Designing, defining, and agreeing on the final look of 3D CG content in projects is known as look development. This causes a solid understanding of topology, texturing, shader design, lighting, and compositing. We’ll look at how to analyse materials and design graphics, as well as how to use textures to create a finished aesthetic.
The pipeline is a system that connects many parts of production into a single, efficient process. Lookdev begins from the very beginning of pre-production, under pre-vis, and uses concepts and preliminary models to map out the entire appearance. Lookdev focuses on consistency and execution.
I modelled a prickly piranha plant from Mario in Maya:
What I used as a reference:
Render:
Look dev part 2
Shaders
A Shader specifies how each pixel in a picture is computed while rendering. Shader design and requirements differ depending on the rendering engine. They’re all made of the same materials (diffuse, specular, normal) Finally, a shader determines how your object will appear.
PBR Workflow
PBR = Physically Based Rendering.
A PBR workflow is used by the majority of VFX and game developers. Each shader component in PBR needs a texture map. This cuts down on the amount of time it takes for artists to dial in particular values for each component during rendering. Several firms, including Substance, sell texture packs for PBR workflows and software.
Components of a shader
- Base / Diffuse – Colour
- Specular / Metallic – Reflection of light
- Roughness – Smoothness or sharpness of a surface
- Transmission – Light diffusion
- Subsurface – Light scattering
- Translucency – Alpha of your model
- Emission / Incandescence – Emitting Light
- Normal, Bump, Displacement – 3D detail