FBBsketches

Caveman Progress - Zbrush

2008-05-08T16:28:00.000-07:00

So, I've brought this character back into Zbrush, and encountered more cause for irritation. The short of it is that I can't re-topologize this character in Zbrush as I had planned, and wanting to move ahead on him I foolishly redid the zbrush work before getting the final word on why the retopo wouldn't work, which stinks 'cause I left some loose-ends in the re-topologizing stage that I had planned to fix later but as it turns out - the reason I couldn't couldn't retopo him in ZB is apparently non-fixable, at least until a ZB update. So, now I wont be able to fix those loose-ends without having to redo the ZB work again. Need I say more? Well, it's a learning experience I guess, and I'm happy with my work thus far anyway.

Caveman Retopo WIP

2008-04-29T16:58:00.000-07:00

I recently decided to fully re-topologize this model. Here's how the face is so far (Update: Just added the body WIP image).

As usual, I'm experimenting with topology, ever-seeking a more true-to-life flow. Areas that have received special attention in this effort are the Nose, Eyes and Brow.

In the nose-bridge I have attempted to work out a better representation of the flow of wrinkles that result when a person crinkles there nose. And the nose-tip topology has been adjusted to better define the sometimes bulbous shape of the nose-tip, and the separation that is then present between nose-tip and nose-wing.

It has been my observation that on most people the tension of wrinkles at the meeting place between brow and forehead, in the center of the head, flows up and outward to either side, creating a shape something like the center of the letter M, but smooth. I have attempted to design the topology to be able to do this more naturally. I think I succeeded, and in this approach found a good way to usefully redirect the many edge-loops I tend to get in the center of the brow.

The eyes are where the biggest deviations from the norm are. It is my opinion that the standard topo-flow of full-loop circles around the eyes unnecessarily contradicts nature. But, I recognize the organizational advantages of it, and also the reality that in a low-poly model it may be the most viable solution. This is not a low-poly model but I have attempted to maintain at least one full-loop circle as the outer-most region of the eye topology, in-order to take advantage of its organizational properties while enabling me to get a little more creative with the rest of the eye topology. While I feel that what I have here is a good step toward my goal, I suspect that I will have to abandon the full-loop circle approach entirely, and adopt something more like a cross-hatch approach in order to get the kind of topo-flow that I want. In the mean time I'll probably just leave this as-is.

Zbrush Caveman

2008-01-08T08:15:00.001-08:00

Well, it really has been a while since I posted anything. I've been really busy with other things. Including a very fun project - a book that my siblings and I put together for my parents, that I ended up being the compiler of, which included devising the bulk of the creative look for everyone's pages, which were all unique to each person (there are nine of us). It was a lot of work but thankfully I had my wife and Sister to draw on for help with the creative part, which they ended up playing a big roll in. Anyway, this post is not about that.

This piece is another Zbrush exercise. Again, I started only intending to do the head, but ended up taking it a little further. What you see here is probably about 7 to 8 hours of work (excluding experiments which did not contribute to the look of the sculpt). Notes: the dreads took a surprisingly long time, even with Zspheres. I'm also going to eventually swap out the dreads for more messy hair that would be more in keeping with the caveman idea that this is based on, namely the middle image, bottom row of this previous post:
http://fbbsketches.blogspot.com/2006/10/cavemandino-shortfilm-idea.html
Of course the original image is more cartoony, and a little more dumb looking. I may narrow the eyes on the current sculpt to bring back some of that dumb look. As for the rest - we'll see, I may just leave this where it is and move onto something else.

This project has served me well as a subject of experimentation. I thought I'd give the local sub-division approach another try. In the end I came to the same conclusion as before - nothing beats proper topology from the start. In the close up on the head you can see some puckering at the borders of areas that underwent local sub-d. This led however to learning the process of retopologizing a mesh in an external editor and reapplying the high-res details in ZB. So I did a quick low quality re-topo of some area's of the model where local sub-d had been used, and much tweaking and discovering of ZB quirks later:( - got it figured out. Anyway, for all to see - here you have it.

Learning Zbrush

2007-07-14T23:15:00.000-07:00

This is a character who's head I modeled from a sphere the first night I obtained Zbrush 3. Later On I came back to it and used it as a subject upon which to learn about subtools, transpose and stuff. I call him funny face.

