headwire

Here's the the poly flow for my head, hopefully most of the loops work.

ChurchTower

Progress shot, zBrush textures + photoshop decals

Loincloth help and a thanks

I started putting clothes on her, however, The loin cloth and I aren't getting along. Any tips on how to make that piece of cloth easier? One of the troubles I am having is the symmetry isn't working on the 3D plane. Maybe it was a glitch?

Also, Allan, the nose is supposed to be alienish. Her face is supposed to have a humanoid face without being too human. (I tried to refrain myself from going all super human >.<)

Alexa, I fixed the problem you have caught with the sterno clavo mastoids or whatever the middle name of those muscles are called. I also fixed the jawline as well. Hey I posted that the face looks scary LOL. Thanks a ton for the comments you two :)

Thanks a ton Gavin with helping me with the lips. I found out how useful the actual pinch tool is. It's my favorite tool to use now!

the final countdown

kk, so for this next and almost final week. you should have:

your highpoly done and painted
your lowpoly done. unwrapped would be best

the last bonus week will be pizza, rigging, and posing your alien on the stand that you had made. so if there is anything you want to change for the stand, wrap it up in the next week and a half

also, for this model, since we modeled it with good topo in the begining, you should be able to just drop it down to a low subdivision and export that to use as a starting point. or if you prefer doing it in zbrush feel free to do it that way as well. im going to do a combo of the 2 i believe. max for most, and zb for the head.

next week we will bake and go over using photo overlays in photoshop for our textures on top of what we project from the highpoly model. also we will probably do a wrap up of issues and bugs we have discovered over the course of the class and go through the fixes for each.

you guys really kicked ass this quarter. the class started pretty slow and all the days off really threw a wrench in the flow of my schedule, but once you guys started getting to know the program a little better you all really kicked up your game a notch. those last creatures you all turned in blew me away, there wasn't one that didn't show great improvement and understanding of the program.
so, good job guys

Textures

More zbrush textures, going to do some more color variation work before I take them into photoshop. Diffuse and normals are direct exports from zbrush.

My head! Scary, yes, but still working on it...

So the face looks a bit scary...I am still working on the darn mouth and cheek area. I think I've sculpted it 5 times already. Got another 1,000 more flubs to go before i get it right. Sigh. I do like the little nubbies I gave her that lead to her tentacles :D And yes, I still have the hands to go. At least I only have to model 3 fingers >.> Again, still working on the angry pouty whatever you call that scary look face. Will be doing that tomorrow of course. Time for bed now.

Hands

Been trying to form the hands, here's what they look like so far.

progress so far

still have a bit more to do in the face, tentacle and hands region.

Gladiator update

I absolutely hate feet especially if I have to model them from my own. Here are my ugly alien feet modeled from my own. ugh...

Rhade's continuation comment

These images came from Gavin's "Presents" folder. The first one is the creepy lady in the spiny scary contraption stand mabobber. She is of a general female porportion usually around 7-8 heads high. I chose that picture for 2 reasons: 1. Her arms are longer than usual and 2. the detail isn't in the middle of the body. If you take the first image and apply the detail proportion and anatomical proportion to your alien, I think she would appear to be less bulky and boxy and more attractive. I understand from your post that you want her armor or something on her to be parasitic. You could have the parasitic parts coming from her head and running down her arms and coming up her legs and merging with boots. That way your character won't seem top heavy and it will seem more balanced.

The second image I chose because it was similar to the first however you don't have that freaky bony stuff on the woman's arms to lengthen them. Instead you have the standard ideal proportion anatomical wise. Just like the first image the detail and "bulk" is on the arms, legs and head. The only thing different is the detail is only on the hands and forearms rather than the whole length of the arms. Still attractive though.

Lastly, the Alien from Aliens. That bugger is creepy as hell. I picked that image to show the head versus the body proportion. That head is LOOOONNNNNNNGGGGGG. However, it works becuase the body is long and extremely thin too. Lengthening your character and thinning her out a bit will work wonders and will hopefully hid the bulkiness of the body and armor. I love the helm of your toon in the profile view. If you thin out your character to an unhealthy weight, the thick body armor would make the body appear to be more proportional thickness wise.

