hey there!

i've been assigned to texturing Nimmie Amee, as martin pointed out: "Because we can't get anybody else to do it?!", well i agree, it should have been done for a while now and i'm certainly not the most qualified person to do it, but i'll try to do it anyway. since i've been on vacation for the last 2 weeks (spain is awesome, even more so at night), i've already missed the first deadline before even downloading the model..

but that will change NOW! and i'm counting on you valued community member (yes you too!) to make up for my incompetence ..

how is this going down?

1. REFERENCE
first i'll collect some reference shots that i think would fit for Nimmie Amee, i'll focus on the face first, but you are welcome to post any suggestions.

2. HOW TO
then i'll make myself (and by showing screenshots also you) comfortable with the texturing environment of TWO and the tools i've got

3. PAINT
after that it should be a piece of cake to paint the texture..

4. RENDER
this phase will probably take most of the time, i'll make a glamour shot or two of Nimmie Amee

so .. are you with me?

for starters, here is the initial design
[attachmentid=18828]

and here is Jims latest post of the character
[attachmentid=18829]

Jim did a great job on the detail already, which will make my job much easier.

since there is no design guide yet for the texturing of TWO characters, we will be developing that together.
what we do have, is the bar, which is set to Shrek 1, so i immediately thought "Cameron Diaz".

but while google knows the location of several inspiring shots of cameron, i just dont know if she has enough cuteness for the job .. does she?

Cameron's cutness is debatable, but she's good enough for references to make Nimmie IMO. At least you only have the face to texture!

I'll take the "pro/for" side of the argument/debate

You're not trying to make Nimmie Amee look like Cameron, you woould just be using here texture as a, um, texture . So I don't think her "cutness factor" has much to do with it.

So is there a main style guide for the movie? Is the movie going more photoreal, stylish, somewhere inbetween? The characters are obviously more stylized but that doesn't mean the texturing will go that route as well.

Looking forward to seeing what direction you go. The model is just beautiful BTW!!

i know, the texture can only do so much for the characters overall appearace, but still, one should always work with properly chosen reference material. i could also use michael jackson as a color reference and it wont hurt the model THAT much, but i think its important, to know where you want to go before attepting to go there.

additionally wrinkles, folds, etc. are typically a job for textures, so technically i could make her look 20 years older ..

but since there doesnt seem to be any objection, i'll stick with cameron as a reference.

Wouldn't it be better to use someone who looks more like the character as a reference? A dark-haired woman with a narrow face, like say, Audrey Hepburn, Jennifer Love Hewitt or Lacey Chabert.

Well, I'm not adverse to seeing a thread full of pretty women as suggested references! Here's mine:

Ooh, is that the singer from the Coors? Kinda looks like her...

Not quite.....The Corrs! I think she looks more like Nimmie than Cameron, but I'm not the one doing the texturing.

What about her?


*Fuchur*

julian and others: you are right, i should rather take a dark haired model .. after all in the initial design her hair has the darkest shading. i think i wont go for black though, since it is difficult to show definition with black.

while on the subject of hair:
should the modeled main hair be replaced by a:m hair or is this not the texturers job?

I see woot's hair has been done by Kevin. He's used a skullcap and not textures to define the hair boundary. If you think you're (and your computer) up to doing the hair, I'd say go for it.

Doesn't she look more like Christina Ricci?

Nikki Cox?

now that i've inspected the model more thoroughly, i must say she really does look a lot like christina ricci .. anyway, for starters i have flattened her head.

as is outlined in the guidelines at http://wiki.hash.com/two/published/Texturing, i have created a folder "Actions" in the "NimmieAmmee" folder.

1) i have created a group that holds all cps of her face that will be covered by the face decal, i've hidden everything else.

