Rigging
As far as the rig concerns, I’ve used biped in max that is really good for humanoid forms.
The very big difficulty was to create the bends in such a way that they could follow the model without “getting crazy”. Therefore, in the rig, I had to spend a lot of time weighing other single unmanageable vertexes, using many skin morph to handle difficult situations.
Texturing
Thanks to the Unwrap, (which is made to manage the sculpting program), I was able to change to a photo editing program to paint the textures I needed. I was always at the same time in Multiply la Bitmap (made by Unwrap) in order to follow exactly the shape of the model developed on that level.
The useful textures are: the level diffuse, specular, bump and the one obtained from the sculpting of the displace.
The diffuse is the level that is going to draw the skin of the character, the specular is useful in defining the points in which the shader of the model will reflect more or less, basing on a gray scale, even if one uses sometimes a lightly blue-tinted gradation to give a reflecting effect.The bump is the map which forms, always with a w/b scale, a little roughness on the shader, which was very useful in giving the impression of an old skin.
Shader
The shader of the skin was realised trying to maintain certain features, like the dryness of the mummy-skin but also the funny and cartoon like appearance I wanted to obtain. Therefore I’ve tried to maintain a high level of SSS ( subsurface scattering ) to take away the seriousness of the character and give him at the same time a certain “concreteness”.
I had to make a lot of trials before being satisfied with the result. The real challenge was being able to give it concreteness without creating horror-like details. The secret was rendering it translucent just like the cartoons and adding very much specular and light strokes to let certain areas emerge.
Morpher
With this model, finished and texturized, I have made a series of morpher cloning the main mesh and giving every clone a different detail, like closed eyes or a smiling mouth.All these facial expressions give “life” to the mummy!
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