Sketchbook: Huffer

huffer

 I'm a graphic designer who recently quit his graphic designing job (for unrelated reasons) and is now trying to get in the industry. I'm trying to come up with a solid portofolio in exactly two weeks, after which applying to local developers here.

At my last job I did mainly graphic design work, posters, catalogues, packaging along with a deal of light product design projects.

I have been messing around with 3dsmax, other software and workflows for years but I always did exercises and never finished anything, so I hope posting updates somewhere will help me focus.

Piece number 1:





Is a low poly (1500 tris) diorama of arctic animals and a dashing flamingo, with hand painted textures. I might go over these again after finishing the next piece, which is:



A futuristic riot gear cop. I'll follow the usual workflow, high poly in 3dsmax and sculpting cloth in Zbrush, bake normal, texture, rig (if I have the time). I'll also do an enviroment for this character, and that will be piece number 3.

To fruitful updates!

huffer

At the end of the first day I'm half way with the head and helmet. There are tens of things that I'm not sure I'm doing efficiently, like what can I sculpt, what can I do in 3dsmax, how much detail goes there, etc. So far only the face mask is sculpted in Zbrush from a base mesh in max, but I'll have to sculpt the folds and wrinkles in the rest of the clothes.

I want to have many different materials on this character like transparent plastic for the shield, skin shading, eyes, cloth, metal and plastic.

huffer

End of day two. The workflow I am comfortable with - base mesh everything in 3dsmax, import in Zbrush and sculpt the cloth layers as a subtool with the hard surfaces in the same project, reimport in 3dsmax.

It doesn't seem that deal faster sculpting something in Zbrush (except organics), for instance doing the boot with laces, I can't find the same control over the mesh and it's painstakingly slow and not as sharp. More studies to be made.

huffer

Update over the weekend. High poly almost done, now I have to figure out how to modify it to get a good normal bake over the low poly.

huffer

First bakes. Any comments are appreciated!

huffer

Next update. Bakes are completed, ambient occlusion and normals, started work on texturing. I learned the importance of getting unwraps straight and hiding seams..they're a pain!

huffer

Started to work on posing him, added some extras. Still have to do the specular map, transparency for the visor and model and bake a cool portable radio (with a glow map). Triangle count is 14000 so far.

huffer

Almost there. Minor tweaks left in the skinning, pose and textures.

huffer

I'm calling this thing finished for now. I learned a ton, mostly on planning my scene and making calls on what can I model, sculpt, or paint after baking. Comments are appreciated!

huffer

Some hard poly and zbrush sculpting practice:



Will try to bake a low poly from these.

werb

I like your stuff and really enjoyed your low poly arctic environment there!

huffer

Thanks werb! That was a lot of fun to do, whipping up some quick meshes and spending the rest of the time painting the textures.

I redid this chair in a more complex manner and set up a Vray material in preparation for a diffuse bake. I'm working on an interior previz as a showcase piece.

I used a VrayDirt, Tension modifier to get concave/convex zones and a Z-axis Fallof to split the chair and create different masks for the different zones, this was the result after adding some noise maps instead of the flat colors.

huffer

New thing - I'm getting accustomed to using modular pieces in preparation for a complete building. Here's a WIP. I had to add extra geometry to the low poly to get a good cage push, will optimize later when creating LODs.



I'm creating some traffic poles with signs and traffic lights, security cameras, etc:

huffer

Update, started work on texturing:

huffer

I'm calling this project finished, with more images here. It was a lot of fun on the texturing part - can't wait to do something similar again







In the meanwhile, here's an arm I'm working on (to be used in a FPS perspective, subdivision surfaces). I did everything I could in 3dsmax, and will take it now to Zbrush after correcting some topology issues.

huffer

Well well well, 2 years later, landed the perfect job in the field, everything is going smoothly.

Now I'm working on a sort of Wild west scene, making an wood wagon loaded with props. A good exercise in Quixel suite 2!

huffer

Learning substance designer: