Spindraft's pixeldump [Archive]

spindraft

05-20-2009, 05:57 PM

Hey all. Recently started playing w/ mud & loving it so far.

I've decided recently to try to refrain from getting too bogged down & just crank stuff out good bad or indifferent. So anyway, here's a few things I've worked on the last few days.

Thanks!

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y177/spindraft/ap3_2.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y177/spindraft/ap3_3.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y177/spindraft/ap2.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y177/spindraft/ap3.jpg

spindraft

05-20-2009, 05:58 PM

one more ;)

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y177/spindraft/ap4_3.jpg

steelsky

05-20-2009, 10:12 PM

ooo really like the first two... keep em going ;)

spindraft

05-23-2009, 07:48 AM

Thanks steel, glad you like them. ')

Fooled about a bit more at w/ this guy tonight. I'm really not satisfied at all w/ how the back/arms were going, looks like a turd imo. I think if I'm up to it this weekend I need to just bang out a few practice models for body anatomy. Don't like to have to sit there and 'think' about what I'm doing, would rather be able to just do it.........so yeah, need to put in some practice.

Anyway, here he be:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y177/spindraft/ap4_4.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y177/spindraft/ap4_5.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y177/spindraft/ap4_6.jpg

steelsky

05-23-2009, 10:25 PM

aye really like how ya have used the brow on this bloke - one thing i would consider is the extra mass to the head... his head looks huge in comparison to the support a standard neck would give - imagine on a windy day how much effort it would be to keep that head upright... it would be like a sail hehe. Maybe thats a little ott as it does look flatter at the back - but summat to think about :)

but i do like this one keep going :)

Bryan Silva

05-24-2009, 04:30 PM

Im really diggin this last one. Keep at it. I look forward to seeing how you design the rest of the body.

spindraft

05-24-2009, 09:44 PM

Thanks Bryan. I don't really have any set design on him, just kinda moving along w/ whatever happens. I smoothed out the back and started redoing it this morning. Thankfully I'm much more satisfied w/ the direction it's taking now.

steelsky: Heh, yeah I guess he might get blown around a bit. Actually I was thinking he might be like a cult priest or something of that sort, since the shape of his head kind of reminds me of those papal hats. I think he'd be able to hold his head ok though. That mass isn't really very thick, and his neck muscles are getting to be a little big.

Anyway, here's how the back is looking after the redo. Not really sure where I'm going, but we'll see.

Thanks guys.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y177/spindraft/ap4_7.jpg

steelsky

05-24-2009, 09:59 PM

Hey mate... really like this - the colouring suits aswell... this angle really shows that mass on the head isnt to bad and your right the neck muscles do look ample.

Cracking work... is this a screen grab from mudbox?

Bryan Silva

05-24-2009, 10:10 PM

The new back kicks ass! You've got to keep this one going!

spindraft

05-25-2009, 02:19 AM

Well, hope I'm not posting too hastily, but I got the abdomen pretty well worked out how i'd like it. So just need to tighten up the lines on the back to get everything consistent, & work out the arms/legs. I think I'll probably soften out some of the wrinkles on the face as well, I feel like some of them are just arbitrarily placed and don't really fit right.

Steelsky: The coloring's nothing deliberate really. I try to hop around mat/light settings every once & a while just to check things. Yeah, it's just a mud screenie.

Bryan: Hey now man, don't put on the pressure you'll jinx me. :p Glad to hear you like it though, a little reassurance never hurt anyone's motivation, so thanks!

Anyway, here's some work on the abdomen. Think it's too much? I haven't really decided yet, but don't be skeerd to hurt my feelings. ;)

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y177/spindraft/ap4_8.jpg

spindraft

05-27-2009, 04:26 AM

Cut the back a bit more & worked on the arms. Not sure yet, but I think the arms may go through the same process the back did......as in I'll just re-do it over & over till I like it =p. Right now I'm still feeling a bit 'meh' about them.

Anyway:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y177/spindraft/ap4_9.jpg

Hulahuga

05-27-2009, 10:55 AM

Bring out the muscles a bit, or the shapes of them. Looks a bit flat at parts.

spindraft

05-31-2009, 06:00 AM

Started another today. Mesh's at about 530k here, so not super det'd or anything, just the main forms.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y177/spindraft/scrn1.jpg

steelsky

06-04-2009, 04:38 PM

Your getting rather good at this mate - i like the style your using ;) how long ya spending on these? this with your own basemesh?

aphexx

06-04-2009, 06:03 PM

cool sketchbook thread spindraft!
not only good sculpts but also plenty of them :)

spindraft

10-10-2009, 05:40 AM

Your getting rather good at this mate - i like the style your using ;) how long ya spending on these? this with your own basemesh?

