the whole process of text during for me usually starts out with the bump map.
And as a base for the bump map,
I baked an ambient occlusion map into the same
UV layer that I used for baking the displacement earlier
and I used a fair large amount of distant distance attenuation.
So it only uh
basically only highlighted
the creases of my model.
I save that image as an open mics. Are
I chose half float
For this
so it's only 16 bit
which should be okay. It shouldn't really show any kind of stepping in there
later on.
We can compress it and uh dither it sorry and uh you know do all kinds of things
with it but for now I'm going to leave it in a very high floating point precision.
Next I entered paint mode here and
uh in the UV image editor
because we have to bring it down to bump map level
right now. I begged it so that
that the most of the model is covered in white
And we actually wanted to be 5050% gray here
because in bump map language that means um don't put a bump in there.
So I'm taking a fairly large brush to switch it to multiply
and the curve for that, making it really sharp.
And I can just paint over the model here, paint over the image and it will
basically bring down all the colors.
So everything here should be gray now.
And really what we want from this is just
a reference.
We don't really have
we don't really need, you know, all the wrinkle information.
We just want something to work from.
And I used raytraced I mean inclusion because it also gives
me some kind of gives it some kind of grain effect.
So uh we don't really start from nothing here.
So I went to three of you
and
chose only the layer
that my model is on and I'm switching on displacement
so I can see all the surface detail that I have in there right now.
And I'm adding a new material
now. I'm still in blender internal render mode here.
Um
And the reason for that is that we actually want to
use this material and display it in the view port.
I'm adding that very texture that I just baked
to my material
and I need to select the UV coordinates to display it.
So go to the mapping tap to juvie.
We have only one map in there right now so we can leave this field blank
now if we want to see the texture and the view port
um we need to
select these faces and actually have a texture assigned to them.
You can see that I already had some texture on there um During the baking.
And so I had to go to the image editor
select all the faces and removed that image link there
and then I could assign
the texture that I just baked
onto my mesh here and this part that's purely for uh for
using multi and single texture view preview in the view port.
The material settings actually don't affect this at all.
Now if we want the material settings
to affect the display in the view port,
we have to
choose G. L. S. G. Lsl shading for the material mode.
And that's basically going to emulate how
the material will look like during rendering.
So we can see the texture on it here. We can see some light. I had to sun lamps in there.
I'm changing one of them to be a hemi light
because during textural we want to we want
to have a fairly flat kind of lighting condition
just going to point it straight at the surface there
so everything should be illuminated.
Now I have to tweak some of the material settings
because we can actually show the level of bump
that this texture is generating in the view port.
Which is fairly cool.
So we go to the textural tab
and make sure it influences the color only a little bit for now.
And we're going to choose normal here and you can see the bump map has an effect on it.
And
since we did some
baking already we use the um inclusion there to uh you know the
am inclusion is uh stronger in crevices and wrinkles and all that.
Uh it already added some detail to it. So I just had to kind of decrease the
influence of the bump map here
and it already gives me something to work on.
Next I can go to texture paint mode
And
currently in blender texture paint mode takes
takes the texture information from the one that is assigned in the UV. Image editor.
So it doesn't pain doesn't
take the material settings into account.
So we already
make sure that this texture assigned to those faces
by selecting them in the image editor and then uh
assigning that texture to them.
I hope that makes sense.
Next I'm going to try it too.
Play a little bit with wrinkling and just gonna generally test
out to see how much I can do with this.
I'm still very in the very early stages here. Some
I made a new brush called wrinkles
and it has a fairly
sharp curve
And I'm just going to try and
highlight some of the details that I already have in there.
So I switched this brush to pressure sensitive on both the radius and the strength.
So I can just try to bring out some
some wrinkle detail here on the eyes
and that should also show in the texture as well.
So right now we're just gonna look at the whole model and see
if we can get any inspiration from it
because you know it's been a while since we did all the sculpting and
we probably have to um you have to look at the whole service and reevaluated and uh
kind of see it uh
with a fresh eye.
So I'm only trying to
really, really faintly um
follow the surface detail here,
trying to emphasize it a little bit.
And
every once in a while I'm also looking at my reference images.
I have uh old pictures of old elephants and
turtles and alligators and they all have really,
really interesting wrinkle patterns.
