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Augmented Modelling - Unreal Engine 4 Testing

Follow Up Of Previous Post

In my previous post I stated that some of the new features available in the reality 4 plugin would make it relatively easy to produce the special effects seen in the "Die Another Day" and "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" intro sequences. In the examples seen below I used gold metal texture for one of them and a mirror glass texture for the other.

Replaced the default skin map with a hammered gold texture

Replaced the default skin map with a mirror texture

The IBL lighting method has worked really well with the use of these textures as the background colours are reflecting off the texture. The mirrored texture has produces a pretty effective camouflage effect similar to that seen in the "Predator" Movie however I would need to adjust the transparency to produce something more accurate but it's feasible.

The ways I could develop my 3D modelling would be to learn how to produce my own IBL images which I could use on my renders as this lighting method seems to produce great results.

IBL Lighting VS Mesh Lights

Due to the recent release of a new DAZ3D plugin called Reality 4 I have been testing out some of the new features such as applying material presets to 3D objects to make them look more realistic. Prior to the release of this plugin every 3D object in a scene used an image map texture which basically means that a 3D mesh was wrapped with an image. With the new plugin 3D objects can now have textures such as marble wood and water applied to them which enables digital designers to create quite amazing textures. 

This feature makes it possible to apply elemental effects to 3D figures much like the effects used in  the "Girl with Dragon Tattoo" & "Die Another Day" opening sequences.

Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Die Another Day

In the two renders below I used the same model and camera angle however the lighting method is different. One of the renders uses mesh lighting which is basically a custom made light projected at the model with the intensity and similar to that of sunlight. The 2nd method uses IBL lighting which is a lighting method where a panoramic  image is wrapped around the scene and the 3D scene adopts the light sources of the panoramic image. This technique is useful when rendering reflective surfaces such as metal and water perfect for rendering cars etc. I conducted a fair test on both lighting techniques as both of the renders were given 1 hour each to render, the results can be seen below

Here is the IBL image used for render 2:

Render 1: Mesh Lighting

Render 2: IBL Lighting

You can see that the blue of the sky in the IBL image is cast on the model's white hair and sunlight is only casting on her left arm and the rest of her is shaded from the sun. IBL does produce a more realistic 3D scene however I would argue that IBL lighting does produce much more noise in the render which overall hinders the image clarity/quality of the render compared to the mesh lighting method used in render 1.

FaceGen Character Creation Tutorial

Introduction:

In this tutorial I will guide you through how to create a 3D custom character using FaceGen and DAZ3D.

Software:

FaceGen Modeller: http://www.facegen.com/modeller.htm

FaceGen Exporter: http://www.facegen.com/exporterDG.htm

DAZ3D: http://www.daz3d.com/

Reality 2.0 (For DAZ3D renders) http://preta3d.com/reality-2-0/

1.    Open FaceGen Modeller

2.    Select “PhotoFit” from the menu

 3.    Click “Next”  and then click Load where the frontal image is displayed

  4.    Select a relatively high quality frontal face image of your character

5.    Once you have selected your image click next

6. Now you need to assign feature points to the correct parts of your character’s face. During this step you only need to place the feature points roughly where their supposed to go as you will get another opportunity to perfectly place the feature points once you click next

 7.    You can now see that your frontal image has zoomed in. This gives you the opportunity to place the feature points more accurately. This is useful if you’re working with larger images such as a full body image.

8.    Once you are happy with the placement of the feature points click next. During step 4: it’s recommended that you tick the preserve facial hair box when creating Male characters.

9.    Your character should now be generated. From personal experience the higher the quality of the frontal image the better the overall results. 

10.    You now need to save the face, click on File > Save As. Ensure you save it somewhere you can find it.

11.    Once the face is saved you now need to open up FaceGen Exporter

12.    FaceGen Exporter is very simple all you need to do is click on the large dotted button and find the face you just saved. (Should be a FG file) Also enter a name for your morph (face). Then click “Create export files”.

13.    Once you click “Create Export Files” you will be displayed with the following instructions which you will refer to later.

14.     Now open DAZ3D

15.    You need to go to “Content Library” at the right of the screen and find “Figures”.

16.    You now want to find the “DAZ People” dropdown menu  and double click on “Basic Male”

17.     The model should then load onto the stage.

18.    You now need to right click onto the model’s face and select “Genesis”:”Head”.

 19.    With the head now selected you need to go the “Shaping” panel located at the left of the screen.

20.    With the shaping panel selected you now need to click on “Head” which is under the “Genesis” panel.

21.    Scroll down until you find the name of the morph you named in FaceGen Exporter.

22.    Swipe the slider to the right so its value is 1.00. The character should now have the head shape of your character.

23.    We now need to apply the face texture to the model, to do this we need to click on the “Surface (Color)” panel

24.    Click on the “Genesis” panel and you should see the following. Ensure that all sections are highlighted in yellow as seen in image below and change the UV Set to “Genesis Male”

 25.    You now need to find the Daz3D textures folder in its install directory. (Here’s my directory)

26. Open the folder for you character and you should have something like this.

 27.    Apply the textures as recommended by FaceGen Exporter

For example all of the yellow sections are numbered 1 so they would use the texFace texture.

28; Your character should look similar to that of the one in the image below.

29.    You can right click on the character and select genesis to highlight the whole body, you can now edit the body in the shaping panel to change the body shape.

30.    You can now animate or pose your character using the “Pose & Animate” panel or add clothing and hair etc. You can also export your figure to Zbrush to add details or simply export it as .obj and work with it elsewhere.

Useful Video for using DAZ3D characters in Unity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY-uWb3q3W8

Reality 2.0 Render