Telling Tales: Modelling My Own Character - Updating the Texture and Testing The Environment

This morning I started off by tweaking my model's texture as some things didn't quite line up as I wanted them to. I have now added more spots to the Giraffelope and made some of the spots along shell edges line up better. I have also gone ahead and added the same texture to the eyelids, and gave my eyes a ramp shader to make it appear as though the character has pupils. Whilst doing this I discovered you can add more than two colours to the shader, so I gave my character an eye colour whilst I was at it, just as the icing on the cake.

Updated Texture

The next thing I felt I needed to do was to test out my now fully textured character in our chosen environment. I imported the living room scene file and resized my model to show it's actually a child, and positioned him accordingly in the scene. I had to readjust the render settings as they weren't imported alongside the living room, but this was easily done.

My Giraffelope in the Chosen Environment

There's something not quite right about this scene. I think it has potential to look really nice but as it stands at the moment I think the character is too dark and isn't as vibrant as what I had imagined him/her to be. 

Ambient Light Test 

 

In an attempt to correct this, I experimented with different lighting. Here I have used an ambient light to illuminate the character, and as much as this is an improvement I was hoping for something more consistant. If the character gets closer to where the light is positioned then you can see the light reflecting off of the surface. The same result applies if the light is too intense. Also, this method will only light up the surfaces that are facing the character. The back of the character is not lit up and is therefore not as vibrant as I was hoping the character to be.

Same Light Test From Different Angle

I didn't know how to get around this problem. My first thought was to add another light that would light up the back of the character, but I figured this would get very complicated very quickly, as I would have to consider the positioning of all these lights when multiple characters are introduced and they become animated. So I asked Mat if there would be any way to light up my character without using lights, and he suggested to change the ambient colour of the material. 

Testing Different Degrees of Ambient Colour 

Final Draft Render

I very much prefer this to the lighting effect I was achieveing with the ambient light. It is also going to be much more consisent than having a light, especially when it comes to animating the characters. By altering the texture's ambient colour it is going to make my life (and Emma's) much simpler.