制作“蒸汽朋克科学家”

Martin Punchev带我们通过他的色彩和照明过程制作他的渲染图像的蒸汽朋克的科学家

Martin Punchev takes us through the color and lighting processes involved in making his rendered image of Steampunk Scientist

Introduction

My Steampunk Scientist was part of a small games marathon I did together with a fellow artist. The purpose of the project was to test the unity engine and prototype a lightning-fast mockup for a cute action-adventure game. The whole aim of this image was to create promotional art with whatever means I could use, since everything on the project had to be done within hours rather than days.

The final image took several hours of playing. I deliberately didn't use the word 'work' because, although in this making of I will share with you how I come to the end result, my main aim was to elaborate on the concept of playing, experimenting and working on the fly ? without having the luxury of time for planning. It is definitely a risky strategy, but worth trying, especially when working on a team project with super-tight deadlines. In this scenario, the big picture is far more important than the individual piece of work and simply there is not enough time to worry over the small things and making everything perfect.

介绍

我的蒸汽朋克科学家是我与一位同学一起做的小型比赛的一部分。该项目的目的是测试团结引擎和原型一个可爱的动作冒险游戏的闪电般快速的模型。这个形象的整个目的是用任何我可以使用的方式来制作促销艺术品，因为项目中的所有内容必须在数小时甚至数天之内完成。

最终的形象花了几个小时的时间。我故意没有使用“工作”这个词，因为虽然在这件事情中，我会和你分享一下我最终的结果，我的主要目的是要详细说明过程，试验和工作的概念，没有时间的豪华计划。这绝对是一个有风险的策略，但值得尝试，特别是在超紧的期限内开展团队项目时。在这种情况下，大局比个别工作要重要得多，只是没有足够的时间来担心小事情，使一切都完美。

Quick start

With a tight deadline, the important thing is to not over-think too much and just quickly start with something. I started with a default render of the low-poly model which was used in the game.

快速开始

截止日期紧迫，重要的是不要过分思考，只是快点开始。 我开始使用游戏中使用的低聚模型的默认渲染。

Generating render passes

Although this model was far from polished (as it was originally meant to be seen very small on the screen), the render served as a good base to start with? or at least better than starting from scratch.

At that point it wasn't a bad idea to generate some additional render passes, since you never know how or when they will eventually help you.

生成渲染通道

虽然这个模式远没有抛光（因为它原本是在屏幕上看起来很小），渲染作为开始的良好基础， 或至少比从头开始更好。

在这一点上，生成一些额外的渲染通道并不是一个坏主意，因为你永远不知道他们最终将如何或何时帮助你。

Start now, think later

Staring at the simple render you might feel scared and indecisive ? so silence the voices of uncertainty and just throw something on the canvas as early as possible!

The best way to start in this case was to throw a background onto the canvas, so I quickly added a ground plane to establish the perspective and depth. Then without losing too much time, I threw various elements in, re-using the low-poly assets from the game prototype just to remove the flat space around the character.

从现在开始，认真思考

盯着简单的渲染你可能会感到害怕和犹豫不决。 所以沉默不确定的声音，尽早把东西放在画布上！

在这种情况下，最好的方法就是将背景放在画布上，所以我很快添加了一个地平面来建立透视和深度。 然后，我不会失去太多的时间，我投入了各种各样的元素，从游戏原型中重新使用低聚物资产，只是为了消除角色周围的平面空间。

Inspiration

And then a magical thing happened! My eyes locked on some of the messy 'pixel puke' on the canvas, and decisions about how to carry on spontaneously came to me. I visualized a steamy/dusty indoor space. The 'throw then think' methodology was starting to pay dividends.

灵感

然后一件神奇的事情发生了！ 我的眼睛锁在画布上的一些凌乱的“像素脓”，关于如何自发进行的决定来到我身边。 我看到一个蒸气/多尘的室内空间。 

Light it up

The next step is to define the light sources. Because I knew that I wanted a steamy environment, I actually indicated them like volumetric lights.

点亮它

下一步是定义光源。 因为我知道我想要一个蒸汽的环境，我实际上指出他们像容积的灯光。

Shadows

Once I knew what my lighting would be, I then cast the shadow of the character on the floor. To avoid painting it, I rendered something approximate in 3ds Max and added it as a pass in Photoshop.

Also, since we touched on the topic about shadows, something you should not forget would be to paint contact shadows on important areas, such as where the character is sitting on the ground plane. Without them you risk making the character seem as though it is floating instead of sitting firmly on the ground. I would have painted an entire AO pass if the time allowed it.

阴影

一旦我知道我的照明将是什么，我然后把角色的阴影放在地板上。 为了避免画画，我在3ds Max中渲染了一些近似的东西，并将其作为Photoshop中的一个通配符添加。

另外，既然我们涉及到阴影的话题，你不应该忘记的东西就是在重要的地方绘制接触阴影，比如角色坐在地面上。 没有他们，你会冒险使角色看起来像是漂浮，而不是坚定地坐在地上。 如果时间允许，我会画一个整个AO通行证。

Throw in colors!

Experimentation is important in this stage too. I generated several eye-pleasing color variations of the image and blended and mixed them together to achieve something better. I'm using custom Photoshop actions that give me various looks, but there are lots of tools available that can give you the same results; some are free, others are paid for and there's even web-based ones like www.fotor.com.

The important thing is to play with them and experiment with different blending modes. Once you like the particular look, you can mask the rest of the layer out, so only parts of the image are affected by your color variations.

投入颜色！

在这个阶段，实验也很重要。 我产生了几个令人眼花缭乱的颜色变化的图像，并混合在一起，以达到更好的东西。 我使用自定义的Photoshop动作，给我各种各样的外观，但有很多可用的工具可以给你相同的结果; 有些是免费的，其他的是付费的，甚至有网络的，如www.fotor.com。

重要的是要调整，并尝试不同的混合模式。 一旦你喜欢特定的外观，你可以掩盖层的其余部分，所以只有部分的图像受到你的颜色变化的影响。

Blending colors

When doing characters, I found myself generally creating a few types of color passes. I tend to create a reddish pass that I blend with the original image to achieve a more sub-surface scattering feel to the organic surfaces and, most importantly, to get rid of the black shadows. Also a cool-bluish color can help to simulate ambient sky lighting and reflections (even for scenes like this one that are indoor!) in which I place the following Fresnel principle.

I use a lot of the advanced blending modes available in the layer properties to help me speed up things and avoid spending time on masking out areas by hand. Right-click on a layer and choose Blending Options ? this will open the Layer Styles dialogue, and on the bottom you can see 2 identical looking sliders, one called This Layer, the other called Underlying Layer. These are the Blend If options.

Moving the black-and-white sliders for the bar on top will cause areas of the currently selected layer to disappear from view. Moving the sliders for the bar on the bottom will cause areas of the layer(s) below the currently selected layer to show through the selected layer, as if it's punching holes through it. The effect will be harsh until you drag the sliders by holding the Alt key. This will add transition to the effect and will give you more control over the blending.

In the image below you can see how the colored layer is showing only in the dark tones of the layers below.

混合颜色

在做角色的时候，我发现自己通常会创造几种颜色通行证。我倾向于创建一个红色的通行证，我与原始图像混合，以达到有机表面更多的亚表面散射感，最重要的是摆脱黑色阴影。另外，一种淡蓝色的颜色可以帮助模拟周围的天空照明和反射（即使是像室内这样的场景一样），我放置以下菲涅尔原理。

我在图层属性中使用了很多先进的混合模式，以帮助我加快事情，避免花费时间来手工掩盖区域。右键单击图层，然后选择混合选项？这将打开“图层样式”对话框，底部可以看到2个相同的滑块，一个称为“图层”，另一个称为“底层”。这些是混合选项。

移动顶部的酒吧的黑白滑块会导致当前所选图层的区域从视图中消失。移动底部栏中的滑块将导致当前所选图层下方的图层的区域显示出所选图层，就好像它穿过孔一样。通过按住Alt键拖动滑块，效果将变得很苛刻。这将增加对效果的转换，并将为您提供更多的混合控制。

在下面的图片中，您可以看到彩色图层仅在下面的图层的深色调中显示。

Time to polish

Time was running out and although I wasn't quite satisfied with lots of things, I had to move on. The previous stage of incorporating elements, throwing colors and relying on happy accidents helped a lot and now I could run the last few meters to the finish-line by just fixing whatever my eye was not agreeing with: for instance, the harsh plane-breaks of the face and the fact that the character was missing eyebrows. Lighting artifacts were removed and some subtle details like wrinkles on the forehead were added.

And as you can imagine, since I've started with cheap and dirty renders of the low-poly, lots of things cried out for attention. At this point it is extremely useful to know where to delete and start over, and where to deform. Most of the time you can tweak and deform certain aspects and not waste time by deleting and starting from scratch. In places where I didn't like the pose, or the symmetry of something, I used the magical tool called Liquify. The other tool for deforming that I tend to use a lot is the Puppet Warp.

抛光时间

时间不多了，虽然我对很多事情不太满意，但我不得不继续前进。以前的阶段，结合元素，现在我可以运行最后几米到终点线，例如，严酷的飞机断裂的脸和事实，字符缺少眉毛。去除了照明工件，并添加了一些细微的细节，如额头上的皱纹。

而且你可以想像，因为我已经开始用低廉的低价廉的低价格渲染。在这一点上，知道从哪里删除和重新开始以及在哪里变形是非常有用的。大多数时候，您可以通过删除并从头开始，调整和改变某些方面，而不浪费时间。我不喜欢这样的姿势，或是对称的，我用神奇的工具叫做液化。另一种变形工具，我倾向于使用很多是木偶扭曲。

Finalization

This is the final stage and the chance to add a few quick bells-and-whistles to the image in the last seconds.

The additional emitting containers on the ground were added to help establish the scale and depth of the environment.

Fog was added in the lower portion of the image in order to refine the contrast so that it doesn't steal the attention from the upper portion of the character, which is the main focus point. I also added subtle reflections in the glasses and darkened the borders of the image to focus the viewer to the center.

定稿

这是最后一个阶段，并有机会在最后几秒内为图像添加几个快速响铃。

增加了地面附加的排放容器，以帮助确定环境的规模和深度。

在图像的下部添加雾以便细化对比度，使得它不会从作为主要焦点的角色的上部分窃取注意力。 我还在眼镜中添加了微妙的思考，使图像的边框变暗，将观众聚焦到中心。

Conclusion

In the last minutes, in the middle of adding some particles in the atmosphere, the time ran out and I had to call it done. However although very far (faaar far away) from perfect, I was happy that I didn't waste time on the smaller imperfections and I actually had something that looked decent for the purpose it was created and it was done on time.

Working under pressure definitely plays its role and helps to reduce wasted time for irrelevant things; but the quick start, figuring out as you go and happy accidents method helps tremendously to forget the pressure and turn the work into play and have fun while creating your artwork.

结论

在最后几分钟，在大气中添加一些颗粒的时候，时间已经过去了，我不得不说。 然而，尽管距离完美非常远（faaar far away），我很高兴我没有浪费时间在较小的缺陷上，我实际上有一些看起来体面的目的是为了创造的目的，它是按时完成的。

在压力下绝对发挥作用，有助于减少浪费时间的无关紧要的事情; 但是快速的开始，随着你的到来，找出快乐的做事方法，可以大大地忘记压力，把工作变成戏剧，并在创作艺术品的时候开心。