Lighting and hair (24/2/2014)

* First the lecturer showed us how to add lighting to a scene, just in case we wanted to include it with our character model. These included 'Mental Rays' and 'Photometric lighting' that he used in a previous student's 3D environment.

From editing this student's environment with lighting and colouring, he was able to show off the difference that certain colours make when mixed with light. For example, a yellow floor with lighting bouncing off it gave warmth, whilst blue appeared cold. Thus you could use the same environment twice in a game and still have two completely different ones.

Whilst all of the above was impressive, I will admit it was a bit too complex for my understanding. Therefore, I will go back to these lighting techniques in the future in order to add to my overall animation presentation.

* I then looked back at the texturing and unwrapped UVW's I had started before.

Having had the waist-coat's UVW map finished during the last session, today I added it to my model to see if it made an improvement or not.

Quite pleased with how the t-shirt looks even without editing the UVW map, I decided to skip it and work on the trousers as seen below...

 
* The lecturer also showed us how to add realistic hair to our models. I decided to do this as admittedly multiple plains stacked on top of one another wasn't doing it for me.

First I had to select my head and go onto the modifier list and select 'Hair and Fur (WSM)'. Doing so comically covers the whole head in hair, thus making my self look like the lion from 'The Wizard of Oz'.

Instead, to make the model look more realistic you have to select the polygons you want and then click 'Update Selection' in order to make only those sections hair. 

Selecting 'Guides' I was then, for no better a word, able to comb/style my hair to look far more like my own.

Wanting hair that better suited mine, I then went into 'Presets' and choose 'Load' in order to bring up the 'Hair and Fur presets'. With a whole selection available, I picked 'meHulkaaaar.shp' that best suited my style despite being grey as seen below.

I also tried to work on my goatie with some, interesting results...

The only problem with the above (apart from just the grey) is that this style makes 3ds Max run incredibly slow. Thus I will continue to edit the model before going back to the hair that I want.


Therefore, I went back to the old hair style to work on the goatie and eyebrows and now their placing looks fine, they just need to look more like my own.