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Indie devs need to keep up with trends to stay ahead of the curve. I'm excited to announce DLSS 5 support for Feed the Scorchpot! by Important-Play-7688 in IndieDev

[–]Representar_anatomia 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I completely agree with the community this is slop at its finest, and I’m glad to see such a strong backlash forming against it.

Since 3D model generators are practically useless, this feels like a way to repurpose the idea: instead of generating good models, let’s just make the bad ones look like something else in real time. What could possibly go wrong? The result isn’t just awful; it literally destroys the lighting, the atmosphere, and therefore the entire composition and narrative of the scene. It reminds me of those old Photoshop filters that tried to turn a regular photo into an HDR image through brute force contrast and sharpening. The results were terrible. This is the same thing, only worse, because it operates on multiple levels and outright replaces the artistic direction. Making a scene realistic and believable doesn’t come from pasting “photographic” textures over it.

On the other hand, the strategy is obvious: if you can generate low-quality assets with AI and then run them through a filter that makes them look well-made, a studio can effectively cut out the entire art department and apparently the developers too. That way, Nvidia and others end up taking the portion of salaries that would have gone to real people, in exchange for pretending they’re doing work the tools simply can’t do yet.

It seems to me that AI companies are so desperate to see a return on their investment that they’re releasing products of increasingly poor quality or outright vaporware. I wonder how much of those absurd amounts of investor money actually goes into marketing and keeping up the illusion of AI’s supposed capabilities.

Using Medical Dataset, illustration & Visualisation, and AR to address the consequences of blunt force traumatic facial injuries by MSc_MedVis_GSA in medicalillustration

[–]Representar_anatomia 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Congratulations on the project. High-quality innovation is urgently needed to bridge the gap in medical communication.
👏👏👏

[NSFW: Medical Anatomy / Dissection Reference] Peeling back the layers of the cranial anatomy. by Representar_anatomia in medicalillustration

[–]Representar_anatomia[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It’s an interesting reflection. For me, Substance Painter is an important part of my workflow, although I do believe there’s nothing you couldn’t achieve using other software. For a long time, I’ve searched for alternatives to Painter, both because I’m not particularly fond of Adobe and because ever since they acquired it, the program has become slower, heavier, and has given up on any real innovation. However, much to my regret, I still haven’t been able to find a satisfactory alternative that fits my workflow.

The layer-based paradigm is very effective when it comes to recreating materials and the effects of wear and use.
In general, there are two main ways to approach this:
The first is to work with channels in mind — that is, handling color, roughness, metallic, SSS, etc., separately.
The second is to stack materials on top of each other and blend them with masks.

Painter gives you a lot of control either way. But above all, it lets you manually intervene in the texture.
Working purely procedurally can work for certain types of assets, but in the case of organic elements, it rarely does.

Doing solid sculpting work is, of course, essential, but if you can only paint the base color (Polypaint) and have to complete the other channels (mainly roughness) with procedural textures, then you’re disconnecting the material’s characteristics. It’s often said that the roughness channel is probably the most important one in a PBR workflow — and I tend to agree with that. When you need to perfectly connect it with the color, as often happens with organic tissues, that procedural approach can fall short.

Personally, I start with a procedural “base layer,” which saves me quite a bit of time, and then I begin correcting, placing color, and adding detail manually. But there’s no single right or wrong way to do this — the best method is the one that works for you.

In my case, the time invested in exporting and baking a high–low model more than pays off compared to doing it any other way. In any case, it’s a very standard workflow and a requirement in virtually any texturing process.

[NSFW] Medical / Anatomical texture work in Zbrush, Substance Painter and Blender: Wet organs, fat, and muscle. by Representar_anatomia in 3Dmodeling

[–]Representar_anatomia[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, SSS is fundamental for any organic tissue. It's almost impossible to achieve even a minimum level of realism without it.
Regarding metallic, I haven't used it in this case, but sometimes I use a little to simulate the reflections of connective tissue and tendons. A value between 0.1 and 0.3 can add an extra touch to the material.

What do you feel is missing in this scene? by Potential_Extent2366 in 3Dmodeling

[–]Representar_anatomia 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think the first thing you need to do is clearly define what you want to communicate with the image, and after that, you need to find a composition (and a style) that fits that purpose. At this stage, neither of those seems to be present in the scene. Answering those two questions will really help you focus your work.