[attachmentid=19090]

2) i have moved the pivot of this group, to be at the axis of the head (from top view inside the neck)
- select the group
- select the rotate manipulator ( A )
- drag the manipulators center ( B )

3) i have rotated the pivot of this group, so that the green y-axis points "towards" the back of the head.
- drag the green axis ( C )

4) created a new action "Nimmie_Amee_flat_face"

[attachmentid=19091]

5) went to Muscle Mode, right-clicked, selected "flatten".
its important to position the pivot correctly, otherwise the results will look somewhat messy. mine looked pretty neat (front view) after going back and tweaking the pivot some more.

6) i've already done some tweaking of the cps (still in the sction in muscle mode)

[attachmentid=19092]

the mirror mode, magnet mode and distortion box help a lot when straightening out the mesh a bit, but the main objective here is to remove overlapping areas and to position the patches as ideal as possible (ideal means, all patches' size is the same as in the original model and they have rectangular corners).

Me, too! (I just didn't want to inject my opinion in here without your confirmation - you're doing the texturing after all.)

That's a really nice description of how to flatten a face - thanks Marcel

(I was beginning to wonder about this thread serving as a ruse for posting pin-up girls)

I think the nose area needs to be widened out more. I think there might be some stretching of textures there otherwise.

Nancy, now what would be wrong with that?

Zaryn, yes, it still needs a lot of tweaking, i dont plan on adding a lot of detail to the nose, but its better if you can. also the chin area is too dense, the ears need to be fixed, the mouth needs to be larger in texture space, etc.

ok, here is a little update:

after a lot of cp-pushing i am quite happy with the mesh layout.

CREATING THE DECAL

i'm positioning my viewport, so the mesh fills it almost exactly.
then i hit the "render to file" button and make some settings:

[attachmentid=19188]
[attachmentid=19189]

a:m will give me a file, i rename that file to "Nimmie_Ammee_face_color.tga".
it looks like this:

[attachmentid=19190]

i import this file to a:m,
then (still with the action window open), i go into the model and create an new decal:

[attachmentid=19191]

with the scaling tool i get, i then position the decal to exactly match the splinage below and select apply:

[attachmentid=19192]

after that i select "stop positioning".
in the viewport i now see that the decal has been properly applied.

CHECKING WITH CHECKERS

next step is to open the texture file in photoshop (i make a copy of the file before that!) and fill it with this checkers pattern:

[attachmentid=19245]

so now the texture looks like an oversized checkers board, very irritating to look at, but helpful:

back in a:m i double-click the texture in the image-folder (that updates the texture from file).
i open a model window and hit "0" on the number row of my keyboard to "view shaded/wireframe"

[attachmentid=19194]

WASH, RINSE, REPEAT

this image allows me to detect areas where the texture is distorted (see some distortion above the ear and along the neck). i can now also tell that the texture density in the nose area is still too low, so i'll repeat:
- go into the action view again
- fix the areas
- re-apply the texture
--- (right-click the stamp under the decal and
--- select "recall view/position" then
--- apply for a new stamp and
--- delete the old stamp)
- and check the texture in the model view
until i'm satisfied.

The face looks good. But what about the neck? And do the decals not need to be multiples of 125? So yours would be 1024x1024 or am I thinking of game textures?

yes the neck is much too distorted in the shot. i'm currently fixing that.
the attached shot shows the first iteration, but there are still things to do.

i dont think a:m has a limitation on useable texture sizes, but if it did have some kind of stepping, i'd guess it would be a power of two (like 128), 768 is a multiple of 128. but i guess you are thinking game textures, they are very dependent on hardware restrictions and tune a lot for performance, so that seems plausible (i remember old quake1 textures to even have a fixed size).

It's still looking pretty good. Are you going to fix it in the flatten or in the Decal Edit? Also could you post that cool checker pattern you are using?

Marcel, one question: the checker-texture is not a new feature of A:M, right? You just didn't mention in your steps that you also stamped this checker- texture, that's what I'm thinking about.

no, actually i dont stamp this texture, i stamp the wireframe texture, so its easier to align it.
after stamping the wireframe texture, i open it up in photoshop and apply a pattern fill with the checkers.
a:m then updates its texture from the file, so i dont have to stamp again.

oops, i just noticed that part is missing from the description, i'll fix that.

