5heepman's Digital Sketchbook
vertex
Howdy howdy howdy!
I'm just getting into digital sculpture, hoping to refine my hand to a point where I can enter the videogame industry as a 3D modeler (although my ultimate goal is to work independently). Unfortunately, I'm a 3rd year college student and only now realizing the sheer depth of what I still need to uncover.
My background is more in the fine arts, so my perspective is a little different. I'm also doing some 3D scanning work - I'll be sure to explain what is what for each image.
Anyway, I could use advice on basically everything - workflow, presentation, modeling, rendering, compositing, retopology, texturing, so if you've got something to say, please say it.
I'm just getting into digital sculpture, hoping to refine my hand to a point where I can enter the videogame industry as a 3D modeler (although my ultimate goal is to work independently). Unfortunately, I'm a 3rd year college student and only now realizing the sheer depth of what I still need to uncover.
My background is more in the fine arts, so my perspective is a little different. I'm also doing some 3D scanning work - I'll be sure to explain what is what for each image.
Anyway, I could use advice on basically everything - workflow, presentation, modeling, rendering, compositing, retopology, texturing, so if you've got something to say, please say it.
Replies
3D sculpt in Mudbox. Rendered in Blender (cycles).
3D sculpt in Mudbox. Rendered in Blender (cycles).
3D sculpt in Mudbox. Rendered in Blender (cycles).
as for your question about advice, it all depends on what you're trying to make. I think the most important part is to think ahead on what you're about to make. Is this going to be for a game? whats my target poly count? etc etc.
Keep posting though I'm looking forward to your stuff.
PS: I'm also from Dallas! you should go to the Local drinkups for the IDGA and meet some people
Right now I'm trying to get used to digitally sculpting, more than anything - I haven't been thinking too hard about target polycounts / other technical questions like that. It's more like: should teeth be a separate object? Is my anatomy believable/accurate? Is this how I should be displaying it?
But I would definitely like to be making game-ready stuff. But I'll start keeping track of triangles, if that's important information. And i know that I have to think about getting these wrapped to low-poly forms, but I'm gonna deal with that after I get more comfy in Mudbox, I think.
I don't drink myself, but the IDGA does sound like a good idea.
Clay sculpt. Scanned in Scanstudio, rendered in Blender.
Lord, was this ever a wrestle to scan. And then I spend a silly amount of time building a low-poly body for it, that didn't really function to mask any holes. It just feels good to have it off of my hands at this point.
Finished watching diebuster, and really wanted to do something quick related to that, so here's an imagined BUSTER MASHEEN. He has dreadlocks.
Been messing around with rendering a bit. These are experiments, to figure out in what way I can display my sculpture - I printed these out on some faded newsprint, which softened them up, made them look much more organic. It was a really lovely effect actually - I might start doing more of them.
Little doodle, trying to get used to 3D space. Digital sculpting has been slow going, especially compared to my clay work. I feel really weird working this way - I assume it's just a matter of not being used to it, and the more I work the looser I get. It might also be my work-flow. I'm trying to build everything from primitives (cubes), but I see some people building a low-poly base mesh to work from, or even using a 'default body' that they skew and contort before sculpting. Not sure about each method - the latter sounds like some kind of cheating. But I saw a Riot employee doing it that way, soo...
Yeah, these feel super clumsy. I've switched from Mudbox to Blender, cause of dynamic topology, but it means my stuff always looks low-poly when I'm working on it, and sometimes that makes it hard to figure out my dimensions.
Also, everything seems too fat. Tips and tricks are always welcome, especially when it comes to workflow.
Sculpted and rendered in Blender.
Definitely still clumsy sculpting. I think I'm zooming in way to fast on detail areas - and then the whole sculpt looks wonky, and then I smooth it all over out of frustration. Also, Blender's default material makes it really hard to see what's going on, but sculpting with the full lighting on lags - gotta figure out a solution.
Digital material really is a media all of its own.
Also snake hook is the best thing ever.
Doing high-poly stuff as well. My machine, unfortunately, is a laptop so my polycount does have a pretty hard cap though. Which is annoying both because that makes sculpting the finer ropes of flesh trickier, but also because sculpting a smooth surface just feels super good.
I think I can tweak a bit more polys out of these, but I am definitely a little worried about how hi-res my portfolio pieces can actually be.
On a high note though, this guy is miles better than my earlier figures. Yay progress!
I seem to have found a way to quickly generate these figures! They are actually sourced from the sculpture above, with the help of an armature and several modifiers.
Looking into getting a copy of ZBrush, cause jeez I'm a senior in college and I still need to get into that program. In the meantime I am still doing high-poly sculpts, it's just that these are more interesting.
Building these from a longsword manual I found. Really satisfying to render - the environment is inspired by the Giant's Chamber from Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.
Gave a few new colors a whirl, not sure I like them better than the gold. These sculptures are the same as some of the previous, just destroyed further. It can be hard to decide how much I want to tear up the sculpture - right now I'm keeping them at the 1000 face mark, but these here are closer to 300.
Changed back towards the yellows.
I think normal uploading is broken? I had to do this through HTML, usually I can just use the [img] tags. Also the editing interface is weirdly double-spaced now?
Anyway, brought out a new shader. Glass surface, emmision volume - it let me get pretty dark in the environment, which I appreciate. They remind me a bit of the bodies from SUPERHOT.
More Zbrush practice. I'm in a really weird ( and frustrating ) place with the body right now. I think I have some hang-ups on building a 'proper' body, in the sense of proportions and a certain conformity to the accepted themes of bodies in high-poly space. But there's a lot of frustration in that. Maybe it's just part of the process, I have to work through it - but I am tempted to start moving away from the hard logic of human figures, focusing instead on the joining of muscle and bone, and the weight of mass, and just building new bodies out of those forms.
Working on a new album cover, this is one of the process shots. Array + build modifiers.
Yeahhh, album cover is done. Check out the EP for free here. It's a series of remixes/covers - influences and samples from FZERO, Metroid, Chrono Trigger. Pretty great stuff.
It took me forever to get the text to cooperate - i'm still on the fence with it. I didn't really plan the rest of the image around the text, so it ends up feeling a little stuck-on. Gotta plan typography earlier in the future.