My daily 3D modeling sketchbook.

Fingus

Ahoy polycount! I am taking a class at the Academy of Art University this semester where our teacher has us do a one-hour model each day, in addition to our weekly homework. It's a lot of work but I'm learning a lot! He is a very skilled modeler who works at Massive Black, and he really inspires me to push myself to become better.
This semester is all hard surface, but next semester I plan on taking his organic modeling class. I aim to be a character/creature artist so I bet I will have a blast with that!

All right, here are what I have done so far:

Week1:














Week2:

Fingus

Week3:














Week 4:

Fingus

Week 5:









And that was all the dailies I have done so far! I'm behind schedule because of GDC so I need to do two today.

Here are the bigger weekly assignments we got. They were both two week projects, first week to model and the second to do corrections and revisions. We actually got one more week on the lamp so I will get that one done today. I plan to make lowpoly cages for both of them and bake normals so I can turn them into game assets. I just need to find time. :P





Here is the reference for the lamp that I worked from: https://picasaweb.google.com/Sindre.Opsahl/Lamp?feat=directlink

conte

delicious modelling!

wake

yeah it's good to see this kind of volume. And when you say 'falling behind because of GDC' is that just because you're reading everything coming out of it or because you're a lucky bastard and are actually there?

Fingus

The latter. I live in San Francisco.

Although I didn't actually go to GDC this year, I wasn't able to get a ticket through my school and I had nothing resembling a portfolio so I didn't see the reason to spend money on it. Instead I met up with people after the convention. I went out drinking with a bunch of graduates from DigiPen that I got to know through the guy who subletted my room over the summer for an internship at Lucasarts, and some friends of mine who run an indie studio in London. Next year I will be prepared.

Fingus

All right, as you might be able to tell I got rather bored and unmotivated with these sketches so I'm going to take a different approach to this. Instead of modeling a random item from around my apartment I will do something more ambitious and model a suit of armour piece by piece. Originally I was thinking of doing a Milanese style suit of plate armour but then I stumbled upon this beautiful piece of german madness. The level of detail is making me shit my pants so I'm opting for this because it will be a bigger challenge. Also there seems to be more variation of details with all the decor and fluting as opposed to the rather clean and smooth milanese suit.

Fingus

Starting this up again. My boss at the studio I'm interning asked me to do 4 hours of anatomy study every day. Here are a few days worth of work. Not much I'm afraid, I really need to work on my speed. Just pencil and paper so far but I'm going to switch over to 3D from now on. Will try to do one every day, four hours should be plenty for that.
By advice from my boss I'm starting with hands as they have a ton of stuff going for them that carry over to other body parts. He says if I can nail hands the rest should be easy.

OverMarvelous

By the sounds of things you have a boss who knows what hes talk about. Just make sure not to only practise hands. People are intimidated by them, but they are actually really simple if you break it up into primitives. You're doing great though, make sure to keep it up!

Fingus

Yeah he knows his shit for sure. I'm learning so much stuff over there, I don't care if it's unpaid. I'm going to try to alternate between feet as well, and when I feel fairly confident in hands I will move on to other parts like eyes and mouths which are two body parts I really need to practice.

Fingus

Here's the start of a 3D hand. Thinking of doing this old school and do it completely in Maya, but I'll set a clean version to the side to serve as a basemesh for zBrush. Just 2 hours so far, I'll put in the remaining two when I get home from work.

OverMarvelous

Could give a bit more space between the circled blue part of the hand ???

Fingus

Good catch, the thumb is pretty fubar right now as it's still heavily WIP, but thanks for pointing that out! I'm basing this off my own hand so it's easy to have ones observation skills fuddled because it's such a familiar sight.

Fingus

Today's update. This is about as far as I'll bother taking it in Maya. From this point on it would just be excessive nitpicking that wouldn't be an efficient use of time. Of course unless some of you can point out some major flaws or changes that I need to do.

I'll start doing quick sketches in zBrush from simple basemeshes now. At least one hand a day, aiming to do several.

Fingus

Todays work on the hand. Put in more than 4 hours today on account of it being a weekend.

A turntable: http://vimeo.com/25957291

FinalDragon

Whew, I'm always blown away by hand studies. Such a beautiful part of the human body, I don't know what I'd do without mine.

I'm no expert on hands, but might you be exaggerating the pronunciation of the hypothenar eminence? It seems like it should be a bit more level with the in the references I've seen, at least towards the digits.

Fingus

Indeed, good catch. It is too round and bulges too much, it's very visible in the strong plane change to the wrist. My boss also pointed out that the fingers are a bit too skinny in proportion to the wrist. It's tricky to work from your own body as it's so familiar you kinda become blind to details.

Leaving the other hand alone for now, my computer is too shitty to do fine details like the knuckles and wrinkles. I may revisit it later to fix the small issues, but I think I may be better off just doing new ones. Repetition is in my experience the best way to learn.

Here is the rough start on a second hand.



And my super shitty basemesh. I see people do sketches from rough box meshes like this so I wanted to try it. Seems to work pretty well so far, but I miss Slide Edge Tool and Insert Edge Loop.

Av7xrocker97

It's....beautiful...

Fingus

All righto. Doing an Organic Modeling class this semester so time for some daily zBrush sketchiness.



Some ugly ladies done in order to push myself out of my comfort zone, which is the heads of old fat men. This shit hurts, but it's a good hurt.









And here's some stuff I did over the winter break.

allmighty_thunder

love your stuff keep it up

Fingus

Awww thank you.

This was supposed to only be a quick mouth sketch because I have other homework due for tomorrow, but I got carried away and did a pigman. God damnit.

About 3 hours of work.