So um
trying to pull a lot of inspiration from nature here.
You can really sharpen the details on these teeth here.
We're just pretty awesome.
And it's so great to see this in the view port while you're painting. It
almost turns this whole process uh into some kind of uh
hyper detailed sculpting. I really love that
one thing.
Of course, you have to remind yourself that you're only painting a bump map here.
So it's not actually affecting the surface in any way unless later on,
we might also use that,
but I have to drive some
small level of displacement
but for now we shouldn't push it too far.
So trying out some kind of cross hatching here on the lower jaw.
I'm only really playing here right now and trying to see
what sort of
what sort of pattern the surface
lends itself to
and the whole workflow kind of goes like this. I'm first trying to find uh
um
skin direction and wrinkle direction
and later on, I'm going to put in all the details.
I'm actually gonna use a texture to um
so I don't have to paint in every single pore and scale.
And first I'm only going to try to indicate direction of uh
of the skin growth and all the wrinkling.
So I'm trying to follow the natural wrinkles that are in there already
that I have sculpted earlier on
and
trying to emphasize them a little bit. And then
also kind of work
work in a kind of cross hatch pattern between them.
We can maybe try to sharpen some of the detail here. That's really going to
make a lot of the difference here.
And the reason why we're starting or why
I'm usually starting with the bump map is that
well
um we're going to take the bump map later on when and
we're going to derive all the other the other textures from it.
So we can actually use it to uh to generate a color map and
texture a speculum app.
So we're really going to try to put in all,
you know, put all the money on the bump map here,
we're going to try to make it as good and as detailed as possible.
Uh huh.
Here, come here, I'm trying to see if I can
fix some of the mistakes here on the teeth
that happened during the
during the um And Occlusion bank.
I can really sharpen those teeth here now which is uh
I haven't been able to do that much in
in sculpting because I really didn't want to put in that much detail here.
But now I can really,
really
push this whole thing to a new level.
And really, that's, that's what this whole process is about.
We're gonna uh we're actually going to turn a
sculpted model into something that's a living breathing creature.
So I'm trying to emphasize some of the scales here.
Can finally go out, go full on
with all the detailing,
trying to emphasize all these scales and make them really, really sharp.
Did I say scales? I mean spikes
scram,
this is where I really have time to think about, you know, of the
kind of surface I'm trying to depict
because in this whole process I really have to make up my mind now,
you know, what is this going to be?
Is this going to be a skin fold or is it going to be uh just bone.
And uh while during sculpting, I said, lots of this is uh
actually going to be a bone with a fairly thin layer of skin on top of it.
And uh at the same time it's kind of going to be kind of wrinkly and scaly,
but I also want to have this, Well, I didn't want to make this whole thing just,
you know, like a lizard or a snake with lots and lots of scales.
I thought that was kind of boring and it would kind of make this whole
process a bit too repetitive because it's basically
just painting scales over the whole thing.
So I took a lot of inspiration from, as I said, uh
older, bigger land mammals, like elephants and
big turtles.
So I'm still really only trying to indicate direction.
This is gonna help us later on to decide how to, you know, when you are using,
let's say stencil textures, for example,
we can also uh it helps us also to decide how to align them,
how to uh rush them and transfer their detail onto our model.
And you know, this whole process is just
um getting inspiration really for
for all the later steps,
I just
increased
the the level of speculate retty here right now.
It's not trying to be anything realistic for now.
Um and also the texture map is also affecting the color level,
which helps me a little bit to see um what color I'm painting actually.
And during this whole process you'll see that
the material settings get more realistic and more um
similar to the final set up as I go.
So right now this is only just
helper for us to see what
what we can do with the bump map and see um
you know, what certain brushstroke
kind of effects on the surface here. I'm
I started
kind of pulling the surface out with a white brush and
you can see that it makes a lot of difference already,
that
now this whole kind of uh
you know, every everything kind of looks like like stone up till now.
Now that we're uh kind of painting bumps on top of this.
I still had to experiment with strength
and everything shouldn't be too strong here.
And painting these bumps out really
brings this uh
the surface to life. It makes it more organic and less like you know rock.
Trying to indicate where later I might add more
um
more
scaly type of spikes there on the chin,
trying to position a few dots here and there.
