Kit's Portfolio

16-Feb Finishing touches

Detailing the hand-wraps

Hard Surface Sculpting Take 2!. After plenty of trial and error,  the brushes I used to sculpt this are dam standard, smooth, flatten and Planar Line Thin. Still very far off from what Mike Jensen did with his Elite tho. But this will have to do for now.

Another go at hard surface sculpting

Got really excited about hard surface modelling at this point, so I rushed myself into finishing this model. Retopologized a ZSphere and roughly did the hair using SnakeHook brush. Note to self: don’t rush next time. The result aren’t really that awesome.  But at least I managed to achieve what I originally planned for this model. Subtools and cloth.

Rough in some hair...

hmm... the hair...

Subtool Practise Male from kit on Vimeo.

15-Feb More subtools!

Not satisfied with only one hard surface object in the model, I added an air filter in it for more practise. Built with ZSphere and a Sphere3D.

Adding an air filter

Using the belt to practise sculpting cloth.

From here on in, its all cloth. I started practising with the belt, getting a grip of it before moving to the rest. I enjoyed sculpting the cloth very much. you can hardly go wrong here. I used some photo reference for some of them. Took a photo of myself with my prop (bath towel.. … …) around my shoulder etc.

Moving onto the rest

It’s basically subdividing it to a high level, drawing out the main folds with clay brush, smoothing things out, then defining them with dam brush (with LazyMouse on),  smoothing out the planes. Rinse and repeat.

Then the shawl

and the top.

12-Feb Let’s try more subtools!

In the previous posts, I mentioned about utilizing more subtools and adding cloth to my model. So, this time round, I’m going to try and design a character that fulfills all those above.

Again starting from the SuperAverageMan, cropped the head, and started detailing. After getting the rough facial feature that I wanted with Move and Inflat tool at Subdivision 1, I subdivided into a much higher subdivision and start giving rough details to the face with the Clay Tube brush without any Alpha selected. After that I smoothed them out before refining them again with other brushes (Dam Standard, Inflat etc).

Sculpting the head from base mesh

Appended eyes to the head, subdividing it once more for finer details.

Detailing the head

Again using Alex’s human base mesh, I appended it to the head and start Moving things around. This rough body mesh will be used as the foundation and guide for other subtools. Rigged a ZSphere and retopologized it to create the shawl.

Continuing the body

Midway through this, I found another awesome post by Mike Jensen on hard surface sculpting that he did for his Halo Elite armor. I’m really amazed by how he did his Elite armor so I tried to practise it on some part of the model.

I tried it on the waist. In my first few attempts, I tried using some of the planar tools. Didn’t really like the way it came out. Tried to sculpt it with dam brush using LazyMouse. Not really that satisfactory. In the end I used the Layer brush with Z Sub to draw the lines. Not really that spectacular but it works, for now at least.

Added a few more objects to it.

Trying to sculpt hard surface

10-Feb Let’s Continue Sculpting Part2/2

Next I rigged a new ZSphere to the head, edit its topology to match parts of the head and then extend that topology to cover the whole head thus creating the base mesh for the hair. Increase its skin thickness then make an adaptive skin before appending it back to the main tool.

Retopo the hair using ZSphere.

Here I sculpted the hair using Dam Standard brush with a custom alpha (something like Alpha 38) for that sharp edge look. Take a look at Scott Eaton’s Digital Figure Sculpture.  I just so happens to have bought a copy of 3D World featuring him as well. Watching him sculpting his cloth inspired my to add cloth to my next model as well.

Done. For now.

USEFUL LINKS :

Scott Eaton’s Digital Figure Sculpture- Scott Eaton’s tutorial on sculpting in                                                                                              ZBrush. Highly recommended for all.

09-Feb Let’s continue sculpting! Part 1/2

Now that I’ve warmed up, lets try something harder.

Quickly grabbed a free human base mesh from Gnomon website (link can be found at the bottom of this post) and starts deforming it using Inflat and Move tool.

Human base mesh by Alex Alvarez

Pretty soon after that, I’m already into refining the shape of the head. And while I’m at it, I discovered how to append a subtool to the main tool (Yay! Pretty excited about that).

Refining the head

USEFUL LINKS :

Human Base Mesh by Alex ALvarez

Miranda Lawson Mass Effect 2 – Edrice Waliyar – ZBrushCentral post by Eldrice on modelling his own Miranda Lawson

08-Feb Let’s Get Started (Again) 2/2

Now its time to polypaint it!. This time, instead of using the texture to define wrinkles etc, I’m using the texture only for the basic skin material. I’ve already defined the wrinkles using the Alpha brushes during sculpting. Using some skin textures, I painted in the blemishes etc using the DragRect stroke.

Colouring the AverageMan

And the end result is pretty satisfactory.

SuperAverageMan-Front

SuperAverageMan-Back

Testing out some of the rendering options in ZBrush. For the render below, I doubled the document size then resized it. Results are okay, still playing around with the settings.

Testing rendering of the man in Zbrush

P.s. : There are no eyeballs for this model because at the moment of sculpting I still haven’t learn how to add subtools yet.

07-Feb Let’s Get Started (Again)

Okay, now that I’ve settled down in Melbourne, lets get started again! I’m going to start by sculpting something simple to warm up.

No building a base mesh from ground up here. Took the SuperAverageMan subtool in ZBrush and start morphing him!

Morphing SuperAverageMan

Not much planning here, just trying to take the default model and turn it into something else. Playing around, mainly, with Move and Inflat brush (as I learnt in The Making of No More Wine by Simon Blanc). Using the Damien Standard brush to carve out the wrinkles. Standard brush for the veins. Move tool to make big changes to the model. And Inflat brush to bring out the form of the head.

Aging the AverageMan

Once I’m satisfied with the head, I added alphas to the head with the leather alphas I downloaded from the previous model.

Recapping my previous attempt at ZBrush, the end results looks flat and lacks details. So this time, I purposely sculpt only the head and concentrate on having a consistent subdivisions. Instead of using textures to bring out the character, this time, I’m adding more details using the Alpha brushes.

Adding more details

BRB-Moving to Melbourne

Relocating to Melbourne at the end of this month. So I won’t be able to post or ZBrush much.

I’ll resume (havn’t even started much to begin with) after I’ve settled down in Melbourne!