Sketchbook: Stanislav Dudas

Dust117

Hello there!

I'm currently working as SQA Lead, but every day after work I'm learning to be 3D artist, as painting & art was always my passion. I decided to create this sketchbook to keep track of my progress.

Any comments are welcome

I have finished Blender Guru "Donuts" tutorial, but I thought what it would be like to live on a donuts... decided to create my own low poly island.

Dust117

Day 4:  I finished  "Anvil" tutorial by Blender Guru, amazing stuff.

I decided that for each finished tutorial I will try apply it and create something new.

Yesterday I started working on a sword. Made just quick sketch in PS. Based on that I started working on a Model, Unwrap & did some basic sculpting.

Notes: Will have to check some sketching tutorials later on. I messed up a bit with sculpting, so baking Normal map didn't work out the best, next time need to be more careful around the gem area.

Dust117

Day 7: I had to re-do the basic model a bit as I couldn't bake Normal map. Now Normal map seems ok. Started working on the Materials, looks fine. Handle needs some fixing. For that I need to learn Loop modifier, but for now in this version I will leave like this.

To Do: Principal shader and I need to check more about PBR. Later on also Loop Modifier.

Note for myself: Next time you learn something ... pick something easy, like a dice, or toothpick. Same as with Java, you start with "Hello World" but not with inheriting abstract classes....moron.

Dust117

Day 14: Finished basic PBR tutorials & articles from Polycount, amazing stuff. Finished Blender Guru's "Principal shader tutorial".

To Do: Blender Guru's Mars scene, I need to learn basics of rocks and grass, later on trees as well.

Note to myself: Substance Painter, looks amazing. So much stuff to learn. Focus is on Environments & Props.

Dust117

Day 18: Well for Blender Guru's Mars scene I need some Rocks, so I had to check some tutorials how to make rocks. It's a whole science. But with those tutorials I learned to Sculpt Rocks, Retopo - Squads (the hard and proper way) or triangles (automatic using Meshlab), combine Normal maps, Hide Seams with Clone brush (Texture Painting), Surface imperfections & import to blender from another file (Append). It's definitely not perfect but now as I can easily make some rocks hopefully I can work on the Mars rocky scene.

To Do: Blender Guru's Mars scene. Micro-displacement, Blender 2.8.

Note: 250 Triangles. It's a masterpiece rock.

Dust117

Day 26: Finished Blender guru's Mars Scene tutorial. Modified it a bit so it looks like desert, let's call it "Artist who fell in love with CG rocks". Took a while but I learned so much. Whole scene is made up with 3 rocks, smallest rocks 250 triangles, medium 2500 and few bigger ones with 5000, no texture, just normal map. Render time was quite good, about 5 min.

To Do: I really need to learn Substance painter, painting in Blender is quite painful. But for now postponing as first I want to improve sketching a bit.

Note: Still so much to learn.

Dust117

Day 35: During week I made a quick draft of a Runestone, during weekend I made a draft of that rune in PS and tried multiple different ways how to sculpt it. I learned how to create and learn custom brushes for sculpting, dynamic topology etc. For render I used high poly mesh and post processing done in PS. Finally I found a way how to change colors on edges, one way is to use ambient occlusion with backward faces, other way to use Pointless attribute. 

To Do: Grass, Trees. 

Note: Substance painter will have to wait a bit, quite a long tutorial, hard to focus on it after work. Sketching all the time to improve as well.

Dust117

Day 41: Last week I spent most of the time exploring more about creating CG nature, mostly working on creating Grass using particles, Trees using Blender modular add-on, Procedural rocks & rock generators. Also updated PS to have symmetry tool, it's so cool.

To Do: Substance Painter Introduction.

Note: Prepared kind of learning schedule + backlog, determined that for whatever else I want to do, proper way to texture objects is essential. After finishing Substance Painter Introduction will try to create some concept weapon from scratch.

Dust117

Day 55: Last few weeks I was mostly learning basic workflow in Substance Painter & implementing it to my workflow together with Blender. Did a couple of very good tutorials and as a result to apply what I learned I created a basic Military knife from a picture.

Next to do: Hammer. I have an idea of a cool battle hammer for quite a while, it's time to make a basic sketch & start working on it.

Note: I need to buy better tablet, sketching on one place and looking somewhere else is kinda messy.

Dust117

Day 62: Made a quick sketch of a two-hand battle hammer. I had to use paper because doing it on that **** tablet would take like 4x more time. There will be green energy gem in the middle. The hammer has special skills of bringing nature back to life, so I will prepare a small environment in a final render. Managed to make basic low poly model up to 5k triangles, prepared High poly meshes & separated them by groups & materials so it's ready to be exported to SP. Maybe I will sculpt the hammer head a bit as it's supposed to be made of stone, the rest is hard Iron. 

Next To Do: Sculpt more details & paint the hammer. 

Note: Spent whole weekend figuring out the structure for the project & meshes so I can export it to Substance, but luckily it's ready. I can play with details now. I will probably buy Wacom Cintiq 16, reviews looks OK. 

Dust117

Day 65: Finished Texturing in PS and SP.

Next to do: Flowers, Grass for environment.

Notes: Few lessons learned:

- Poor design - poor result (found myself struggling as I didn't add details to sketch & colors)

- Stone - sculpt, then retopo (next time)

- Low poly mesh - Bevel - there are some hard sharp edges which could be avoided

- Texturing - use more details next time also prepare alphas in Inkscape f.e.

Result looks not as bad as expected, but can be improved. I will add small environment to improve the final render.

Dust117

Day 70: Learned how to make procedural flowers.

Next to do: Sketching. Office Scene. New & Broken.

Note: Following weeks I will be traveling a lot, then I want to divide my focus on 2D and 3D. Daily Sketches & meanwhile working on some environment scene in 3D.

Dust117

Day 108: I took a small detour - bought Wacom Cintiq, so currently investing time to learn basics of digital painting, concept art, stylized art. I will post some better results here, then continue on 3d, creating my own designs.

Also meanwhile learning Houdini, interesting approach for modelling.

Dust117

Day 121: Later on I will return to concept art, it's fun but takes too much time. I will create some concepts because I want to have some pieces in portfolio which are my own ideas, but for now I will probably focus more on Houdini procedural modeling.

Meanwhile I have finished Sci-fi rifle in Houdini, looks pretty good in my opinion, and I like the procedural approach. Then I exported .obj to substance, finished there and rendered in Blender Cycles.

Modeled: Houdini
Textured: Substance Painter
Rendered: Blender (Cycles)
Post processing: Photoshop
Poly-count: 3252

Note: I quit my job to have a bit more time on 3d modeling, but in couple months I will have to find something back in Slovakia. So for next 2 months I need to focus as much as possible on Modeling, by the end of September start building portfolio.

Next To Do: Houdini Tutorials.

Dust117

Day 129: Finished procedural simple building asset tutorial in Houdini.

Note: Amazing stuff but I will need to learn more about VEX syntax.

Next To Do: Finish Concept of the sword, try some more Houdini tutorials, try to create sword in Houdini.

Dust117

Day 131: Finished the sword 4430 tris. It looks good, nice thing is I made the base mesh in Houdini. Painted in Substance painter. Didn't finished the concept, but I think lineart should be enough. Next thing I need to finish stone altar & add some smaller props to finish the sword scene.

Note: Need to check more tutorials for Houdini.

Next to do: finish sword scene.

Dust117

Day 134: Finished the altar for sword in Houdini as well.

Next to do: Houdini procedural modeling, VEX.

Dust117

Day 139: Finished Ammo Crate in Houdini. 

Note: Need to learn a bit more about exporting FBX and OBJ from Blender. 

Next to do: I want to do some additional changes to make it a bit more procedural, driven by box input, low poly with limit up to 5k and make it a proper reusable asset. 

Dust117

Day 142:  Well after that ammo crate tutorial I have decided to go completely mental and make system to create any crate/box. It was amazing, but so complex that  I almost lost my mind. Yes I could create like 100 different variations with all different things, handles, tops, bolts etc,  it was driven by simple box input but damn it was boring. So today to regain my sanity I learned how to make procedural rocks in Houdini, made one example, + I made realistic ocean shader. 

Note: Time to change the way how I try to learn this, probably better will be to find some way like semi-procedural Houdini-Blender-Substance workflow.

To Do: Will see, something fun, to regain my sanity.

Dust117

Day 157: So, instead of regaining sanity I have decided to go mental with rocks, and created whole set with different textures. All rocks are procedural with 5k triangles (could be less but for now it's ok). 

Note: Started organizing my assets.

Next to do: Procedural Maltese house, and maybe one scene in Blender just for fun. 

