Doing hard surface

Anthony_

Hey guys, I was just wondering if anyone could help me with blocking out mecha type robots been struggling to get started with this piece from Marc Brunet, any help would be great! I wanna use Zbrush or Maya to do the high poly model.


Marc Brunets, Shifts end concept art.

musashidan

This is a project I did a while back. 100% Zbrush hard-surface character. I also posted up a breakdown thread that might be some use to you.

https://polycount.com/discussion/168591/wxs-07-depopulator/p1

Brian "Panda" Choi

^Yes to that

Anthony_

Yeah that's really helpful thanks, will give it a shot, trying to not be to precious is something I'm gonna have to work on most haha

musashidan

@Eric Chadwick Is that allowed, Eric? You already front-paged me for this back when I did it.

musashidan

Anthony_ said:

 trying to not be to precious is something I'm gonna have to work on most haha

That's it mate. If you use the sculpt/retop method you do have to force yourself not to noodle too much on the concept sculpt by refining all the edges and whatnot. The fact that you retop the parts with very minimal geo does all that work for you in cleaning up the surfaces and crisp edges.

Eric Chadwick

Ok, your wish is my command. Still a kick-ass piece tho!

musashidan

Eric Chadwick said:

Ok, your wish is my command. Still a kick-ass piece tho!

@Eric Chadwick Thanks man. Ah, maybe it would be no harm to keep it front page......

musashidan

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

^Yes to that

Are you referring to the Arse?

Eric Chadwick

Just make 'nother one, and we'll get it up there!

musashidan

Haha! I'll get right on it.

sacboi

musashidan wrote: 

This is a project I did a while back. 100% Zbrush hard-surface character. I also posted up a breakdown thread that might be some use to you. https://polycount.com/discussion/168591/wxs-07-depopulator/p1

Ah...I remember seeing this on CGTalk as well. Blew my mind then, (***note too self***) will definitely keep an eye out for your next one. 

Anthony_

Hey guys, been doing some blocking out recently, would love to know what you think trying to understand how this is going to function is a nice challenge, but maybe I should of started on the outer shapes first what do you think? I think I'm putting too much into the block out to.

Love your work too @musashidan , your process has really been helpful to cheers o/ 

musashidan

Thanks mate. Glad it was useful.

Good start. However, I would say you're already bogging yourself down from the start. The blockout phase is very important. It allows you to judge relative scale, see what works in 2D Vs 3D(look at the woman's legs in the 2D concept. They are impossibly positioned in the machine), see which parts you don't have to waste time creating, iterate on the design without committing yourself to changing something that you've already taken too far.

Once you start noodling and concentrating on things like the chair at this level(the back will never be seen so why waste time sculpting it?), and the pose of the woman, you're already slowing the process down significantly. Focus on the 'grand scheme' at this stage, not panel lines on the back of the chair.

The importance of the blockout stage can't be stressed enough. This is the time to try and lock down the design with the most basic of forms and primitives.

Anthony_

Thanks @musashidan, taking on board what you said Im gonna stay in base forms for as long as possible until I get the forms and make sense of it The character is also finished but I will be tweeting her later. Also this mech will be in the Overwatch style so that's something I will be taking into account thanks again will be back sometime soon with some updates hopefully o/ 

Anthony_

Hey guys, been chipping at the shapes and the overall size still struggling not to get to carried away but here's where I'm at. As I'm figuring how the mech functions I always get into the smaller details its so annoying probably gonna get some more ref, been using a lot of DVA as it has organic shapes and is to the style I want to go for. Also how should the character be when creating a seat, in a seated position or just out of the way? I also still think the pieces are still to big compared to the character so I will be getting to that next, thanks

musashidan

You can eyeball it pretty accurately as you luckily have the woman in the concept, which gives you a real-world dimension to reference. Let's say the woman is(for heroic purposes) 6 feet tall. You can just put your thumb and index to the woman and measure the proportions that way. So if 1 woman= 1.8m, then the mech is approx 4.2m tall by my calculations. This way you can use the woman as a reference point to size the rest of the proportions from.

In this case it does indeed look like your mech is way too tall.

As for the position of the woman, as I said above she is impossibly placed in the concept. This often happens when translating 2D to 3D. You have to make design choices that often have to deviate from the concept to accommodate the nature of building in 3D. I would build the seat and pose the character to the seat design.

Also, you should try and blockout in much simpler forms until you have the proportions figured out. Just use cubes/cylinders/spheres. Otherwise you're fighting against dense dynamesh geo all the time. Not so bad on the shoulder pads as it's just a blob, but the legs are already somewhat detailed and you will find you've wasted time going in and sculpting way before you have the primary forms in place. This is no different than adding pores to a character's face when the primary forms are far from finished.

Anthony_

Hey peeps, I needed to try harder to forget about details so I am trying to just block out with the snakehook and re-dynamesh everything because details have really been holding me back with this cheers, I have also been resizing everything whilst never! touching my pen haha, that's been my cant detail anything approach. Thanks again @musashidan