Haha, I found this guy again not that long ago, collecting dust in a forgotten folder. My god what time flies, and yikes, what my personal projects have been set aside for far too long.

I finished him years ago but never got around to render him out for my website. The entire update of my portfolio section have been dragged out for way too long, so I decided to get the ball rolling by render out a web version of him and get The Innkeeper posted. He is more or less the same as when I left him a few years ago, I just updated a few minor things to make him render properly in LightWave 10.x.

Now the second thing, I’ll let you in on a little secret. A few months ago I heard about GTD for the first time. I’m on the eternal quest to boost my productivity so I always try to check out new things to see if they can help me achieve that constant goal.

I’ve for quite some time, as I believe I’ve mentioned more than once in the past, had problems to juggle both work and personal projects at the same time, which in the end has made my personal projects suffer way too much and get the shorter end of the stick.

After reading a few articles on sites like Lifehacker about GTD I was getting curious to explore this productivity system more, so I read Dave Allen’s (@gtdguy) book. I’ve somewhat of a reserved attitude towards these “amazing” systems, but I keep an open mind and pick the pieces that suites my life and workflows. So, I studied the GTD method and setup a personal system and started using some cool software, based on the GTD ideas.

The result after a few months evaluation?

It has actually made a difference. I’m getting more things done, I am working more efficiently than ever before, and something I am especially happy with, is that all my personal projects have started moving forward again. All of them. Really cool!

I am currently altering the deal I’ve had with my website and have started to make some use of this space again. I have a very solid plan how my projects will continue going forward from now on and somewhat of a schedule as a well. Dang! Lot’s of things I’ve wanted to do for quite some time, but work etc always seemed to get in the way. Now I am actually pursuing my passion projects again.

Okay I better stop now, before I start to sound like a “religious” person about this whole GTD thing. I can recommend to dedicate some time to carefully check it out though, if you’re a productivity junkie like me.

Elly - Click for render and breakdown

Alright, it was time to wrap this baby up.

I could go on and on to keep detailing and refining her, but I felt I’d reached the point where I’d accomplished what I wanted with this project, mainly researching some new techniques for my workflow and touch some base with FiberFX in 9.6.

The final render can be found in my 3D portfolio together with a breakdown. (I’m so happy I finally got my act together and fixed the framework for my site last week so I can start adding new content without any hassle)

Well, this was the first darling to get completed, I have a couple of more dusty projects I’m resurrecting and completing and this first one was simple enough to get my feet wet with, and it was a great opportunity to explore some of the new LigthWave 9.6 goodies.

Now it’s time to move on towards some more complex characters, and theoretically I should increase my speed some on the next one, as I don’t think I’ll spend any time to do research for new techniques as I did now. I’m in the mood for just using my current arsenal of techniques and do a straightforward project from A to B.

I have a busy week coming up, but I will get the next one started towards the end of it. Until then, cheers!

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

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

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

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!

Destrachan - The Final Render (Click to enlarge)

I ended up modeling some sort of dungeon environment to put him in. I could probably have spent some more time with it but I wanted to finish this project, wrap it up and move on to new challenges.

I was about to make some animations with him, but I just have got to many things to complete right now, so I’ve put that part on ice. I might revisit this project in the future and add some animations. Time will tell.

A closer look at the model

Destrachan - Front

Destrachan - Side

Here is a few more renders to easier examine the model without any specific lighting or environment elements to distract from looking at our guy.

To the right you have two textured renders of him from different angles where I have posed him on a stand.

And below we have two images with renders of the model without any texturing at all, to better see all the details I’ve sculpted into him.

Destrachan - Before Texture Painting (Click to enlarge)

Destrachan - Clay Render of the Beast (Click to enlarge)

Wires and the UV map

Destrachan - Wires

Destrachan - UV Layout

And if anyone is interested, here is another two images, one with the UV unwrapped layout I created in LightWave 3D for him side by side with the acutal color map that I painted.

