Mantipede...what?

Mantipede, not the greatest title for a piece that I have ever come up with but for some reason the name has stuck.

Right, this is the piece I did for the Pixologic guys (The creators of Zbrush). The idea was to test all the features of the new version of Zbrush by doing a piece for them.

Strangely I chose to create a half man half centipede character. There was a reason. The Zbrush R5 includes the ability to use inset meshes that could be created in a free form across a surface. So the idea was to take a segment of a centipede and string it out over a curve in the scene. Due to some technical issue it ended up just being the upper segments however you can still see centipedes crawling over the characters skin that use the Curve brush inset mesh feature in R5.

As a side note you can actually find the centipede curve brush in Zbrush itself. If you go to lightbox and open the brushes tab there is a folder called 'BetaTestersBrus', in there is the centipede. You can basically create a plane and drag out the curve and watch your very own centipede appear before your eyes. Have fun.

This image again was created and rendered pretty much entirely in Zbrush.

New piece

A new piece I have been working on today. I wanted to take the BPR compositing further. I have always been against compositing in Photoshop but now I am really getting into it.

Really need to get the new Zbrush so I can push on with the new hair brushes and HDR that R2 offers. And now R3 is coming out. We love you Zbrush.

An interview I did for the game Hedone

Here is a recent interview I did for Acony Games. It gives an insight into the pipeline used to produce a weapon for an online first person shooter.

"For me the best stage has to be the high resolution modeling step. Why? Because it is the hardest step, but with the reward of seeing the weapon look as realistic as it can, for a virtual weapon." - true story.

http://hedone.tv/blog/item/175-developer-diary-3-more-weapons

The making of Dr House part 1

So A few people asked me to reveal my working process and I was happy to share the information.

So I am posting 3 images to hopefully help spread some light on any areas people are interested in looking at.

To start with the lighting setup. Then the shader and unrendered model. Finally the rendered model close up.










This piece is only partly finished so the settings will change and of course I will do the hair, eyebrows, lashes and hopefully stuble.


Anymore questions thus far please feel free to ask, I won't bite.

Thanks for listening children.

Sunday with Mental ray and Subsurface scattering

Usually it makes me shudder when I have to go through this stage of sculpting BUT for once it went well. I think I actually have a pretty good pipeline sorted out for doing these renders. When I did the chinese fishmonger my render times where over 15 minutes per frame, stupid. I needed this to change so after a few tweaks I have got the render time (for a 720p HD frame) down to about 1min 50seconds. Now rendering is no longer frustrating.

Anyway this is the middle-aged man with some extremely quick polypainting applied. The whole thing took about a day to texture in the end. The texture used are in no way finished yet but they include:- diffuse, epidermal, subdermal, back scatter and front facing spec.

The bust was then decimated in Zbrush to 400k and imported into maya.

I then rendered it using final gather.

So far I was so pleased with the results I thought I would show you guys on the blog.

I really hope you think the results are as good I think they are. Chinese fishmonger took months to create this took about 3 days so the pipeline is far more efficent.

Any questions please feel free to ask.

Anatomy study - Male Mesh

I have been working this week on my Male base mesh. Honestly I think I started this model about 1 year ago but I have thrown it out and restarted it again and again. I guess it is therefore a new sculpt.

I really have been trying to study muscle groups and the rhythm of those muscles within the body. It is a very interesting study but it has left the sculpt a tiny bit stylised. In order to make this more realistic I will redo the tone of the muscles at a later date (next week). For now I am happy with the general grouping, even if it is a bit to symetrical.

Still need to work on the hands, back and feet but I liked these renders enough to go public with a W.I.P. post.

As usual let me know what you think.

That naked lady is back.

After listening to many fine comments from people around the net I decided to revisit the base mesh I thought was finished. She really wasn't finished enough.

So may I present her again NOW WITH POLYPAINTING. So textured and with eyes and teeth she is almost ready to go. Oh appart from her seeweed hair which will not stay and was just a test.

One of the things I am really happy about in this piece is the ZB shader I have used. It is a tweaked basic material that I have used for her skin. No Matcap. This way I can still control the light direction in the final renders.

Anyway I am sure I will keep tweaking her but another project has come up that I need to put some time into.

Keep you eyes open for an update. I am off to the Hurricane Festival for a few days this week, need some R and R, so no more udates this week I am affraid.

Nightwatch Man 3D

I was going through my old stuff last night and I came across the piece I worked up from concept.

I opened up the old Zbrush 2.5 version and started to work on it and you know what. It was FUN. It seems doing creatures is just so liberating. I love doing my anatomy studies but when you start doing a piece like this it just seems to flow so easily.

I think doing this kind of work should be on everyones agenda once in a while just to let the mind be free.

I love Carlos Haunte and his style is what motivates me but he has a very solid background in anatomical correctness. It is great to learn from a master like this and he has helped inspire this creation. So I hope you all like it. It is very much W.I.P so don't be to harsh.

Return of the Crab

An old piece I thought I would return to. I have a really good idea for a big scene involving this Coconut Crab.

Btw going through the reference material for this piece was brilliant. THESE THINGS ARE HUUUGGGE

Hope you like it

Naked Lady

Ok so today the task was to get my base mesh into Maya and render it. Now usually this is a very painful process HOWEVER this week things have vastly improved. So this mesh in Zbrush is about 1.9 million polygons, to much for Maya BUT pixalogic released Decimation Master this week and now the sun is shining.

No more displacement maps HURRAH simply run this neat poly crunching program and hey presto a nice easy to manage 200k mesh.

I have also added an occulsion map to help out the SSS Shader.

Great results all hail the Decimation plug in from those wonderful people at Zbrush HQ.

Testing out my new female base mesh.

I have finally finished my female base mesh. I thought I would spend the day doing a quick test pose.

Very pleased with the results so far. Not bad for a days work.

Hope you like it