Sketchbook: Merlynn

Merlynn

Starting my sketchbook today! I will mainly use this to post WIP updates of personal work, practise my 3D skills and experiment with new techniques. Feedback and helpful links are always welcome

Merlynn

In order to brush up on my Zbrush skills, I started doing a little doodle. Started from a sphere and it somehow turned into this little guy:

Merlynn

Decided to go for a more stylized look. I think about texturing him as some kind of brass statue. Also a good opportunity to have a look a Maya quad draw for retopology.

Merlynn

Figured I could add a few more props and turn him into some kind of piggy mount.

tmartyn807

Nice cute piggie dude!

 I feel adding in more crinkles around the nose and crows feet around the eyes would add a lot. Also perhaps you could define the cheeks a bit more and pull them out further too to exaggerate his squished face.

Merlynn

@tmartyn807 thanks for the feedback! Good point concerning the cheeks. I finished the sculpting and did the retopo on the body. Realized that he comes off as lowpoly due to the flattened cheeks. I need to fix that on the lowpoly mesh. Here are some pics from the final sculpt and the first retopo.

I'm pretty happy how the retopo turned out! Must say that quaddraw in Maya is a really great tool and I find it very easy to use. I probably won't do any retopo in 3Dcoat or Zbrush soon.

katelucky

Hah. Looks cool)

Merlynn

@katelucky thanks

I finished the remaining reotopo work and got a very clean bake in Painter. Started doing some texturing. I'm aiming for an aged brass look with a nice patina. Something like this:

first base layer

with some dust applied

Need to add more green patina next

Merlynn

First Iray test render. Still need to tweak the material a bit, but the colors are all there. Pretty happy with the result!

Merlynn

Refined the texture some more. I think the previous one was too glossy. Also added a little sign. I imagine it being part of an exhibition at a museum

It was a great exercise to brush up on my Zbrush skills, do some retopo and focus on texturing.

Calling this done:

Merlynn

I always wanted to try out a combined Zbrush + Substance Designer workflow. Decided to take today evening to give it a try.

I stared out in Zbrush following this amazing tutorial by Flipped Normals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTRKo6EgXVs

and took the result into Designer to create all other maps based on my sculpted height map (just the rocks, the mud is done in Designer).

There is no roughness on it and to be frank the sculpting is super simple. But it's already pretty cool for just two hours of work   I will definitely experiment with this further.

Merlynn

Experimented a bit further. I like the layout on this one. The tiling is a bit too obvious though. However I'm starting to get the hang of this workflow.

Merlynn

Improved the layout and fixed some artificial looking gaps:

Merlynn

I worked on it some more. Did some tweaks to the Designer graph. The basecolor is much better defined now and goes more into the direction of a handpainted stylized look.

And here is the Marmoset beauty render

Merlynn

Just realized the lighting is too realistic. I need more vibrant colors to sell it as stylized Feedback is welcome

Merlynn

Sculpting a somewhat Mayan ornament to go with my tiles.

Merlynn

Spent some more time refining the sculpt and scrapped the old middle piece

Merlynn

Started laying out bricks around the ornament.

Merlynn

Updated render. I will most likely wrap this up now. The combined Zbrush Substance workflow is pretty cool. I will keep using it for more textures in future.

Merlynn

I had a long weekend and took the time to get into Blender 2.8. Coming from Maya this was quite a struggle at first. Luckily there are many amazing tutorials out there. Two days in I got something done and I'm starting to get the hang of it.

Merlynn

Started to blockout another blender scene. I really like how the rock formation turned out but now I'm having a hard time deciding for a theme.....

Merlynn

Decided to go for option 3 and turn it into a wintery scene. Turned the rocks into this little guy. I still need to work on the actual fire. And maybe a few mushrooms for decoration.

Merlynn

Added the mushrooms, some icicles and the fire. I like the shape of the fire. Not sure if the icicles are already too much...

allmighty_thunder

oooh thats cozy

Merlynn

@allmighty_thunder thanks that's what I was going for.

I added some fog and adjusted the icicles. I figured they looked too flat. With a little thickness they are much nicer. I need to play around with a few settings to get a nice rendering/presentation and call it done.

