08 - Keyshot, Clay renders
Hey guys.
I finally hit Exit in ZBrush. I was going back and forth so many times because of tiny things! I wasn't satisfied with the eyes so I kept adjusting and adjusting. Thank god for the ZBrush/Keyshot Bridge thingy, I have no words for how it was helpful in this process.
Anyways, finishing my business in ZBrush means its time to set up my scene in Keyshot. Yay! After transfering the geometry, the first step was applying a stantard clay material to the entire model. This material that I created is pretty much just a grey diffuse material with high specular and a semi/matte roughness level - its really quick to adjust in the material graph and allows me to see the changes I'll make in the environment and lighting afterwards Otherwise I probably couldn't see the changes in the model right away, trust me, that's just counter-efective.
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Also, the shiny thingy applied to the model in this screenshot is the material I created. It looks like this because I had performance mode on to speed my navigation but as soon as I turned it off it turned into normal clay. Pretty cool feature huh?
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Then, after applying it to each material using the labels function in keyshot (this function allows to toggle the clay on and off as needed), I started adjusting the HDRI parameters right away.
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I picked a default one from Keyshots library and tweaked it untill i liked the result. Then I created a simple light setup with a front, top and bottom light and, of course, a rim light. There's something about rim lights that adds that sweet spiciness I like. Also, I wanna add that I worked with grayscale almost to the end of thisl lighting creation workflow because it helps to see if the whole composition is working or not. When I finished setting the lights, I gave them different tints.
(HERE'S A LITTLE TIP: work with a dark background and with the HDRI in low brightness. Add each light separately and, when adjusting one, keep the others turned off. Trust me, it's a good way to see what each one is doing to the scene. )
I also set up my cameras in between. Everytime I see a view I like, I save the camera.
With my scene and lights set up as I wanted, I moved on to the next step - materials.
This took me a while but I eventually got used to the interface and was able to sped up the process a lot (it's my first time using keyshot. Ever.) Eventually my teacher gave me a big big feedback that changed the look of the entire character! I was using ZBrush's polypaint on the skin (which is ok, obviously, but I was completely ignoring the fact that skin in translucent and has subsurface scattering and that was why it was looking incredibly dead and weird. I tweaked a few things in the materials graph and boom, she's alive and with blood vessels now). For the rest I just color adjusted a few parts and added the emissive material for the hologram.
For the hologram and Sonic cool shirt stamp, I used Photoshop and just had fun painting - those cool bubbles are so cool and all I did was change the mode to Index!
When I finished setting the materials, I reapplied the clay label and started rendering a few shots. I'm very happy with the result, she transmits the confidence I really wanted her to have.
Then I untoggled the clay label, adjusted the post process effects (I'm addicted to bloom. Sorry), started rendering with my custom materials and colors and, as you can imagine, that's where I'm at right now.
That's it for today.
I'm pretty much finished but I still have a few renders to waiting and I can't wait to show you guys! <3
