Cyborg Character Breakdown

Created Using Maya

Rendered using Mental Ray

Responsible For:
UV Mapping
Texturing
Lighting
Rendering
Compositing

This character was textured using Maya shaders and rendered in Mental Ray. The base mesh of this character was one piece but I chose to use 2 seperate material types to define his outter skin. For this reason I hand painted texture maps for every attribute of the shader to define two different materials on one shader. This allowed me to shape the transparent glass cuts in his skin however I wanted without having to change the model and also allowed for easier
rigging.

I used a number of render utility nodes to achieve the final look of the character, including the sampler info node to make the relfections more apparent as the surface normals turn away from the camera (fresnel effect).

I also used the sampler info node in conjunction with a surface luminance node to fake a slight rim lighting which is a common effect of sub surface scattering.

Again the sampler info node was used on the texture of the transparent wires and glass tubes on his chest and armor pieces causing the wires and tubes themselves to look as if they have some thickness no matter which angle you look at them while the fluid inside stays centered.

The eyes of the character as well as the fluid in the wires, tubes, and brain have animated textures controlled through expressions which cause them to move continuously.

This character was rendered in 2 passes, a beauty pass with a seperate reflection pass and compositted together in Shake.