Posts Tagged ‘Character’

Resurrected female model - painted and shaded

No Comment // Jan 05, 2009 // Posted in Characters & Creatures

Okay, a few hours has passed since my earlier post and it’s time for me to call it a night. Naturally I couldn’t completely finish her in this amount of time, as it’s quite a tedious task creating a detailed CG character. But I came pretty far though.

Second WIP of this model - Texturing and shading almost completed.

I more or less completed painting the textures, and that’s where I devoted most of the time I spent with her tonight. I ended up with a diffuse map (color map), epidermis map, subdermis map, occlusion map, reflection map, fresnel map, bump map and a normal map. Phew! With those maps fed into the simple skin material in LightWave 9.6 blended with the SSS 2 (SubSurface Scattering) shader I got the above skin material.

I also worked on the eyes, where I used the SSS 2 shader as the base for the eyeball material. Other than working with textures and shading, I added the eyelashes and eyebrows, blocked in the beginning of a top for her and started blocking out some hair guides too.

So I’m pretty happy with the progress tonight. What’s still left to do now is some final polishing on the textures and shading networks, completing the work with the hair guides and finish her top and maybe one more accessory to equip her with. If I’m in the mood I might do a minor rig to make the final pose a tad more interesting.

Tomorrow is a working day, but hopefully I’ll have some time in the evening to continue this project.

Oh, and I almost forgot, I named her as well, so the lady in the render above is called Elly, hello Elly.

Tags: 3D, Art, CG, Character, Female, LightWave, Shading, Texturing, Work in Progress

Resurrecting old projects - Female model

No Comment // Jan 04, 2009 // Posted in Characters & Creatures

It’s Sunday afternoon, all the dreadful holidays stealing precious time are coming to an end, so what’s better to start of 2009 than by doing some house cleaning. I’ve let the axe work it’s way through my folder of unfinished projects with no mercy. It was time to kill some darlings where just too much time had passed, I really didn’t want to work on those anymore.

What I was left with, was a couple of personal projects that have been untouched for some time, but that I’d get much personal satisfaction from to complete. And with the massive axing done, I was left with six projects (in contrast to over 30 unfinished ones) which I hope I can now have a clear focus on and finish them one by one.

With the release of LightWave 3D 9.6 around the corner, with it’s improved hair rendering and new lovely shaders and updated materials, I’m craving to take them for some serious test drives by doing some character work.

So, first out is this female character bust, which I created in one ambitious day back in February 2008. I’ve just spent some time examining the state of the project, going through the mesh and the textures. And here is a render of her current state how she was left in her project folder for almost a year.

The current working state of this model (Rendered with a slightly too narrow DOF)

The modeling is more or less done, but the textures are mostly just blocked in and need quite some more work. I will spend the rest of the day and evening with her, and see how far I’ll come.

What’s left to do to have her completed as I currently see it;

Fixing a few edge loops in the overall polygon flow.
Cleaning up the textures and repaint many sections of the current maps.
Update the shader network to utilize some of the new goodiness in LightWave 9.6.
Model proper eyeballs and texture/shade them.
Model and style a hair wig as well as brows and lashes.
Model a few accessories for her.
And finally baptize her, she has got to have a name, doesn’t she?

And that’s pretty much it. Oh well, let’s see how far I can take her towards completion today. It will be a couple of entertaining hours, as I love when I have some time to spare for my own projects and character work. Which is also the times when I evolve my techniques the most as well.

Happy 2009 everyone, and I hope this will be a more active year blogging wise for me than the past year.

Tags: 3D, Art, CG, Character, Female, LightWave, Work in Progress

Speed Doodling Session - Male Bust

3 Comments // Aug 18, 2008 // Posted in Sketchbook

Alright, time to post another speed doodle, I’ll keep these babies coming until I’m completely satisfied with my speed vs quality before moving on to make complete character projects with the new techniques I am developing for myself.

This is approximately a 4 hour sculpt from the first drawn ZSphere in ZBrush until the final textured render in LightWave 3D, as seen below. Let’s call it a small Sunday evening project.

Click to enlarge

Of course, it’s far from perfect, but with the small amount of time spent, I’m pretty happy with it. I could tweak it for a few more hours to make it shine a bit, but that would defeat the purpose of my speed modeling/sculpting/texturing/rendering sessions.

I started this time as well by placing a few ZSpheres and then converted them to an adaptive skin, ie. a polygon mesh. I tweaked the low poly mesh to get the proportions somewhat how I wanted them, and then just kept going by subdividing, detailing, subdividing, detailing and so on, until I had reached about 2 million polygons. I didn’t use any references but just kept going and let the character evolve by itself as I went along and the details started to come through.
A few screenshots from the different stages of my sculpting can be seen in the image below.

The progress in ZBrush, from ZSpheres to detailed sculpt

I spent around 2 hour in total with the sculpting part of the character. At this stage, I would have retopologized the mesh if it was a real project, so I could animate it properly, but as this wasn’t the case I exported the low poly version to LightWave together with a displacement map.