Zaryin, the uv-editor is much nicer to work with, but it has a serious drawback: if you change your model splineage, you'll have to do it all again, because the new parts were not part of the projection back then.

with the action approach i can just open the action, position the new cps, recall the position of the decal and re-apply it.
but the action does not allow to split patches, so one cannot build a good complete texture of a model, you'll always have to make 2 textures (back + front).

Ah, ok. That's what I thought.

somewhere up in this thread i've asked if i should also do hair .. Ken answered if i and my computer are up to it .. my computer doesnt seem to have a problem, but i just cant get a good look out of hair other than Battle Angel Alita's (GUNNM)

anyway, i've created the first color texture for Nimmies face, like christina ricci i've made her very pale.
this choice makes some uneven parts in the model appear more prominent, so porcelain might be needed for her skin. the second image shows her with porcelain.

Good start! Maybe you'd be able to do the hair for the lashes or brows....

I know you are just starting painting the textures so take that for what it's worth. I find the face skin lacking real skin features like speckles etc. I think it will be difficult to find a picture of Christina Ricci without makeup.

Supposedly Ricci wore minimal makeup in the film Monster.

[attachmentid=19387]

Ken, yes, i i'll try hair for her eyebrows.

Yves, i actually found a pic of her without makeup, but you dont want to see it ..

i do have some hi-res shots with natural looking makeup though, i'll create a bump map off them next.

here is a little update:

1. i have added hair eyebrows with length and direction maps

i'm getting some stray hairs (see above her left eyebrow) - position variation is set to 0. anyone knows where these come from?

it looks nice, but i dont know if there will be any real close-up shots of her, so i'm unsure if its worth it to add hair eyebrows to the characters ..

2. i've painted most of her face bump map (at 246x1536 pixels)

the detail in this map is very fine, basically i've drawn all of her pores and tiny creases, i hope this wont lead to any mapping artifacts in animation ..

when i've finished the bump map, i'll start with the spec map to make her lips look less dry.

Hard to get over how wonderfully expressive Nimmie Amee is... and she isn't even doing anything!
A beautiful design that just keeps getting better and better.

If I recall correctly there may be more potential for closeups in the 'flashback' sequence than in the 'reunion' scenes. Not sure. That would make more sense though from the viewer perspective... instill a yearning for Nimmie Amee in the viewer's empathy early on that has gets resolved later when finally(!) meet again.

Added: Eyebrows looking rather hairy.... (yeah I know... no kidding) Hmmm...

There seems to be weird stuff going on along the sides of her jaws....in the shadow area.

yeah you are right, when i set my monitors gama very high i can see it too .. its not distortion, i've controlled that area before, and its not jped artifacts, so it must be mapping artifacts. hmm .. how should i proceed with this? reduce the bump depth in shadowy areas? blur the bump map?

Rodney, i think i can get rid of that hairy look on her eyebrows by tweaking the hair material some more.

oversampling might also help, since our target is only video, it should not be too expensive. this would also help with the mapping artifacts.

will renders be oversampled or rendered to target resolution?

The bump map looks good. But is there a color map on her face? I cannot distinguish the color variations that we normally see in a face. In fact I can't distinguish any color variations.

here is an update .. it doesnt look like much, but getting her hair to look even remotely convincing was really a lot of effort ..
i ended up using a combination of direction maps and grooming to get the hair as close to the skull as possible.
maybe i shouldnt add as much detail as it wont be seen anyway though ..

all hair is just black for now, i hope that cool hair shader will add some livelynedd to it.

i've also added some saturation to the color map to make her look less gray.

oh yeah: i noticed, that the model had 20% ambiance set, i have removed that because it messed with the hair. is this ok?

