A damaged pillar prop for a competition at work...
polycounter lvl 11
Hello all, our studio (TT Fusion) recently held an in-house competition to encourage all artists to get their zbrushing and photoshop texturing juices flowing again (since our current pipeline has not involved much of this lately) and this was my entry.
I completed it in two days, the weekend before going on holiday and I was really happy to receive first prize of £50, which I'll hopefully use to buy some digital art related books, so any good suggestions for good books are most welcome!
I'll probably not re-open it now since the competitions over now, but any and all comments are welcome as I can always take them on board for my next thing, cheers!
I completed it in two days, the weekend before going on holiday and I was really happy to receive first prize of £50, which I'll hopefully use to buy some digital art related books, so any good suggestions for good books are most welcome!
I'll probably not re-open it now since the competitions over now, but any and all comments are welcome as I can always take them on board for my next thing, cheers!
Replies
(btw- i like the ruined warehouse on your website)
...the only thing I could think of is exposed rebar sometimes has small concrete chunks stuck to it.
I alwyas wondered how people get such crisp details on their presentations. Mine alwyas look like fuzzy crap.
@ serriffe: hehe thanks, a raise would be nice, but for now i'll make do with some nice new art books with the prize money
@ Mordin: thanks for your compliment on my ruined scene...it's still WIP, but i'll start a thread for it this week hopefully
@ Navi271 : thanks for stopping by - I'll outline my workflow for you at the bottom
@ loopriz : hey that's a good observation, a few chunks and some more colour variation would be a good addition to those!
@ ToffeeApple : Ha, I don't often post work (if ever) but that's so flattering to hear that something I've done might inspire another artist
@iniside : thanks for checking this out, i'll list a few tips below for presentation, maybe you'll find something helpful
Here's a few points about my workflow for this pillar, hope they might help someone:
- I load a basic cuboid into zbrush with the correct height, width dimensions and some divisions...I didn't model anything detailed in maya first as I knew I wanted a very 'organic' pillar and so I wanted to push and pull a lot in zbrush and play with some fun shapes
- I then sculpted......all day heh! clay and move tools for the large shapes. Then polish, flatten, smooth, pinch, dam standard etc to flatten off areas and create hard edges/definition, I spent a long time, not even thinking about the low poly at this stage, just getting as much character in as possible
- I used alphas for some details, though sparingly for large surface details as more of these will come from crazybump later
- I used dynamesh to create a low poly mesh, then into maya and quickly delete and recreate edges to create a nice topology whilst still retaining the accurate dynamesh sihoutte. This method literally takes about 10 minutes on an object that's quite low poly like this.
- I unwrapped this using face selection and the standard maya unwrapping tools, on certain uv shells i'll straighten the edges and relax the interior points to make texturing easier, this can help especially when matching seams and for the pillar, I localised deformation and any stretching, to the rubble section.
- Then bake out normal, occlusion, height maps etc from Xnormal
- Texturing is then done using these maps as guides to paint over/under in photoshop...I think zbrush/mudbox can be great for texturing, but sometimes it's nice to work on the colour and specular together, so that every layer/group in one has a complimentary group in the other. I then create heightmaps manually and take them into crazybump, then overlay the normal map output in photoshop
- I also like to make changes to the colour map while in flat lit mode in maya and then I think it's important to refine your other maps whilst viewing the model in the application you plan to present it in...so the specular and normal I will observe in marmoset as I make them.
- Finally when presenting I choose a default lighting setup, but one that has a strong directional light, that gives good contrast across the model, in order to pick out the bumps and to provide nice highlights on shiny materials. I spend a while rotating lights and tweaking material values in order to highlight nice areas and different materials. Finally when it comes to rendering I'll output at 4 times the size, then downscale in photoshop.
- Then I like to paste the renders onto a complimentary background, nothing too distracting and focus the attention on the model with a vignette/border etc
Ummmm I think that's about it...lol. Thanks for checking this out, i've been working on a fair few portfolio things lately so will have to get them up soon too
Cheers!
Once again, amazing work!
@ Dimfist : Hey thanks for the compliments, that's a good observation, it was very difficult finding a nice balance between soft and hard sculpting to make sure that part read as weathered concrete. You're right about making adjustments to the texture, there are a few rocks etc that I sculpted into the high poly that I hoped to pick out with a darker colour, sadly I ran out of time with it though :S Thanks for your comment
As for the wires, i'm not at work atm so don't have the file to hand, there is a wireframe on the third screenshot down on the left (quite faint though admittedly), but I could get a few more images tomorrow perhaps, if people are keen to see...
The shape of the rebar doesn't really make sense. I'd expect it to be straight overall, but bending in the direction of the upper column. I'd also expect a bit of rust on the rebar.
You could have done more with weathering, from rust streaks from the various metal pieces to water damage and flaking or worn paint.
You could also have added some debris around the base of the column - both random trash and pieces that have broken off the column.
There's no visible evidence of what caused the damage. A solid strike from something truly massive might work, but then I'd expect to see a different shape to the break. A large explosion would also work, but then the break should be mostly circular with some remnant scorch marks.
I thought i'd attach the main picture I kept referring back to when sculpting this, it might also explain some of my development choices - I chose this because it has lots of character and seemed like making something similar would be a challenge!
@JoshVanZulyen : Heh thanks, I appreciate drool, I might look into the sketchfab addition, not sure how to do that at the moment though, will check it out later if I get a chance