Hanuman: Monkey god--Indian Mythology

[hells angel]

made changes to the textures....still not completely satisfied.....luckily i dont have a deadline for this so gonna take it slow......lemme know what u guys think.....no lights in scene.

[hells angel]

texture testing again.....
noticed that no ones been responding lately!!....guys...this is the place i need help in....texturing!!!......se please lemme know what u think......cheers.

[mr_makaveli]

Im no expert on texturing either, but can offer opinion for all its worth. The last two images are definatly the best so far, as one would hope, but i think it needs to be a balance between them more than either way. The texture on the first makes the skin look more like sand, but the second makes him look old (i dont know if this is the intention).

IMO keep the hair loose and varied like on the last image, but change its tone to a more brown than grey, or make it gradiate from brown to grey at the tips. The main issue is that the eyebrow fur looks slightly too low and is obscuring the eyes, if you raise that up thr brow and maybe add some short, fine fur over other areas it should be on track to a great model, hope it helps.

[Avatar-3DT]

I must confess I was stunned to see the way you handle your meshes nowadays. You have done a giant leap as well in the anatomy part as in the texturing and modeling. This character is looking awsome. If you ask for them, crits will always be. Such as: the skin is too shinny and some wrinkles will add reallity to your character. Adding flaws to the skin (pores, moles, smole liver spots) will also increase the degree of realism. Then you have the eyebrows. They really need to follow a path, for now they are chaotic. If you use ShagHair you can use the splines for direction, if you use Shag fur, put hair vectors in the vecinity of the eyebrows to imprint them a path. Add a reflect/refract map to the reflection slot of the earring, it will slow your render but it will increase the metal look. Change the color of the eyes. Make your own map is my advise but if you can't, take this one in photoshop and increase the tonality of the blue. Add some streack into the iris, yellow ones, it will look cool.
Good luck with this one and I'll be expecting for more.

[hells angel]

mr_makaveli : ur suggestions would definitely help.....my intention was not to make him look old but i really wanted to keep the white hair......looks like i'll have to change the color after all......i noticed the eyebrows too.....will have to do some tweakin there...raise it up.....thanks a lot....
Avatar : thanks a lot...comin from u those words really mean a lot!!...u know i've always been an admirer of ur work.....and i was hoping u'd see this thread soon!! i've tried adding wrinkles through bump maps but really cant get that effect....what resolution should i be runnin my maps??...coz i reall am not lookin forward to goin back to the modellin phase again!!been tryin to look around a lot for some shag hair tutorials....the only one i found was at joan of arc.....hope thats enuf...coz i still havent got a hang of the plugin.......will make those changes on the maps like u pointed out for the textures.......thanks a bunch.

updates will take a week now......although i will be lookin into the forums for more crits.....its already taken me really long to reach this level....and with the changes!!..phew!!.....but i dont wanna start with the rest of the body until i'm done with the face......thanks all....i'm tryin really hard on this one...cheers.

[mr_makaveli]

Here's a few shag hair tutorials to help you along, not sure how useful they are but i thought hey, since i have them bookmarked why not share..

Tutorial that concentrates on the painting aspect:

http://www.adamwatkins.com/s3_tutorials/s3_01.htm
http://www.adamwatkins.com/s3_tutorials/s3_02.htm

General tutorial, its in french but.. well it has pictures of settings, etc, could be worth a look:

http://mr2k.3dvf.com/tutorials/max/s...ag_hair_01.htm
http://mr2k.3dvf.com/tutorials/max/s...ag_hair_02.htm
http://mr2k.3dvf.com/tutorials/max/s...ag_hair_03.htm

And finally a Digimation video tutorial, straight from the horses mouth and always worth checking digimations (free) training vid's for theyre plugins:

http://www.digimation.com/software/d...6/ShagHair.swf

Hope they help

[Avatar-3DT]

Great tutorials from mr_makaveli! This can surely help you with the shag problems. As for wrinckles, you don't need to alter the mesh. Just save you bitmap in a tif format at about 1024 resolution, 300 bits. Its big but is precise and it can gave a nice fx.

[nico3d]

The character looks excellent. The skin it is definitely too shiny...

there's one big doubt about one thing. I travelled extensively around india and I haven't seen a poster or image where Hanumman looked like that... You said you took it out from the ramayana? So weird..... of course you must be right since you are hindu...
And I also saw sculptures of Hanuman in the Angkor temples in Cambodia and he didn't look like your either...
I have a photo of this sculpture, if I have time I'll scan it and post it...

[hells angel]

thanks a lot for the tutorials...although the second is the same as the joan of arc one.....did help though.......
and thanks for the tip avatar.....u'll probably see the difference in the image.....
nico3d :...ur confusion is justified...although i have my reasons for havin my hanuman this way....firstly...every depiction of hanuman over the ages has been an artists representation.....based on how he perceived the god to be....keepin in mind only one factor that he was a monkey...and strong.......but the scriptures do mention that he got his name from from "hanu"=jaw...due to the swollen jaw that he got from a fight with the rain god "indra"....this factor was never paid attention to in the paintings....this is what makes him look more like a gorilla than a monkey.....the other features were put in to give him a tough look and keepin in mind the fact that he belonged to a forest tribe......
i tried to give my depiction of hanuman a completely fresh look based on the scriptures..without basing him on how other artists perceived him....the usual tendency of the artists is to give a "goody two shoes" look to all gods which i didnot wanna follow as i wanted to give my hanuman more character.....hope that sez enuf!!.....if u'd like to ask anythin else...pls do....

finished texturin the face.....lemme know if i can improve.......
used shag hair for the hair....20 minutes to render(middle shading disabled).

[hells angel]

front and side.....hair shadows disabled and only a few lights in scene to speed up rendering.....

[TheOne]

Wow! Thats awesome!
i'm waiting for updates!

[nico3d]

Hells angel, your explanation was excellent to me and actually it cleared a lot more doubts I had about Hindu Gods depiction, since I always saw them depicted in different ways all through India and Nepal..
Now your version of Hanuman definitely makes sense to me and I think it is a great idea that you do your own hanuman based on your interpretation of the scriptures.

Since you asked me to ask you anything, let me ask you this doubt I have with Ganesh...
I found this in a text..

"it is said that Ganesh (created by Parvati) was asked by the goddess to guard the door while she bathed. When Shiva, her husband, arrived, Ganesh refused him entry. Angered by this Shiva lopped off Ganesh's head but repented once he realized who Ganesh was. To make amends he directed his attendants to bring back the head of the first creature they found. That creature was an elephant and thus restored...."

could you tell me if this is the real story of Ganesh's elephant head? if not, could tell me briefly what's the story about him?

[Avatar-3DT]

You're going great here buddy! I must said I like better the black hair than the blond one but this time you sure got the eyes right. Congrats!

[Mr.T]

great evolution! i don't have much to say except that it's coming great!

ps: well.. maybe there is just the ear rings, they need a little rotation to fit well at the ear hole area but it's a really small detail..

keep on updating

[rubberduck]

The render with the dark hair/fur (hair shadows enabled)looks great.
2 suggestions, move the earrings in a little so that they fit better and I don't think apes/monkeys have blue eyes/irises, maybe brown?