Eye's Highlights 2

In order to further enhance the reflections, create a light box that will show up in the eye's reflections (as in a photography studio). Let's start by creating a self illuminated material for the light box (Fig.12).


- Open the Material Editor (press M).
- Choose a Material Editor slot and press the Standard button. Choose VRayLightMtl.
- Leave the color as white.
- Change the intensity value to 0.6.
- Create a Box primitive with a length of 0.25m, width of 2.0m and height of 4.0m.
- Apply the material to the box.
- Right click on the box object and choose VRay properties.
- In the VRay object properties, disable Generate GI and Receive GI. We don't want the box to illuminate the scene, but just to enhance the reflection highlights. So we are disabling the GI.
- Position the box as in Fig.12 (my box is about 6 meters away from the character).
- Render and adjust the box position in order to create highlights on the eyes.

Skin Material 1

Before creating the skin material we need to create some more textures. To create the texture that will control the glossiness amount on the skin we will use the cavity texture as a base (Fig.13).



- Open Photoshop.
- Open the "body_cavity.PSD” image generated in ZBrush during Chapter 2.
- To tone down the values, create a new layer
on top and fill it with a mid gray color (R:128, G:128, B:128). Change this layer's opacity to 55%.

As explained in the Toon Animal tutorial, you can check the values of the image by keeping the Info window open (press F8) and setting the displayed color to HSB. As you move the cursor over the image, the B value (brightness) indicates the glossiness percentage of that pixel.

- Create a new layer on top. Select the brush tool (B) and set the brush opacity to 5%.
- To increase the glossiness percentage paint with white, to decrease it paint it black. While you paint keep checking the B value on the Info window. The idea is to set the correct percentages in each body area.
- I have used this technique to make the lips, interior of the ears, forehead, tip of the nose and nails glossier. In Fig.13 I have marked a few values that you can use as reference.
- On top of everything, create a new layer. Fill it with a gray color (R:128, G:128, B:128).
- From the Filter menu choose Add Noise from the Noise sub menu.
- Set the Amount to 40%, Uniform distribution and turn on Monochromatic.
- Set the layer mode to Overlay and the Fill value to 34%.
- Save it as "body_glossiness.PSD”.

Skin Material 2

We will create a noise map to work as a specular map and break the highlight reflections. You could also create a procedural map for this effect as an alternative in 3ds Max (Fig.14).