Merlynn

Final shot

Merlynn

Started on a new project, a clerics mace. Here is the current state of the highpoly. It's done in Maya since I started it before I switched to learning Blender. The goal is to do the UV layout in Blender.

Merlynn

I didn't like the tip. It looked too clunky and so I refined this areas some more.

Merlynn

I got inspired by Tim's (Polygon Academys) latest Trim sheet tutorial. I spend the weekend zbrushing. Here is a first rough pass on baking and texturing. I would like to use the final sheet to create a small environment. Something along the lines of a Greek bath house scenery,

Merlynn

I sculpted in a few more cracks and refined it a bit more. Also did some test renderings in marmoset. Experimenting with adding paint to it.

Merlynn

I didn't like those large rock slabs at the bottom and decided to replace them with tiles. I sculpted a smaller section of tiles in Zbrush, tiled them across the whole surface in Maya and baked onto a plane in Painter. I'm still experimenting will colors and am not quite sure which direction to go. At least for now everything tiles perfectly. That's already a success

Merlynn

Turned the trimsheet into a column

I works pretty well already.Once you got your model Uved into strips, it is really fun moving them around on the trimsheet and trying different looks

Merlynn

Reworked the pillar top and bottom some more, added a few splits and removed the blue color from the large tiles.

Started to built a few more modular pieces using the trim sheet. However, I think I need another texture for the floor and ceiling as well as the walls.

aedan9

Wow! You do an amazing job! Keep it up, definitely interesting to see with what you come up next 

Merlynn

@aedan9 Thanks really happy to hear that.

Merlynn

The trim sheet also works quite well as fire or maybe water bowl

Merlynn

Making some progress in Unreal. I imported all modular pieces and setup the materials. I'm still missing corner pieces and maybe a curved piece or an overhang to break up the repetition. Playing around with the lighting and realizing that I really need to learn more about proper light setups in Unreal.

Merlynn

Some more layout and light experiments. The trim sheets works surprisingly well as coffered ceiling!

A pretty cool trick I found for super fast texturing those ceiling pieces. UV map once planar from Z and then cut along the diagonal lines into 4 triangles. Stack them and you are pretty much done. This way you get no seams at the corners and the patterns wrap nicely.

Merlynn

Added some stairs

Merlynn

I started to experiment with props to give the scene some life and add some interest.

Merlynn

Decided to remove the wall behind the center piece and let some light in.

Merlynn

I added more details to the center piece and refined the stairs. I bent them down in the middle to indicate usage and added a few extra modeled stones. The floor and orange wall material is still from the UE starter content pack. I need to replace that in the next iteration.

Looking back at the previous screenshots I can tell the scene is still improving so I will keep tweaking it further. Any feedback is welcome!

Merlynn

I started working on a wooden pendant. It's supposed to be part of a rosary of a clerics equipment. Plan is to have it on a final shot together with with mace I worked on previously. Here is the final sculpt

Merlynn

Did the retopo in Maya and started the first round of texturing No painting done yet, this is the smart material I setup. There are several layers of colors going from bright yellow to red and finally dark brown in the "burnt" areas. I'm trying to get as close a possible to my reference

Merlynn

Sculpted a bigger wooden pearl. I really like how the ornament turned out on this one. I still need to tweak the leather band a bit and close it off. Overall I'm really happy with the feel of the wooden material.

Merlynn

assembled the whole piece and tweaked the dark pearls some more. Mainly adding some size difference and color variety to not have them all look alike. I also improved the leather material by adding some smaller and sharper details. I still need to tweak the main wooden pendant. Right now the material is procedural. It does need some manual tweaks.

Merlynn

Finished it!

I mainly tweaked the wood grain on the pendant. Painted out some of the height information to have it look less procedural. Then played with different lighting setups. The final image is rendered in Painter with iray

tinyworlds

Great work, keep it up

Merlynn

@tinyworlds thanks! Really happy to hear that.

allmighty_thunder

Thats looking great

allmighty_thunder

Thats looking great

sorry some kind of posting error