Terra.Cotta's workshop and general assortments of dickbaggery

terra.cotta

Hey folks. Terra.cotta here. I promised I would jump in here, since I silently lurk from time to time. Mostly behind bounch. Dont worry, its welcomed. He and I have an arrangement.

So ya I'm gonna try to post here and stuff.

I'm gonna start off with a little process gif for a loading screen i did recently for that eg doom set you may have seen, and a turnaround of the finished product.





More to come soon. Free feel to ask me questions and/or tell me I'm a bitch.

I have recently started streaming on twitch at http://twitch.tv/t_cotta and posting stupid self promoting bullshit and occasional pictures of lunches (not really) on twitter as well. HOLLA AT ME BROS. @t_cotta

bewsii

Your texture work is amazing.

Potm

i envy your art skill, that set is amazing even though i never play doom!

BohSheh

I dont usually comment , but this set is really nice and unique , well done!!!

heboltz3

Wooooohooooooooo

quockhanhlk

he's here finally

Shtreimel

The loading screen is looking great!
I hope you'll do more process gifs for loading screens that you make

By the way, with what software and tablet are you working?

Do you have any special costum brushes? if yes can you give us a download link for them?

TrevorJ

Glad you decided to show your face around these here parts. Lookin forward to seeing more of your great work.

MickeyMania

The art process is very interesting to watch. Can i ask why do you prefer to start by drawing the character black and white? What are the benefits as opposed to starting with base colors or with colors in general?

terra.cotta

Oh wow thanks for all the kind words guys/gals. I will be doing some more process gifs in the future, and now that I'm streaming I could maybe do some actual time lapse gifs as well.

Shtreimel- to answer your question, I am using a couple different tablets. I have a cintiq companion and a cintiq 24hd. I opted for the normal 24hd and not the touch hd, because on my companion i always turn off the touch features anyways and photoshops support for touch is butt.

As far as software-
concepts- ps
sculpts- zbrush (rarely will make a base mesh in maya)
retopo- 3d coat
bakes- combination of xnormal and 3dsmax
textures- ps

And for the loading screen it was 100% photoshop. As far as brushes, i use literally two. Both round. One is hard edged with 100% opacity, no shape dynamics, but transfer dynamics turned on and set to opacity jitter/pen pressure.

the other is a soft edged round with 44% opacity, 35% flow, no shape dynamics, but transfer dynamics set to opacity/pen pressure.

Thats literally it. This was my first illustration in around 3 years so I wanted to keep it simple. I'm generally happy with it, but the surfaces are reaaaallly too clean for my tastes because i rendered it moreso than painted it. The next one will be a bit more painterly and I may use a 3rd brush. Maybe.

Hope that answers your question well! in terms of specific brush technique i'd say just jump into the stream next time I do the loading screens and I can lay it all out for ya.

Jlem

terra.cotta wrote: »

Shtreimel- to answer your question, I am using a couple different tablets. I have a cintiq companion and a cintiq 24hd. I opted for the normal 24hd and not the touch hd, because on my companion i always turn off the touch features anyways and photoshops support for touch is butt.

Adobe are working on a touch-friendly Photoshop that will have normal sized icons and touch control so let's just wait and hope:D I also have Companion

Konras

I was thinking about companion as well. Especially because I sometimes need to go to my family place and that would be perfect for me. However I am worried that its absolutely impossible to work on it in zbursh without hardware shit/ctrl/alt buttons. What is your experience on that guys?

Also funny thing about 24hd versions is that they have also different screens parameters in standard version compared to touch one. Well Wacom likes to complicate things I guess...

Jlem

Konras wrote: »

I was thinking about companion as well. Especially because I sometimes need to go to my family place and that would be perfect for me. However I am worried that its absolutely impossible to work on it in zbursh without hardware shit/ctrl/alt buttons. What is your experience on that guys?

Also funny thing about 24hd versions is that they have also different screens parameters in standard version compared to touch one. Well Wacom likes to complicate things I guess...

I carry a small keyboard and have 0 problem with it.

Sorry for offtopic, Terra:D

terra.cotta

I just invested some time in working with the onscreen controls and the quickkeys on the side. I bought a bluetooth keyboard to set all that shit up, but now i never use the keyboard and i am very efficient in zbrush.

Jlem

terra.cotta wrote: »

I just invested some time in working with the onscreen controls and the quickkeys on the side. I bought a bluetooth keyboard to set all that shit up, but now i never use the keyboard and i am very efficient in zbrush.

For some reason my quickkeys kept going to default after i set them. Did you have such problem? Never tried to do that again after the update, though

terra.cotta

No I dont have that issue. Any time it updates tho it overwrites your settings, so you have to make a backup after you are done i ncase.

terra.cotta

Time for some more dickbaggery. This is gonna be a real quick turnaround for a tourny ticket. Started yesterday, got some cool feedback from some of you in the skype group. Here is the blockin. Tomorrow ill polish this shit and start the lod.

Edit: its a hammer for void. The big purple nonsense is a placeholder for a rather substantial particle. Finished version to come shortly.

quockhanhlk

awesome work :thumbup: keep it up man, post moaar!

terra.cotta

Starting to clean up the sculpt, its gettin there.

Its All one mesh, fuckton of polygroups.



You can catch me in my stream to see how i make that shit work.

terra.cotta

and....its polished. Now lets bash it up. Still strim.

terra.cotta

And the finished sculpt. Quite a bit of progress for one day eh

Vayne4800

Yeah really good! I am just wondering, why have the mesh consisting of many polygroups? Honestly I never got into polygroup usage and their benefits. Care to enlighten the un-enlightened! Thanks in advance!

terra.cotta

Well basically its a way to turn a really rough concept like single mesh into a nice polished sculpt. Notice How clean the edges around each group are? Gives me really crisp edges and the ability to select single polygroups and flatten across them without messin up the edges. Its a somewhat tedious setup, but its quite fast. And I didnt ever have to use the polish or hi-polish brush. Not even once.

Sukotto

Wow! After seeing the results, I'll have to look into this workflow for more intricate hard surface stuff.

So are the polygroups created by masking each face?

sajedene

You rock as always!

terra.cotta

Sukotto wrote: »

Wow! After seeing the results, I'll have to look into this workflow for more intricate hard surface stuff.

So are the polygroups created by masking each face?

Thats one way of doing them, yes. You could also do it by visibility.

And thanks sajadene. Yes I do. *snickers*

Baddcog

doom set is just too sick.

pior

Interesting ! Are you saying that after creating these individual polygroups, there is then a way to smooth them according to their borders ? (like some kind of tensile surface stretching, pretty much ?)

Vayne4800

terra.cotta wrote: »

Well basically its a way to turn a really rough concept like single mesh into a nice polished sculpt. Notice How clean the edges around each group are? Gives me really crisp edges and the ability to select single polygroups and flatten across them without messin up the edges. Its a somewhat tedious setup, but its quite fast. And I didnt ever have to use the polish or hi-polish brush. Not even once.

Meth... not even once...errr.. I mean. Cool!

I should try it next time! Thanks a lot mate and love your work!

terra.cotta

Baddcog wrote: »

doom set is just too sick.

Thats the gist of it, yes. IF you set up the groups properly.

terra.cotta

Pretty pleased with the bakes.

terra.cotta

Workin on a mirana set for new Bloom.

Long way to go.

teabiscuit

oo, always fun to see wips. Looking forward to seeing how well this animates!

Vayne4800

I like how you made it a chimera instead of a full goat. Awesome!

terra.cotta

Sculpt is almost done, need a polish pass tomorrow