Project Week 4: Character Shading

As promised, here is the next update (this time only half a week late!). Shading took much less time than rigging, simply because there is much less work involved in the process.

Shading is just the process of creating the texture and color on your model. Given how lambert1 is rarely the most enthralling shader, I had to create a new shader, add a bump map to that shader, and then attach the shader to my character using a UV map.

At first, I created a Blinn shader, since I prefer working with Blinn (I think they display bump maps better, but that is mostly opinion). I then just altered the color to make it more stone-like, and changed the specular settings so that the reflections and eccentricity would not reflect much light.

Shader settings

After that, I added a bump map to create texture, so that Kopf actually looks like he's made out of rock instead of clay. I used a fractal bump map to make the texture kind of random, but still coherent, and set the bump value fairly low since the Easter Island heads are actually pretty smooth.

Fractal settings

Bump map settings

The final step involved mapping to shader to my character using UVs. Although the color applied itself without a UV map, bump maps cannot be applied without them. All I did was use the Automatic Projection tool, since I didn't have to worry lining up UV shells due to the fact that the shader was just a constant color. I had considered using a seamless rock image to make him actually look like stone, but the UV map was just too complicated to fix within my limited timeframe.

Model with shader

Overall, the result was pretty good. I may still alter the shader or bump map after I add lighting and start rendering, but this is a pretty decent start.