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

Galapagos Tortoise Final

Finished off Mr. Tortoise, finally.
I ditched final gather in favour of an ambient light with occlusion and did a little base very much in the style of the one I did for the Rhino. There's an unfortunate shadow that makes the cactus fruit look a bit 2d but other than that I can't be stuffed fixing it up any more. I have a few days off and I don't want to be fixing this piece the whole time. Depth opf field was done with the Bokeh shader for mental ray, which multiplied the render time by a factor of 5 or something.
Fun times.

A sodding merry Xmas to all!

Another Speed Sculpt

Seeing as I have some time off, I'm doing speed sculpts
This was an attempt at actor Steve Buscemi, it was good practice although the likeness
is pretty bad. The Screengrab has a slightly altered neck which I think looks a bit better

Speed Sculpt

Another Speed sculpt
Some post work in photoshop

ZBrush 3.5 First Speed Sculpt

I just got my Zbrush 3.5 license so I decided to do a speed sculpt.
This was done from a cube, I usually use a basemesh so this was a good challenge.
Once again I didn't use any references because I wanted to test myself a bit.
Took about 2 hours.

Galapagos Giant Tortoise WIP #6

I've done a test pose for the tortoise with a bit of cactus fruit that they apparently eat. The depth of field is done in Mental ray and takes for ever to render. Some of the maps still need a bit of touching up but otherwise this model is nearing the end. If I can figure out a way to get it to render quicker I might be able to do some animations with him. Thanks to Greg Tatum for some useful advice.

Galpagos Giant Tortoise WIP #5

I've started the process of texturing this model.
At this point I've got diffuse, bump, spec and gloss maps on everything and they all need refining to the point where it looks right. The lighting is the same setup as the earlier WIP. I'm liking the head but the neck and legs need a lot of work. You can see where I've started detailing the bump map on the shell but haven't gotten the whole way through yet.

Galpagos Giant Tortoise WIP #4

I've done some more sculpting on this model and also mapped the pieces of the model and exported some low res displacement maps to test that things are working as they should be.
I've comped the wireframe over the top to show the underlying geometry.
I'm looking forward to texturing this guy now although there is a fair bit of cleaning up and sculpting to do in Zbrush first.
Rendered in Mental Ray

Galpagos Giant Tortoise WIP #3

Some more work on this model
Nori had a question from the previous post about the base mesh so I've included a screengrab of the base level.
The mesh is organised for rigging and animation, which is what intend to do with the model once I have exported some displacement/normal/whatever maps. I would also like to do proper texture maps for this guy and try for a little more realism than I did with the rhino. All the details still need refinement but I find it easier to jump around here and there on the model to keep myself interested.

Galpagos Giant Tortoise WIP #2

I've started detailing the tortoise. I'm sort of blocking in the major scales, wrinkles and folds (of which there are many) so I can come back and surface them a bit better later on. I've done a fair bit on the front legs as well but they are not shown in this render. He looks a bit angry, so I should probably fix that too

Galpagos Giant Tortoise WIP #1

I had lots of fun making the rhino so I thought I'd stick with animals for now. This is 5 or so hours into a model of a Galpagos giant tortoise, I just think they're cool animals. This one I intend to completely retop in MAX to get a full unwrap and animation ready mesh, and then either do bump or displacement in ZBrush. The anatomy of these creature's is totally bizarre and it's good practice to work on something so foreign anatomically.

African Rhino Render

I've done the displacement thing in MAX and mental ray and created a little base and vegetation for my Rhino Model. I got the base render and multiplied over an ambient occlusion pass in fusion to make the model pop a little bit more. Learned a bit more about displacement exporting from ZBrush, although I still don't get it much. I think she's pretty anyway

Hey! It's another speed sculpt

Today's speed sculpt, this one took around 3 hours. It's supposed to be a kind of orc creature but I wanted it to be more human looking.

Another Speed Sculpt

A slow day at work, Jono decided I should try to model John lithgow. Not wanting to get on Jono's bad side, I agreed. This took five hours or so. Some photoshop tweaks on the eyes on the shadow of the hair.

Speed Sculpt

A slow day at work so time for another speed sculpt
This took a few hours and I foolishly used no references.

Speed Sculpt

A one hour speed sculpt, just for fun

Rhino WIP#2

I've been at this for a couple of days now, it's great fun to work on. I'm starting to realise the power of ZBrush alphas in creating surface textures, the trick is to use them in the right way so they don't look like tiled and flow with the mesh. I have 8GB of RAM in my machine and this mesh has got it at it's limit, I had to change a few settings to get the performance useable. It's obvious that I haven't started sculpting the far side of the body yet. I'm looking forward to posing him/her.

Rhino WIP#1

I've got some time off so I'm starting a new modeling project. This is something that I thought would be a good challenge from the overall form, to the secondary major skin folds to the tertiary skin details, wrinkles etc. After doing a lot of work on lighting, materials etc on Cohen I need to get back into pure modeling and try to improve. Probably 7 hours spent on this so far, I'm taking my time because I'm trying for a fairly realistic representation.

Cohen the Barbarian

Well, it's been a hectic month or so at work. We've been developing an intro and teaser for a kid's animated TV show for a while now for 2large productions and I hadn't had any time to work on Cohen. Once we sent Dan off to MIPCOM with his DVD though, things quietened down significantly, so much so that I'm now on holidays for the next week and a bit.

Having more spare time has meant that I could finish off Cohen. For me, finishing off a model is more a case of becoming unable to see it properly, losing my objectivity, becoming exhausted and throwing in the towel. It could be heaps better, but I'm better off moving onto the next challenge and trying to learn something rather than tweaking and re-rendering for weeks.

Cohen Update

Some texturing, lighting and hair work on this model

Cohen Update

Just an update on Cohen.
I'm approaching the retop stage for the costume elements and then it's on to texturing and figuring out the displacement map settings which has proved difficult in the past. Also sorting out the fur whihc is always a pain.

Cohen Face WIP

Just some work on Cohen's Face
still lots of details to put in, although much of the lower face will be covered by beard

Cohen the Barbarian WIP#2

Some updates on this character
All the costume elements are standins and will be redone in MAX.

Cohen the Barbarian WIP#1

Another Discworld inspired character. This is based on the art of Josh Kidby from the Discworld fable "The Last Hero". Cohen is an ancient barbarian hero who refuses to die. So far I'm just blocking things in to make sure I have the proportions right. The devil character wasn't going where I wanted so I had to cut my losses on that one.