Dust117

Day 159: Ok so before I will start working on procedural buildings I will do one more small scene in Blender. Created some brushes in Houdini, all of them have 400 triangles, only exception is first two where I replaced brush stroke with blender hair particles(they will be in the focus. Ultra quick sketch, just to have some idea how it should look like. 

To Do: Finish Brush scene & Props. 

Dust117

Day 161: So I finished the render, it looks cool. As paper I used one of my older acrylic paintings. 

Next to do: Procedural house probably, will see.

Dust117

Day 164: Started working on the procedural  Maltese house, collected some reference images, walls and railings are finished. So far there are just 2 types, still need to parametrize them but looks more or less OK now. UV's...that's another story. I have a workaround but for now I haven't figured out how to stack islands & add all to one texture set. For now it's going to be separated to multiple. 

Note: I wish somebody could help me with Houdini...

Next to do: Props, windows, balconies, doors.

noniol

Very nice progress! Keep at it!

Dust117

Thanks noniol!

Dust117

Day 168: Procedural Maltese house v1. Generally it's fine for first asset building, I still have gaps in UV's, as I am just learning I can't transfer it to Unreal or Unity for now, so I divided house to multiple meshes, painted in Substance and rendered in Blender cycles. 

Note: works like charm, but those UV's... need to figure out better way for assigning materials in future.

Next to do: I need to improve on presentation, so will check some tutorials on OBS Studio and how to create Gifs, and some simple rotation animation. Also once I get some time improve the asset, create some more urban style house. 

Dust117

Day 180: Learned how to do few more procedural things like pipes, UV shuffle, stairs, base and few other things important for building details. Still need to figure out how to set whole row to have only balconies etc. I can bet it's something stupidly simple but I will figure it out later.

Note: I got a bit bored by doing the same building all over, so for now I will focus on learning something different, animations, maybe basics of Unity engine.

Dust117

D228: Finished tutorial for character creation, workflow Houdini modeling > Blender Animations > Unity rendering. mostly I needed to have basic overview about Unity engine.

Dust117

D249: Finished couple Mineral generating assets, learned a lot during it. I have an idea to create kind of alien egg using the procedural minerals & hexagon ball. Will work on it tomorrow, maybe even to create a small animation as well.

Dust117

D250: Finished alien nest, also added small animation. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fha65_XO9hQ

Laughing_Bun

Looks great especially animated. Would Love to see the rock formations grow also

Dust117

Thanks very much I will try that later, now I'm busy with another animation

Dust117

D266: Last two weeks I have been trying to animate flower bloom in Blender, learned a lot (mainly that it just really matters where you put the bones :P, don't use particles  for petals etc.) dust particles for the scene, camera focus, new Blender denoiser. There's quite a few issues, but final result looks ok. For now I will keep it like this and focus on another animation. Probably tank or something like that.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Fnsvipc1nE

Dust117

D269: Started learning how to rig Tank tracks, quite difficult setup with all those constraints, but the result looks great. Need to add wheels and top rig & create concept and proper model.

Dust117

D287: Yeah the tank..... so the rig is good, but I figured out I have no concept. And I don't want to use another concept for now.  So now I will focus again on concept art. I would like to create at least one concept per few days, ideally every day at least something. It's already improvement if I compare it with my older drawings Will post here something if it's not absolutely horrible. Also my friend is working on a game with spaceships, so I might focus more on that & Houdini hard surface tutorials. 

Dust117

D460: Yeah, I took a small detour, I still want to become environment artist and I love working in 3D, but I got an amazing opportunity to work on 2D game in Unity with my colleague.
We set up the art style to be Pixel art with using combined techniques. I pretty much love this approach, as for some assets I am using my Blender skills, for polishing and most of the core assets hand drawn sketches/sprites in PS, Most of VFX are done in Unity using various techniques as well. I mean, I learned so much, and I still am, doing all the ships, planets, props, environments, interface, animations, VFX, it's just amazing. 
I will post something here from time to time, just to keep up. 

Dust117

D467: Spent last couple days on interface improvements & animations, but finally I got some time to work on planets. For left and right planet I created some sprite-sheets with 2 sets: main and bloom. For the Sun I did little more experimentation with VFX Graph and Particle systems. Looks amazing in my opinion, but will see if we use it in game, might be a bit hard on performance, so I might update it a bit later.