Sketchbook: Michael Klement

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Hi people,

my name's Michael Klement and I'm a 3D hobbyist enjoying 3D art and game dev. First of all I want to say that critique is very welcome and I appreciate you taking the time! My goal with this Sketchbook is to post a piece of work once a week.

I'd describe myself as 3D generalist and my ultimate goal is to make games on my own as a hobby, so you will see different kinds of work here. I am also dabbling with traditional 2D art for concepts but my experience there is very limited. If you want to know more about my person, you can find my introduction post at polycount here.

My tools of choice are: Blender, ZBrush, Substance Designer, Substance Painter, Photoshop, Unreal Engine 4 as well as Pen & Paper.

Note: I will also post works done by following a tutorial which I will mention in the corresponding post then, including a link to the tutorial so you can tell what I added to it whenever I can (free tutorials).

As for the usual social stuff:

• Artstation
• Sketchfab

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Here's my latest piece done by following a YouTube Tutorial:

I added the skyship and did some post-processing. Rendered using Blender Eevee. I also did a quick animation, also rendered in Eevee:

https://youtu.be/S5UA4JHBwSk

I am aware that there is some noise/flickering. Not sure what the cause is, maybe it's from the Depth of Field or post-processing I did.

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Tried to exercise cross-contour lines this sunday by drawing my Lego Wall-E. I tried to keep the details low to focus on the cross-contour lines:

Noticed too late that he was too broad. Also I really struggled with the perspective of his arms.

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Phew, quite some time passed already. Finally found the time to improve my Stone Floor material in Substance Designer.

Before:

After:

Tried to improve the clarity, cleaned up the colors and brought out the forms more.

Here's an in-game (UE4) Before/After:

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Worked this week on a blockout for an obstacle in my game: A stone pillar for a wizards' tower. The idea is to put a (magical) light into the cavity in the middle to make it a bit more interesting.

And here in-game just for a quick size-check (no material applied, that's why it's so dark):

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Added some details to the lighted pillar to make it more interesting and also refined the general shape a bit to make the lines flow better:

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Did a sketch of a Landscape built with geometric shapes following a Drawing Course on Udemy.

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Another sketch to practice drawing a character from geometric shape, following a tutorial course:

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First pass of a high poly for the simple pillar:

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Added cracks and damage to the pillar:

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Refined the damaged parts and added a bit of noise for pore details:

I also put on a Smart Material in Substance to do a quick in-engine test:

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I added some geometry in the low-poly to support the high-poly details that change the silhouette of the pillar:

With that, the bakes turn out really nicely in-engine:

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Started on the high poly for the lantern pillar tonight:

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Aaaand some more work today:

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Quite some silence in here. I was busy working a project I didn't want to post here while it was WIP since it was a 3D printed christmas gift for my wife and I didn't want her to stumble over it by any chance here (despite her not knowing this forum, but sillier things have happened). Will post it in the coming days.

In the meantime, a friend asked me to "nurglify" some Space Marine shoulders he sent me. Here's the source model I received:

And here's my nurglification of it:

Still a novice with ZBrush but I had some fun with it. More to follow.

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I've just published what I've been working on most of december on Artstation:

A 3D printed model of the Stargate.

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Finally some time again to work on a second variation of the Nurgle Chaos Marine shoulders. Still in an early phase, though:

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Finished the next piece and made 2 variations out of it:

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Didn't get around to post in some time due to a month long game jam that mostly required my skills as a coder.

I did some modeling exercise from the book Digital Modeling though:

And I am also doing an old tutorial from Blender Guru since I like sci-fi stuff:

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Been working on the Spaceship Corridor Tutorial these past weeks. Think I'm happy now with the current looks so I call it finished:

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Long time no updates, but I was diligently working on some stuff. For one, I'm working on a stylized piggy for 3D print:

That's an exercise project in conjunction with a stylized sculpting course in ZBrush I'm doing right now.

As another side-project I was doing a dungeon tile for the Castle Ravenloft board game in Tabletop Simulator:

Tried it in-game with some quick WIP texture:

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I did some refinements on the Ravenloft tile, added a cross at the top so it's not that bland anymore. Also added some beveling on the big edges of the archway:

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Finished the Ravenloft Tile (see here for final piece)

I started to work on another level tile for the game I currently do with a friend in UE4. It's the final tile to reach in a puzzle game, so I made it a trap door. So far I finished the low-poly, next step is doing a high-poly sculpt:

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Some work on the high-poly: