Art of Sammy D

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!

Lately I've been spending a lot of time working on a Unity3D project, not only from a texturing and modelling point of view but also from a software coding point of view. Its been years since I actually wrote any decent code but I must say I still remember quite a bit and I've managed to pick up a lot of C# in Unity really quickly.

I'm currently pro-typing my own game, possibly for a mobile platform, if I can get something to a state that I'm happy with I will approach a few of my software developer mates and see if we can take it all the way.

But in the mean time here is a little sample of a low viking character I created for the unity project.

Low Poly Viking

Hand Painted Texture

After finishing my goblin project, which was all about high-res detail and epic render times, i've turned my attention back to low poly work for a Unity 3D project I'm working on.

I'll definitely get back to the high res stuff soon though as I have an idea in mind for my next project! But for now i'm working on a simple low poly character, i'm again tackling the hand painted textures, which is the biggest challenge for me.

But I'm always so impressed by how cool some of those textures can look. I'll post some WIP shots in a few days, but for now I want to leave you with this little gem I found!

You may note that in 3ds max when working with textures, they appear lower resolution in the view-port window. This isn't so bad when you are working on a rendered piece but if you are creating real-time art for a game engine you'll want to see your textures in high quality in the view port. This little max script lets you control it all via a handle little UI that you can make to a menu or keyboard short cut.

Nitrous Texture Tweaker

I finally completed my goblin prison warden scene. This final render was constructed with Zbrush, 3DS Max, rendered with Vray and post processing in After Effects and Photoshop. The last few stages were a little bit rushed but I'm pretty happy with the final image. Full sized image here

Things are coming along quite nicely on this project, I've learnt SO much!! This test render actually marks quite a turning point in my creative development.
I have now ironed out my Zbrush to 3DS Max workflow. Displacement with Vray works really well if the settings are perfect!
I'll be sure to added some detailed information under the Learning section of this blog relating to displacement once i've finished this project.
So the scene and all the modelling is done! (minus) the eyes for my character.
From here i'll be experimenting further with rendering in Vray and moving onto textures and materials!

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

I've been experimenting a lot with Vray in 3DS Max, a renderer that I have not had much experience in. The main reason why I started looking at this render was I found an amazing site that has a perfect displacement from Zbrush to Vray workflow.

This area was a big unknown for me as I have never taken anything from zbrush into 3dsmax before, so I needed to bed down my workflow before I could fully commit to finalizing everything in zbrush.

The artist who put together this tutorial is Akin Bilgic and the workflow can be found here http://www.cggallery.com/tutorials/displacement/

He also has some really great work worth checking out.

So now i'm going on with creating the accessories for my goblin!

Heres some Vray test renders as well.

Vray Test Render - No displacement, lighting test

Vray Test Render - Subsurface Scattering and Displacement

Art of Sammy D

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