Faerie

2007-07-14T14:05:00.001-07:00

I haven't been able to get to this as much since my last post, but what I have been doing is a lot of tests on shaders, textures and modeling of the eyes; other tests with sub-surface-scattering for when I texture this character; making some topology tweaks in adding geo for wrinkles in the elbows and around the eyes and learning UV-Layout and Zbrush. In these screen captures taken from Zbrush you see some of the work I've done on the hair and clothing for practice and presentations sake. I intend to replace the hair with a true hair system, likely XSI's when I get a student license of advanced, but I wanted it to look somewhat presentable until then. I'm not really happy with the hairline though. I'll probably fix that later. I have to point out how much I love this Red Wax material in Zbrush. It looks so nice. I setup an environment for making some renders in XSI as well. I'll put up some of those renders too.

Well, here are some XSI renders. On the body is an incidence based shader for the color, to give it just a little more life than a flat color would, plus Ambient Occlusion on a blinn. The eyes are more involved but I'm not happy with the results. I've been doing a lot of grumbling over them. Anyway, here they are at present. I have four lights in the scene. Oh, and the wire was a happy accident in comp using PS. I included a full 8 point rotation as well because the different lighting at different angles reveals different things.

HNA

2007-06-05T18:32:00.000-07:00

I'm putting together a new portfolio. Here are some test pages featuring some of the work I did on the film Happily N'ever After (HNA).

Recent Drawings

2007-03-04T22:18:00.000-08:00

Concerning the Horned Animal - This was just a creative anatomy study, not that it's really all that creative. The structure is sort of a blend between horse and deer. While working on the profile I found myself wondering what was wrong with the hind legs, then it occurred to me that I had drawn the pelvic, or bum region lower than the shoulder region. Most animals of this general construction aren't built like that - except giraffes ... and bears I think. Probably some others too. Anyway, I finally decided to just go with it and take on the challenge of this particular uniqueness (looking forward to possibly doing it in 3D, animated and all), figuring it would make it just that much more interesting, subtle as it is.

Faerie Update

2007-02-28T21:40:00.000-08:00

There are quite a few changes to report. Clothes are now roughed in. I'm modeling them with the intention of using cloth simulation. Wings are now on, accompanied by the necessary changes to the topology in the back, and for the better I think. The feet are now done, and there are lots of tweaks to the topology and form. Probably the most significant change in the form is on the nose. On a whim I squished it into the face a bit more, and I liked it.

Solair Media

2007-02-06T07:10:00.000-08:00

Well ... irritating! When did blogger start resizing the images you upload? Needless to say that is what has happened to the image for this post. maybe it's a dimensions limit. Anyway, my apologies to anyone viewing this for the tininess of the images. I had combined them thinking that that would make for easier viewing, and now they're all too small. Anyway...

Thought I should finally show what happened with the project I was doing for a friend. Well, the short of it is that there was a bit of waffling, I wasn't sure if they were still going through with it, then all of a sudden they wanted it yesterday. So, these images are from what I was able to get together for him in a very short period of time, probably 8 to 10 hrs spread over a week. I was having trouble figuring out how to put some of the stuff together in 3D, so, given the urgency I drastically changed the plan and put this together instead. It meant needing to relearn what little I had once known about After Effects, plus learning a number of new things about it on the fly. I've included a link to a test render that I did. This is basically the end result, except that I ended up removing the "Illuminating Your Imagination" slogan, and the stars in the Background, and after delivering the product I made a shorter version that I didn't get around to giving to them. I'll put that up later, and get it to them later. Oh yeah, the sun was rendered in XSI using a customizable lens shader. Everything else was done in After Effects and Photoshop.

Click here to download the video

Clicking on the link should automatically start the download, otherwise right-click on the link and select "save link (or "target") as" from the menu that appears.

EDIT: My website expired and I haven't set up a new one, so for now this video is no longer available.

Faerie Hands

2007-01-20T23:53:00.000-08:00

I've modeled the hands with the intention of making a wide range of wrinkles available for rigging. Personally I don't much like the idea of faking such animated wrinkles.

Unfortunately I seem to have failed in my goal of having only 4 sided poly's. I've had to resort to using 1 triangle. It's very irritating to me. I'll probably take another stab at eliminating it later.

