For an upcoming sally dark ride in Monterey bay
Had to create a shader for the main antagonist "bouchard." the shader had to have an ethereal look that matched the effects created by another artist.
one of the challenges was working with uvs that i hadn't created myself and not being able to use world position since the character moves continuously.
The initial task involved creating an opacity mask for the legs and blending out the seams between the head and the chest. Initially, I incorporated movement in the opacity, but I discovered that Metahuman's hair shaders did not support this type of movement yet, so we had to abandon that idea.
Next, I had to find the optimal approach to achieve a continuous and seamless motion across the UV shells, without making the seams obvious. I began by creating a flipbook animation in Substance Painter and then animated it further in After Effects. However, this approach did not yield the exact desired look, so I decided to add a flowmap to help conceal any issues.
A significant amount of research was dedicated to understanding Metahuman shader setups and finding ways to make the materials behave according to my requirements.
