Month: May 2023

Paintover!!

The final step in this project, the paint-over detail stage! Where we take our render and give it extra details we may’ve missed in zbrush or blender. Now there was a developmental process for this, as I had originally gone from 1920×1080 to a smaller canvas size, as there was a bunch of extra space that was taking away from the focus of my sharkbug, as evident in this WIP.

Also! My lecturer at the time informed me that the glow I had done on the eyes and behind it were completely wrong, as the glow is meant to come off of the eyes, and not inheritly behind it. I fixed this making use of blending layers in photoshop, such as screen so that a soft screen would coat the eye, causing it to glow. The same case applied to the mouth, but I had to mess with levels and hues in order to get it to look glowy.

As a result, this development was born! I added some paintover work to the bottom of its chest (near the scratch marks), a few wires on the wing, and some scratches and carbon photo-bashed material above the pipe by the wing. Also my attempt at making the glow work as well. I even started to try and add colour to the fog in the background by making use of a colour layer from an already painted black and white fog.

However, there was more I could do, as it still felt a bit empty at this stage.

In this version, I added some sparks that I photo-bashed to the front of its mouth, to simulate the pure heat and scratching of the old clunky metal. I also wished to have more of the fog cover its feet so that it didn’t look like it was floating. Despite these changes, there still felt like there was something missing. Fog and backdrop lighting. Also my lecturer noted that the wing and furthest right leg touch, so deciphering its silhouette would be hard to do, as a result I made a change of that in my final development.

Boom! Here is my final development of my paintover. I tried intensifying the glow a bit more, added a backlight for the character, focussed the fog more on the lower parts of the sharkbug’s legs, and also added more sparks and some orange fade into the back fog, to insinuate that the lighting from its glowing eyes and mouth were making its way into the fog around it. Overall looking very intimidating. I also painted the difference between the right leg and wing to give that silhouette more depth.

Conclusion!

In general, I really, really enjoyed this project. I say this because I felt like I could actually create something of high industry standard using this workflow, whilst being able to keep my stylized look. It felt incredible to see this develop, and see how texturing and rendering could change so much in such little time. Producing this inspires me to keep honing my skills and showing people what I can do! I am very hopeful for the future, and its a good way to end off the first year.

Bug Legs!

Before I could look at rendering and texturing my monster, I needed to give it legs. Overall I decided to keep mixing things up based on reference from my thumbnails, so my monster has a leg formation similar to that of thumbnail 2, even though a lot of my design is based on thumbnail 3. I sculpted this by using Zspheres, a feature where you can draw spheres and turn them into actual geometry based on the desired shape, making use of see-through in Zbrush, i made it easy to fit the legs to specification based on real reference.

This formed my basis, before I went and sculpted my details onto the leg, eventually I ended up with this for my sharkbug’s legs.

In general, I feel that my model still has that technological aspect to it, but more rustic, decayed. I’m happy its turning out this way, as I can use it to further convey that my monster is angry, due to its neglect over the years. Aside from theming, this is how my monster looks with the legs and everything connected to the main body.

I am incredibly happy with it. However, this week doesn’t end on this, I still have to texture and render it ready for paintover in Week 6. Instead of using substance painter, I made use of blenders shader nodes/ texture nodes features, that can be used to create procedural textures that fit exactly what I need to make, such as rusted metal, brass, copper, etc.

This is an example of a rusty metal procedural texture using nodes, I had researched it and found quite a concise tutorial which helped greatly, especially with understanding how nodes interact with specific results. It also allowed me to apply the rust to other materials, like on the wings. Originally the wing texture node were circuit boards, however with these nodes, I could add rust and discolouration to them, only to emphasize that point of abandonment.

Rendering!!

Now that textures were in order, I could now start the rendering process, to get ready for paintover in Week 6! I wasn’t entirely sure how I wanted to have the final image composed, so I took a few assorted shots of the sharkbug until I found one that I really liked and wanted to stick with. I also did a clean render with all the lighting, materials in my desired posed to see what it looked like.

Here is the first clean full render of my sharkbug, no additions, or anything else, just the render. I was really happy with the way the red lighting came out on the eyes, as it looks almost clockwork-like, and incredibly ominous, along with the red afterglow and the heat coming from the sharkbug’s mouth, its so hot its white.