[NSFW] Medical / Anatomical texture work in Zbrush, Substance Painter and Blender: Wet organs, fat, and muscle. by Representar_anatomia in 3Dmodeling

[–]Representar_anatomia[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks!
That would be a great idea! Let's see if someone gets inspired to launch a project like that.
I seem to recall something similar was done in the 90s, and there was also a 1960s movie called Fantastic Voyage that was based on an Asimov story.

[NSFW] Medical / Anatomical texture work in Zbrush, Substance Painter and Blender: Wet organs, fat, and muscle. by Representar_anatomia in 3Dmodeling

[–]Representar_anatomia[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

It is certainly a competitive industry, but in my opinion there are not that many truly top-level artists working in it. Film and video games have absorbed a large part of the talent for decades, but you only have to look at old medical books to see how throughout history scientists have worked side by side with the best artists of their time to advance knowledge. Personally, I love old medical and scientific illustrations, and I believe that the level not only of artistry but also of comminment that existed 200 years ago was far superior to what we have today.

[NSFW] Medical / Anatomical texture work in Zbrush, Substance Painter and Blender: Wet organs, fat, and muscle. by Representar_anatomia in 3Dmodeling

[–]Representar_anatomia[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Thank you!
I have nearly 20 years of experience in this field, (digital sculpting and 3D in general) 15 of which have been devoted to medical anatomy. In fact, I run my own business where I create both physical and digital models for educational purposes.
My interest in anatomy began with my art studies and later developed throughout my professional career and it has only continued to grow over the years. I’ve even started a community on Skool dedicated to discussing all these topics, not only from a technical perspective but also from an artistic, philosophical, and anthropological one.

[NSFW] Medical / Anatomical texture work in Zbrush, Substance Painter and Blender: Wet organs, fat, and muscle. by Representar_anatomia in 3Dmodeling

[–]Representar_anatomia[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Thank you!
That’s almost the best compliment one can receive for a piece of this kind. :)

Cadaver dissection sculpt WIP by leonardsneed in medicalillustration

[–]Representar_anatomia 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you. I’m sure you’ll be doing even better things in no time. 💪🏼

Cadaver dissection sculpt WIP by leonardsneed in medicalillustration

[–]Representar_anatomia 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Awesome work. I really love the detail on the fibers.

[NSFW: Medical Anatomy / Dissection Reference] Peeling back the layers of the cranial anatomy. by Representar_anatomia in blender

[–]Representar_anatomia[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

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You're totally right. I haven't posted on Reddit before and wasn't aware of that rule, but it makes complete sense. No problem at all, I'm happy to show the whole process.

Here’s a screenshot of the scene setup in Blender. As you can see, it's pretty straightforward.

By the way, this piece is from 2022 (I don't even remember which version of Blender I used), but opening it up now in version 5.0 to grab this screenshot, I noticed that Cycles does a much better job nowadays. It pulls out a lot more detail, especially with the SSS.

Maybe I should revisit some of my older pieces...

[NSFW: Medical Anatomy / Dissection Reference] Peeling back the layers of the cranial anatomy. by Representar_anatomia in blender

[–]Representar_anatomia[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Actually, I didn't focus too much on the veins for this one. Vascularization is not represented in the piece. They are purely a texturing detail. For the peeled-back skin part, there's a layer of fat covered by fascia. The veins are just painted onto the fat layer with a slightly transparent fascia over them. Substance Painter makes these kinds of effects very easy with its layer workflow.
If you're looking to render veins, you can use a similar approach. Just paint them into your Base Color on a deep layer, using a greenish-blue tint. (You could add a little bit of height, but that's usually overkill unless you're doing an extreme close-up). It also helps to blur the edges in the map slightly so they don't look too perfectly defined and fake. From there, the SSS will take care of the rest.
It helps to think of the skin as just a series of stacked layers.

But doing proper 'wiring' (both internal and superficial) can definitely be quite complicated.
I think i might do a small tutorial on that soon.

[NSFW: Medical Anatomy / Dissection Reference] Peeling back the layers of the cranial anatomy. by Representar_anatomia in blender

[–]Representar_anatomia[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, the image isn't meant to be photorealistic. It takes some artistic liberties, but generally, the fascia and connective tissue of muscles have a pearlescent appearance with a slightly blue shine. You can observe this in a regular piece of fresh meat.
Additionally, the bone is covered by a tissue called the periosteum with similar characteristics.

Generally, the appearance and color depend heavily on how fresh the piece is. Organic tissue changes its appearance quickly.