Having completed the hands I'm left with mixed feelings. I'm rather proud of what I've done in some regards, but I'm left with an uncomfortable feeling over a few things, mostly the sheer density and especially the resultant need to integrate the hands into the arm in such an abrupt and inelegant manner as I have. Ah well, at least where I've ended them on the forearm, just before the wrist, is a region that should normally undergo very little deformation so I don't think any problems should arise.

Faerie

2007-01-20T02:19:00.000-08:00

Update on Faerie. More to add later.

Drawings

2007-01-20T00:42:00.000-08:00

A word about the turtle. It was the result of some spare time at work wherein I asked a coworker to give me something to draw. Hence the cheezy rattle-snake tail.

More Drawings

2006-10-24T23:15:00.000-07:00

Some Old Stuff

2006-10-24T23:07:00.000-07:00

I was reminded tonight of this render I prepared as a poster for Gradshow at Cap. I like it as an image and I don't have it posted anywhere else, so I thought I'd put it up here.

I also have an image of Phil where he's actual posed that I'd like to put up as well. If I can find it I'll add it to this post.

A different project for me

2006-10-18T22:04:00.000-07:00

well, working on a little project for a friend. This is a test render from it. Just a regular shader on the foreground objects right now. No real texture on the planet (that will change eventually), just a shader designed to replicate the look of the atmosphere along the horizon, and then of course the sun done via the lens flare shader in XSI along with a glow on a sphere, which helps me control the volume of the "sun" a little more.

Cartoony Dino Concept

2006-10-18T07:58:00.000-07:00

Right now I'm leaning toward the cartoony aproach for the caveman, so here's an idea for the dinosaur. Still in progress.

CaveMan\Dino Shortfilm idea

2006-10-03T01:22:00.000-07:00

I've got this idea for a short film that I've pretty well completely storyboarded ... in my head. Well, I'd really like to get to it some time. I had a lot of fun thinking it up. Here are some drawings done in search of Caveman and T-rex designs for the two characters.

The Cartoony Caveman was of course inspired by Bryce (my brother). The uh... diaper, is made of stone. The visual gag would be him trying to keep his stone wrap up while doing everything a caveman does, such as running from a dinosaur.

The dinosaur, in case you were wondering is quite cheerful in this story.

Something...

2006-10-03T01:17:00.000-07:00

Cartoony for a change. That's pretty rare for me. To be honest I don't usually do anything cartoony unless my brother comes for a visit. He's more into the cartoony look and so I guess his presence prompts me to try it. Needless to say that's how this came about. As well as a silly drawing of a space monkey that I probably wont bother posting. We'll see. Maybe just for kicks.

I actually do draw occasionally

2006-10-03T01:01:00.000-07:00

... though not very much these days - unfortunately. Oh well, Here's some stuff done since I last put up any drawings. I know, they aren't really inspired. mostly gestures of people or parts of people. Still, I at least find some satisfaction in that.

that fairy again

2006-10-02T21:53:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm not really sure of how to control just where all these images and text show up in blogger, so please excuse the mess. Anyway, the updates are as follows - been trying out some HDR based renderings - eh, not totally convinced I've got it down right but anyway. Applied a quick eye texture. It's actually the eye texture for my Phil character, but it had to be refitted and there is more work to be done. I was originally planning to make the eyes brown but now I think I may stick with the green, I think it'll suite the character, especially once the red hair is on.

Also modeled a new set of teeth. I was again going to use Phil's but I wanted to approach the modeling differently, now I want to do it differently again - oh well. I also added a tongue. This I did grab from Phil but then I made some significant changes to make it more anatomically correct. I'm debating over whether to attach the teeth and tongue to the rest of the model, or whether to leave them seperate.

further refined the Geo flow and made lots of other tweaks, filling in more of the inside of the mouth and nose (I find that having real form in the nostrils can make a difference in the believability of a character. It's one of those things you don't always see but when you do it goes a long way in the subconcious) and also around the eyes and throat.

There are actually some really significant things that I'm doing with the eye's. For a while now I've been puzzling over some interesting observations I've made while studying my wife's eyes and some discrepancies between the usual approach that modelers seem to take with eyes vs what the anatomy text-books show. There's a reason for the method that many modelers use but I've been able to confirm that that approach does not correctly describe the anatomy. The image of my model doesn't show the all of the differences well, but I don't have time to get into the details anyway, maybe later.