I also recorded a video of the whole process, it really helps to go back and look at your process to spot areas where you slow down or screw up.

http://vimeo.com/36329873

Fingus

Anatomy study.





But now I'm considering putting some clothes on him. I've been thinking about doing Sandor Clegane aka The Hound from the Song of Ice and Fire series for a while so I think I'll take him in that direction. Learn some hard surface techniques in zBrush.

And speaking of which I was watching the Eat3D Hard Surface 2 DVD and I got inspired to dick round a bit with the workflow he was demonstrating. Discovered that activating Polish on Dynamesh can give some pretty interesting effects combined with an inverted dam_standard.



Dramatic lighting for good measure.

xk0be

holy balls this is all awesome

Fingus

So... yeah. This has been a pretty unproductive week. My other classes threw me a big pile of homework and there's been some other stuff...

My roommate Jacob asked me if he could rig the anatomy study dude I did, so I retopo'd him and put him in a tpose. He wants to do a muscle rig so he requested that I try to have the topology comform to the muscles. I have never done that before but I tried my best, not sure how well it worked out but time will show.

I also gave Marmoset a try. I understand why people use this tool a lot. It makes it ridiculously easy to get nice looking results.

Fingus

Trying out hard surface modeling in zBrush. My conclusion: good for conceptual hard surface, but if you work from reference and need precision use a root program.

Blaisoid

neck and hands of the anatomy study look a bit weird. hard surface stuff looks really solid though.

Fingus

Going to try out some hard surface techniques in zBrush. Here is a preliminary concept sketch thingy.

MissModeler

May I ask what class you're taking where you get to make these models everyday? I'm an AAU online student, and haven't taken it yet, but want to! Massive Black is like my dream company haha. Great modeling by the way.

Fingus

It's GAM 403: Organic Modeling: High Resolution Game Assets with Duylinh Nguyen. I don't know if he teaches it online though, and in my experience the curriculum for online classes are very different from the on campus ones. By the way Linh is not the Massive Black dude. He moved to Seattle to work at 343, but Linh is just as great.

Fingus

All right, update to the armor. Still figuring out the ins and outs of the workflow. Using 3DCoat instead of the built in Topology tools in zBrush so that complicates things a tiny bit.

Fingus

No armor today. Decided to experiment a bit based on a question asked in the Technical Talk section. Essentially I tried to see how well NoiseMaker plays with UV'd meshes. Apparently not too well...

Fingus

Here is a big messy dump of what I have been doing lately.

I finished the armor guy. I'd like to do some detailing in the future, but I ended up spending so much time on him I figured I should move on.


I did a cloth study.



Started doing a cartoony fat pirate dude.



And gave him a big nasty scar.


Did a nasty head using only the Clay Buildup brush, and replacing the Smooth brush with Rake, gave a nice clay feel to it.


And started working on an ecorche. Still on the skeleton so far. Muscles will commence the coming weekend.


Oh and I completely forgot, here are my finals from the Hard Surface class most of the stuff in my first post was from.






And a character I made together with my friend Sueann Williams.

Fingus

Tonight's work on the skeleton. The wrist is a bitch...

Fingus

Ribcage done, wahoo.

Fingus

Skeleton almost done.



Did a Jafar bust in class.



And a quick shitty arm study today.

njc6425

some trully inspirational stuff here, great job... realised i should spend more time studying anatomy

ClamJam

you have helped me re-think how hard i should work
incredibly good work.

Stoop_Kid

Awesome stuff, I love the armor parts and how much time you put into the skeleton, it really pays off.

Lovely work, keep it up!

Fingus

Awww thank you guys.

Fingus

Just tried out some texturing techniques, as well as some zBrush alpha flimflammery.





And I recorded a video of the process. Gonna start doing this for my sketches from now on.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK2qILHhabw"]Brickwall texturing experiment - YouTube[/ame]

Fingus

Just a speedsculpt practicing some tertiary detailing.



[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKF7cBRA9Gs"]Nasty pacman face thingy - YouTube[/ame]

Fingus

Experimenting with drawing zSketch on polygon meshes, and having fun with radial symmetry. I think I've found a great way to make jewelry.




Forgot to record a video this time though. :<

Fingus

Fingus

Fingus

When I learned that Sculptris has a GoZ function I decided to try out a workflow where I do my base scultping in Sculptris and then send it over to zBrush for detailing.

Here is what I got out of Sculptris.



Here is the zBrush pass.



And a closeup of the details.



Oh and here are two sketches I forgot to post earlier.

Zeldrak

the last one is cool, love the spidey legs, looking very detailed. Really love the way you add those small details everywhere, really brings out some character.

Fingus

Thank you very much. The trick is to not use the same alpha all over but rather grab high resolution photos of people and grab the section of the face that you are going to detail and save that as a grayscale psd. I had about 12 different alphas for that guy. It might seem obvious, but it really helped me out when my teacher showed me that approach.

Here is today's sketch. It's Uranina, the muse of astronomy and philosophy. So far just the base body. I plan on giving her a toga and hair using zSketch. The sphere is a placeholder for a globe, and I realize now it looks like she's about to do a volleyball serve.

RKHansen

A lot of great stuff in here

Fingus

The hair and dress was done with zSketch that I later ClayPolished and went over with Clay and DamStandard.

bigphun

Wow that last model is great, I never thought to use z spheres for cloth.

Fingus

A lot of zBrush's tools can be extremely useful if you use it for things other than what they were advertised for. zSketch was generally promoted as a way of doing muscles and anatomy, but it's very powerful for ornamentation and cloth. Also, ShadowBox is generally promoted as a tool for making mechanical parts, but for my ecorche right now I'm using it to make muscles.