The other image is just an overlayed wireframe from the base mesh I modeled to use as a starting point for my sculpt, on on top of an occluded render of the same mesh with the displacement map applied to it.

I guess that pretty much wraps this project up.

Tonights working music: Anna Ternheim – Separation Road

P.S. Someone recently asked me why I always end my blog postings with the music I’ve been listening to. Simple answer, music is very important to me. It inspires me and I really can’t work efficiently without my music in the background. So the music plays a major part in all the work I create, so that’s why I feel to share the music I choose to help me set the mood for each session. Maybe my taste will influence someone out there to discover new inspirational music.

Destrachan posing for the camera

Destrachan more posing for the camera

And even more camera posing

When I was at it, I also created an animation rig for him. So I can pose and animate him. Nothing fancy but all the basic controls needed are there. Some Inverse Kinemtics controllers for the legs, arms and the tail and just a Forward Kinematic for the body and head.

The Destrachan - Rigged for easy posing

As he is completed now I have started working on a scenery where I can put him, and also make a short animated sequence in. Stay tuned for the next and final update of this project.

Working Music: Detektivbyrån – Hemvägen

And yesterday was definitely Christmas for me. I was like a kid in a candy store with all the new toys I got. ZBrush 3.1 (Outstanding update!), Vue 6.5 and LightWave 9.3. So I kept myself pretty busy checking out all new features and fixes.

Anyway, my Destrachan project is progressing. I have finished the sculpting of this little guy, so I thought it was about time I posted a few renders.

Destrachan - Final Sculpt

Destrachan - Final Sculpt - Side shot

Destrachan - Final Sculpt - Anoter angle

I had a few adventures before I perfected my pipeline on how to bring my ZBrush sculpts into my other 3D applications in the best way possible. The above renders are all done in Modo. I will do the final renders in LightWave 3D, and I had thought I should do the above in LightWave as well. As LightWave doesn’t have micro polygon displacements I ran into trouble with all the details in this character. The new APS in LightWave helped a bit but I simply couldn’t get all the details I had sculpted to show up in LightWave without running out of memory. LightWave do have pretty poor memory management when dealing with high quality displacements at the moment. I really hope LightWave 9.5 will bring micro polygon displacements so these things will be fixed once and for all.

So I decided to give Softimage|XSI a spin instead. It’s a very nice 3D application in many ways, and I really enjoy how well everything is integrated, the history stack, the powerful node system and all those things. But when coming to displacements it turned out to be even worse than LightWave. Can you imagine? It takes forever even to initialize the renderer when increasing the displacement quality in XSI. Being used to the snappy workflow in LightWave I just couldn’t take it. No XSI for me at the moment.

So for the renders above I ended up using Modo. With Modo it just works and it simply rocks with displacements. Modo didn’t even stop to think for a second when I added my high resolution displacement map and cranked up the quality. Without any real time difference Modo just rendered this guy out with all the details like a breeze. Amazing. If Modo just would have had animation, volumetrics, hair and nodes I would definitely use it as the backbone of my pipeline.

Anyway, as Modo doesn’t have those things at the moment, I had to work out another solution for my current and future projects. And luckily ZBrush 3.1 was released yesterday, where among other things the missing Normal Map exporter was added again. And boy, did that fix everything for me. Combining a displacement and a normal map in LightWave from ZBrush just gives me excellent results, with a very low rendering time. So now my pipeline is complete again. And after all experimenting the last few days I have found a very efficient workflow now I hope. We’ll see shortly.

Alright, to end this post, here is some screenshots from ZBrush of some of the different stages from the sculpting phase.

A few shots from different levels of sculpting in ZBrush

Well, I just started painting this guy tonight, and that shouldn’t take to long, so I will probably have him painted shortly in a new post. And I’ll probably end it this project before hitting the final render in a scene with adding a basic animation rig. I mean, this guy needs to breath some life as well. Until next time…

Music Tonight: Slayradio