Daelus' Sketch book

[Daelus]

Well, my New Year's resolution was to get a whole lot more work done. Gonna try to get at least one completed render done each week, whether it's just a bust or full character or whatever.

Criticism is always enjoyed, however I'm unlikely to go back and work on any of these unless it's a WIP pic from Mudbox or something or that nature. And to kick it off, here's two I worked up in the week after christmas.

[Daelus]

Been working on a lot of things, but nothing really finished. Here's a handful of WIPs, since I haven't posted anything since the first ones. Hopefully I'll have something finished by next week.



The first one is a head I'm trying to do for the CGchannel January competition. If any of you guess who this celebrity is, I will be most overjoyed (as it means I haven't completely screwed up the likeness).

Second one was me trying to figure out what makes a face feminine. It kinda perplexes me that the head of a male and female are so similar in structure, yet you can almost instantly tell one from another. Only spent about an hour on that one, but... for a guy who's only ever done male sculpts, I don't think it's too bad for a first try.

The third one is just the face of a full body model for a rather sinister looking Sith character. I'm planning on rendering him out wearing the traditional black robe and shooting lightning from his finger tips. I think I'm pretty much done sculpting him, just planning on painting him up and composing the rest of the stuff together.



Anyway, hopefully more to show next week.

[Daelus]

Been working on this one quite a bit over the past few days, and getting frustrated with it. Think I'm gonna leave it where it is for a while and do other things. Anyway, here is where it is for now. ;)

[Daelus]

Made a few more adjustments, but I've mostly been working on some new cage meshes so I can have a little bit more freedom in what I do. Pain in the behind to work from scratch every time.

Anyway, the two final shots on the guy above. They have different backdrops because... well, I felt like they should. Anyway, back to school tomorrow, so I'll probably be a bit more motivated to do this stuff soon. Holidays kinda drag me down. :(

[mercenary]

Very cool, keep it up. I look forward to when I can post some stuff... ND and such.

[Daelus]

Been a while since I updated this, so here's a little something I've been working on. It's a work in progress, so not everything is textured properly, or even sculpted yet. Haven't had as much time as I'd like to work on stuff, plus I've been feeling very uninspired. Oh well, maybe lightning will strike soon.

(These are straight renderings so they aren't too pretty. ;))

[Daelus]

Finally got around to finishing Mr. Slant. Could certainly be a lot better, but oh well. Very tired of this one, and time to move to something else.

[Daelus2]

Just a bust I've started for the CGHub bust a move competition. Only like a week left so I figured I might want to get moving instead of procrastination like usual. No textures or expression yet, that comes tomorrow. Then the hair and composite. Wish me luck. ;)

[Shawry]

nice start dude, a week left!? good luck with that.. better get moving! haha
As for now, i think the mouth and chin area have a kinda manly feel.. and i think her cleavage is kinda too wide.. but i guess they come in all different sizes ;)

look forward to the end result! best of luck

[Daelus2]

Actually it's more like 5 days :eek:. Anyway here's the first tex pass. Time to head over to photoshop and start making SS layers and spec.

[Daelus2]

Just about done with it, few final touches on the scene to be done. Lot of the textures don't want to do what I want and I may cheat and touch em up in photoshop. :p But anyway that's the general gist of the thing. Like half of my sculpt work ended up getting blown out by the skin shader, but oh well, it'll have to do.

[Daelus2]

Little update. Made a few changes to the bust, but then realized that they had a no nudity clause for the competition so no submission from me. I should read a little further into these things before I start.

Other thing is I'm working on right now is portfolio work. Since most of my work is either old and second rate, or only really half a model, I figured I needed to get some high quality, completed work done soon. I'm gonna be looking for a job in a few months so it might help if I had something to show. ;)

Anyway, here's the sketches and my base mesh (not quite finished with it yet) for that. I did a lot more sketches than included, but I don't want to show off all the really terrible ones. I'm sure most of you could guess the inspiration from it, but truth be told it wasn't intended to be that way. The sketches just sort of ended up like that.

Oh, and yeah. I deviated from the sketch for the hands because I was really hating how they were working, so I kinda just played that by ear.

[Daelus2]

Quick update. Did a little practice sculpt on my alien centaur, and thought I'd post it. Definitely not the finished version and I'll probably do the sculpt again from scratch before I texture it, but I wanted to show off what I want em to look like more or less.

[Wayne]

Yep...I like him., :) keep going on that one.


Wayne...

[Daelus2]

Decided after a few sculpts I didn't like what was going on with his torso, so I built it to a more standard, human-ish look that I was more comfortable with, rather than continue with something I don't think was working.

I also experimented with a more insect-like carapace look, but it really wasn't going to work with the rest of the body.


Anyway, here's where my (probably) final sculpt is for now. Going to rework the head and neck a lot because it's not where I want it, but the body is mostly done, just a few touches for the legs and arms.

[Shawry]

looking good, but you definately need to do something with the hands, or lack there of.. his arms are kind pointless sticks atm.. keen to see how it all finishes up.

[Digital_Ninja]

Oh, he is a scary customer!! Don't give up! :D Your progress is great so far!

[Daelus2]

Quick update. Pretty much done, just some final sculpting to the legs to get em matching the style of the arms. The head is giving me a headache, so I'm gonna leave him as is. I wanted it to look intelligent, but not old (as this would be very non-threatening), and every time I tried to make it look more intimidating it ended up going the other way or looking positively ancient.

Anyway, moving on to texture studies tomorrow probably.

[Shawry]

Nice update, i really like the lighting, and the face turned out really well.. tho i think he has a more of a "wise" kinda feel to him, more than menacing.. really like the nose.

nice work. =)

[Daelus2]

Okay, pretty much done with textures, but I ran into... not so much a snag, as a strange occurrence. First of all, when I brought the .OBJ out of mudbox, like a total of 8 of the faces just randomly have no UVs. It's no problem for me to fix this back up, just wondering if it was something fixable without reprojecting those faces and snapping em into place.

Secondly, why does the Maya Software render give such ugly results with normal maps? Mental ray is near flawless, but MS is just wrong.


Anyway, I should have a turntable or at least a decent render to show by tomorrow. ;)

[Hulahuga]

The centaur is looking pretty good

Keep on finalizing =D

[Daelus2]

Well, rendered out a turntable with em, and after about 10 hours of rendering (my computer wasn't exactly built for 3d apps) I went through the images and realized I'd screwed up some of the rigging I made to pose em (since I wasn't sure if I was gonna animate him or not). A few polygons were sticking out where they shouldn't be, so I've fixed that up and will re-render if when I've got some time.

Anyway, you this frame wasn't too bad, so I thought I'd give an update before I move onto my next project or spend some time animating this guy if the rig works out. He wasn't really built too well for animating, really need to start from a T pose for that.


Oh, and since I didn't mention it, this guy's been kept to game resolution (since that's where I hope to head soon). This rendering is only 3200 quads. Thought it turned out pretty nice for my first low poly model. The maps are all 2k, but I could probably cut that down if I wanted to.

[Daelus2]

Just a few speed sculpts I did. Bout 20-25 minutes each, not counting a quick render setup. Need to get in the swing of things before my next portfolio piece. ;) More on that in a few days, finishing up the poly modeling right now.

[Daelus2]

Afternoon folks. Thought I'd post my next project. Poly modeling is basically done, except for a few final props that I may work in for the final scene. I've started on a little sculpting, but nothing too serious yet, bout an hours work so far. Textures are all placeholders for the moment.

To explain what's going on, this character is essentially going to be emitting fire, and, in the end, should look quite scorched and burnt if I've done my job right. The grate below him is being heated by him, not the other way around. Hopefully that will convey a little better once everything is set up a little better. ;)

This is eventually going to be submitted for Gnomon's sculpting contest for the month. The topic was a "Grand Fireplace", and since I didn't want to do anything traditional, and I need to get more characters to show off, I figured I'd do this.

[Shawry]

Interesting concept.. look forward to what it ends up like.

[Daelus2]

Quick update, just about done. Few things left to work on then it's on to texturing.

[Digital_Ninja]

You're really cranking these bad boys out :D I can't wait to see what he looks like textured! SHold look pretty cool :D

[Daelus2]

Well, you don't have to wait long. Here he is textured. I think I'm gonna end up compositing in the fire in photoshop afterwards, but I ran a few test renders with maya's fire. And I'm also going to rebuild all the base poly model because... well it's just not gonna work. Doesn't fit anymore.

[Daelus2]

Updated poly model for the base. Time to UV, and texture it. But tomorrow, it's midnight now. ;)

[Daelus2]

Okay, probably the final image here. Might redo it to make it look a bit better, and I might do another comp for a close-up, but I really gotta work on something else. ;)

[Daelus2]

Finally got around to recomping Ignus for a final submission. Also, I did a few things for the hell of it, but that's about as far as I'll take em. I think I'm going to retexture my centaur tomorrow, since I'm not really liking it now that I look at it again.

Anyway, I'll prolly have several updates over the next week, since it's spring break. Some people go partying... I go mudboxing. ;)

[Daelus2]

Retextured my centaur, and a few poly models that I finally got into mudbox. The fun starts now. :cool:

I'm doing Darth Malak from the original Kotor game for fun. Always liked him as a villain, and he was one of the first models I ever attempted. That was... shall we say less than successful? Hopefully it comes out better this time. Maybe at the end, I'll post a before and after. ;)

The metal golem floating... thing is a model I built earlier this week because I was bored. Dunno if it'll go anywhere, but thought I'd post it since I said I'd have something this week and I haven't posted anything yet. I'm kinda reluctant to take it any further because if I sculpt it, I'll end up having to sculpt like 10-12 seperate parts for one mesh, and that's always unpleasant.

Anyway should have some sculpts in the next few days of Malak at least.

[Daelus2]

Most of the sculpting is done. Little work to do on the mask and belt. I'll probably touch up some of the other parts a bit before I move on to texturing.

[Shawry]

i think it would be more dynamic and more sinister if u were to curl and cascade the fingers on the left hand.. its letting down ur pose atm.. ( unless their straight on purpose ) .. but nice work.

[Daelus2]

Been a little while, switching over to 2011 and all, plus a few corrupted files meant I took a bit of a break.

Anyway, here's Malak in his final form (minus a few last minute texture color corrections, contrast, etc). This is the low resolution mesh with normals in mudbox. Sitting at just over 10k quads. If I were to push it, I could probably cut it down to 7-8k, but it's not too heavy as is, and I don't plan on animating this guy, beyond just maybe some practice with ncloth some time down the line with the cloak.

[Daelus2]

Just finalizing the shot. Need to throw a few basic textures together for the set, and maybe do a few tweaks to lighting, but basically this is how it will look. I think it turned out rather nice if I do say so myself. :cool:

[Groen]

Your last render looks good but its a bit too dark. Add some backlight and brighten it up a bit. It could still look dark but currently its just too dark and hides all the cool details

[Daelus2]

Been a little while since I updated this. Been busy, finals, family, rendering out a bunch of stuff trying to put together a demo reel. Anyway, here's a project I just finished and something I'm just starting to sculpt. Schools out soon, so I'll have a bunch of time to knock out some stuff for fun then.

[Hulahuga]

Interesting designs.

Going to continue on the guard/warrior??

[Daelus2]

Planning on working him a little more over the weekend, but I have this habit of coming up with ideas while I'm in the middle of something else and dropping that something else to start on the new idea. ;)

If I took everything through to completion I figure I'd have twice as many things in here. Still got like 5-10 bases built and UVed that I never even imported to mudbox. :mad:

[Daelus2]

Well, it's the weekend, and therefore it's time to get some work done. :cool:

Here's an update on my alien. The rig is kinda iffy, and I had to cut down on polys to reach anything like the target poly count I was aiming for (not that they are missed that much, the helmet was far too dense anyway). His surroundings I'm going to start on tonight or tomorrow, then it's time for a final turntable.

[Daelus2]

Figured I'd round out my portfolio with a few props, so here's my first. Bout 2 days spent on this, and I was trying to keep it as low poly as possible. Only 636 tris all up. Haven't gotten around to texturing the trigger yet. I'll probably throw something together quickly in photoshop to finalize it.

No sculpting done here, just texture painting in Mudbox, so I guess that still counts. ;)

[Hulahuga]

Sculpt it ffs :P.

Looking good as a base texture, so complete it !

[Daelus2]

http://i587.photobucket.com/albums/ss311/Xerocise/Render1.jpg
http://i587.photobucket.com/albums/ss311/Xerocise/Render2.jpg

Character I worked on over the break. She has a partner who I haven't really started working on yet, but I'll get it done soon. I have a few other characters that I did over the break, but I won't post them because they are.... horrible. :mad:

Anyway, back to school in a few days.

[Hulahuga]

Feet look a bit flat and odd... Otherwise this looks quite good :D.
Pose 'er up !

[Daelus2]

Feet look a bit flat and odd... Otherwise this looks quite good :D.
Pose 'er up !

I got her posed and all in my reel. So I'll probably upload that soon, and start sending it out. Time to start looking for a job, always seems like it comes too soon. :eek:

And yeah, her feet feel a little odd (perhaps too long in the foot) to me as well. I built the boots as a covering for her feet over the top, rather than delete the encased faces. So... that probably means I should work on the proportions of my base a little more next time.

[Daelus2]

Feels like it's been a while since I've updated this, so I thought I'd post what I've done. Been busy with school/internship/reel work, so I haven't had as much time to procrastinate as usual.

These are the almost final pieces that I've been touching up and tweaking for my demo reel over the past month or two. These pics are the raw beauty renders stolen from my turntable sequences.

http://i587.photobucket.com/albums/ss311/Xerocise/DroneFinal.jpg
http://i587.photobucket.com/albums/ss311/Xerocise/Girls.jpg
http://i587.photobucket.com/albums/ss311/Xerocise/AlienFinal.jpg


And here's something I've been working on recently. Mudbox render there, and still need to give it teeth and eyes. I'll probably have it done over the weekend sometime.

http://i587.photobucket.com/albums/ss311/Xerocise/QueenMBrender.jpg