A bit about my Workflow.

duncan

Hi everyone

newto3d asked to see a bit about my workflow a long time ago and I am sorry to say I got stuck in Comicon and totally forgot. I put together this little image last night and I hope it helps. I am not saying it is the best way of working, in fact I doubt it is, but it is how I am going about stuff at the moment and will no doubt change as I get more experience. Anyone out there who cares enough to give me extra tips and advice I am all ears. My sole aim as an artist is to continually improve myself and inspire others (if possible)

This is how I went about creating the Dr Baron for my Comicon entry. It was supposed to be about my CHERRY "Zombie ate my pants" character but I deleted a heap of my early work in the great clean up of some time last week.



and some of the results.









Thanks for looking if you did

and sorry newto3d for taking so long but I hope this helps.

jarrede

Cool stuff man, I know it's hard to find the time to compile stuff like this, looks great!

jordan.kocon

Very cool! Would you mind explaining how you get the cavity map from your normal map?

bbob

Great stuff as usual, always nice to see breakdowns as well

Next

HA!

That groundplane AO thingy is Ace!

It looks awesome and thanks for sharing

@jordan.kocon with this i can help! Xnormal > Tools tab > Normal 2 Cavity > done!

jordan.kocon

Next: Thank you very much

Next

u r welcome

Nate Broach

Awesome! thanks for taking the time. Went straight to the inspiration folder. Really wanna try your AO method.

euclidius

been meaning to say something about this piece but I think a lot of people have said it already. But yeah, thanks for sharing your knowledge with us- awesome work :]

ebagg

Love the character, love the tut! Big thanks for the nice reference sheet!

duncan

Thanks everyone

@ jordan.kocon: @ Next: is 100% right, but I used the NDo cavity from Normal action. Just as quick and just as good

Lucas Annunziata

Thanks for this duncan. It's always nice to see the workflow of others, especially how people incorporate cavity maps. I had never even thought of having the 2 different AO bakes.

erroldynamic

Excellent techniques! Definitely helpful.

haikai

That's pretty cool. I use a similar process with 2 AO bakes except that I do another painted layer on top to even out the lighting a bit as the directional AO can be too strong for me in some areas.

Nice job on the model. He kind of reminds me of a Garbage Pail Kid version of Doc Ock.

LRoy

aweseome! thanks for posting dude

hamzaaa

Really nice and informative. Thanks for sharing, I like your work very much!

DrunkShaman

duncan wrote: »

Hi everyone

newto3d asked to see a bit about my workflow a long time ago and I am sorry to say I got stuck in Comicon and totally forgot. I put together this little image last night and I hope it helps. I am not saying it is the best way of working, in fact I doubt it is, but it is how I am going about stuff at the moment and will no doubt change as I get more experience. Anyone out there who cares enough to give me extra tips and advice I am all ears. My sole aim as an artist is to continually improve myself and inspire others (if possible)

This is how I went about creating the Dr Baron for my Comicon entry. It was supposed to be about my CHERRY "Zombie ate my pants" character but I deleted a heap of my early work in the great clean up of some time last week.



and some of the results.









Thanks for looking if you did

and sorry newto3d for taking so long but I hope this helps.

This actually helped! I go about the concept in 2 ways, Either create a base mesh, or create a mesh from z-spheres and edit mesh I dont re-topo entirely. I will try to use this one you suggested on my next project.

gilesruscoe

Nice one duncan, that AO trick is certainly useful.

Tenchi

Awesome character, and many thanks for the tut, especially the AO Bake ^^

skylebones

Seriously man, that AO trick is super useful. Wish I would have used it for my entry. Too late now! Very well done and I love the final entry.

MeintevdS

Thanks for the breakdown Duncan!
You really managed to get the rashes/skin to look nasty, good job on that

One question though, did you bake down all the arms separately and already posed? Or did you bake just one arm in a neutral pose and then later copied it 3 times and posed them into their final poses?

OrganizedChaos

Thanks for sharing, I love seeing how other people handle things, you almost always pick up something new. I really should start using a cavity map with my work.

Have you messed with the new dynamesh at all yet? It's really awesome, I could see it replacing the zsphere/remesh stage entirely.

Zpanzer

Thanks for the write up, very cool technique with the AO maps!

