Though it was time to start working on stuff again.

Dom War 1 rework WIP. About 38,000 polygons at the minute.








Dom War 2 rework, since I wanted something to sculpt. Basemesh, using the hands from Arshlevons basemesh.





C&C more than welcome.

Hey Rick, good start to your sketchbook.

The first one has a lot of interesting material going on. The horns are a good choice, but the present set are a bit odd. With all of the spikes facing inward, they're not particularly threatening, and yet they're spiky (instead of webbed like a moose). They're a dominant form so it might be worth another round of TLC on the base there to make sure it'll carry what you want. The other thing on that sculpt is that the hands feel small and a little weak relative to everything going on around them. Does he carry a gun or a melee weapon? Looks like the low shoulder guard wouldn't allow him to raise his arm on the right side. Despite the size of that paragraph it's just little issues, there is a nice mass, and plenty of opportunity for detail in that one.

On the domwar2 one: Would those ankles work? That arrangement appears on reptiles, but they don't have a full vertical body weight on them often. Horses aren't much different, but again thats 1/4 of the mass, and it's going onto the toe, not into the ankle, then forward into the main foot. That was it on that one, nice anthropomorphic head base, the collars look very interesting and the costume is generally clever (he just had to be wearing tails didn't he ).

Good stuff.

Ta.

Not only are the hands weedy in the first one, the arms were too short, but that's been sorted. I still haven't decided on what is going to happen with the hands yet, that's a job for some paintovers. The antlers are going to closer to caribou antlers when I get round to them (they are a straight lift from the Dom War 1 model).


It's funny you should mention the feet on the Victorian chimp lizard, they were the part I as most unhappy with. I've already started reworking the entire lower leg into something closer to a gecko (ignore any bandiness for now).





He is almost ready for Zbrush, but I 'll need to install Windows first since 3.1 never got a Mac release (though it seems that 3.5 will).

Zbrush 3.12 for Mac is out, my license arrived on Thursday, so I've imported this guy and split him into subtools.

Perhaps some thin framed spectacles are required....

looks promising! looking forward to the sculpt!

Learning more of Zbrush than the sculpting - but it took me a bloody hour to make and place 14 buttons.

one thing I found out with zbrush that may help you since I noticed you didn't manage to maintain your lowpoly shapes while smoothing:

just before the first smooth, go down the panel and in morph target click storeMT, then smooth as much as you want, then go back to the first level and switch morph targets, and your shape will be maintained when you'll go up your subd levels again.

also, if you can, try to get the RS matcaps, they are pretty awesome for sculpting

Vahl - cheers, that's a great workflow technique. Most of the subtools have had no sculpting, so I'll go back and do that on those ones.

Got any Transpose tool tips? Specifically, how to speed up the placement of buttons?

We have those Matcaps at work, and they are very nice indeed.

If you want the buttons to be geometry I would just place them in your modelling package and import them in place like that.

If it's for personal work where you know the texture resolution will hold up well, I would just make an alpha for a button and place them like that. I found out you couldn't include other subtools like buttons and rivets in your normal map via ZMAPPER the hard way

It's starting to come together nicely now Rick.

np Rick, I struggled with that myself so I'm glad I can be of any help

you can use the meshinsert fit and meshinsert dot brushes.

to make it work and keep your subdivision levels, however, you need to duplicate your subtool and delete the lower subdiv levels, set the meshinsert mesh in the brush menu and then set up the size of your brush accordingly, this will create a mesh the same size of your brush, facing outside the mesh you dragged it on. to keep only these meshes once you're done, just hide the polygroup you don't need (the duplicated part of the mesh) and then hit delete hidden under geometry. using that technique, placing buttons should only be a matter of minutes

The advantage of this technique compared to the alpha one is that it keeps them a separate object when you export to obj, thus making material mask baking much easier.

Another few hours, trying REALLY HARD (and failing) to not get caught up in the fun detailing.



Feet and hands next i think, then maybe belts

looking great. love the details,

cool character. original.

Cheers for the kind words folks! As to the originality, I had a very rough idea of colonial werewolf martian (I wanted a double breasted jacket) but Ian (http://ianmcque.blogspot.com/) very kindly reworked into some lovely concepts and that's where the originality comes from - Victorian Space Chimp. After DW2 was over I lamented on not working more of his ideas into the piece, so the remake is much truer to his concept.

Ian did the sexy coloured piece in this shot:



I grabbed another few hours tonight and gave into the temptation of the head, but managed to steer clear of detailing for the most part.

you still tend to advance levels too soon and it still looks bloby as your entry was, take time to push each subd level to its maximum ;)

Johny - yup, guilty. I'm getting better at not advancing so quickly, but I do it. I find myself having to step down and delete higher levels. It's slowly getting through though!

I dig the concept of this fella. You mentioned something about glasses earlier. I think with his prominent brow, it would be cool if he had a monocle. You could have a small chain that could hang down and tuck into his overcoat or into a side pocket of some sort.

Overall I like were this is going. Makes for a interesting character. Planning on rigging and animating later? Keep up the good work.