12-May Creature Design
Few days ago, I was asked to help designing some creature and a mecha for a yet to be published comic. So, here it is, the creature design.
Creature Design For SOL Comic
Nomad Turn Around
4-April Quick Sculpt
Did a quick head sculpt today while testing out some AO render in ZBrush.
Quick Head Sculpt
Composited the final render from several render passes from ZBrush in Photoshop.
Sketches Section Added
Added a few sketches for a future comic project.
Dragon Concept
Elven Costume Concept
Elf Designs
26-Feb Hard Surface Modelling Part 3
============================================= STAGE FIVE | Renders =============================================Okay, here goes nothing, the final version.
Front and Back
Closeup
Another look from the back
Heres some renders with the “Knives”
plus "knives"
Inspired by Bulgarov Vitaly’s post on rendering, I managed to churn out some composite renders below. For some reason my comp slows down to a crawl after changing the material a couple of times so I re-pose and re-render it again several times. That’s before I found out that ZApplink can be used to store positions.
100% modeled in ZBrush. Render composited in Photoshop
a lil' photoshopping
25-Feb Hard Surface Modelling Part 2
============================================= STAGE THREE| Smoothing =============================================Okay, here goes nothing, all the bumpy surfaces gotta go! Referring back to Mike Jensen’s post, he mentioned using hPolish to smooth things out. So, what I did to smooth out the model was to first define the edges using Dam Standard with custom alpha, then use hPolish (combination of both Z Add and Z Sub) to smooth things out. And of course the occasional smooth tools.
Smoothing the chest
The same goes to the hair, define the edges with dam standard with custom alpha then smoothed the surfaces out with smooth/hPolish.
Smoothing the hair
Demonstrated below is a pic of the torso from the beginning till the end. Even after smoothing the surfaces, I found some of the surfaces to be still a bit bumpy. I was pretty worried about that until I added the fine details. The details are some of the most fun things to add. If used correctly, they can hide the imperfection of the surfaces. I’m not really a mecha enthusiast, most of the details I used are from using Mike Jensen’s images as reference. Details are added mainly using Layer brush with different alphas.
Sculpting process
20-Feb Hard Surface Sculpting
A few posts ago, I mentioned being inspired by Mike Jensen and his Elite model, and after that he posted another amazing post on Polycount (which later featured on toprow of ZBrushCentral). In his new post in Polycount theres a link to this Korean ZBrush artist by the name of Dilblo. So using these two masters as an inspiration and guide, I’m making my own 100% ZBrush Hard Surface Sculpting!
The subject of the day is:
Design And Model A Mecha!
============================================= STAGE ONE | Designing Stage =============================================I’ve always wanted to incorporate what I’ve seen in my design. Back when I was living in Kyoto for a year, I was really impressed by the juxtaposition of their heritage and modern culture. So this mecha will be something based on that.
As always, I don’t want to get too much details going on, just the rough outline of the character.
Getting some silhouettes going
Now that I know the limitation of my computer, it’s time to plan properly before starting. Each major part of the body will be divided into subtools. I’ve broken them down to the head, torso, arms, hands, pelvis, legs and feet.
Separating the body into several subtools
At the moment, I still have no idea on how to achieve the smooth look that Mike or Dilblo achieved, so what I did was just get the rough shape going without worrying too much about the rest.
Moving onto the legs
First level of detailing
As you can see, the model is still very organic at this state. But instinct told me they’ll be fine. I hope I’m right. Haha.
Roughing in the hair
Learning from what Dilblo did, I painted over the model to get a rough idea on the positioning etc.
USEFUL LINKS:
Halo Elite (New Armor) by Mike Jensen - Awesome hard surface sculpting using ZBrush then retopologized to look even smoother in 3DMax. He explained some of his workflow in his replies.
Scouting Mech: Drone 04 by Mike Jensen – Most of the smoothing in the Halo Elite are done in 3DMax, but this time, it’s 100% ZBrush. Absolutely amazing.
http://blog.naver.com/dilblo – Blog of a Korean ZBrush user
17-Feb Penguin
After finishing my previous renders, my girlfriend showed me her work and asked me to model it. 12 am in the morning. So here it is! 2 hours work. I enjoyed modelling it a lot in the end tho. After getting the base mesh right using ZSphere, I detailed the skull using the claytube brush and slowly gave form to the cute penguin. The flippers are sculpted on.
2 hours of work
16-Feb Some Zbrush renders
Bulgarov Vitaly made a post on ZBrushCentral on how he render his images using ZBrush and Photoshop.
I don’t plan on exporting different mats and compositing them in Photoshop yet. So I only doubled the size of the document then exported it out with AA Half Sized. Also another render in Flat material for masking in Photoshop.
some photoshopping
His hair is too distracting, so here’s a render without hair.
Sans hair