Macattackk

can you say more about linking a gradient map in photoshop to the AO. also how come you used nDo for you cavity map and not just xnormal like you did for your other AO.

newto3d

Another awesome thread by Duncan, love seeing how other people work especially seen as I'm a noob and it's good to see how it's supposed to be done

disanski

Thank you Duncan.
What you are doing with the AO is also new to me. Thanks for sharing.
Model itself looks amazing. Love the skin details. Orange hair does not really pop out considering all the rusty colors you have going on there. I also love how good the stomach area looks considering how low poly it is - I guess you needed the geo for them tentacles.
Awesome character man.

Vailias

Macattackk: You can use an adjustment layer for gradient map in photoshop which will map the black to one end of a gradient, and white to the other.

By using the AO as input to a gradient map, then using a blending mode like overlay or soft light, you can change the effect of the AO from being just darker shadowing to shifting the hues and or saturation of the underlying diffuse to get effects softer, or more desireable than simple shadowing.

FYI you could also use an Inverted AO map as a mask for a hue and saturation layer so you can shift your shadows cooler or warmer, as well as desaturate them, like real shadows.

afisher

Interesting about the gradient map, I'll have to try it out. Thanks for sharing and congrats again on an awesome character

BoBo_the_seal

Very nice work! I have a soft spot for fat characters.

- BoBo

azchtein

really nice works duncan!

care to share the tips how you do the robot`s hand or hard surfaces on zbrush? thanks

gaganjain

Thanks for info....

duncan

Thanks for the kind words everyone. I spent my lunctime running around the internets to find a few tutorials by artists much better than myself that got me onto the whole Gradient map deal. here they are. They explain what they are and how to use them much better than I could.

Ben Mathis aka poopinmymouth:
http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/gradient_map.htm

EarthQuake:
http://dev.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=81562

Thanks everyone. my lunch break is over but I will get back to try and answer other questions a bit later tonight.

Thanks again

duncan

@ MeintevdS: Thanks Nah I baked all 4 from a posed position then tweeked the pose later on.

@ OrganizedChaos: No I have not tried dynamesh, I am sorry to say I know very little about it. From what I do know it looks very interesting, I might have to give it a shot, thanks.

@ Macattackk: (this is pretty much copied from my DA site) I tend to have the AO in a folder set to Overlay in photoshop. Inside that folder is the AO bakes, and above that is a Gradient map "Adjustment layer". I like having adjustment layers because if you need to change something later on you don't have to try and remember all of your previous settings. ALSO you can mask out sections of one Gradient map so another one shows through eg... you would want one gradient map for the skin and another for the metal and another for cloth, etc... That is it. ALL of those things go into a folder set to "OVERLAY"
That is how I do it, There are other ways of doing it but I like this way best, and it is NON destructive too. I can make a quick diagram if that is more helpful too.

As for nDo, There is no real reason I used that to create my cavity maps. I mean it IS super quick, but I was just giving it a go.

@ dustinbrown: Thanks for the kind words man . Yeah the Gradient map adjustment layer goes over the final ao layer. You can keep the two Cavity maps separate and sit those over the Gradient map but what ever works works. colour wise, for skin I tend to put reds into the shadows and yellow into the lighter areas, no real reason why it just seems to work, and there is plenty of room for some experimenting and fun there. I am not too rigid when it comes to those things I find experimentation is half the fun, and can start to push your character into unknown territory.

@ Vailias: Yep that is pretty much how I do it. I will have to try out that inverted AO as a mask for hue and saturation though THAT sounds pretty killer. Thanks for the tip :thumbup:

@ afisher: Thanks man, I loved your entry by the way, saved it to my inspiration folder the second I saw it.

@ BoBo_the_seal: hahaha me too, Thanks man.

@ azchtein: Thanks . Yeah I tend to do most of my hard surface stuff in Maya. I find it gives me cleaner results, but that is probably just because my sculpting skills need improvement.

Thanks again everyone

nicafornica

those pimples on the bottom are disgusting (in a good way). this came out very nice and thanks for the workflow.

8-Bit

Thanks a lot for this amazing insight into your workflow Duncan! That's a really interesting occlusion system you've developed. It gets great results though. I'll have to try it out myself.