[feedback needed] [video] Look Dev - Character Animation Reel

Hello Forum members,

Myself, and fellow friends (each of us have started our own studios) are looking to develop and collaborate on a character animation reel. At this stage I am looking to develop the highest quality images possible in Unity using HDRP (I assume that's where ill get the best results) and I am focused on making the materials/shaders, lighting really stand out and shine in the best way it can.

Im posting here is the hopes that knowledgeable people will be able to help isolate issues in my setup and help tweak my settings with image quality over performance in mind. for the best possible image output.

Here is a link to the WIP so far. With additional details of my scene to come is following posts.

FEEDBACK TO DATE:
(+)
Music and vibe good.
Gives chills
Badass
(-)
Resolution doesn't hold up close (technical problem)
need a cinematic model version
Some shots feel to long, by a few seconds. (video edit feedback)
Doesn't know what looking at - Maybe an earlier reveal before zoomed in shots (video edit feedback)

 

This looks so cool.

 

SCENE / LIGHT SETUP


The Character is set to NON STATIC as he will be animated. However for the purposes of this specific edit, I guess nothing is stopping me from having him set to static and maybe baking the lighting?


The scene uses 4 realtime lights.

1. 
   
   
   • Directional
   • BackLight
   • RimLight
   • FillLight

Directional Light



Backlight



FillLight



RIM LIGHT

 

TEXTURES



I removed compression, increased the resolution to 4K (on a 2k texture, I actually found there to be a difference) and am considering removing mip maps. Suggestions?

 

Materials and Shaders

Unity’s custom HDRP/Lit shader does not seem to automatically support images in their default material / shader for Metallic and Smoothness.

So I had to create a very simple Shadergraph shader to be applied to a material so that I can use the al,l available texture maps.

The texture maps we are using are the following

· Base_Color
· Emissive
· Height
· Metallic
· Mixed_AO
· Normal
· Normal_DirectX
· Roughness

I’ve omitted using ‘Normal’ in favor of ‘Normal_DirectX’ As I have found it to give better results.

Also, I decided to use the roughness map as smoothness. This seems to work well, but I am unsure if I should be applying a ‘one-minus’ node between them in order to inverse the values.

Additionally, I am unsure where the ‘Height’ map would go in the master node? Any help would be appreciated.

Here is my shader graph.

 

You can drag and drop textures on that empty square space.
If you click on circle, it bring you new UI to select textures.

 

Yup! But I dont think that option is available specifically for metallic and smoothness, just a float value range.

Thats why I felt it necessary to go through the shader graph, so that I can use all the maps I had available.

 

OHH!! Nice! I didnt know that. I don't think I have a detail map (or know what it does), but Ill look it up. Also, I assume each RGBA channel is already assigned to one of the respective Shader Inputs, Ill also look that up.

Since its already done, Ill just leave it as is.

Excellent thanks for the clarification.

Ok, very interresting, ill need to research further into this to better understand what will be the best approach for us in this case.

Thanks for the detailed reply, much appreciated!

 

Awesome Pawsome!

 

Cool!

Thanks for the heads up Vester, I'll pass the message over to the character artist