I am not the best communicator out there so if you have any questions, let me know and I will try to explain in class. I am also a retard at this blog thing and embedding images into comments is too complicated for my mind set. I hope this helps a bit :)

Progress Report

This what I have so far. I have to say, though, I've been so hung up on the overall shape and anatomy that I kinda' forgot about the details. I don't suppose anyone has any ideas I could implement?

-David Woo

OMG THIS IS AWESOME

octopus chase

Need more time! Urrg! (And yes that with an Orc voice)

Alright, here is another pass on this Char. Done away with the old design since it wasn't good enough and gone for a more organic and primitive feel. What's on her head and back isn't exactly an armor per se but a mutualistic/parasitic symbiosis. (If that actually happens on Earth but hey it's alien) During youth, the thing is ritualistically attached to the body and will grow with the host. It will meld with the host by connect itself to the circulation system and live on the blood of the host while its own biological byproducts(useful for the host) becomes literally "power-ups" for the host. The nervous system is also melded so that the thing can act as a bio AI. So that's a short "bio" on this alien

Design wise, I think I need to tweak more on proportion between the two and of course more work on the "thing"

That's all for now...

Doh!

Sorry Gavin >.<
I am going to have to post my gladiator sculpt tomorrow since I forgot I modeled her in 3ds Max 2010 instead of 2009 (darn files aren't compatible!). I haven't updated the program on my main comp and will have to dish out my laptop tomorrow to put her together. Stupid mistake on my behalf. Sorry bout that.

Question regarding the homework

Maybe someone could help me with this one. After you revamp your model in max and take it back into zBrush, how do you use the projection technique to project your sculpted model to your fresh new model?

Having problems masking cavities with this sculpt for some reason.. tried playing with the cavity profile and intensity, still can't get it working so colors are rough.

spamming posts :P

hey guys, for those who wanted to go to the zoo...i have some good news...and bad news if you are nicole :P saturday will be my zoo day. sunday it turns out is earthfest. so balboa park will be jam packed with hippies and yuppies and protesters. so i will be there listening to music, eating awesome food and drawing. so....saturday for the zoo. everyone is welcome to join me at earthfest as well.

alien links newly unearthed

hey guys, found some cool links i thought i would share
http://www.shiflettbrothers.com/forum/index.cfm?page=topic&topicID=3629

http://www.davidmengart.blogspot.com/

http://www.shiflettbrothers.com/forum/index.cfm?page=forum&forumID=2

enjoy. also i just got my dr. grordbort books in the mail, so i will be brining that in next week

my gladiator

hey guys, just thought i would toss this up and show how things fall together. see, you make all of your shapes super solid, then once your big pieces read all you have to do is toss on some detailing and some noise, bam, good. i'll go over this when doing the arms in class next week. if there are any questions in the mean time for the head and torso of your characters (the homework this week) please post here or email me.

Scott Eaton - Full of Win

His site; It is full of win

CROCODILE!!!!!!

Concept sketch for the costume

A rough sketch for the armor and clothing. I would be much easier for me to come up some details in zbrush. But this is the general idea.

Girl Gladiator - Second pass more defined

Here is my female gladiator in the second pass. I think I might be lengthening her a little bit.

player

mesh for my tennis player gladiator

Human Mesh from 3ds Max

This is the mesh from last week..

Female alien...first pass

Here is what I have so far. Now if only I remember how to mirror sculpts....Nope don't have a clue. Does anyone remember how to mirror what you sculpt? I think it was under masking? @.@
Well, she's done once I get the mirroring done. Time for bed!

Box model

Here is my model so far. Yes I still need to fix a few things before I turbo smooth and take it into Zbrush for sculpting. I know I was struggling with box modeling before and decided to try it again with a previously made model I created. I do not know what I was thinking when I made that other model. THIS is SO MUCH easier!!! Anyway, I will post updates on my model when I take it into Zbrush.

Block'in Model

This is what I have so far. Level 4 with 75264 polygons. It's an alien so going for some imaginary anatomy that is in close resemblance to human anatomy. This is the initial stage so might be doing changes later on. She is going to have some cloth/armor on but either body tight or partial as not to block the organic flesh.

