More SSS testin'

Did some more tweaks on the SSS shader and the texture maps themselves today. Was looking very rubber-masky, and while the latest tweaks takes out some of the subsurfacy goodness we all love too much, I think it looks a lot more realistic this way.

Eyebrows still crazy (vray fur), eyelashes way to dark and opaque (exported fibermesh from zbrush).

Quickie 03 - Orc #7

Playing around with some vein work tonight before bed. Just about ready to send the last pieces over to Mari.

Quickie 03 - Orc #6

Still working on getting all the textures and displacement maps out and into maya. A lot of shader work, bit of a struggle but learning a ton. Hoping on getting everything render ready this week.

Quickie 03 - Orc #05

Yeah I should probably change the name of this series of posts, months and months hardly count as "quickies".

Here is a quick update, starting to put things together in Maya, setting up shaders, displacements and whatnot.

Quickie 03 - Orc #04

Quickie 03 - Orc #4

Quick update on the orc. Got some hands and bases for some big ass shoulderpads in there. More to come.

Quick Sketch

Just another quick morning ditty from yesterday, smiling alien dude what has glowing crystal in his skull. Because why would'nt he?

Ecorché

Just a quick ecorché I did tonight to brush up on my now severly dust covered anatomy skills. The image I used as base is one we were supplied when I did Scott Eatons amazing anatomy course a couple of years back.

Concrete dome texture done

Quick update, finished the texture for the dome over the weekend. Exported from Mari as five 4k textures for diffuse, same for bump map. Only need a quick reflection glossiness map and I'm ready for rendering.

Next stop, Turtle City

So, I'm finally closing in on ending the turtle project. Just thought I'd post a few of the iterations that have come and gone for you all to see.

First one is the original idea, a city within a glass hemisphere. Spent a whole lot of time trying to get the city to integrate believably and look ok, but ended up scrapping the idea.

Second was having a mountain on top of the turtle's shell, with a city on top within a smaller glass dome. Spent a lot of time getting up to speed on texturing in Mari, but in the end I couldn't find any way to make the mountain integrate well onto the turtle model.

This is the one I'm ending up using. Kept the gate from #2, as well as the dome setup from #1. No more city.  Now all I need is to finish up texturing the concrete hemisphere (it's concrete now, not glass), stick the submarines back in, light the window slits and hit render. Off to comp.

I'm not sure if I like turtles anymore.

Quick sculpt 12.21.2012

Well, seeing as I've been informed that the world is about to be covered in lava made from aliens and eaten by the mayan god of eating stuff, I figured I'd sketch a quick alien dude.

Concept / paintover

What little spare time I've had these past 6 months have mostly gone into getting on top of things as far as the full creature pipeline goes. This has entailed a lot of time trying to learn about vray, proxies, displacement maps, SSS shaders, comping render passes in Nuke and that whole bag of fun. As a part of this I've been playing around with a giant turtle scene, where the idea was to have a city under a glass dome on top of its back.
However, after trying for a long time to get it to look right, I've decided I did not much care for how the city itself came out looking. So, back to the drawing board. The turtle itself is pretty much done. I did a quick render and painted over it to come up with some new ideas. Those tiny submarine thingies are also built already, just need to redo the city and build a mountain. Sounds easy enough, right?

The sketch was done in 5 minutes and looks like it as well. But hopefuly you get the idea.

Quick sculpt and Monster Month

Hey y'all.

Another morning coffee quick sculpt. I also put in a rough start of what hopefully will be the first of many monsters this month. Inspired by Caesar Dacol's ongoing Monster Month, where he sculpts (in clay) a new monster design every day for a month, I thought I'd try doing the same for each week day for at least a while, as long as work and time permits it. I'll keep going with this one tomorrow, then on to another one on Wednesday.

Quick sculpt 05.25.2012

Found myself with an hour to spare, so I did some more work on the last one I posted. Hands and ears still in a very rough state. Might take this one all the way through the pipe, it's growing on me.

Reelshot - Update #03

Here is where I'm at as far as the character goes right now. At the moment, I'm about a day and a half behind schedule, but I hope I'll be able to catch back up with most of the lag over the course of the coming week.

There are still some minor tweaks to be done to the sculpt, but it's getting there. Not going to do much more detailing on the body itself, as much of it will be covered by clothing anyway. I have also built parts of the set, started setting up camera projections for the surroundings etc; might post some of that later.

Lars