Hey thanks man, I appreciate it. Time depends, the busts are fairly quick, prob. around 1/2 - 1-1/2 hr. depending on how far I go w/ it. The priesty-ish guy, not sure exactly but there's certainly several hours in it. Maybe like 12-18 total? Hard to say (been a while since I worked on him at this point).

Most all of these are just the basic meshes from mud, so no they're not my own bases. I've recently been playing around w/ zsketch though.......have enough stuff to get me many hours of retop practice. So I should have some more interesting bases to play w/ in the near future.

cool sketchbook thread spindraft!
not only good sculpts but also plenty of them :)

Thanks Aphexx. That's the idea. In the past I've had a tendency to let myself get too bogged down in a single project and end up losing motivation. I figure simply "sketching" will let me keep my head in it for longer periods.....and as a result, get more practice. ;)

Anyway, here's a little something I started tonight. A friend wanted a basic demon type guy for their band. So he'll have some horns & what not. Cliche I know, but hey, practice is practice.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y177/spindraft/Sloans1.jpg

spindraft

10-11-2009, 07:27 PM

A quick diffuse & basic 'T' specular.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y177/spindraft/Sloans3.jpg

steelsky

10-14-2009, 12:58 AM

very chizzeled and defined... like it ;)

spindraft

10-14-2009, 05:15 AM

Thanks steel. Unfortunately I'm going to have to spend some re-do time on that guy due to a corrupted file. :mad: Not a biggie, but annoying none the less.

Here's a quickie for the evening. Just needed to feel like I actually did something. Bout 30min.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y177/spindraft/Female_10-13-09.jpg

steelsky

10-14-2009, 02:12 PM

cool result. It would be good to see a video of you doing such a short scuplt at some point in the future ;)

spindraft

10-19-2009, 06:24 PM

Thanks Steel. Yeah I'll have to setup fraps or something one of these days.

Here's a quick normal map morph test I did yesterday. Nothing spectacular, just a mess about to get a feel for the workflow. Main problem I've found though, as you can see in the vid, is the normal mapping changes the overall lighting as it morphs. I know it's not the maps as they're exactly the same save the changed bits.

Anyway, here it is.

Linky (http://www.vimeo.com/7137208)

steelsky

10-19-2009, 09:15 PM

spindraft

10-19-2009, 11:11 PM

gr8 effect, but your right that morph does have an odd effect on the lighting - am trying to think why. The lighting effect seems to ease in and ease out with the morph - have you tried a linear change - i dont think that will make a difference tho. Opening both normal maps up in photoshop, when you sample an area that should be the same in both files.. do they have identicle colour values?

Will have a think

Thanks. Yeah I did get the general idea going that I was after, except of course for the funny behavior. I did check the maps in photoshop, & yeah, excluding the portions that are deliberately changed, the maps are exactly the same. This is why I think it must have something to do w/ the way the morph &/or normals are handled in the mat'l in max.

I've tried the usual google routine, but have come up empty on that front so far. Ideally I'd like to find an .fx shader that could handle it correctly in the viewport. That would be sweet.

steelsky

10-19-2009, 11:21 PM

Just to help me thinking, could you just note down how you have the material set up to do the morph? If its simply like a stacked layer in photoshop, ie your changing the opacity of the upper layer to reveal the layer below, it should work perfectly. The only reason I can think it would cause this odd effect is if there is some image processing (like multiply for example) is somehow being added to the result - but that doesnt sound right either.

Are you doing it with a blend or composit material etc?

.

spindraft

10-19-2009, 11:29 PM

It's a 'morph' material bound to the modifier on the mesh. I think I made them just basic raytrace mats w/ a normal bump. The two mat'ls are identical save for the different normal map for each, then I have them instanced into the morph material, which in turn is bound to the modifier so that the material changes automatically as you morph the mesh.

(heh, sorry, kind of long winded scentence there).

I'm pretty sure that's the jist of it, I'll have a look after work just in case.

steelsky

10-20-2009, 12:22 AM

Hmm interesting - last time i did any morph targets was in XSI some years ago - so interesting to know about this morpher material ;)

Hmm, well im still non-the-wiser to why its causing that effect, but i guess there is a way to try and debug it. Rather than having 2 different materials in Mat 1 and Mat 2, load identical materials in to both. then on your morph targets, create a duplicate of your base mesh and set that as second morph. Animate in the same way you have done on the animation you showed earlier.

You should end up with no visual morph or lighting change when rendered. However, if there is still the lighting change - the morhpher material is the problem, as you have ruled out all other factors.

Does that make sense?... lol probably not haha

spindraft

01-17-2010, 09:00 AM

Hulahuga

01-17-2010, 04:39 PM

Woo, it's still here. Sorry I haven't been around for ages!

I never did get around to figuring that morphing problem. I tried using those same maps in cryengine to test it out & the worked fine. /shrug.

Anyway, I've got to rummage through some stuff to post up, but for now here's a couple busts I did this evening for practice.

Thanks.

The girl was pretty nice. But the male looked a bit odd. Especially about the brow and eyebrows (in the middle of the face). It seems like a lot of odd bulginess...

spindraft

01-17-2010, 10:14 PM

The girl was pretty nice. But the male looked a bit odd. Especially about the brow and eyebrows (in the middle of the face). It seems like a lot of odd bulginess...

Thanks man. Yeah, I sculpted the male and then the female. After doing the female I wasn't really diggin the male one as much either, there is something silly about him.

Any way, in light of that, this morning I decided to do another male & attempt to avoid the previous mistakes.

spindraft

01-17-2010, 10:47 PM

Eh, almost forgot this guy. Been working on him a while. One of those things w/ no real 'set' design. So I've just kinda been doing pieces whenever something comes to me. Few months time that probably only amounts to a few hours of actual work. :(

Digital_Ninja

01-17-2010, 11:37 PM

I really dig your work spin :) It's neat to see how you use form etc :D Thanks for sharing!

I've been like a kid trying to hit a Pinata, hopefully I can get some candy soon!

spindraft

01-18-2010, 06:10 PM

I really dig your work spin :) It's neat to see how you use form etc :D Thanks for sharing!

I've been like a kid trying to hit a Pinata, hopefully I can get some candy soon!

Thanks a lot man.

Hah, I know what you mean. It was like that for me for a while too (sometimes it still is). Sometimes it's feels like I'm getting beat down by a pack of midgets, other times it just clicks an I think, "holy shit I just did that in 30 minutes". (hmmm, sounds like a haiku in the works there).

But yeah every so often you stumble on a little technique that seems to work well. Just a matter of doing enough stumbling. ;D

Thanks again!

Shawry

01-18-2010, 10:45 PM

Hey nice sculpts.. especially like the Armour one, great lines and style.

spindraft

01-20-2010, 03:07 AM

Hey nice sculpts.. especially like the Armour one, great lines and style.

Thanks! Yeah that guy's one of my favorites currently. He's on the list of things to see completion (I say that with a grain of salt lol).

Here's this evenings warmup. About 40min.

spindraft

01-28-2010, 05:46 PM

Hey guys. Been away here a few days. Mostly been working on this guy.

He's probably approaching 20hrs here pretty quick. Sculpted in Z, textured in Mud. Currently a diff + basic spec. map. Going to do some new topo/uvs & re-project the maps, at which point, if I'm not entirely sick of looking at it, I'll go back to mud for some further refinement on the sculpt/maps.

Anyway, thanks for lookin'. o/

lovingsaskia

01-28-2010, 08:33 PM

Why would you model in Z and texture in mudbox? It looks good and all that, but just a little suprised by your workflow,. I'd be interested to know why?

spindraft

01-28-2010, 09:23 PM

Why would you model in Z and texture in mudbox? It looks good and all that, but just a little suprised by your workflow,. I'd be interested to know why?

Well, basically because both app.'s have their strengths & weaknesses. Both have tools that I prefer to use for different stages of something. I find Z is much more flexible for me for the concept stage. You can easily drop a zsphere layout, & do some zsketching if you like, & start working on forms with very little regard for topology. You can quite quickly get something to a level where you can make the decision of wether or not you think it's going anywhere. For me, doing this, & retopo'ing later is much faster than box modeling a base out of max. So if you do decide you don't like where it's going, you've wasted much less time.

On the other hand, you can't beat the realtime lighting in mud. In this specific regard, Z is like fingerpainting in comparison. It's just so much more intuitive for me to be able to see what a texture is doing right there as I paint it. Additionally, at least in my experience, mud has always produced more consistent results when doing things like projecting details onto a re-topo'd mesh. Z it seems to begin having troubles when you get into these areas.......sometimes it works, sometimes it makes a bloody mess. Mud just does w/o a fuss. Also, going into the finer levels of detail is much less of a fuss w/ mud. Z still has yet to have been written for x64, & hence you simply cannot take a single mesh anywhere near the levels you can w/ mud. At least not without breaking it up into pieces, but that's just more time & complication for an extra step that really shouldn't need to be done.

