Concept Compositing
by akrid
There Probably Won't be a Title. Ended up re-sculpting the face Continuing on with my character , I decided to mess around with what I have decided to call concept comping, as I can't remember if there's a real name. This is probably not something I would have done had I not started this blog, but it's a pretty interesting subject. Concept compositing is a fairly rare technique that can quickly...
There Probably Won't be a Title.
Ended up re-sculpting the face Continuing on with my character, I decided to mess around with what I have decided to call concept comping, as I can't remember if there's a real name. This is probably not something I would have done had I not started this blog, but it's a pretty interesting subject.
Concept compositing is a fairly rare technique that can quickly produce textures. These textures are relatively unusable in a 3d space, but they're so quick to make that they can be used for planning and organization. It can also be used to present many different looks to a client, allowing them to choose their personal favourite before you finalize. In order to understand concept compositing. you first need to understand
Render Passes
Most 3d packages are able to separate specific parameters from the total scene into individual images. These are called passes, and the total sum of them when blended together equal what you would have got had you just hit the render button. By rendering out each parameter individually, this gives me the ability to reconstruct my scene in a 2D application, like Photoshop. Now what's the benefit of all this work? Well, having every single parameter be hand editable at a whim is pretty nifty. For this particular application, having the color (or diffuse pass) editable is what I'm looking for. This allows me to experiment freely using photoshop's powerful brush system before going back into Zbrush to paint, which generally takes a bit longer.
Layers for those interested. 
Math isn't entirely correct, but you get the idea. In order to accomplish this, I render out a pass representing the lights and a pass representing the reflections. I then blend these together in photoshop, which then allows me to paint a color pass from scratch below the other layers, Allowing me to leverage the accuracy of 3D and the toolset of 2D simultaneously. The obvious drawback from all this is that the texture produced (for the most part) cannot be used in 3D, as it only works from the single perspective I painted it in. Hence the need to bring it back into Zbrush.
Guess which one I did first. So I did two of these and... Well... It didn't really work out as planned due to the fact that I'm an awful painter. It was neither fast nor easy for me, which more or less defeats the entire purpose. Still, it was a great change of pace, and you can probably see the massive jump in quality between the green and red. Just need a bit of practice is all.
What's Next?
Dunno. There are a few more things I could do with this guy, but he wasn't terribly interesting to begin with. I could bang my head against it more and make it a few degrees better, or I could start anew on something else that has the potential to be vastly superior.But finding a subject that's within my skill-set is always the biggest problem. When I have a project to work on it's pure bliss, but the vast majority of my time is spent without. I'm hoping you guys can help me out by suggesting a new subject. Nothing too complex mind you, but I would really appreciate any suggestions. I started this blog to force myself into making progress every week and I'd hate to break the chain.
P.S., My project files for this have come out to a sizable 1.30 GBs. That's a lot of content that I made :)
P.P.S., Oh shit, I forgot my soon to be signature x :or: y thread title! Ah well.