Metroid Chozo Fan Art

dtschultz

Original post: I always liked the Chozos from Metroid, and I wanted to do a redesign and play with some new processes. 95% of it was done in ZBrush with a little work in Modo and Fusion 360, and it was rendered in Vray for Modo, with some post process work in Photoshop.

Thank you so much for the honor of putting me on the banner, Polycount!  I've highlighted a few of the things I wanted from this project. Let me know if you have any other questions.

I really wanted to use this piece to try and push myself to learn better ways I can use Zbrush's booleans to get more and more of my shape work. I show a simple example in the last two images of some of how I've been using the booleans. I starting extruding less and just using cutters, because I can always go back and change the shape or the depth of the cutter instead of having a fixed extrusion like in my old way of modeling. This also show how simple some of the work was. I didn't want to make things too busy or add in detail into places you aren't actually going to see in the final shot.  This is something I've always struggled with, because I love getting lost in little details, but if you're going to get anything done as one person making a shot, it is very important to learn how to edit and figure out what's most important. It's a never ending struggle.

I also wanted to try and learn how to use Vray. I still love KeyShot, but I feel like I've hit a ceiling in trying to render out environments with KS, and Vray is obviously a beast in this area. I know I only scratched the surface, but I am really happy with it. The rendering times were nothing compared to what I used to experience with KS. I love the lights and all of the post process effects and render passes. Vray gives you a lot more control, and it seems like it is perfect for what I need.

This was also about continuing to push my ability to come up with my own designs. I love doing this kind of work, and it's just fun to exercise these muscles and hopefully improve from project to project.

Higher Res here:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rGKeJ

Final



Grey Render



Zbrush



Zbrush with all of the cutters.  I know it's hard to see exactly what is going on, but if you compare it to the image above you can see how much I used the cutters for a lot of the extrusions, etc.



Examples of simple, but effective boolean work. 

jose.fuentes

I love this! Great work!  Im curious about Vray in modo, I use modo at work but we use their default render.  Do you set up your materails the same?  or are you using V-Ray materials?

wormo

Very cool.. dig the lighting. What part does Fusion 360 play in your workflow?

dtschultz

jose.fuentes said:

I love this! Great work!  Im curious about Vray in modo, I use modo at work but we use their default render.  Do you set up your materails the same?  or are you using V-Ray materials?

Thank you very much! You do set up your materials in a very similar way. I did use Vray materials and I made some presets out of them. I attached an image of a couple of materials just to show the similarities.  I really like the Vray blend material, where you can setup masks to blend between the different materials.

If you are interested in Vray, Grant Warwick has an awesome class to help you get familiarized.  He's using Max, but for the most part it is very similar to what is in Vray for Modo.  https://masteringcgi.com.au/course/mastering-vray/

dtschultz

wormo said:

Very cool.. dig the lighting. What part does Fusion 360 play in your workflow?

Thank you very much!! I didn't use Fusion that much for this piece.  I only used it on a few small canister like pieces I have in my IMM brushes from previous projects. I tried to do almost everything with Zbrush's booleans and dynamesh just to try and push how I work with them.