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  • Making-Off Fa Hai

  • Making of Fa Hai

    Published by: the area

    This piece was made for a video tutorial, so in comparison, I spent the least time on this piece when compared to my other portfolio work. This took only five nights, but I was very satisfied with the final result. I’m happy to share the process of creating this piece with everyone.

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    Modeling part:  I used a base model, and directly sculpted it in Mudbox; modifying its shapes. This is the fastest method; oftentimes I can even create 3 or 4 characters in one night.

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    I jumped back into Maya afterwards with about 50,000 polygons and left the rest of the details to normal map. This is a very cost-efficient technique, and the effect is also sufficient. In Maya, I assembled the body, clothes, and praying beads. I deleted the beads after I discovered that their overall effect wasn’t that good.

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    Next I started drawing textures; it was a very simple process. Because this was a male character, so I was able to be more bold with the colours, and added lots of details to make him look more menacing. The texture was created in Photoshop. The reason I like creating male characters is because I can be more bold and exaggerated in daring variations.

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    This is the most basic texture, by using this as my foundation I can create the sss texture.

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    Highlight and Specular Texture.

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    Here is also the texture that controls sss value.

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    Next is the shading network -- now these look very complicated, but they are actually very easy. A lot of complicated nodes are only for adjusting colours, and they are based on personal preference. We can also complete the task of adjusting the colours of the texture in Photoshop; this will achieve the same effect. There are also some Clamp and setRange nodes for shrinking/expanding the texture’s colour range. Because in Maya, the colour range for texture is 0-1, when we control the parameters with textures, sometimes we will need 0-100 or 300-1000 etc., and that is why we need these nodes. For example, when using a texture to control the scale conversion parameters of fast skin sss, setRange node will be needed to increase the 0-1 information on the texture to 0-200, this way the strength variation of sss will be more noticeable and we'll be able to achieve the effect that we want. I also used mib_fg_occlusion node, it’s still Ambient Occlusion, only thing is that the rendering speed becomes faster since final gather is turned on. Using this mode, I wanted to emphasize the shadows on some details. Frankly speaking, with that complex shading network, my goal was to add details in darker areas, and not affect the lit areas. About the shading network that controls the model bumps, I wanted to strengthen the bumps on the edges of the model, this is not exactly natural, but in this piece, the technique ended up producing a pretty good effect.

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    This is the rendering result before adjusting colours. The lighting is very simple, with two spotlights lit from the back, and from the front only directional lights. Also using HDRI as environment dome and turning on Final Gather will achieve gentle effects.

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    This is the result of the final render.

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    After some later adjustments, this piece was created.

    Thanks for this opportunity to share my production process. Feel free to write me - I would be glad to receive your emails.