From this point, all the work I can do is entirely paintover work, so keep an eye out in Week 6, to see how my final render looks!

Nano Mesh vs Micro Poly

One crucial part of developing my sharkbug beast, was an idea I had having the head of it be entirely metal, and wanting to use the alpha I had made previously as the material to replace the head with. However, there were 2 ways of which I could do this, and I was trying to find the better way. Nanomesh is part of ZModeller, which allows you to place an insertmesh in the center of a poly, or polygroup, whilst micropoly replaces the faces with the material.

Originally I experimented heavily with Nano Mesh, as it had way more control variables, and this was the typical result.

It looked good, however, it was way too layered for me, and it made parts of the head too thick to the point where you’d miss out on the details, also the way it overlapped at the mouth specifically really put me off of using it overall for my final head product. On the other hand, Micro Poly did exactly what I needed to do, and in similar poly count!

I’m really satisfied with the way that each little sheet of metal stretches out to fit the entire shape of the shark head, and you can still clearly see the texture and bumps on the metal itself, providing in my opinion the perfect amount of detail for this part of the body.

Body Construction!

With the head in a good state, I started working on the body for my sharkbug beast, I even prompted to create another alpha to use as a subtool, as I was unsure on how to create a precise wing, using sculpting, and due to the level of precision I wanted, alphas were needed. Here is a look at the body in the earlier parts of this week!

Throughout the week, I kept working on this until I had finally reached a good fundamental point, where I was ready to start focussing on other aspects, such as the wing/arms and the legs and finer details, before moving to photoshop.

Here is the alpha I used for the metal wings below. At this point in the project, I really wanted to start pushing pipes and cables, etc to try and drive that techy look.

On top of this, I also had made a small node/coil object in ZModeller, as advised by my lecturer, considering how cables and pipes just came out of parts of the body, and it seemed incredibly un-natural, which was a great criticism for my work.

But for now, this concludes my Week 4 antics, in Week 5, I look to create the legs for my sharkbug beast, as well as start looking at lighting, possible rendering and composition, ready to move it to photoshop for paintover. I also want to look at making use of texture nodes, so that when it comes to paintover, my job becomes a lot easier.

Base Head Done!

Just in time for the beginning of the week, I managed to finish the head of my sharkbug beast, I am quite happy with it, but there are still things I wish to add to it so it is more detailed, like the idea of covering the skin in that alpha metal sheet I made, or making a small mesh to add to the eyes like a camera or something similar, really to bring out that technological feel.

As you can see, the small panel part is a different colour, and this is due to it being a different subtool, it is its own model, but its been appended into the head. I like this idea of having a panel with wires and such connecting, the concept of wires connecting to things and miraculously working is such a fun concept to me, very curious and I want to push that aesthetic. Lips are a bit messy still but better than before, and im happy with the nose overall at this point. I am also quite proud of the head fin, as it looks quite blocky despite its round feature.

Array Mesh!

Our lecturer introduced us to a feature called Array Mesh, where you can take a mesh, duplicate it a bunch and mess with settings to position it into something, like a pattern. It is classed as its own subtool, and was quite fun to play around with, I made this curvy mesh loop illusion thing by just having a play around with it.

However, whether I’ll use this technique or not is unknown to me at the current stage.

Sculpting Time!

With thumbnails and brief ideas planned, it was time for me to start the sculpting process of my monster. This week primarily focuses on creation of the Head specifically.

Within the first half of the week, this is what my sculpted head was looking like, a bit rounded and not really that sharp, but the idea was definitely there, specific parts of the model needed to be worked on, such as the lips, nose, and upper head, as it was quite flat and lacked any detail.

Alphas!

A method made known to us by our lecturer, was the use of alphas! You could draw a shape or object in photoshop using specific colours (greys and whites) to represent alphas, then import them into zbrush and create a 3D mesh out of them. Throughout the project, I hope to make great use of these tools, as I believe they can help me tremendously add extra detail I would otherwise struggle with, easily.

Aside from these things, this week was just focussing on the base of our model, and I am continuing to work on the head into week 3, as there are still a few things I wish to experiment with before finalising the head of my shark-bug beast.