Oh yeah, I recently bought Zbrush so I'll eventually be doing some fine detailing on the model with that. Been playing with it a bit. So far it's fun

2006-08-15T07:36:00.000-07:00

Well, I sat down this morning and worked on getting those edgeloops at the corner of the eye to run up into the forehead with some success. Still have some problems to fix, but I am pleased with how its turned out so far.

2006-08-14T21:40:00.000-07:00

Time for an update on this model. Gave her ears and a proper skull instead of the stand in hair. I plan to use the Bhairy plugin for the hair, brows and lashes. I've been learning more about how the mouth joins in the corner, and about the construction of the eye region. I'm not very happy with the geo on the ear. Ideally I'd like to take more time to work out a better understanding of how the flow of this kind of ear should go, but I decided it was time to move on. You may notice I've chosen not to continue some edgeloops through to their natural end. I came to a point where I thought I should start reducing the geo density. I've altered my approach to the eye region in a significant way. You can see some loose ends at the outer corner; I'm planning to try taking them in a circular path round the brow and into the forehead. I've been looking for a way to do this for some time as I feel it better reflects nature and it would solve the dificulty of applying dense geo in the eye and forehead regions, in a fluid manner (that's the thrust of the problem), while keeping it out of other areas that don't need it.

2006-07-16T14:16:00.000-07:00

Well, I started a new model. This one is based on the faery drawing I posted earlier, and one other, but I'm letting myself be free to change it. Actually when I started it I wasn't totally intending to take it through to completion, I mainly was wanting to try out some ideas I've had on how to solve some of those transitional spots in the edge loops that tend to be a bit troubling. So I just roughed out the shape and started working out the pattern of the edge loops. So far I'm thrilled with the results. Pretty well every spot that normally creates problems has been solved by my new approach. I should point out that it is not the basic concepts such as circles around eyes and mouth that I'm approaching differently but rather the way they transition between key areas that normally conflict, and result in triangles and limited capacities to accept more geo without making fundamental changes to an area. I'll probably write up some more specific explanations at a later time, but one thing I'll say right now is that this is the result in some paradigm shifts I've experienced, since I first started modeling. A key one being that I used to think (regarding edgeloop patterns) in terms of the shapes of muscles and bones, where as now I believe it is much more effective to think in terms of the flow of skin, which is fluid. I believe it results in geo that will deform more truly, and will probably respond more accurately to any dynamic-skin algorithms.

2006-07-11T22:15:00.000-07:00

Woo hoo! This render is from a test I did on my old Phil character to see if I could still use the original texture with XSI's Fast SSS skin shader. My concern was due to the fact that I originally used a skin shader that was developed at the syntesis school of art in spain, which has some distinct peculiarities, that resulted in me needing to really punch out the reds in the texture, especially on the fingers, in order for them to show up as I wanted them to. Actually, that skin shader was definitely not the only thing contributing to the need. I added on a number of other elements that I'm sure played there parts, such as dirtmap and diffusion. Anyway the real issue is that the shader network I developed for Phil doesn't work as intended in XSI 5.0, so I need another solution if I ever want to use Phil again, and I do (Although the model really needs to be reworked. Yikes! if only I knew then what I know now). The "Woo hoo!" is over the fact that this render shows that it will probably be reusable for the most part. Some previous renders had given me some serious concern. Still don't have a firm grasp on the fast_SSS_skin shader, but I'm excited to learn.

2006-07-02T21:07:00.000-07:00

Just another drawing done in Sketchbook Pro.

Faery-WIP_01

2006-06-23T23:31:00.000-07:00

Here's another WIP. Also another sketch started at work. This time during my lunch break. This one though I think I will take all the way. Currently I'm playing around with color, using it as a testing vehicle. I've included the innitial drawing, the ferry alone with some painting, and then with a conceptual BG. Still very much playing with Ideas. I may entirely change the BG, and the composition could use some work, and there is a good chance that various aspects of the ferry could change, such as the pose of the hands and the robe. Innitially I intended a more positive ferry (at least a ferry is what I had in mind) but it turned more aggressive, so I started thinking more in terms of a wicked ferry, but now with this BG concept I'm imagining her fighting against the wind daringly. We'll see.

Drawing - Sketchbook Pro; Color - Gimp. Oh, I must comment on the stark contrast between working on a Cintiq with Sketchbook Pro vs working on a 4x6 graphire Wacom in Gimp. It's painful. I get home and find that none of my lines come out as intend them when using my graphire, and then there are those choppy lines and non-changing stroke thicknesses in the Gimp. Frustrating and very limiting.

