the texturing.
3/4 view
3/4 Render: Displacements only
Tonal Values
I wanted to give her a subtle but impactful expression. Working with blendshapes in Maya, I added some further Displacement information by sculpting wrinkles and recesses in Zbrush to further accentuate the expression.
Facial Hair: Using Ornatrix, I added peach fuzz, eyebrows, nose hair and some bangs sticking out from under the cap. I think the bangs may be too long as they cut out the strong expression information sculpted on the forehead. The strands could be shorter
I used the character's skin to tell a story about this astronaut, likely under intense environmental pressures, in space. I added veins and intricate SSS to add layers to the ways in which radiation affects the human body.
Rendered in Arnold 5 ; Textures are a little pixelated due to a limited pool of stock image resources, but since the eye is normally rendered from a distance, its passable.
Rendered in Arnold 5.
Going simple is best; I kept it to three basic texture maps plus a displacement map.
