Borderlands Art Test

I've been busy with classes, but I've gotten some time to practice some new things.  I decided to take a crack at the art style for Borderlands and creating tillable textures in ZBrush.

Last of Us Environment update

I started doing more with some foilage and correcting my modular building pieces.  I understand now that you need to have everything 100% lined up.  If one piece is altered, the entire set can change, and that takes up time.  I never bothered making foliage in Maya, but I understand now how difficult it can be versus 3DS Max's tools.  Lucky enough, I got my grass patches and a test ivy in.

Last of us environment

I recently bought a DVD series by the Gnoman Workshop on Environment Modeling.  Lately, I've been focusing a lot on using UE4's BSPs, but this DVD is showing me a lot of cool Maya tools and techniques.  This is going to be based off the concept art piece, "Respite" by Logan Feliciano.

You can see his Artstation here: Logan Feliciano

Always Learning with this Monster

So I ran into a problem this past week with my monster.  I couldn't unwrap the back shell, and my normals were terrible

After 3-4 hours this past night, I came up with a solution.  I moved back into zBrush, and projected the highpoly details onto my new topologized and UV'd mesh.  Just a bit more cleaning up in the sculpt, and then PolyPaint time!

I am still completely blown away by the power of zBrush 4r6.  This could've been a nightmare, but I figured it out!

Low Poly Heart of the Monster

Finally got the lowpoly down.  Much was learned from this with great mistakes.  Now to unwrap the UVs and do a bake.

Heart of the Monster [Day 2]

Day 2 of the Monster sculpt.  The shapes are starting to form.  My only problem will be creating a believable set of hands for him.  One problem at a time.

Heart of the Monster [Day 1]

I started on my zBrush file for the monster.  Im really proud so far with my Dynamesh and clay-buildup from a Polysphere.

Heart of the Monster

I've been watching a lot CUBEBRUSH's YouTube videos, and they are really infromative.  Here's a piece that I call Heart of the Monster.  

Clay and Trim Border

 Its been a while, but I've got a ZBrush mesh to share!  I was pretty happy with the formations on this rock.  Definitely a great practice

Still Rocking (sorry)

So I got to explore more with rock creation today.  Once I get my actual laptop withing the next two weeks, I can start doing more custom shapes.

Chaos Rock and TrimBorder

I saw a video on Youtube that showed a section of Brushes that do not load by default in zBrush.  One of the brushes, a TrimBorder, turns out to be incredibly neat for sculpting rocks.  It's messy, but I see its effect.

Torso Iteration and the Clay Brush

I knew my college gave us free access to lynda.com, but I never used it at all.  So I decided to browse it and see if there was anything I could learn from zBrush.  There was actually a couple of interesting lessons by Ryan Kittleson.  One of the powerful things I picked up was actually how effective the Clay brush is for making circles. 

Something I did with this that I haven't done before: I completely reworked the chest region.    In Ryans videos, he said that you should try and do iterations of design until you are happy. 

Male Torso Anatomy

For this sculpt, I put together a few references on my Pinterest boards and used them to guide me in the sculpt.  I've taken a figure drawing class, but I figured I should at least get a sculpt of a torso with anatomy.

The torso came out okay.  I know I got my major muscle groups covered, as well as using crevices to add some depth to areas in the back and the pectorals.  I also used polypaint this time, and tried to capture pigments of the skin using Alpha's and different drawing methods from the brushes.

Tree Sculpt and Negative Space

It's been a few days, but I was able to squeeze in a sculpt.  I choose a tree to do mainly because of the negative shapes.  Negative space helps with robot design by using empty space to create a recognizable shape.  In addition to negative space, I tried to utilize Sub-tools for the branches to see if it would speed up the process.  It might be smarter to leave those branches out of the model and add them in for the low poly.  Furthermore, I tried to build up a bit of texture in the mesh using brushes.

Hard-Surface Torso/First Post!

Hello!  This is my first try at a blog.  I think I'm doing things right so far...

Today I watched Michael Pavlovich YouTube videos, and I got a solid look into a set of brushes for creating the best hard surface look.  Some of those brushes included the hPolish and Damien Standard.  I wanted to try it out, so I just used the male base mesh that comes with zBrush 4R6.

The hPolish and Damien Standard give me the nice surface and cuts I need to help sell a cyborg look.