That hair looks real good ,but that skinn is great ,looks very good to me

She's very pretty - and yes that muhhair hair shader will definitely add zip to her hair - Try different specular colors - golden yellow, red, purple especially work well with black hair - and you'll get a taste of what it can do, then tone back from there. I still haven't figured out the settings & what they mean.

I like that you've given her hair some kinkiness - it's interesting.

Eventually you could add a more pronounced blush to her cheeks and lips to really make her sparkle. And if she's supposed to be looking like a hard working, wood carrying house frau ? Maybe smudges of soot (Not sure what's in the script).

The higher cheek blush - as if she's been toting bales - would also communicate that the lazy fake woodsman (whatever his name - Choppyfeet?) sits around all day watching re-runs on Youtube.

Thanks for the update, Marcel. She's coming along well. And thanks for changing her ambience setting. That could have caused a few headaches when we light her.

The style of the hair look pretty good to me. I would like to see it a little "fluffier" on top though.

Very nice hairdo job. I would like to see it rendered with the hair shader on.

I'd like to see the face texture map pushed much further. More color variations like yellower in the nose-cartilage area and the mouth commissures, reddish on the tip of the nose, etc. I like the idea that she have a very pale (geisha, goth or zombie like) skin complexion but she needs to have a few skin inperfections. Like a few beauty spots (or moles?) that could be in the darker-pink variety instead of brown. Maybe a few pink frekles too.

i have added some of the color variation, i'll add some more red and pink later.

a bssrdf shader would be neat .. every time i try increasing the bump strength i end up toning it down again because it makes the skin look hard + dry..

in the meanwhile i have replaced the shag curls with emitters with 6 cps, this look doesnt have that fade at the end, also this way i dont need shag hair anymore.

BUT: i have duplicated kevin's settings for the tin servant's hair, but it just wont render as nice as his .. is it the lights or am i doing something wrong

Marcel,
Very nice job on the hair styling there. That must've been a nightmare, glad you took care of it As far as the shading goes I'm not entirely sure why it looks like that. It's probably a combination of the colors you've set and your light setup. Is the diffuse color a pure black? It looks like it is and if it is the shader has nothing to work with, make sure there is at least a little color in there, even if it is extremely dark. Could you post a wireframe with your light setup?

I agree that a bssrdf shader would be nice (crosses fingers for V14). One thing I read recently that could help with the bump maps making things look to dry was to actually tint your bumps pink/red in your color map.

I bring alot of my bump layers into my color map as Overlay or Multiply layers. Great Hair. It seems a little too shiny though. I have been screwing with hair lately and it's hard to get a good look (at least for me) we need an in-depth tutorial.

..Sometime I have to reassign the map image in the hair property panel...seem to lose it pointer in some situation

another issue
...I have also some problem to delete material folder...once a material is inside a PSW folder and deleted ...after closing and reopenning the project , the material reappear in the folder ? the folder is hard to delete and cause some freeze

if you experience the same let me know, I'll try to make a report.

Al

My guess is that the tin servant has less kinkiness in his hair - could be 1 of the reasons not rendering the same.

The grey specular is giving you that prematurely gray look - which is very interesting - makes her look older, more worn, as if the times of sand ..er...sands of time ...have done their thing. She's appropriately no longer the flowering youth that Tinman remembers, alas.

If you want to just experiment - try a deep purple for the specular just to see (if you haven't already) - it should give you a more shiny blue black look which also could be interesting - but she would look younger and less aged.

And also I agree - make sure the diffuse is not a pure black.

(Note to Al: I have noticed some funnies with hair rendering as well - but can't reproduce it - the hair seemed to change it's density, It persisted even if I started a new project. I then restarted A:M and it went away. Pretty sure I hadn't changed any setting - ver13e)

EDIT: I'm also wondering how she might look with a thin smokey "taupe/grey" eyeshadow liner on her upper & lower lids.