Below is an ambient occlusion render of just the mesh with the displacement map in LightWave.

Male Head - Speed Sculpting - Ambient Occlusion Render

Well, well, then I spent around 2 more hours, painting/creating the color map, specular map and the bump map in ZBrush and Photoshop, as well as setting up the shaders and lighting in LightWave for rendering, which ended up as the image at the top of this post.

I’m getting closer to move on to bigger things, but I’ll probably make an additional doodle or two in the coming week.

Working Music: Joan as Police Woman - To Survive

Tags: 3D, Art, CG, Character, Doodle, LightWave, Render, Sculpting, Texturing, ZBrush

A new female head - speed doodling session

No Comment // Jul 11, 2008 // Posted in Sketchbook

I took a few hours tonight and had another speed doodling session. I worked from my imagination with this one, with a goal set to as fast as possible get a decent looking character. I really need to get a speedy workflow in modeling characters for some of my upcoming projects, so I’ll probably make a few more similar doodles around this theme.

Click to Enlarge - Quick LightWave Setup and Render

The image above was created from scratch from the first polygon to final render in about 3-4 hours. This was mainly a ZBrush project, but I did end up rendering it out in LightWave 3D at the end. If I had spend some time on bulding a skin node network in LightWave and worked a bit on the hair it would probably have ended up pretty decent looking, but I’m saving that for the next time.

Anyway, I started this project by making a few ZSpheres and sculpted and pushed around the mesh from there, going up in level of detail now and then, trying to capture the basics of the female facial form as much as possible. Check out the image below for a few screenshots from different times in my sculpting process.

ZBrush Sculpting Workflow

At this stage I felt I had got most of the structure down as I wanted it. As sculpting from a few ZSpheres in ZBrush doesn’t create a decent topology, I included fixing the topology to my workflow this time.
To fix that, I roughly painted out directly on my character how I wanted the topology to flow, somewhat close to what I like, and then I used that model with my paintover as a template, building my new topology on top of that. When I had my new topology in place, I projected my sculpted details back into the new mesh. Here is three additional screenshots; The original topology - My paintover - The final topology.

Click to Enlarge - Retopology Process in ZBrush

Alright, the third one looks much better, so to end this session I made some basic texture painting as well. I didn’t bother with painting any Subsurface Scattering, Specular, Diffuse maps and so on this time, I just wanted to get some texture down and painted a simple color map. Here is the color map rendered in ZBrush with a basic skin shader applied.

Finished Texture Painting in ZBrush

And to close out this doodling session, just for fun, I exported the model out of ZBrush and brought her into LightWave. I made a quick and dirty wig with some hair strands, just a few minutes worth of work, and then rendered out the image at the top of this post.

Well, that’s it for this time. I shall return.

Working Music: Markus Krunegård - Markusevangeliet

Tags: 3D, Art, CG, Character, Doodle, Female, LightWave, Render, Sculpting, Texturing, ZBrush

Female Head - Speed Sculpting Doodle

No Comment // Jul 04, 2008 // Posted in Sketchbook

A 3 hour speed sculpting.
I haven’t used ZBrush for a while, so I doodled around in it for a few hours today, to get the groove back. The image below is the result of a couple of zspheres and then just playing around, sculpting out the basics for the female form. I wasn’t going for accuracy or realism this time, just trying to get the shapes down and having some fun with it.

Click to Enlarge - ZBrush Speed Doodling Session

I could probably go on for a few more hours, keeping on refining and improving on her looks, but that would take the speed out of speed doodling. When I ended my sculpting session I exported her out of ZBrush together with a displacement map, and made a quick and dirty render in LightWave 3D, which is the render above, trying to capture at least some mood.

Actually, I think it’s pretty healthy to do a doodle now and then, to give myself some time to explore some new tools and techniques in my applications which I might not dare trying out when I do real projects. I’ll probably try do this somewhat regular to work on my speed and nail down better techniques.

Sculpting Music: Reyn Ouwehand - The Blithe, The Blend and The Bizarre

Tags: 3D, Art, CG, Character, Doodle, Female, LightWave, Render, Sculpting, ZBrush

Goblin - Revisit

No Comment // Jun 26, 2008 // Posted in Characters & Creatures, Goblin

The summer is here, and I’ll have at least a month of free time, getting some things of the ground. To get my juices flowing I decided to finish some old projects that’s been sitting lonely for a long time, and by that be able to soon send a bunch of files to my archive drive instead of having tons of unfinished stuff in my project folder.

I dug up my old Goblin project, and had a session in ZBrush with him tonight.

The old Goblin project with some ZBrush doodling

I kinda liked where he was going now, so I’m gonna continue detailing him for a few hours and add some accesories to him and then see how it all turns out. If I am happy I gonna shade, texture and render him, otherwise he’ll hit the graveyard.

