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STAGE FIVE | Renders
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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
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
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STAGE FOUR | Detailing
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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.
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STAGE ONE | Designing Stage
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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
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STAGE TWO | Detailing
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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.
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STAGE Three| Adding More Details (Continued)
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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.
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.
The subject of the day is: Design And Model A Male Character!
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STAGE ONE | The Base Mesh
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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
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STAGE TWO| The Body Mesh
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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.
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.
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STAGE THREE | Texturing the Monster
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Usually texturing is done in Photoshop, but because I wanted to learn more about ZBrush let’s try doing it in ZBrush!
First, choose a base material. For this Monster, I used MatCap White. Then put in the base colour for the different parts of the monster as you can see in the pic below.
Trying out PolyPainting in Zbrush
And finally, the details. Nothing too complicated here as I was still trying to get used to the tools. Added in the details using the standard Alphas.
ZBrush Render
Back view of the monster
Overall, its pretty decent. I’m not that satisfied with it, there are lots of place that can be improved but I’ll leave it as it is for now. The textures are pretty flat at some parts of the body. Need more consistency in the subdivisions. Need more subtools. Etc, etc ,etc.
After finally finished my degree in Multimedia Design in Curtin, I’ve finally found some time to do what I really want. Model some stuff, learn more 3D softwares etc etc etc. So I set off by giving myself deadline! 1 Piece Per Week! Time management is key! Not only it helps by reducing procrastination, having a deadline also stops me from concentrating on one part of the creature for too long.
The subject of the week is:
DESIGN A MONSTER
Now that the subject has been decided, the next part of the decision making process is what software to model it in? I’ve been working with
Maya most of the time in Uni, this time round I wanted to try something new. Few months ago I had an opportunity to test out ZBrush for a side project of mine for a while, but never really gotten far into the software. But I like it a lot because of the intuitiveness of the software. So ZBRUSH it is then!
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STAGE ONE | The Base Mesh
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After blocking out the silhouette in photoshop, I automatically opened Maya to build a base mesh before exporting it into Zbrush. Then I paused. What’s wrong with modelling it from scratch in ZBrush? I read that the new ZSphere tool is pretty amazing!
Woo ZSphere!
Using The Making of No More Wine by Simon Blanc as a guide, I rough out the shape of the monster with X Symmetry activated using ZSphere. It takes some getting used to but overall I was very impressed by it. Using the first ZSphere as the torso and slowly extending from there.
Another tutorial that really helped a lot in this stage was Part 1 of The Making of “Birth” by Francois Rimasson. Using some of the ZSphere images as a guide, I managed to get the hands to look like what a pair of hands should look like.
The last part of the base mesh, is to turn the ZSphere into proper mesh. Adaptive skin. Hmmm… This ought to be interesting. The version of ZBrush used in Francois Rimasson’s tutorial slightly differs to mine. But after a bit of trial and error, I think it turns out pretty okay.
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STAGE TWO| Detailing the “Monster”
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Detailing the monster
This section onwards, things starting to look familiar to me. I’ve did a bit of sculpting in Zbrush before, not much, but enough to get some shapes going on. Starting with Subdivision 1, slowly sculpting it into the shape I wanted as I subdivide it more. At this point of time, I’m using only a few basic brushes, Standard brush, Damien brush and Smooth.
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STAGE THREE| Refining the “Monster”
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Adding fine details like lumps, pores or wrinkles make the monster more believable. I try to achieve that using DragRect Stroke with Alpha 04 and some leather alpha from ZBrush download center.
Detailing part 2
Detailing part 2-back
At the point of sculpting this model, I haven’t learn much about ZBrush yet. So I’m having problem going into higher Subdivision to add fine details to some parts of the Monster because of the bad topology planning. My comp is already lagging at this Subdivision, which is pretty obvious in the pic below. Notice the inconsistency in the polygons.
Detailing part 2-Closeup
I later learn that, there are several ways to go around this problem (at least those that I knew of, please do tell if there are others as my knowledge in ZBrush is still pretty basic). Some of them are dividing the monster into several subtools (I find this the easiest), retopologizing the model with ZSphere and using Geometry HD. I haven’t tried Geometry HD yet, because I found that using subtools and retopologizing is enough to accomplish what I need for now.
