A lot of zBrush's tools can be extremely useful if you use it for things other than what they were advertised for. zSketch was generally promoted as a way of doing muscles and anatomy, but it's very powerful for ornamentation and cloth. Also, ShadowBox is generally promoted as a tool for making mechanical parts, but for my ecorche right now I'm using it to make muscles.

After watching choco's tutorials on creating terrains for UDK and CryEngine with Mudbox and WorldMachine I wanted to see if the same approach could be used for Unity. I just used the standard assets so it's kinda crappy looking, but still not bad for something cobbled together in an hour. Can't wait until I'm done with finals so I can make something properly polished with this method.



Also, zBrush ecorche:

Yesterday's work on the ecorche. Gunning to get the legs done tonight.

It blows my mind.

Ecorche is done yo!

Just wanted to say I admire your hard work.

Anyway, me and some schoolmates are doing an art group over Facebook where we challenge each other by taking turns giving weekly challenges. This week's challenge was to model a traffic light entirely in 3DS Max. This is the first time using the program so the process was slow and painful, but well worth it. I feel I'm starting to grasp this program. Modeling through modifiers is powerful as hell.

Surprisingly enough I didn't follow the 3D Motive tutorial.

Time for some tech art stuff.

This is a material I made using the Strumpy Shader Editor for the Unity engine. It uses vertex color combined with a depth map to blend two sets of textures together.

Unity Vertex Blend Material - YouTube

Inspired by this UDK material, but the principles are the same and very simple to make:
http://udkc.info/index.php?title=Tut...Color_Blending

Stumpy Shader Editor:
http://u3d.as/content/strumpy-games/...der-editor/1C4

I saw a pretty good explanation of a Silent Hill style transition material so I was inspired to try that out myself. The article in question is here: http://dp3dblog.tumblr.com/post/2674...-transition-fx
But I did a change to it where I did an Add operation of the rock texture on top of the transition mask to make the glow effect match the rock texture better.

The material is connected to a Matinee that controls the transition parameter, and the Matinee is triggered by a key press through Kismet. T to make the transition, and G to reverse it.

UDK Transition Material - YouTube

God damn, this is some inspiring stuff.
Really shows how much you can learn in a short time if you put some hours into it every day.

More UDK shader wankery!

Today I made a material that fakes thickness on transparent surfaces. Good for planks and fences and girders and such.

UDK Fake Thickness Material - YouTube

The concept is basically to offset the texture with a Bump Offset node (also known as Parallax), then darkening it with a multiply node, and then adding it underneath the original texture with a Lerp node. It doesn't handle corners that well, so I'm wondering if multiple stacks of Lerp might help with the illusion but I'm worried about the drawcalls. Also, I'm not sure if this is more efficient than just stacking two planes, I'll have to do some testing.


Here is the shader graph if you're curious as to how it works:

Played around with Maya Vector a bit.

Really excellent stuff here. I need to do some hand studies myself. I can do them quite nicely in 3D, but I want to better my 2D. I'd avoided it for so long... but no past regrets - just future opportunities, right?

Thanks! And drawing is much faster than 3D so there's nothing stopping you from spending maybe 15 minutes or so a day just doodling a hand or two. I honestly need to get back into the 2D sketches.

Retarded demon head.

Just trying out ZBrush4R4.

Jesus.... peat.

I wish I did this modeling in school! @___@

Cartoony face sketch. I figure I'll polish him a bit tomorrow.

Been doing a lot of technical shit in UDK this week so I did this sketch yesterday to unwind. Very inspired by the look of ParaNorman, I loved the way you could see the paint strokes on the models.

Sup AAU buddy! I'm an animation student focusing on modeling, but man I feel like I should be going the games route if this is what you're doing in it. I haven't been super happy with the animation curriculum so far.

Awesome work regardless! Gonna keep an eye on this thread.

Your work and work rate is inspiring!

@PolygonDon
Thanks a lot! Hearing that I inspire is extremely motivating.

@polaroid
The AAU allows you to take GAM classes even if you're ANM. In fact, that's what I'm doing. GAM used to be a part of ANM, but was made into it's own major after it gained popularity. I stuck with ANM though because I was so far into the program at that point that I would lose a big chunk of my units.
Some of the advanced classes for ANM are pretty good, but their basic classes are rather poor. The major suffers a bit from their faculty being mainly made up by veterans who were in the industry years ago, so while their resumes are impressive a lot of the principles they teach are pretty outdated. In GAM on the other hand a larger percentage of their faculty consists of teachers who are teaching on the side of freelancing or contract working so they are much more up to date with technology, techniques and industry standards. Unfortunately this means a lot of the teachers I've had have quit or found work elsewhere.
Some teachers I can think of from the top of my head that I know are still around and I can personally recommend are Micah Moore (creature design and marquette sculpting), Jeremy Roland (mudbox, and lowpoly modeling and texturing), Daniel Burwen (lowpoly modeling and texturing), Zimou Tan (analysis of form, and heads & hands), Thomas Gronbukt (clothed figure drawing), Mark Zjawinski (traditional sculpture), and Valerie Winslow (Anatomy).

But most of all:
>Work hard and do more than what is simply required for the homework. Do art every day even if it's just 15 minutes. The school is a huge institution and won't give you a job or great skills if you let them run you through the curriculum on autopilot, you have to work for it on your own, and you have to work your butt off at that.
>Respect and apply yourself to the foundation classes, they are some of the most important classes you'll take even if they aren't straight up 3D classes.
>Research classes and teachers ahead of time, never enroll blindly. The AAU allows you to sit in on classes so you can get a personal preview of how they are which I HIGHLY recommend!
>Swallow your pride temporarily and resist the temptation to let personal expression take priority over life studies. Working from reference and real life is extremely important when you're starting out, and once you get over that hill (which you honestly never will, but it will become less steep) your passion work will become exponentially better. But be careful so you don't get stuck in that mode for too long, it's important that you love what you make.

Tried out a new technique in zBrush where I emulate real clay sculpting by building a skinny zSphere armature that I then add InsertSpheres on as if they are lumps of clay which i deform and sculpt on. I then dynamesh it and sculpt on it. Didn't really take it that far so parts of it (especially the arms) look really goofy, but I like how well defined the major forms turned out.

Inspired by this video:

Creature Design & Sculpting With Jordu Schell...

Played around with Gradient mapping in photoshop. Pretty good way of getting a base color pass from a black and white value painting.