Working Music: The Concretes - In Colour

Tags: 3D, Art, CG, Character, Creature, Sculpting, Work in Progress, ZBrush

Ninja: Resurrection

1 Comment // Apr 19, 2008 // Posted in Characters & Creatures, Crash Test Ninja

Just a quickie, here is an old darling of mine which I recently resurrected… Fear his wrath!

My Crash Test Ninja

This character was like 90% finished back in 2004 for a SpinQuad challenge / thing, which I never had the time to complete. I’ve been cleaning up my old folders and content directories, getting rid of old crap and revived a few things that had fallen into the dark shadows, hiding under the dust, but deserved to be brought back to life.

This Ninja guy is one the latter. Back in march I fixed his topology, made some new UV unwraps and updated his textures and created a new clean rig to animate him. This test render is also from march while working with the rigging.

I’ve always liked this character and have had some great fun animating him when I originally created this cunning Ninja, so I am pretty psyched about finally having the time to get him finely tuned and bring him to full life.

I’ve some diabolic plans of where he is heading, more to come soon…

Get ready for some tough, serious, Ninja action!

Tags: 3D, CG, Character, LightWave, Plans, Render

Innkeeper: The texture game is on

3 Comments // Oct 12, 2007 // Posted in Characters & Creatures, Innkeeper

At last, here’s a new update of my innkeeper character. Again, it took a little longer than I had expected since my last update, but I’ve had a few commissioned pieces of work that have come in between. Believe it or not, but they take precedence over my personal projects.

Anyway, today I got back in business with this guy again, and here’s the latest snapshot of his current state.

Innkeeper - Work in Progress - Texturing 1

First Texturing Pass on The Innkeeper

I’ve entered the texturing and shading phase. Since the last post I’ve created the UV’s for him and then spent most of the time building a decent skin shader. The texture maps used at the render above is just some rough placeholders I sketched out quickly to have something to work with when the skin shader reached the final stages. The color map is pretty wild and I’ll remake it from scratch for the next update, and other than that I used a simple normal map to get some structure going on. I’ll remake that one as well.

The skin shader though, am I pretty happy with now. It consist of a large node network built up around 2 SubSurface scattering shaders, 1 OrenNayar shader, 1Blinn shader, 1 Reflection shader and everything mixed together with some mixer nodes and gradients. I’ve tested this shader pretty carefully and it seems to hold up in most lighting environments.

I wanted to get this shader perfect before starting to work with the texture maps for real, so well, here I am. I have a photo session I need to do this weekend for a totally unrelated project, but other than that I think I’ll have enough time to start working on the real textures and post another update shortly.

Working Music: Babyshambles - Shotter’s Nation

Tags: 3D, Art, CG, Character, Shading, Texturing

Innkeeper: Now the fun can begin!

4 Comments // Sep 26, 2007 // Posted in Characters & Creatures, Innkeeper

I had some time tonight to continue working with this guy, so I finished up the modeling process of this project. Now the fun can begin!

The Innkeeper - Work in Progress 4 - No Hair

Untextured render of The Innkeeper

Since the last post, I’ve made tweaks all over the character, but I’ve mainly focused on the face to make him look a bit more interesting. Also for these renders I added a quick and dirty rig, so I could pose him and not have another boring T-pose render. The rig is far from finished, so he doesn’t deform perfect yet, but it was okay enough for these renders.

The Innkeeper - Work in Progress 4 - Hair

A bonus render with some quick and dirty hair

Alright, time to start texturing and create the shading for this guy. This is what I have been looking forward to the most this time, so I can’t wait to grab my Wacom pen and start painting. I will also fix the hair during this process. Stay tuned for another update coming soon!

Working Music: Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man - Out of Season

Tags: 3D, Art, CG, Character, LightWave, Modeling

Another Innkeeper session

No Comment // Sep 19, 2007 // Posted in Characters & Creatures, Innkeeper

Here is a few updated images of the progress of my Innkeeper character. I didn’t have time to work with him until today again. But now he is starting to come together after this session.

I’ve got rid of the strange pointy belly and added some more volume to it as well as some fat around the waist where the apron runs. Also I modeled a dagger for him and added some more details to the face, arms, hands and robe. The symmetry from the first modeling session is now about to run into the history land and I have started to get some more randomness to the different sides.

Innkeeper - Work in Progress 3 - Front View

The Innkeeper - Front View

Innkeeper - Work in Progress 3 - Right View

The Innkeeper - Right View

Innkeeper - Work in Progress 3 - Left View

The Innkeeper - Left View

I fixed some edgeloops as well this time which I was not that pleased with earlier, and it’s still pretty low poly for the amount of details. I have been thinking of using ZBrush displacements for him, but I’ll pass on that this time, and stick with normal maps in the end for the finer details.

I am not completely happy with him yet, so I’ll take him for one more modeling session for the final touches before I get into texturing this guy. Really looking forward to that part, as that’s my main purpose with this project.

Working Music: Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not