Anyway, there's other little quirks about each that I like/dislike, but that's kinda the overall jist of it.

Sometimes I just kinda keep that to myself though. Mud/Z can sometimes be like pc/mac in terms of running into the occasional fanboyism. But they're both fantastic app's in their own ways. I simply like to use both depending on which I feel is better suited for the specific task.

lovingsaskia

01-29-2010, 08:13 AM

Thanks for clearing that up for me, makes more sense now :)

Shawry

01-30-2010, 11:53 PM

spindraft

02-02-2010, 08:32 PM

kool, interesting idea.. kinda looks like he has a exoskeleton on the outside of his muscles a little.. when u first see its like.. hmm that looks weird.. but then, its growing on me, i really like it.. nice sculpting dude, even tho it was in Zbrush.. but i don't care..
I like the few sharp lines throughout the model, makes those parts stand out more in an organic model..

I really like it mate.. tho from the back view kinda looks like he has a little flab hanging down lol.. but anyway lol... so is this guy finished?? or u gotta do more to him?

Thanks alot. yeah, he's a bit on the strange side. I may try to put together a proper render or 2, but at this point I'm going to call him done for now. It's just at the point that I'm tired of looking at it ;). Even though, I really really ought to do some more work on the hands and feet, I feel like those are the main parts that are really letting it down. So I'll prob. go back to it eventually, but for now he's on the backburner.

Time willing, I need to just spend a week or 2 doing nothing but hands & legs. I think I've gotten fairly comfortable w/ busts & torso area stuff & arms for the most part, but especially hands is something I really need to spend some practice time on.

spindraft

02-03-2010, 06:05 AM

A little modeling work on the alien guys back armor parts. o/

VexX_81

02-03-2010, 07:02 AM

A little modeling work on the alien guys back armor parts. o/

Can't wait to see it textured.

spindraft

02-24-2010, 12:28 AM

Thanks man. I can't wait to texture it. :p Always so much going on & never enough time.

I though some of you might find this interesting. I've been playing around with creating & using tileable displacement mapping for quickly creating new geometry. This is just a testshot of the results using one of the maps w/ a matching diffuse+specular. The base geometry is just a plane & cylinder w/ some parametric modifiers (bend etc.).

Thanks!

spindraft

05-28-2010, 06:14 AM

o/ Hub!

http://sheaspina.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/BootwipLrg.jpg
http://sheaspina.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/uvLrg.jpg
http://sheaspina.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/prog5.jpg

A basic flow sheet for re-top/uv/re-proj/text etc. etc.

http://sheaspina.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/FlowSht.jpg

spindraft

05-28-2010, 06:21 AM

Also went back to this guy a few weeks back and did some new renders in max (prev. images are mud screens).

http://sheaspina.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Final1.jpg
http://sheaspina.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Final2.jpg
http://sheaspina.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Final3.jpg

Shawry

05-29-2010, 05:32 AM

dude, love the space chick and the armour, looking awesome!!

spindraft

05-30-2010, 01:25 AM

Thanks! Glad you like her.

Did some more texturing on her armor parts today.

http://sheaspina.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Back6_Lrg.jpg
http://sheaspina.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Back5_Lrg.jpg

Shawry

05-30-2010, 04:03 AM

fantastic... ur armour and texturing is great..! nice work, can't wait to see it all finished.

Hulahuga

05-30-2010, 08:28 PM

Good that you update her as well! :D

Looking good :)

spindraft

05-31-2010, 11:53 PM

Thanks again Shawry.

Huga: Hey man, any excuse to get back over to the hub. ;)

Got the front going.

http://sheaspina.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/TArmrFnlText_Lrg.jpg

Shawry

06-01-2010, 06:01 AM

Kool design for the front, he breats kinda look like they could be headlights lol, gives a new twist on " High Beam " haha..
lol yeh ok, that was a lame joke.. but anyway.. is she going to be fully decked out with armour? not that it matters really, but from the front view she kinda looks " Back" heavy as if she will fall over.. or are u thinking jets at the back of her??

are you going to use something that'll look like a counter ballance on her? like i said, i guess it doesn't really matter, it'll look awesome either way in the end.

keep it up dude!