And we can also paint on the other side.
Now you've noticed that uh of course we used the UV layered um that we used for
for painting uh sorry we used the UV layout that we used for
making the displacement. So it's already mirrored.
So everything that we paint here is also going to appear on the other side.
Which is um it's good because we have to do less work but it's also
a disadvantage because we have this uh this
kind of seam around the creature right now
that we have to get rid of later on.
And currently the texture painting tools are under development.
So I believe currently uh
um
there's also a development for a type of mirror mode during texture painting.
So uh
hopefully in the future hopefully if you are already in the future
um
you will be able to paint
um to switch between mirrored and non mirrored painting.
So you can actually uh for most of the stuff
um
paint the whole texture in mirror mode. And then just
try to work on that mirror line and try to make it disappear by switching off. And uh
that's going to make a lot of a difference now.
Trying to cross hedge between those spikes here
kind of break up the whole
smoothness of the skin,
refining those skin folds here around those bikes. Which
really helps a lot to sell that they're really growing out of the skin here.
I can even continue this whole
uh soul kind of uh spike theme here more towards uh
the torso.
So I can add in more
more spikes and skills and
kind of continue that pattern there.
By the way I'm drawing this texture in 4K. Again. So it's 4,096 pixels square.
And uh it's probably a bit too resolution to uh
you know to paint in these microscopic details here
as you can already see some pixels there.
But that was really a compromise because 8K. was really getting a bit too sluggish.
But yeah ideally it would have been eight key.
So the head roughly has a
Sort of 3000 pixels for the entire to cover the entire area.
So um
that should be more than enough to cover it full.
You know whether for
close up
if we are if you're rendering this in HD
of course if we have to render this in 4K.
We need even bigger textures. And
my computer would probably crash
trying to detail some of these bikes on the shoulder
can really make them
come to live now.
They used to be just
couple of bumps there and now we can
make them really sharp and
detail the hell out of it.
Trying to start some of the wrinkles here between the
skin falls on the leg.
And
this is just really trying to
trying out what is possible.
We're going to brush up
all this stuff with textures later on anyway and we're going to add more detail to it.
We're really just laying the groundwork here
drawing a few white dots here every here and there too.
Kind of suggests that later on I might be adding
uh
some kind of pimply scales there,
whatever the name for it is.
And that also already helps up breaking this
uh breaking up the smoothness of the area.
So I'm constantly trying to jump between
white brush and black brush and the white brush kind
of needs a bit of a more smooth curve.
Whereas the
the Russia and painting all the creases with
all the wrinkles probably needs a sharper curve.
And that took a while to find out
what is what setting is best for that. And it really takes some
take some experimenting.
But later on I just came to my senses and I
kind of thought, okay, well I I should really make two separate brushes for this.
So I just went to the image editor and I saved my image because
it's kind of
something that you can forget
really quickly
because blender doesn't save your image automatically.
So every once in a while in a while you have to go to that image editor and make sure
that you're saving your changes actually.
You're trying to see what's possible with the skin fold here
on the corner of the mouth
and
make parts of this creature look a bit more age than the rest.
So
my theory was that he had this uh this whole thing is probably in its
in its in its best shape, but it's already been around for a while,
so it has some wrinkles and it's not
kind of like a
um
you know, like a joyful little
a bundle of sweetness. It's not really young or anything, but it's a
kind of uh
has some experience and but it's not really that old,
It's not really that wrinkly and
um
but it should be scary and kind of uh
you know,
uh off putting.
Mhm.
Oh I guess grotesque is the rise, right? Bert. Um
Well at least that's uh the only word I can think of right now,
but at the same time it shouldn't be too slimy, you know, I still had some uh you know,
I'm a big dinosaur fan.
So uh of course obviously I love all the dinosaur movies uh
and
taking some inspiration from the dinosaurs and
uh
well I can say a Jurassic park or so they also didn't have uh you know,
really slimy scaly skin.
So
I'm trying to make it slimy and
sort of a bit
uh
you know,
weird in certain places, but generally I
wanted to have a bit, I wanted it to have a bit more of a leathery
type of look
now, trying to add some wrinkling here to the underside of the
torso and between the legs.
We're going to have a fair amount of wrinkling here,
but at the same time it should also not be too much probably.