That's all for now. See you all in class.

this week

hey guys, wanted to post up my pic from class and a link to keep in mind

the link is for neil blevins. he is an amazing cg artist and loves to share his knowledge. he is very technical and likes to break down how things work in order to better recreate them in 3d. this is a habbit everyone should get in the habit of doing. when trying to make something look metal, dont just paint it a certain color and add specularity, find something that is made of what you are recreating and play with it in different light scenarios. see how satin is very crisp along the threads but the highlight stretches along the forms. most metals have small grooves along the surface from the polishing process. how dirt builds in cracks, and what the best way to get that would be. how light plays across a dusty surface vs a clean surface. so if you pick a glass off of an old table you can relate that merely with a spec map. which parts of the skin are glossy from built up oils.

well, luckily you dont have to figure most of this out yourself. neil has made a cg education portion to his site. so read through it and hopefully it will help you see a lot more of what is going on around you. i know his site has helped me a lot and whenever i am missing something i go to his site first to figure out how to send my work over the top.


and for our over all models and the process i generally follow, look at this.

Master Plan - Phase 1

I think I found my form. I organized the polygroup and now I'll begin sculpting. I should note that I grouped the fingers and toes separate from the arms and legs because I had such a hard time with those parts in my creature model. I hope not to repeat those so I'll try this new approach.

-David

p.s.
I don't suppose anyone got the "Fantastic Mr. Fox" reference I used for the title of this post? I recently saw it and fell in love with it.

Humanoid Base Model

We'll I guess I better get started, then. I have no idea what his head will look like though, so I left it as the rudimentary block we've been working with this semester.

-David

Creature_QuadPed

I honestly have no idea where my texture went on this file @.@ Anyway, I did a bit more detail like you asked Gavin. Here is the final product, I think I'm going to pass out now...

Concepts for alien gladiator

Here are my concepts for my female alien gladiator. I think I will be going with the one above due to the hair framing the face. It doesn't look as bare as the one on the left. I did have a call out however, my darn tablet's driver crashed photoshop and well, I lost the call out. T_T I know I should have saved...
Anyway, I can merge some pieces of predator costume to her or would that be too much?

A little late but here's my creature

I know, it's a little late for posting. I figured out a way to make my creature more evil looking...I think. I need to create and sculpt the claws and teeth. I am curious to know if my creature is too dark. Any comments would be helpful :) Thanks!

Plant 1

Here's 1 of my plants.

missing classes

hey guys, seems like all the days off this semester have been right in the middle of key parts of a project and for that i am sorry. tonight i will do a quick demo on sharpening up not only your sculpt, but your texture as well to give it a nice crisp look. help you guys with your sculpts most of the class, then go over the workflow i have been using to make my low res in zbrush lately. "i break it up and put it back together in max"

alright guys, i will see you tonight

More beastie update. I still have to work on the hind leg and tails and front toes a bit, the toes are problematic in the way the zspheres reacted but I think I wan work around them. I was starting to sculpt out like. beefy musculature on his legs, but I think I like him better smoother as it contrasts his back scutes. I'm going to do more scute-like things for his tail so that instead of a hammer-like tail it's going to be more.. pick-axe-y.

Creature Painted

Here is my creature painted. I went back and tweaked the legs some more and decided to make his claws a sub tool. I will be adding them along with the eyes and tongue.

update

Here's a shot of my guy at a lower subd, he does have hair but it's not looking whispy like I want.

Yet, another catch up

This is my stand.

-David Woo

Creature in Color

Here is what I have so far. Of course could use more time to fine tune stuff but it's pretty much done.

Catching Up

This is my second plant. Its surprising how fast ZBrush can hammer out a simple model. That Topology tool is a amazing!

-David Woo

Creature's head.. no alpha textures yet, waiting until I finish defining the rest of the body before I do that. My uhm. subtool master isn't working in that it's not letting me mirror so he's only got a tooth and eyes on one side of his face :( Will also be modeling the rest of his teeth and tongue on separate tools

Playing catch up...

Here is my second plant. It is an exotic bell flower. What do you think?

Tomorrow, working on rocks and base :O

Changed some proportions, angled out his head more, working now on musculature so it's still kinda gooey but getting there!

Stuff so far

Here are the second plant that I redid to fit the scene better. And the final stand.









Also here is the creature so far. Still need to fix the arm and leg bit more then start on the alpha and color after.

Will post update when I get to that point.