not posting this to showcase the render (that's half of the reason though) but to show that the technique I used works.

by using a shortcut method, I made the helmet see-through and the face visible with minimal changes to the textures and models :D once I get back to my work computer sometime next week or so, I'll post the changed textures/models since demonstration and example are better teachers than a wall of text.(unless you want a wall of text)

Yes, please do post some demonstrations. :)

I am interested in knowing how you got them to look like this. I can't wait untill next week! XD Mind posting a wall of text for now untill next week when you can do what you were going to do?

It seems to already have a neck bone. I think the two circles are the spinal column and throat.

not sure which I should use, if any

which do you guys like? blue, partially blue, or original green? or give suggestions of what I should change/ add besides colors

Edited by Delicon20 on Nov 18, 2012 at 12:18 PM

The first one.
Less disgusting.

wall o' text
1) modify the head rigging so no mandibles stick out
2) duplicate the visor polygons and invert them
3) modify the texture so the visor is slightly (about 75-25%) transparent
4) make the visor texture whatever you want the fog color to be (green, blue, orange, etc(make sure the colour's darkness is around the default texture))
5) make the inverted visor 100% black(or modify the UVs to a dark area on the helmet texture)
6) make all the textured parts of the inside of the helmet (breather, edges, etc) completely black - that way they won't stick out. (alternatively, bake the light to increase the fog effect)
7) the face should be visible; simply edit the texture (I used baked lights) to make the face glow and fade to black
8) (this is the awkward step) make the head and inverted visor 100% illuminated. this is so shading does not affect the black parts and ruin the visual
9) profit

I have the textures and models with me right now, but I have no way to check if they will work. so have a .zip :)
broken link
included:
banner.max (the file that was used to render that scene 2010)
ranger.max (a ranger elite with all parts necessary, albeit with rigging issues, fixed in banner.max 2010)
a bunch of textures (the important ones have a hash-tag on 'em)
banner.jpg (a larger version of the render)

if there are any issues with the download, PM me or reply to this post saying "wow ur dumb (insert issue here)"
Edited by master noob on Nov 18, 2012 at 09:55 PM

I was wondering more of the how to do the lighting, the render setup, and how to acheive the matalic and rubber look. :|

But this also helped too. :)

Can you post another wall of text on those? Also color change. <- Was it using color correction change the color?

decided to make the neck sort of glowy, like the grunts blood. Figured that this raises the gore factor while still making people who hate gore feel less likely to vomit, win-win

also added various details all over the texture, most notably the glossy armor (light scratches) and the piece in the bottom left (large amount of wear and tear detail compared to the original)
Edited by Delicon20 on Nov 18, 2012 at 05:31 PM

Looks nice. I'd sharpend the texture a bit and add more detail to skin personally.

old

new

decided to start doing the other textures so they're all the same consistant art style, once this and the head and back are roughly at the same point as the torso, then I may start trying some
different detail strategies on the torso and maybe sharpen a few more things

as you can see, I did the details first, and am going to do sharpening of edges after (I've already did some sharpening on the err....I thing they're fingers?)

Edited by Delicon20 on Nov 18, 2012 at 08:27 PM

Gives it a reptilian look... awesome...

Is your link working? Doesn't seem to work for me. Also, are you going to post how to do the metal and lighting?

something seems to be up with filebeam, but this gives me time to adjust the files since I missed a few :P
for the metal, I used a cubemap (converted into HDRi for convenience, since 3dsmax doesn't like cubemaps and mental ray being together) and for the lighting I used a single Photometric light with a yellow-red tint with an intensity of 50,000(from behind the elites, of course. an intensity like that would be blinding) with a Volume Light environmental setting. when I update the link, take a look at banner.max to see.

Ok, great! Thanks. :) How about the color change? How did you do that?

How does one convert a cubemap to an HDRimage? I use mental ray often too, and can't get cubemaps to work like in scanline renders.

you make a box, invert the faces, match the UVs to the cubemap (or apply each side to each face) and, using mental ray, use the wraparound camera shader to render a 360 panoramic view, which essentially converts cubemaps to HDR. here's a few, but I accidentally rendered them with bloom:
imgur.com/a/KPFU5


using the red/green CC texture extracted using Adjutant, use a Composite map with 3 slots; the bottom slot holds the diffuse on the left side, the second has the desired team color on the left and the CC map on the right. you can look at the .max files, it's really hard to explain :P

speaking of which, here is the updated file with missing textures and updated UVs;
filebeam.com/5a7ee7f196e1a64cd8484265b5cca8ef

Just two quickies of a map I've been working on for a long time

:) now where have I seen that before.... I wonder

Thanks for giving me an idea.

Cool map!

Haha yeah it's the same map you are referring to although I've worked on it alot over the past years and added a bunch of features. Enough that I'm fairly optimistic on a pre-christmas launch

orig:




New:



got the head and back detailed and sharpened abit, focused on the head more than anything cause it's the part that you probably look at the most up close

might try to get some in game or in sapien comparison photos tonight, if I can ever learn to start posting in the right threads XDDD

EDIT:
got the beta HD textures ingame





as you can see, at a distance the difference is not too noticeable, however up close:





the difference is much more obvious


2nd edit:

viewer discretion is advised:

http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/1542/popgoestheweasel.jpg
Edited by Delicon20 on Nov 19, 2012 at 11:23 PM

Needs some shader work..and a little rigging work and it should be good. I need to get the color just right and the reflection too...and the right visor cubemap.

Yes,the visor definitely needs to be fixed.

That's pretty awesome

lol we need to get DX11 on this game so we can say screw cubemaps!

screw buying an XBOX 360 on x-mas, I want that instead!!!

Heck, I'd be happy with just DX10

I dont even know.

Still tinkering around, needs to be brighter but if i set it one value higher its to bright, its like blah!

That ODST looks great! Good job with everything.

yay

Yeah...wait, no...yeah. I came. Got to be the sexiest ODSTs I've seen in CE.

Needs more flowers.

Minor edited cubemap, in my spartan release, it's an edited version. I posted parameters of my shaders somewhere...
Here :
just suggestin'