Rendering the Enforcer - ZBrush Creature Design: Creating Dynamic Concept Imagery for Film and Games - page 672

gone haywire, you should be able to fix the problem by loading your saved materials using the Load button
in the Material palette.
Image-Based Lighting
Now that you have a nice looking skin shader all set up, you can move on to other parts of the Enforcer
character. However, it might be a good idea to add a little more interest to the lighting, especially if you are
going to start dealing with reflective surfaces such as the metallic parts of the model.
You can quickly create a background for the model using a spherically mapped image. This image can
also be used as the basis for a more complex LightCap lighting arrangement. In this section, you will down-
load an image from the Internet and use it to create more stylistic lighting for the Enforcer.
Create a Background Image
A background image of an environment is a great way to quickly add visual interest as you develop the
look of a character. Seeing a character in context will also help you make decisions about how to design
the materials used in the model. The best background images to use are spherically mapped images. A few
example images can be found in the Textures/Panoramas folder of LightBox. However, these images are a
little too pleasant and pastoral for the Enforcer. Another great source of free panoramas can be found online
at the sIBL archive at http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html .
Because of copyright restrictions, these images can't be included on the DVD or download files that
come with this topic. However, you are free to download them and use them in your own project. Follow
these steps to create a background image for the Enforcer.
1. Open a web browser and go to the following URL: http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html (see Fig-
ure 10-26 ) .
Figure 10-26: Point your Internet browser to the sIBL archive to find a number of spherically mapped pan-
oramic images.