Final model (Maya viewport)

Finished!

I have finished the textures for the eel. I used Zbrush for the main texture and Photoshop for the eyes. I may rework the teeth a little, but aside from that it is complete. I ended up having a little trouble trying to achieve the orange bioluminescence using the incandescence method so I settled for a much simpler method.

The method I used originally was to paint a texture map with black and white values for the glow (whatever was black would not glow and the whatever was white would), but I had trouble getting this to work so I started thinking of alternatives. I decided to either go for setting up a light rig or creating additional meshes and let the shaders do the work. The latter seemed more logical as it would remove the hassle of having to deal with numerous lights so I went with that approach first. For once I had things go my way and maya gave me no trouble, the shader method worked well so I decided it would be the solution.

The basic run down of what I did was to create a very simple shader, lambert/blinn, give it the colour I wanted it to glow, then scroll down to 'special effects' and activate the glow (whilst hiding the polygonal geometry). The only down side is the glow seems to get larger as the camera gets further away from the model, but I thought it through and it can be easily managed by keyframing/adjusting the intensity and just doing a bit of work in post. This is awesome because we could keyframe the glow intensity and use this to help add emotion to the character (it could get brighter the more aggresive it becomes).

I then UV mapped and textured the eyes in Photoshop, trying to keep things simple. I remember a conversation I had with Andy and we agreed the eye should have no real pupil but just a simple white area, I think this works well and adds to the menacing look of the character. Below are shots of the model in maya and I will next upload some test renders.

Oh before I forget, the maps I created are (I will post shots soon):

Diffuse 2048 x 2048

Specular 2048 x 2048

Normal 2048 x 2048