Slowly found some time to work for on my Gnome character. I had some instability issues with Zbrush when I was trying to apply various surface noise on the hat, so I ended up going with texture based bump and displacement.

I'm now about 1/4 the way through the texturing and shaders so hopefully another update really soon.

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The idea for my next image came to me from a few different points of inspiration. One part came from the mother of one of my step-daughters friends bought us a small hairy gnome ornament, it intrigued me as it had a lot of hair and a beard and its hat covered its eyes. Another part of inspiration came from chatting to some mates at the pub who were talking about living in a giant hat..all very bizarre I know! Ultimately the idea was born, I wanted to create an interesting gnome character that had a village or house in his large hat! Lets see how it turns out.

Heres a couple of WIP screens.

Building a base mesh in Zbrush.

Creating some clothes in 3ds Max.

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I've finished my 'thumbnails' for my latest zbrush project. I do like the idea behind 'thumbnails' and it definitely helps with the create process in the early stages and helps lock down a more solid design base. Following the instruction from my Bryan Wynia video, he used photoshop to extend the thumbnails, which I have also done, but I feel my sculpting is a lot stronger than my drawing.. I also didn't do as many, only 4 in this instance.

I've decided to go with number 1 below.

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Hey all, so i'm back in Zbrush after a bit of a break playing with Unity.
I've been following some tutorial videos on CGSociety by Byran Wynia.  He uses an interesting concept called 'Thumb Nailing' which basically involves speed sculpting three ideas in Zbrush then using photoshop to paint over so you ultimately are left with 20 or so thumb nail images of potential designs. I really like this idea and I hope I can come up with some cool concepts.

I'm going with the idea of an 'Alien host' I want to make something really confronting and shocking. So far I've completed 2 sculpts and I'm excited to do the third.

Heres a quick look at the speed sculpts so far!

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Still plugging away at my goblin prison project. I've now pretty much completed most of my Zbrush work for this phase and I'm happy to say I've finally bedded down my workflow of Zbrush to 3dsmax! This has taken a lot of time, experimenting reading etc, but I now have a method that can get great results in Vray for 3dsmax! Looking forward to some great renders!

As a side note I've read a lot of tutorials and posts stating that Zbrushs UV workflow doesn't yield good results, especially when using displacement maps. I must say I don't agree. At least in this project using UV master or even the AUVTiles has worked nicely, even with poly painted textures. Still, having said that, if you are painting textures in 2D say in photoshop then you'll need better UV layouts than the ones Zbrush generates.

So to show off my new workflow, here is some quick Vray renders of the goblins accessories, all using displacement maps on low poly meshes and also using poly painted textures.

Dagger in Sheath

Pants and Belt

Leather Shawl 

Leather Cap

Bone Pendant 

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