Such rage is disturbing

2006-06-19T15:18:00.000-07:00

Well, all of my assignments were just recalled and they've got nothing else for me just yet, so while I've been waiting I've drawn this in sketchbook pro. A good program by-the-way. Of course it's even better when you're drawing on a Cintique. Oh how I'd love to have one of these at home. Anyway, maybe I'll do something more with this later but for now - no. Tell ya the truth though, this image makes me uncomfortable to look at it. Such rage is disturbing. Wierd, it's my own drawing.

Woman? - or "one of those samurai guys"?

2006-06-18T17:43:00.000-07:00

Well, here's another impromptu painting. I was scribbling in Art Rage while making a phone call, and I kinda saw this face in the resultant scribble, so please don't judge the composition, it wasn't eactly a planned image. Again, I'm not really satisfied, but I thought it was worthwhile to put it up on my blog. I don't really have a good sense for what colors I should choose and I find I have a strong tendency to make things far too light. I eventually switched over to Gimp and, I confess, darkened the image twice via levels. Kind of a dirty trick in my books, but I guess you use the tools you've got. Total time - between 2 and 2.5 hrs. Oh yeah, I originally envisioned this as a guy but near the end it occured to me that it could pass for a large ugly woman, especially given the color of the garb, so I created the bun in the hair as it gave me a chuckle. However, my wife pointed out that it looks like "one of those samurai guys", so call it what you will.

2006-05-25T22:44:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a really long time since I painted anything, but somehow I ended up doing some painting last weekend. I don't think I'm really a great painter, but I was reasonably pleased, so I decided to post it. I spent about 4 hrs on it from the beginning sketch through to the finish. The innitial sketch and paint pass were done in ArtRage 2 and the rest in Gimp 2.2

2006-05-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

Finally have an update for that model I was working on. There are a lot of not so obvious but crucial changes to what was already done. It's been a real learning experience in terms of various structural mysteries of facial structure, and approaches to laying out the geometry. The "hair" you see in two of the images is stand in until I purchase a student license for XSI advanced, and put something more real looking on it. In addition to what you see here I've got a good start on a shirt for him and I've got more done on the eyes. I've also tried out the unfold uv command in Wings 3D on this guy. It works pretty well.

2006-03-17T12:25:00.000-08:00

WIP on this model. I'm going to have to leave it for a while to work on some stuff for a few people. Not sure when I'll get back to it. Hopefully soon.

2006-03-09T12:23:00.000-08:00

Two new pages for my Portfolio

2006-02-23T12:54:00.000-08:00

2006-02-23T12:45:00.000-08:00

Some recent drawings from a trip to a local petting zoo and a pet store.

2006-02-17T10:40:00.000-08:00

Drawing a dog in a sitting a position was really eluding me last night, until I finally drew a reference dog in a standard standing profile. Doing so made a surprisingly big difference for me. I ended up drawing right on top of the original mess, hence the heavy messy lines.

Paul'sProject_03

2006-02-16T14:51:00.000-08:00

Installment 3 of some concept sketches I voluntered to produce for a personal project that one of my co-workers has been working on.

Paul'sProject_02

2006-02-16T14:37:00.000-08:00

Installment 2 of some concept sketches I voluntered to produce for a personal project that one of my co-workers has been working on.

Paul'sProject_01

2006-02-16T13:14:00.000-08:00

Installment 1 of some concept sketches I voluntered to produce for a personal project that one of my co-workers has been working on.

2006-02-16T11:13:00.000-08:00

The image on the left is based on some guy I saw while waiting for the seabus last night.

This image is of a guy who saw me drawing while taking the Seabus home last night. He wanted me to draw him. His name is Jorge. He's from Mexico.

I started drawing something else, didn't like the results, and I was bored, so I changed it into this bizarre looking bird.

2006-02-15T12:44:00.000-08:00

I actually did this drawing a number of months ago, but since I just started this blog I'll necessarily be posting a bunch of old stuff at first.

This drawing was inspired by a glimpse I got of some guy while waiting for the seabus. I got the immediate impression of a long thick neck.

2006-02-15T12:20:00.000-08:00

Painted with Gimp 2.0