Venator

[WolfChild]

I'm going to make sure everyone gets this straight from the start: This is NOT a replica of the "Venator" armour from Halo 4. The word "Venator" is Latin for "Hunter" or "Huntsmen/man". The skin did however, take heavy inspiration from these fellas and Master Chief's armour. I repeat though, it is NOT a replica of anything.

Now that we are all clear, here's the skin!

I spent a lot of time on this, and I'm still not happy with the helmet or arms yet. I'm going to upload it in it's current state anyway though.

So thoughts, opinions, constructive criticism is all welcome and appreciated! I'll put the download up soon.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Who are those "these fellas"?

 

[kupu]

Who are those "these fellas"?

Danish special forces i think..

It's a great start Wolf! Out of curiosity, are you using the shading overlay Omni provided in the game files?

 

[WolfChild]

Who are those "these fellas"?

As kupu said, the are Danish special forces. The website I got the picture from named them the "Danish Huntsmen Corps", but I think it is actually a picture of the Danish Frogsmen; basically the equivalent of America's Navy Seals.

Out of curiosity, are you using the shading overlay Omni provided in the game files?

Yes, actually. It's quite difficult to see in the picture unfortunately. You can see it in-game though.

 

[kupu]

...Yes, actually. It's quite difficult to see in the picture unfortunately. You can see it in-game though.

Ok, awesome. Have you tried adding it twice? Might look quite cool being a dark character.

 

[WolfChild]

Ok, awesome. Have you tried adding it twice? Might look quite cool being a dark character.

I just tried that, I think it makes it look stacks better. Thanks for the idea!

 

[Omni]

I just tried that, I think it makes it look stacks better. Thanks for the idea!

While dropping the overlay on there does a lot by itself, working more specifically with it can have quite amazing results. For example, try the blend mode Color Burn. (If you're using Photoshop, that is.) I find that when doing skin (like Dave's face/head) it looks better if I have one shading layer set to Multiply at a lower opacity than the non-skin parts, and another layer set to Color Burn with a low opacity. This gives it a little more of a feeling of subsurface scattering as is present in human skin.

The shading layer applied to Dave's body/suit and the shading layers applied to Dave's head/skin are not the same. (Using layer masks to define where the shading layers should be used.)

 

[WolfChild]

Omni

I was messing around with the blend modes a few days back (and effects) and found some of the came up with rather interesting effects. Colour burn was one that caught my eye actually, but I don't have much experience in skinning currently so I thought I'd wait a bit before venturing in too far.

It was playing with the "Xor"(?) effect I created this, a joke really but it appears someone likes it... :P

The subsurface scattering (I had no idea what that was :P) technique you speak of I might have to try. I never thought of applying layers with different transparency.

 

[Omni]

Omni

I was messing around with the blend modes a few days back (and effects) and found some of the came up with rather interesting effects. Colour burn was one that caught my eye actually, but I don't have much experience in skinning currently so I thought I'd wait a bit before venturing in too far.

It was playing with the "Xor"(?) effect I created this, a joke really but it appears someone likes it... :p

The subsurface scattering (I had no idea what that was :p) technique you speak of I might have to try. I never thought of applying layers with different transparency.

Blend modes are great, though I find most of them are only for extremely specific uses (like XOR), leaving only a fraction of them for common use.

Once you understand it, Overlay is an incredibly useful blend mode. Kind of like Screen and Multiply at the same time, with middle gray (roughly 808080 in hexidecimal) being the color that does not cause any change in color. Add a little noise to a layer of that color and set it as Overlay and you'll get noise on everything under it without permanent changes to what's under it. (So you can still do whatever you like with the layers below without worrying about messing up the noise.) Being able to adjust the opacity also means you can always increase or decrease the strength of the noise easily. A layer mask allows you to add or remove noise from any part of the image at any time. A VERY valuable tool/trick.


The basic principle of subsurface scattering as it applies to skin is simply that our skin isn't opaque, it's translucent. It's only due to the thickness of our skin that it is seemingly opaque. A good, fun way to see subsurface scattering in action in real life is to put your fingers over the tip of a flashlight. Instead of completely blocking the light, they glow red. (Due to scattering the light instead of blocking it completely.) Part of the reason why characters in games look so fake at times is because their skin is painted on opaque, rather than using subsurface scattering. Though in recent games they've been using shaders to mimic subsurface scattering with skin and the results are quite shocking. It looks so much more real.

Using Color Burn is, of course, faking the effects of subsurface scattering. It does make the skin look a lot more rich and skin-like, though. The multiple layers is simply because color burn by itself looks a little odd, since it doesn't give the proper shading and darkness the shading overlay is originally for. :D

 

[WolfChild]

Blend modes are great, though I find most of them are only for extremely specific uses (like XOR), leaving only a fraction of them for common use.

Once you understand it, Overlay is an incredibly useful blend mode. Kind of like Screen and Multiply at the same time, with middle gray (roughly 808080 in hexidecimal) being the color that does not cause any change in color. Add a little noise to a layer of that color and set it as Overlay and you'll get noise on everything under it without permanent changes to what's under it. (So you can still do whatever you like with the layers below without worrying about messing up the noise.) Being able to adjust the opacity also means you can always increase or decrease the strength of the noise easily. A layer mask allows you to add or remove noise from any part of the image at any time. A VERY valuable tool/trick.


The basic principle of subsurface scattering as it applies to skin is simply that our skin isn't opaque, it's translucent. It's only due to the thickness of our skin that it is seemingly opaque. A good, fun way to see subsurface scattering in action in real life is to put your fingers over the tip of a flashlight. Instead of completely blocking the light, they glow red. (Due to scattering the light instead of blocking it completely.) Part of the reason why characters in games look so fake at times is because their skin is painted on opaque, rather than using subsurface scattering. Though in recent games they've been using shaders to mimic subsurface scattering with skin and the results are quite shocking. It looks so much more real.

Using Color Burn is, of course, faking the effects of subsurface scattering. It does make the skin look a lot more rich and skin-like, though. The multiple layers is simply because color burn by itself looks a little odd, since it doesn't give the proper shading and darkness the shading overlay is originally for. :D

Thank you for all the valuable information! I'll try to put it to good use.

I'm presuming all of this is not specific to skin making either, and I'm gathering that it would be valuable for texture makers also when trying to replicate certain materials in their art. I've learnt a lot from this.

Anyway, thanks again for the explanation and -for lack of a better word- stuff.

 

[Draren Thiralas]

I like how you called them "these fellas"