Throughout the lessons we will model, pose, texture and shade a 3D character. We will use lot of different techniques within ZBrush and Softimage to bring to life a bio-mechanical concept. Along the way we will learn creative ways to use a wide set of tools to build details in a quick and effective way. All the techniques shown can be translated in different kinds of pipelines and can bring up a huge speed up to your usual modeling and texturing workflow.

When trying to create highly realistic, lifelike characters, the importance of the eyes is often understated. In fact, the eyes are one of the most important aspects to consider when creating characters that truly look and feel alive. During this course, we will learn how to create highly realistic eye textures from scratch using Photoshop, and in a way that gives us a high degree of flexibility and control over the textures' color variations and other details. Once the texturing has been completed, we will jump into Softimage, where we will discuss shading and rendering techniques that can give the eye a highly realistic final look. Along the way we will be exploring many additional tips, tricks, and workflows that you will be able to use both in Photoshop and in Softimage to help create more believable, realistic eyes for your characters.

Popular highlights include: Working with Real-time Shaders; Setting up Models and Skinned Models; Using XSI FX Shader Presets; Using SAS Bindings; Writing Vertex and Pixel Shaders; Constant and Texture Shading; Lambertian Diffuse Shading Model; Blinn-Phong Shading Model; Using Normal Maps; Render to Texture; Drawing with Sprite Batch; Using Pixel Shaders for Post Effects; Problem-solving Approaches; Shader Analysis; Working with Textures and Clusters; Publishing XNA Models from XSI; Consolidation Techniques; Creating Animation Clips; Fine-tuning looping animation; Gaussian Blur; Shadow Projection; Programming and Choosing Techniques; Edit/Delete Message.

Popular highlights include: Understanding Properties of HDR Images; Using 32-bit Color Space; 32-bit Image vs. 8-bit Image; Shooting Multiple Exposures with Camera; Bracketed Camera Exposures; Using Mirrored Ball for Environments; Naming and Organization of Exposure Sequences; Assembling Multiple Exposures into one HDR Image; Assembling Panoramic HDR Images; Removing Unwanted Subjects from Images; Color Correcting and Image Enhancement; Adjustment Layers for Image Alterations; Tone Mapping HDR Image for Low Dynamic Range Output; Setting up Image-based Lighting in XSI; Final Gathering in XSI; Setting up Multiple Render Passes; Rendering HDR Images from mental ray.

Popular highlights include: Polygon Modeling; Projection Master; Morph Targets; UV Mapping Techniques; Advanced Geometry Tools; Rendering with mental ray; Geometry Sculpting; Displacement maps; Cavity Maps; Normal Maps; Brushes.