Texturing Anna

Texturing my model was something I GREATLY UNDERESTIMATED in terms of time and difficulty.

Also, unlike the design and modeling posts, at the time that I am writing this the texturing for Anna is incomplete. There are still quite a few problems that I have to work through before I can refer to them in past-tense (too bad! the best way to discuss problems is always in the past-tense).

For those of you that don’t know, texturing in CG is a series of processes that assigns material attributes to a mesh. Let’s speak about the real world for a sec (“you mean in real life?”). Take yourself for example, look at your skin, and then look at your clothes. Your skin and the fabric of your clothes are extremely different.

Now look at Anna.

Currently there is no difference between her skin and her dress.  That’s what texturing is for.

To start the process of texturing, one must first unwrap UV? This isn’t always the case but I’m not going to get into it).  UV unwrapping is by far the WORST PART OF ANYTHING 3D! 

So what is UV unwrapping?

Well, I’ll tell you. 

What you’re doing is translating a 3D object into 2D space in order to use 2D software (Photoshop) to paint your model. Think of it like taking the paper off a birthday present (except you don’t get a present at the end so it isn’t any fun), or what sewing patterns are to making clothes.

Anyway this process is a pain in the ass because it takes a lot of time and effort but there’s nothing really to show for it.

Here is Anna before UV unwrapping:

Here is Anna after.

To be fair I should have shown this as the after picture.

Those checkers mean something in case you couldn’t guess.

I’m sitting here trying to think of an interesting way to write about UVs but I honestly can’t seem to do it.

So I’ll just say this:

UV unwrapping is hard, boring and time consuming.

When describing it I always equate UV unwrapping to unwrapping presents, and organizing UVs to Tetris so it should be fun right?

 WRONG!

Anyways this is what you end up with, UV TEXTURE MAPS!

I have nine UV maps for Anna’s character because there are nine different types of materials.

FUN GAME!

See if you can match the UV maps to the right mesh by assigning a number to a letter!

Answer Key:

1-I,   2-E,   3-B,   4-A,   5-L,   6-H,   7-K,   8-G,   9-D,   10-J,   11-C,   12-F 

 

Now with the UVs all mapped, it’s time the leave Maya and the 3D world and venture back to Photoshop and the land of the 2D for some good old fashioned digital painting.

Little bit of a hiccup!

What colour is Anna’s dress?! 

Bah! Head space where were you on this one? It’s always a bit bizarre running into these sorts of problems. I’ve been picturing Anna in my head for the last month, how did I not know this? How did I not realize that I didn’t know this?

More specifically I didn’t know anything about Anna’s clothes: the colour, the fabric, the embroidery  -- nothing!

So I did what I always do in these situations, BACK TO REFERANCE IMAGES! 

Here are some:

Most helpful

This picture, in particular, really got my head working in terms of how to work Anna’s clothes. Truth be told, I am really not very fond of this jacket. It’s a little too anime inspired for my taste.  However, the cage motif really caught my attention. During this process I had also been working on a mural design for Anna’s room. If you want to see it just take a look at the back ground for this blog. As you can see I went with caged birds, hoping to invoke a little symbolism. It hadn’t occurred to me to use a cage design in the embroidery of her dress.

Hesitation! If I also did cages in the dress would I be beating the audience over the head with symbolism?

Nah.

Here are some of my colour maps so far:

Interesting bit of trivia! I spent over 24 hours drawing lace for this dress.

Take a look at the detail:

A bit of lace history:

Back in the day, lace was all hand crafted and very expensive. Only the wealthy could wear lace. However, with the advent of the industrial revolution lace became manufactured and more affordable. This allowed more people of less financial means to also wear lace, bridging the gap between classes. In the Victorian era, lace is associated with the rise of the bourgeoisie or middle-class.

Back to texturing:

 Before I start discussing the nightmare that is Anna’s hair, I think I need to do a better job of explaining the texturing process. The maps I posted above are colour maps. Colour maps are one of several types of maps out there. There are also; spec maps, bump maps, crazy bump, normal maps, diffuse maps, transparency maps and several others. Any material can have any number of these maps on it.

So far for Anna’s hair I have created a colour map, specular map and normal map.

A specular map controls the specular reflectivity of an object. Let’s talk real world for a second. Think how light reflects differently on different objects, like a new car’s shiny surface compared to a cotton shirt’s dull one. Specularity plays a huge role in how we perceive and understand the qualities of a material.

Still thinking real world, think of a brand new IPhone (so shiny) now think of an IPhone after it’s been used.  The screen’s specularity has changed in the places where it has been touched because of the grease on our fingers. To emulate this in CG you would use a spec map!

To make a spec map you use a grey scale to paint. White represents the maximum amount of reflection where black has no reflection.

On to Normal maps!

Working in 3D programs is extremely demanding on computers, because there is so much information. In order to work in a 3D program the user is only shown the essentials. 

What I see in Maya. Check out rendered Image later in post.

Rendering is the process where the program gathers all the information in a scene. This can take an extremely long time (several hours or even days) depending on how much is going on. So obviously you would want to limit the amount of information without limiting detail.

NORMAL MAPS TO THE RESCUE! They create the illusion of depth without the depth. Without a normal map you would have to add more polygons to a mesh thereby increasing the rendering time.   

To make a normal map, I took the hair mesh from Maya and imported it to a program called ZBrush. ZBrush sculpting is a lot more like how you would sculpt clay in real life. Anyways, I added a lot more detail. I then created a normal map from the ZBrush mesh to bring back to the hair mesh in Maya.

Making a normal map in Zbrush

Here are the three maps for Anna’s hair so far:

Great! Now that I have spent all this time making these maps, Anna’s hair should look fantastic, right?

WRONG!

And now things get hard.

My head stops working.

ENTER HYPERSHADER!

For those of you who still believe that computer animation is just a magical button click to awesome – I hate you.

It’s never easy.  Ever.

The hypershader is the more technical side to texturing. It combines all the different aspects of what goes into making a material.

Here’s a picture.

For Anna's hair

Looks like a messy spider’s web to me.

I got a lot of help at this point from my friend, Kert Saville, who is very good at the technical side of 3D programs.

Good thing I sit next to him because it seems when my brain shuts down, his brain turns on.

Here are my first fully rendered images of Anna.

The reason it looks any good is because of Kert.

I’M GETTING WORRIED!

Here comes the self doubt.

Maybe choosing to do my thesis film using 3D animation was a poor decision. I thought taking a year off from Emily Carr to learn the ins and outs of 3D at Capilano would be enough. But now at the end of my time at Capilano I feel like I know just enough to know that I know nothing.

I’m not going to have the knowledge and technical skill of the Capilano teachers and students at my convenience very soon.

I have greatly underestimated this art form.

How does this just keep on getting harder as opposed to easier?

One of the major differences between good and bad CG is the lighting/texturing. Can I really expect to get my work looking professional when I only have a year to complete this film?

I’m running out of time and problems I never even dreamt existed are popping out and becoming MY REAL WORLD.

Here comes the self reassurance.

I’ve only been doing this for eight months and look how far I’ve come. Imagine how far I could get in the next twelve months.

I’m not expected to know everything about CG. It’s absurd to try and be a modeler, texture artist, rigger, lighter and animator. I need to learn how to let go and delegate. That’s what good directors know how to do.

I’ve got some idea of how to rig. Kert (who is also very good at rigging) says that rigging is harder than the hypershader. Therefore I can probably learn how to work the hypershader.

Here comes the conclusion.

I have a year – ONE Year – and it’s going to be one HELL of a year.