Here I present a virtual character Veda
which I have created. The work
in progress.
Bodybuilding
body
How do you think? Could a slander girl survive and fight in post nuclear world? I think she couldn't. That's why the character of our short animation film "VV" is a stout muscle woman. Many of you probably have never seen such muscle women and didn't hear of female bodybuilding. For those who are interested in such topic here are links to personal sites of professional bodybuilders. Fotos and videos from this sites I used as references for creating my own character.
Clips that you see are not animation but transformation from one test pose to next one. Only in one of these clips is used jog*.bvh mocap which is included in 3dsmax package.
I have almost completed my model in 3dsmax and rigging. The only use of the bones/biped at rigging of my model was not enough to make her looking alive. The use of a muscle system is the only way to achieve this aim. I tested all known muscles systems for 3dsmax (ACT, Hercules, SkinFX, Cat) and found that the best way for me is using CAT muscles and SkinFX together. During testing this plugins I wrote maxscript "Muscle Select" which allows to boost productivity during work with muscle objects.
SkinFX has excellent modifier for binding bones/muscles with mesh, but it has terrible muscle object. That's why I'm using edited by me Cat muscle strand/muscle object instead of SkinFX muscle object. Besides I had to write scripted functions extending SkinFX modifier such as "mirror vertex weights for all one side muscles to the other", "write and load vertex weights in file for all muscles", "save and load vertex weights by vertex position".
While working with Biped skeleton I use my script "Biped Manipulator".
For linking and unlinking muscles while rigging my character I use my script "Linker".
For simulating dynamics of breast (and muscles in the future) I use Flex modifier. It is very bad the Flex modifier is not multithreaded.
The model of my character has been rendered with EZ SSS Fast skin shader (with out maps, exept mask for eyes and lips makeup) in Mental Ray. This shader allows to use reflections from Arch & Design material unlike standard Fast SSS shader which can't do it (another modified Fast SSS shader).
I've got to make UV and draw texture maps but before it I must finish rigging to be sure that mesh won't need any change. While rigging I have to fix topology of mesh to avoid errors of mesh when character is moving.
Updated
: 25.03.2010
Head
Finally Veda has got the hair :). Textures of the face still need much more work. At the moment the face has EZ Fast SSS shader, wip bump map and some temp color maps.
Now some technical info about the hair. The hair is made in Hair and Fur and rendered in Mental Ray (max2010). Styling of hair is made by splines. This splines-styling technique is used to apply third-party dynamics to splines instead of internal H&F's dynamics. I has rather good results in using Flex modifier as hair dynamics. But before posting it needs more tuning. As alternative maybe I'll try to use Ornatrix dynamics...
p_hairTK is used as shader of the hair (this shader is written by Puppet on the basis of MuhHair). In my opinion this shader is fastest and more flexible then internal shader of H&F. To those who make blond and bright hair I advice to read this document. It helped me to solve the problem of lighting of the hair with colored light. At first when I lighted hair with cyan light the hair acquired green color. But I couldn't totally get rid of this effect (as you see in images). Even so this result suits me.
