Acid King project

Taylor Hood

Hello all, I'm LoM Chaos or just Chaos (LoM stands for a game I'm working on -Legend of Mazzeroth) Nice to meet you all.

I'm going to start a model going thru the normal pipeline and work flow of a 3D artist. The concept art is from a mate who gives me these to practice.





Here is my to do list :
(I realise people do it in others ways to but I like this way)

Base mesh in Zspheres
High poly sculpt
Retopology
import to max
unwrap
normal map
texture proccess

Sound good?

MoP

the workflow you describe there sounds good. get modelling!

not really sure what the concept is meant to be though, it really looks like it could be more interesting (some recognisable features - does it even have a face? is it big, small? i have no idea of scale here)

Taylor Hood

I can finally type.. xD

Okay yeah I updated the first image.

What do you think? Should I start with Zspheres guys? I'm kind of new to them and having a hard time imagining the stuff (even tho there is a concept right here )

SHEPEIRO

try it and find out, this sort of thing is personal preference, get your hands dirty first then ask for help

Slave_zero

take this thread as an example:

http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=64108

By finally starting the sculpting he got results and learnt something.

There is no progress without getting started. And even if you are making some mistakes at the beginning. So what? That's what you and everyone else is here for: To improve.

So once you get started you will see the progress. Post your results and updates and then more hints and suggestions will be posted in here.

MattQ86

Taylor Hood

Thank's dude! Hope I can run em' well.

Edit: Quick time, right?

MattQ86

Yup. It shouldn't take too long to block out the basic shape of this one.

Taylor Hood

I'm thinking a series of spheres that run along the way from the head to the tail.
I'm kind of worried about the flatness at the bottom and the big ball things at the top... that's all covered in sculpting right?

Taylor Hood

Alright got the basic shape. It's hardly anything so why bother posting an image right? I'll post one when this damn problem is fixed. I need to add the arms at the face area and all the litle parts on the side.. as soon as I put a second sphere on the face I get mass distortion. Same pretty much with the sides. Any help dudes?

Taylor Hood

Okay I can't add any spheres or I get distortion...just great :S

Jeremy Wright

Just as an aside, Acid King is a stoner band from California.

Taylor Hood

Haha, woops. Ohwell. Doesn't really mattter. Anyone know what the problem is I have above?

MattQ86

What do you mean by distortion? It could be that the spheres are rotated. If the adaptive skin has a twist to it try using rotate to correct it.

It could also be that you're not adding spheres to the top and bottom (or left and right) of the chain. For some reason Zbrush tends to shit the bed if you just draw them in one direction.

Taylor Hood

1 milla-second slap up pic xD I can't really do anything to the part where the head is and the side where all those other parts are. Just the end tail.

MattQ86

Not sure what you mean by stuff but if you're trying to sculpt on it you need to make the adaptive skin a polymesh first.

Taylor Hood

Okay wrong choice of words, sorry about that. I mean I can only really add spheres at the end of the tail without loads of distortion..weird.

MattQ86

Did you start your Zsphere chain from one end or the center of the creature?

Taylor Hood

Symmetry X and just went. Oh....dear the weird capped but is the head of the zpheres isnt it and the tail is the normal part..now how can I fix that guys?

MattQ86

Try moving the spheres around the head a bit. It looks like some of your distortion is coming from how close the "neck" is to the other spheres.

Taylor Hood

Thank's man, I'll try that.

Taylor Hood

More distortion ...weird...

nfrrtycmplx

I sometimes have this happen to me... make sure you don't have any bogus z-spheres hanging tout at the tip... it tends to create "Wallygons" on my machine.

Cheers,
Don

nfrrtycmplx

you don't really need that many zspheres to create that base mesh anyway... you could do it with 3 and subdivide/move/shape the actual mesh it forms... then re-top the whole thing to get the polygon distribution you want.

Taylor Hood

Thanks man. I'll try that. Do you mean reto to make the high poly sculpt once i've moved it all or do you man sculpt the high then do the retopo like normal?

nfrrtycmplx

that's another preference thing... generally i'll rough in some BS and retop ... then sculpt the high poly. But it could go either way.

Chaosv49

Lookin good

Taylor Hood

Hello all, this is an update on the sculpt. I've been PolyCount forums for a month now but haven't had the time to post and I realise you guys are pretty strict at critcising art and such. But it's for the better ofc. =]

Now, this is the sculpt so far. If you notice it says "Inspired" that means I was going for something more organic and normal compared to my mates concepts at the start.

Basically here we are: I hope you like it, because who would want to crush a guys hope on his first project for the PolyCount forums right? =]
Hello all, this is an update on the sculpt. I've been PolyCount forums for a month now but haven't had the time to post and I realise you guys are pretty strict at critcising art and such. But it's for the better ofc. =]

Now, this is the sculpt so far. If you notice it says "Inspired" that means I was going for something more organic and normal compared to my mates concepts at the start.

Basically here we are: I hope you like it, because who would want to crush a guys hope on his first project for the PolyCount forums right? =]


Peace.

Taylor Hood

Okay, I'm going to try and retopo and gonna try it a number of ways. First is Decimation Master I've not used it yet. If it doesn't work I'll do vert by very edit retopo.

Chaosv49

Nice one

Taylor Hood

Bump ;P

[Deleted User]

Yeah, you've got the right idea, process-wise. If you have access to another 3d app outside of zbrush, a box with a few extrusions would probably have worked just as well and saved you some time, but there's certainly nothing wrong with using zspheres if you find them easy to work with (I don't, personally).

Are you going to make a low poly for this and texture it? If you haven't done it before, it'd probably be good practice. This is a pretty simple model, so if you just want to learn all the steps of doing the retopo and the bake, it'd probably be a good place to start.

As for the model itself, it's kind of hard to critique because it's a big fat worm. There's no telling how it might look. But I'd say search around for some reference photos to get some inspiration for the details you're putting in. Think about the different surfaces as you sculpt them and try to make it very clear which parts are, say, loose wrinkled skin or hard exoskeletal shell, etc. That's where the ref helps a lot.
http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&safe=off&sa=1&q=macro+caterpillar+&btnG=Search+images&aq=f&oq=
http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&safe=off&sa=1&q=close-up+bug+face&btnG=Search+images&aq=f&oq=

Don't be afraid to push the details ridiculously far on something like this either. Check out this Pixologic interview with some of the guys from Epic. The link goes to page 2, where there are some pictures of a wormy bug thing by Chris Perna. (Be sure to expand the gallery at the bottom too, and check out the other pages as well. It's all inspiration folder type stuff.) After the initial shock and intimidation of how cool that is, take a close look at it and try to see what kinds of stuff they did to make it look the way it does.

And try different alphas with the clay brush too. It's fun and useful.

:icon3:And don't bump without content. It's frowned upon.

Taylor Hood

Thanks for the very well written critique there mate Yep, I have the whole deal - Max, photoshop, zbrush, Xnormal and all that good stuff : D

I'm working on a good topology for the actually retopology. I done a quick low poly but it looked really bad when the normal map was applied. I'm not sure how to unwrap the worm as stupid as it sounds. Not sure of the ideal way.

And all I have to say is that.. EPIC RULE at zbrush and all.

I'll keep that in mind with the bumping stuff. I just didn't get a reply for about more than a day..

Thanks again!

rooster

looks cool so far- I can't see the aforementioned mouth though.. if eating stuff is a big part of the concept, I think it should have a pretty grizzly maw

Taylor Hood

Thanks Rooster. I may actually do a full revamp. I love sculpting and obviously need to get alot better. I'm gonna keep trying until I get something that is really significant as a creepy worm and has loads of detail.

Taylor Hood

I'm probably going to go with something like the concepts from page 1. Do you think I could get away with a skull alpha?

Also, I'm gonna do that if it doesn't come out so great, as a second practice. Then something more like the Gears creatures altho there stuff is pro and kicks ass
Who knows.. I'll keep revamping. Does anyone have a link to that cool pinkish/flesh mat that they use?

Taylor Hood

1 minute, slap on, image Heavy..image incoming ;P
Alright, here is what I have. I went over board with detail. I'm not a big fan of adding detal everywhere but I guess it does look more life like...and a big giant Sh*t

I want to go onto the re topology now so this is were I'm stopping.

nfrrtycmplx

This looks better, but looks more like a cocoon than anything. Doesn't look like it has any moving parts.

I would try to create some contrast between the hard/soft bits (if there are any hard bits)

At the moment it all looks like a dried shell. Looking at the reference that was posted there's a clear difference between the rigid parts of the bug-worm and the soft bits (gears of war stuff). I would also look at some real photos of worm/caterpillars to inspire my acid king, if i were you.

Not really sure what the original concept was going for to be honest.

Tattooed ninja-turtle styled slug monster? If you were going to even loosely base your slug off the concept, i would suggest a more cartoony/funny style for the mesh... at the moment it looks like a hybrid of the original concept and an attempt at the detail from a gears model.

You get the process, Now it's time to work on the strokes.

Hope to see more!!!

Cheers

Taylor Hood

Haha, thanks Nfrrty. I'm stopping this project for now as I need to learn my topology in the new awesome tool 3D coat. I'll come back to it when I've learned retopologizing better. I'm gonna completley re do it infact.
For the concept - think WoW.
Thanks again.

stoofoo

No. Stop.

You've gone entirely too far with the low frequency detail. There's no single detail on it that has been refined to a non-playdough look. You should not be at a point where you are using alphas for detail. Secondly, you have used the same texture(or very similar) over the entire model. My eye doesnt get to rest on anything.

Seriously, take more time sculpting large and medium scale details. Maybe try not using alphas at all. Refine refine refine.