Alright Martin, here you go. The long awaited Green Monkey Hair thread. He looks a bit like a chia-pet right now but I've just started. There's a lot of work to do. I'm hoping to get him done today so I can get started lighting tomorrow (the beauty of a 3 day weekend with nothing to do but spend time with the wife, watch movies, play videogames, and AM). Let me know what you think...

Cool! Obviously the boarders of the skin areas will need to be less defined. But the hair I can't fault.

neat - like it - even the chia pet look, all scruffy & unkempt

I'd like to use those hair settings as grass.......that's a nifty looking monkey there...freaks me out too.....keep er going....good job..

Mike

This is gonna be so good!

You are off to a great start already.

Is the head color more saturated than the body? I think I prefer the body saturation.

Thanks guys, he's coming along a lot slower than I had hoped, forgot how time consuming mapping can be. Anyway, here's what I've got now. I think I need to go back to a brighter green but I'm liking the overall look. Obviously I still need to texture the hands, feet, ears, and tail and add some hair to the top of his hands/feet. Thoughts? Anybody got a nice banana model I can stick in his hand

Kevin



I've got some much better grass settings I can send you if you like

This is looking fantastic Kevin. I don't know about the narrow strips of hair going to his nose though.

I like it too. I think I prefer the brighter green as well (my, my, what a surprise) - more fanciful, deliberate and Emerald City of Oz like.

The olive green might get lost in all that dark moody lighting in the Yoopster's castle.

I wonder if you should perhaps comb his head bangs slightly similar to Woot ? Whadda ya think?

Not sure if eye color should be the same as Woot's (made it olive greenish), and the hat, with new added feathers & medallion. I just added Woot to svn, I can send you the info, if you don't want to download Woot again.

He's a cutey.

Oh Yeah.

Nice update!

Fabulous, Kevin!

Thanks for the comments everyone, didn't get much farther last night, just got some hair on his hands and feet, but no color yet. I hate mapping hands, it's always tricky.



I think I'm going to aim for something in between what I've got now and the first image color wise. You're right about the bangs, in fact I just went back and looked at Jim's original design for the monkey and sure enough, Woot bangs. The eyes and hat should definately be the same as well, I'll see if I can import what you've done into the monkey. I already downloaded the updates last night so I'm set but thanks anyway.

Kevin

Ok, latest update, added Hat and eye's from Nancy's Woot Changes. Changed the color back to a brighter green, colored his tail, and gave him something to eat...

That be Woot. I'm satisfied.

Is this Multipass? I've been considering jittering each hair a little bit in Multipass to make it "softer" and "fuller."

looks great - banana is also terrific

I'm curious: Are you using a decal to drive the color? or different emitters & different densities? Different materials? How are you getting the variation in color? Looks quite good.

Aww what a cute little monkey!!!

LOVELY!

I would also like to know how you control the color of the hair!

Very good! I'm a little worried that there's no shadows between/underneath the hairs but that could be the light/settings. For example his hair quiff isn't casting a shadow on his face.
On a separate note, I think the bump mapping on his lips could be refined abit more and less strong. I could give it a shot when he's uploaded.

He looks fantastic. Nice fur, nice colors, nice pose and nice lighting.

It's getting better & better! :-)
But as Ken said, the bumps are to strong.

No multipass right now, takes too long for these quick test renders (except fot the 1 pass super quick tests). When I was finished I was going to do a multipass render. So you are thinking of adding that to the renderer? That would be cool, I know John Keates is a big fan of the hair jitter...



Thanks Nancy! The banana isn't mine, it's Bill Young's from one of the Hash training videos. The color is being driven completely by decals, it's really the only way I can get good color variation with the control I want, I'm not that good with AM's material system.



The shadows are just a result of the light setup, I'm not too worried about it. You are right about the bump map being too strong, I'm still tweaking all the decals. I'm planning to finish this little guy's texturing up myself but thanks for the offer.

You are doing an fantastic job with the hair Kevin

Stian

He looks great! I can't wait to see a multi-pass rendering.

Yes please Martin!!! Oh, and if you are feeling up to it, an option for it a nice bit of 'hair clumpiness' please.

Kevin, another terrific demonstration of your fur prowess. Is it possible to have a shot of Woot with some cool backlighting on his hair to show off your new shaders.

I think that can be arranged sir ... thanks for the comments Stephen.

Kevin

I agree, his fur/hair would look more lived in if there is clumping.

Kevin,

You mentioned not believing in tapering for hair... as much for human hair at least.. I assume this meant tapering the thickness.

but... on this monkey hair...

... did you use transparency on the hair (at the tips)? I'm just wondering because that adds a huge hit on rendering times... but if it gives better results visually (soft fuzzy fur) I can persue it.

If you got this look without using transparency... then I'm good to go.

-vern

Here's a backlit version:



I am using transparency on the hair, but I think I've only got it set at like 30% at the tips right now, might be worth pushing it higher to see how it looks. I've just always found I need to increase the density a lot when using transparency.

Looking really nice Kevin. Hopefully you wouldn't need to use transparency if there was hair jitter in there.

I grabbed some time to play with your shaders the other day and they are great. I assume this is the simpler one?

I like this character. Suitibly monkey-ish with a slight anthropomorphism.

[EDIT] I don't know if this is just my mind but that banana kinda looks like something else from a distance... cheeky monkey!

Thanks John, glad to hear you finally got the shaders to work for you. This is actually the more complicated one, I've been using it for all the hair models so far. However, I really should try the kajia-kay since it renders quicker and will probably look just fine for this guy.

oh and uh, that's just wrong.

hehehe

Great monkey Kevin! nice texture work!

Al

Nice one Kevin Somehow, there's no mistaking that it's hair when you have backlighting. Hopefully when it comes to animate this cheeky monkey your shaders will also help reduce hair 'noise' too.

Well, I think he's about as done as he's gonna get for now. I'm not all that happy with the hair on his hands but I'm tired of working on him. A lot of the work I've done texturing his hands and feet doesn't really show up in this render unfortunately, I'll have to post another one. I used 3DPainter to finish him up, great tool btw.

Kevin

looks terrific!

Thanks Nancy ... Green Monkey Woot, Guitar God???

Another really very fun, excellent image.

(I notice Woot's feather on cap sticking up - you can change the decal on the feather to more match the monkey boy. Also occurred to me that the combing probably didn't transfer from woot...did you have problems with combing it? I can't imagine that given the fabulous job you've done on the rest of him)

this is so great .. oh man .. add a strap for the guitar and go win the mascot contest .. now!

That's excellent. I don't know if he can be entered to the contest.....I think a few people contributed to him. Not sure.

Sooo....the characters aren't getting eyelashes?

Thanks Nancy! I just noticed the problem with the feathers last night, probably because I kept rendering him from that same pose that didn't show it. I don't know why it didn't occur to me before since hair transfers never work (I think I really need to write a feature request for that). I'll have to fix it tonight.




Thanks Ken and Marcel ... I thought about entering him, I did do all the modeling and texturing on him (minus the hat), the only thing I didn't do was the rigging (which is very nice btw whoever worked on that). I don't think not having done everything myself is a problem, I'm just not sure we can enter TWO characters for the mascot contest. Martin or Steve? You're right Ken, he does still need eyelashes, I'll try to add those tonight (still need to update Nick too).

Kevin

Cool!
I just noticed....it looks like he has no "big toes". Ah well....too late to change that now.

You don't have to do all the work on a character to enter it. (And, no, I don't know where the line is.)

Go ahead. If we get a couple years of mascots out of TWO, that's great.

Why not enter in the name of all the participants ?

The credits for the mascot should read from everyone who touched the model (designer, modeler, texturer, rigger, image creator).

Yup - The whole is greater than the sum of the parts - an excellent example of synergy - that old fashioned word, that no one uses anymore (according to Martin).

Perhaps Syzygistic would be an even better term for this collaboration - the planets have aligned and the community is united.

A definite win for everyone's good work.