BPR tests

Well I was just bored the other night and wanted to play with lights and rendering a little in Zbrush with the BPR.Just 2 lights ambient occlusion and shadows. Basic material and bumpPreview mats.

Scott Spencer Workshop

Over the weekend I was in zbrush workshop, with Scott Spencer of Weta Workshop. Was great, he covered almost everything in his books over the course of 2 days. It was pretty good for me cause I have not got into zbrush for ages! So nice to sculpt and then learn the tools that are version 4.
We did sculpt all the time but I tried to get as much done as I could, here is the result.

Small improvements

We are told that things should get better the more version we do, or the more time spent on it. I have wondered about this one, in all the years that I have been plugging away at this are things really going to get much better? Got to ask yourself sometimes.
Here is a shot I am updating. Below is my first pass, which I am proud of. Hey its pretty ugly but it was part of getting all the passes and all the shots comped together. Not much has changed, I am rendering fur with raytracing, sand is decimated from zbrush, octos have SSS, Not alot but it has made a difference, and I am happy that I am still working away on it.

Latest take, 2011

First pass, 2008

Dingy Model

So i was wanting to model something again and I had seen this very nice dingy model at work, so I talked myself into needing this in one of shots, it looked empty under the house,any excuse would have done it. So 5 hours to model and then 1 hour to unwrap,texture material etc. Then I did a quick turntable, just because I can, not required at all. And down below you can see how amazing it looks in the shot!

Depth map to raytrace shadows.

As I stated in the previous post I have to render some shots with raytraced shadows. I used depth map shadows before. I think the depth map looks better, softer, more natural. The raytraced one is very harsh and the colors are different. But the depth map flickers and its just not acceptable. Got to raytrace!!

Fur render with depth map shadows

Fur render with raytraced shadows

Shot updates

Lately I have worked on updating all the interior shots with the textured files, and at the same time going over the lighting and rendering. Did find out that in many of the shots I will be rendering the fur with raytraced shadows. I had been using depth map and they are good, but in close up shots there is fair amount of flickering. Not so with the raytraced, downside is that fur look less soft. Will post up some images to compare.
In this shot I wanted to do something with the sand. Its about the most we see of the sand in any shot, however it looks dull. So did a quick zbush of the sand and got it rendered out.

Here below is the old sand


and with the zbrush sand.