Gears of Mike...

I doodled a few designs in my sketcher a while back and I've had it in mind to mock some of them up, so here is a high poly model of one of them.

The idea behind this mini project was to get comfortable with working with subtools in Zbrush. As you can see it's made up of a large number of parts. The main donkey work was done in Max in an evening and the next step will be to rough it up a bit in Zbrush and then use Decimation master to knock it down to size. (No neat topology here!)

I really like how Epic use a neat contrast between different materials in their environment assets, especially between stonework and metal and I'd like to try and get a sense of that dichotomy here.

I AM THE CRAB!!!!!!!

Believe it or not I have been beavering away at some of the course projects although I've been a little slack in the posting department.

This post seeks to rectify that!!

Here are a few pretty pictures of the finished crab and some WIP!!

The Zbrush Renders are done using a beautiful material called a framer, which does an incredible job of showing off the surface detail. To make my job easier I used a trick in zbrush to make picking out the detail a far shorter process:

Basically you unwrap and texture the asset as you would normally then in Zbrush you can load the texture and apply it as an alpha directly on to your model (go into the texture menu and click on 'make alpha'. You may need to invert it in the Alpha menu!) You can then either use the inflate deformation in the tool menu or you can go over it with a brush so you have more control over the outcome. Then you just pick out the details.

This crab is as big as a fully grown man.

Getting Inside Epic's Head...

So I've been checking out Epic's Environment work on Gears of War just recently to try and get a bit of inspiration for ways in which to carry out my FMP.

Their main Environment artist Kevin Johnstone has been posting quite prolifically on Polycount just recently, which has been a fantastic reference for their Hi Poly work, he has also been giving tips on how he produces such amazing Hi poly Sculpts.

The only problem with the thread is that he is really coy about sharing any low poly wire frames of the assets. I don't know whether this is down to genuine lack of time on his part or whether the low poly wire frames are a little crap compared to the highpoly stuff.

Don't get me wrong, in game, when the assets are running in the engine they look excellent! But it could be down to them using a polycrunching utility to produce quick low poly assets from the high. These utilities provide great low poly meshes for Hi to low baking but the result is a messy, technically poor looking wire frame.

I've already found out from Heather that for the Final Major Project, polycrunched meshes are a no no, which is a shame because it would really save me time. I could devote more development to Hi poly assets. So the only alternative would be to model a relatively over-tesselated mesh in several pieces in Max and then subtool them into Zbrush where they can be sculpted and roughed up a bit!!

With that done I can make use of the Zbrush retopo tools and build a low res mesh over the top.

From what Johnstone has said I can tell from the above examples that the main payload of building has been accomplished in Max in many little pieces. For instance the top pillar with the metal detailing was a splined shape which was then made to fit around the half cylinder by applying a Patch Deform Modifier to it.

Something else he said which will make me think carefully about the way I approach asset making is that he spends a bit of time thinking in advance quite carefully about how the piece will fit together modularly. So planning is key!

Alambic Configs...

Here is a little more sketchup madness.

I really want to play around with the composition of the actual Absinthe making apparatus.

These are the main componants that I'm playing around with here but once I've settled on a layout that I like, I'm going to add in the plethora of pipes and what-not that link all of the machines together! Whoop!

I have an idea for baking in the metallic information on the Alambics and metal work too. I'm either going to bake in a metallic shader effect in Max using one of the Architectural materials and Mental ray OR I'm going to work out the method for baking out metallic shader materials in Zbrush. With these as a base I can work grime textures in on top and gaussian out the reflections a bit so they don't appear too perfect!

More FMP development stuff!!

Here are a few more renders from the courtyard area for the FMP. I've managed to track down a few renderers for Sketchup which can do outline and photo real renders. The only problem is that they are free trial for a month and then you have to pay for them!!

Don't they realise there are poor student bastards out there!?!?!?

So I'm gonna have to get as much use out of them as possible!!

...Closely Follow by Number Two..!

I've been getting aquainted with Google SketchUp this weekend in order to quickly knock together some ideas for the layout of my FMP.

There is also a very good reason why I'm using this over the nightmare and misery of Max and one reason only...

Google have thought about the people that have to use the software.

Thank you Google!

The interface took me all of ten minutes of watching YouTube to figure out and the ease of modelling and just how completely intuitive the modelling style is, is just a breath of fresh air!!

The idea for modelling is subtractive and consists mainly of drawing shapes on planes and then extruding shapes into and out of existence. Genuinely I think Studio Max could learn alot.

So this is just a simple layout of what may be the external courtyard area, it is not finished but this will be the first in a number of works in progress which will flesh out the project in weeks to come.

First Post of the New Year!

This isn't the grand opening the first blog back really ought to be. I have however found some really interesting 3D work be a website called http://www.graffititechnica.com/.

Well worth a look, check out some of their work below...

It's impressive what you can do with some splined shapes and a bit of Mental Ray!