Another WIP

Did some lighting and shader work on this today as well as some comp in Nuke
I chucked in eyes that I had from my other project and havent done textures for the teeth and gums yet

Messing with the shader

I did some experimenting with the normal map and found that it was coming into max inverted causing the strangeness in the previous render. It's not that simple going from zbrush to max sometimes. This render has the SSS effect turned up too high mainly just to see what it would do. It has muddied out a lot of the detail as has the DOF effect that I put on for fun. Getting closer though

Speed sculpt render

Exported some displacement and normal maps to do some rendering in MAX, there are seam problems with the normal map

Speed Sculpt

Spent a few hours on this today using the same base mesh as my human project. Making it up as I go. I'd like to do some more deatiling.

Human WIP#3

Some more work on this model. First pass at mr prim hair in vray, it's extremely slow and requires lots of samples to get a decent render, the result here is still pretty muddy at 1/16. I would love to use hairfarm but it costs too much.
I need to add pubic hair and overall body hair, some of this will probably be done using vray fur, if it works on displaced geometry There are areas in the textures and the sculpt that need addressing also.

Human WIP #2

Just some more sculpting on this dude and a quick hair test.
Vray can now render Max's hair and fur modifier with the mr prim rendering method. This is pretty cool as it allows me to light my hair with vray lights and GI if I want.

Homo Sapiens

I started this anatomy test a fair while ago because I hit a major creative dead end with my dragon. I havent been able to work on it much becasue of work on a general lack of energy but with the constant rain this weekend I had a chace to dust him off and try and make some progress. This render is from Vray using the SSS2 shader and 4 X 2K displacement maps (I'm testing out multiple UV region workflows in ZBrush). ZApplink works with multi UV so I should be able to get an obscene amount of detail in some maps. The poly limit in ZB will be a problem for utilising 4 X 4K disp maps though. More sculpting needed and more details

Dragon Retop #2

Finished the first pass of retop on this model
I'm continuing to change the proprtions and stuff in small ways as I go through the retop process and I'm still looking for ways to improve the model. Still coming to grips with what should be modeled in with edgeloops and what can be displaced.
This is a bit of a test pose to see how the model deforms and cos I got sick of looking at it in it's stupid base pose.

Dragon Retop

Using Matt Clark's Wapit plugin to retop this drgaon character. Still a fair bit to go yet.
There's been a bit of a learning curve, but once I got the hang of it, it's a good quick way to retop a character. Defintely better than the graphite workflow that comes with Max. So far the topology is all quads but I still have some detailing and creases to add, and some gbits yet to be joined up. This stage is getting boring and I'm looking forward to going back ZBrush to detail

Learning to sculpt

I haven't tried to sculpt anything with clay since primary school so I thought it was time to try again. Julie bought me some clay last christmas so this was a good chance to use it. Having pretty much learned to sculpt in a digital environment, working with physical media did my head in a bit (stupid gravity) but it was fun.

Dragon WIP#2

Some more work on this model. Changing up the physiology a bit to make it a bit more logical and working a bit more on his head.
Thanks to Jono Freisler, professor of dragon anatomy, for help on muscle groups

Dragon WIP#1

Spent today doing some sculpting, just trying some stuff out on this mesh to see what sticks
I bought Matt Clark's retop plugin Wrapit today so I'd like to get this sculpt looking alright and then retop it and possibly find someone to rig it.

Another unfinished project

Something I started a while ago and lost motivation to finish
A troll made of rock

Peter Garrett Sculpt

A sculpt of Australian environment minister and ex vocalist of Midnight Oil, Peter Garrett. Likeness is far from perfect but I think it's better than my last attempt at a likeness. I sort of feel like this was cheating because he's got such a distinctive appearance. Approx. 4 hours spent on this.

Nicolas Sarkozy speed sculpt

This was supposed to be Nicolas Sarkozy, the likeness is a bit dodgy and the hair makes him look like Sean Penn. Took about 4 hours, sculpted from the base mesh of the little boy sculpt which has turned out to be a pretty useful all purpose base.

Boy Concept

I've done a bit of work on a pose for the boy and a paintover to get a better idea of how the composition is working. All the clothes are quick block-outs at this stage. I intend to fully sculpt all the folds etc. The pose is not quite balanced so I need to fix that. The hands haven't been posed so they look pretty weird, I'm thinking about maybe adding a suit coat and maybe a cap to give a more old timey, private school feeling. That could work to play up the contrast with the oversized, modern backpack. I think I should make it even bigger.

Boy WIP#1

Another character I have started on
The idea was to convey a child on their first day of school, I have the whole character blocked out but have only really spent any time on the head so far. I got the idea from seeing schoolkids with hilariously oversized backpacks and thought it would make an interesting portrait. He's giving off at Hitler vibe at the moment, maybe it's the hair. Also gathering reference images of children on the internet is... unsettling in some way. Observing children in real life is also generally frowned upon.

Horse WIP #1

I've spent a few hours sculptig this horse for a project for Arran Potter.
I've never tired to model a horse before and working the anatomy out has been heaps of fun.
Still lots of bits to fix up and accentuate.
It will be posed and have a rider so I don't want to sculpt too much detail in this neutral pose.


BaseMesh

Orc Wip#6

Some costume blocking and experiments with this character
I'm getting a bit sick of him so I might shelve this project for now and try to practice a bit
more instead of getting bogged down with this.

Orc WIP#5

More detailing work. The legs are a bit messed up. I'm trying some stuff out with the staff to get away from the typical fighting, agressive style of orc. Maybe he's more of a chieftan or explorer or shaman type. The necklace is just blocking shapes to see what works. Doing a lot of the little teriary deatiling to the muscles and folds is new ground for me and I struggling a bit as I make it up as I go.

Orc WIP #4

Some progress on this guy
I'm looking at a lot of tribal costumes to try and go in a different direciton from the normal orc cliche. It's still cliche as hell but whatever.
I'm thinking off adding some greaves on his legs so there's some more interest there and leaving the torso naked.
I'm not liking the spear very much and it was knocked up pretty quickly so I might change it.

Orc WIP#3

Some sculpting and detailing on the face and neck area. Changed the mouth a bit cos it was looking stupid.

Orc WIP #2

Some more work on this character. Posing and sculpting to correct errors with the transpose tool.

Orc WIP #1

Because I haven't been very inspired lately I decided to have a go at the old 3d cliche. I started with a simple base and then retopped it in max and then back to zbrush. I'm currently sculpting it and I intend to light and texture. He also looks a bit generic so I need to give the character some interest before posing and costume etc