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.

Lost Concept Challenge Result.

Well turns out , after voting- I won the challenge.!I gotta say I am really happy about this! Really enjoyed making it and so it was very nice to win.
here is the link.

Final Images for Challenge

Lost Concept Challenge
Here are the final maya and zbrush renders that I submitted. Had some good advice for the sack and it did improve, but I think its not there. Didnt get enough fine detail into it.
Will always think to do a proper lit and textured version, but you never know. Had a great time with this, good to get some rest now.
I will watch the voting over at cgfeedback to see how I do.

Lost Challenge Update

First pass on the sack in Zbrush. Not feeling it right now, some work to do.

Lost concept Challenge

Right so work continues on this piece, here some un-smoothed renders.Got most of the geo I want done. Now its time to take the sack into Zbrush, I am hoping to finish the sack sculpt tonight which then will leave me one night to final it all, tweaks, renders etc.

Female Head W.I.P

When I did the pin up challenge I was never that happy with the face. And I did some work for the woman with M.A.k machine but that still needs work. So I been working on this slowly, really slowly. I found it was really good to make the planes for the face, quite like how it looks like this, but not sure how to more forward. Sure it will happen. Be nice to finish so I can attach to bodies.

Lost Concept Challenge

Here is the block out based on the concept art and colouring stage. I think I have most of it sorted out. Now can start the hard surface part.

CG FeedbackChallenge:Lost Concepts

Going to do the challenge over at cgFeedback. Chose this one by Christian Pearce. Its a cloning tech thing, from District 9. Did a quick colour in to see what I need to make and figure out the tubes. Will be cool to make as its hard surface and some organic.

Sand Test

I have been looking at the sand in some of shots and finding it a little dull. So to address this, I tried to take the mesh into Zbrush and work it up.Wanted to keep it lose and have fun with it. Here is frame of what I got.
When I first started on the film I could not see a good way to work this sand up, not with the resources that I have. And it wasn't till Decimation Master came out for Zbrush 3.5 that I could see a way.Really helps to give the characters of feeling of being in the world, rather than walking on it. Now I dont think I am going to animating this ground, its very heavy, so have will to choose where I put it carefully.

Zbrush 4

I got my update to Zbrush 4.0 going last night. I needed to get a larry render out. Going into maya with decimated geo is not much fun really. So I wanted to try this BPR rendering out and get a turntable done. I spent most of my time setting the SSS that you can now hook up in zbrush. I just hooked up my painted ED map to the texture and used a preset. Its not perfect by a long way, but I can see this will be getting plenty of attention.

Larry Bust W.I.P

Back to Larry.. This has a long way to go.I wanted to focus in particular on painting the SSS layers in zbrush and detailing the skin. Here are my wips so far. The lower wips was my first renders out of maya but I was not mad about it, the upper one has everything tweaked.They are both using the same maps on the SSS but I did some work on the eyes texture and a blockout of his outfit. I have to rework some of detailing and change the coloring of the skin, but for now I am looking at the general feel of the maps.
Also in the piece I decided to get some hair renders. I have used the fur a fair bit, but always avoided the hair and it can be more trouble than its worth. But for this I think it will be the right way to go.

Final Pin up

I did some more work on the pin up. I wasn't able to get everything right in time for the challenge. Main area of work was sculpting the face, so I made her more expressive. I did some adjustments to the feet, legs and fingers. I did some touch ups to the rendering, softened the shadows, moved some lights,and made some eyelashes. Really had a good time with this and can't wait to start my next one.

Final Image for Pin up challenge.

Here is my final image for the challenge. I am pretty happy with how this came out. It was great to finally make a female body, and a pin up. I have been wanting to do a pin-up for ages so the challenge was a good excuse to get it done. I would like to think that I will do some more Pin-ups in the future.

final Sculpt for pin up challenge

Just the latest sculpt, almost the final one. Still have some work to do on the face I think....

Face Details Sketches

Here are some practice sketches. Parts of the face this time. I have the excellent book Portrait Sculpting by Philippe and Charisse Faraut, so this me working through this book.

Larry Render W.I.P

Decided to try a new light setup for Larry. I found the old one, which was good on the Krieger work lacked somewhat in feeling. It didn't pull any details out. This setup is an improvement, sculpts out the form and is more reflective of the character personality.

Latest Larry W.I.P

Here is my latest work on Larry. I tried to sculpt hair for the first time, was hard but I am sure will get easier. Started from a base mesh from maya. Rest of the outfit was modeled in maya also. As for the head, I have spent the most time on the eyes area, lift the right eyebrow for some expression, but didn't go nuts, just another element to work into the piece gently.

Larry the Certifiable W.I.P 2

After looking at the reference for Larry-my old comics, I decided that what I had was ok, but I had lost some of the character. This WIP work was moving the elements around to address this. I did some work to the mouth and eyes also. Well most of the head got some work done. I am almost there, soon I have to do the shoulders and the hair, this as I found out thanks to my wife helps hugely in balancing the bust.