Update:



Toying with the head:


Getting somewhere on the max armor. Update:



Update:

I think I'm just about done with the sculpt. Maybe a few changes here and there, and then I'm going to go on to the max hard surface.



Hey guys!

This is my first time posting my work here, so I'm a bit nervous cause of all the awesome stuff going on here!

Anyways, one day I hope to work in the game industry, so I'll continue to practice.

I love halo, so I wanted to make an elite. But I didn't want to make an elite with the standard armor, so I took it upon myself to have fun. I kinda see this as a "tank elite" that has all his weapons built into the armor. So I kinda have this idea in my head that the elites (or covenant engineers) and the humans worked together on this armor. And one of the earth engineers kinda liked iron man too much (or it's just me).

Anyways, I'm not sure how much this armor fits into the halo universe, but it's been fun to build thus far all the same.

Everything thus far is zbrush. The body is zspheres, then retopology, and each piece of armor is started from a zbrush cube primitive. I find that doing hard surface stuff in zbrush is a bit messy tho, so I'm gonna surface everything in 3ds max as needed.

Not done yet but I thought I would make a wip thread all the same.



Zspheres:



Base Mesh:



Crits welcome and thanks

I think Vitaly's new dvd set will help greatly with this.

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/544/

The first one is out, he's using xsi/zbrush but all the principles apply to hard surface modeling.

Looks good so far, but yeah I think the hard surfaces look a little melty.

I really like that. I see one potential issue though: The armor around the shoulders may be too thick, it looks like it could limit arm movement.

I also agree with Teriyakistyle, the hard edges look a little dented/softened in some areas, that may be what you are going for though.

Melty lookin armor seems to be a problem with sculpting hard surfaces.. I say model that shit!!

man, everyone hatin on the zbrush hard surface stuff up in here

i think it looks good and reads well (which is the important bit), but i guess some tightening would be cool. One idea might be to do a retopo pass over the high poly if you haven't already, kinda like cedric seaut: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/sho...9&page=4&pp=15 (scroll down a bit).

It prolly would look more solid being done in a traditional modelling app but i kinda like zbrush hard surface stuff

how did you get your Zspheres to work like that, to create that base mesh? it looks like you got a whole bunch of intersecting spheres to flesh out the muscle or something. Did you retopo the zspheres as is, without using adaptive skin?

TeriyakiStyle: Hey bro. Yeah Vitaly is a freaking pimp! I may be able to manage without the DVD but if not, I'll definitely pick it up ;) Yeah I'm gonna retopo in 3ds max as to clean everything up.

jmchristopher: Hey dude thanks for the crit! You're speaking of the torso armor right? Cause if so I see what ya mean. I'll change that up a bit to allow more movement. Still have to make room for the real shoulderpad!

beartraps: Eventually I will. Wanna pound out the rest of the concept before I start to work on the final.

Nizza_waaarg: Hey dude! Ceds work is the reason I tried sculpting hard surface stuff! He is awesome. Anyways, I'm not sure if I wanna retopo then continue to sculpt cause I'm not sure on how much time it'll take to fully make everything smooth looking. Maybe I'll try it and see how it goes though

DeathByChris: Hey dude. I didn't use the adaptive skin cause they are so messy in the first place, I had it in my mind to simply use the topology tool. My final zsphere model was a bit different, I'll post it below. Then after that I just retopologised over the zspheres. I'll also post the adaptive skin below so you can see how crappy it was ;).

Killer zsphere workflow and execution man!

UPDATES NOW PL0X

Looking pretty good dude

Awesome, thats what I thought. Whatever gets the job I guess.
I really like using Zspheres but the adaptive skin doesn't always give me the results I would like.
Thanks for the reply.

@Kovac and Havoc:

Thanks guys! :P

@DeathByChris: NP dude!

So I have this idea where the elite will be holding a halo helmet in the final render, like he effed up some spartan and took his head. Anyways, Here's a recon helmet I made It's a bit different, but it's kinda the same.

Also I can show you waht I mean when I say I will rebuild it in max after I have the concept finished, as I have already done it with this model.

So the concept sculpt:



And here is it resurfaced in max:








low poly:



wire:


I think that's everything!

hmm, I'm not too familiar with zbrush, but isn't that a bit too much model detail on the rebuild in max? Or are you not baking down the normal map? That'd be a shame considering all the effort put into zbrush.

Really like the helm, the armor is looking great but it seems that for your "low poly" you have so many things modeled out that should be baked down. Example almost all of the plane cylinders. They are not creating any form of silhouette so they should be baked down.

Right now your not getting much detail from your high poly beyond softer edges.

You can get rid of almost every other edge, the chin has too much detail, the emblem on the forehead isn't doing anything. All of the cylinders/ diamond things. Some of those little lips need to go.

Hey guys! Thanks for all the nice words. Yeah the poly count on the helm is pretty ridiculous. At one point I had it down to around 1500, but for some reason I reverted back to an earlier version. I can't remember why exactly. Anyways, I'm gonna leave it for now cause I'm kinda lazy. But after I finish the elite I may redo it. We'll see :P

Anyways, Here's a small update. I have most of the body done, but I'm not ready to show it cause the rest of the armor doesn't have any secondary details. So for right now I'll just post the helm:






There isn't really any secondary details on this either but I feel more comfortable showing it. I'll have to get to it tomorrow, however.

Take care, mike.

I must ask, what are your base meshes and how do you get your layers upon layers of "plating" to have 15 degree angle increments?

So let me get this straight, you create the zsphere model, then you retopologize the zsphere model (no adaptive skin)? How does one go about doing this?

innervision961, you make the ZSpheres and then go to Topology and then click Edit Topology. It allows you to draw geometry over the ZSpheres

Really awesome hard surface sculpting! I'm digging the design as well

I was thinking about doing that method myself. He would make the sculpt in zbrush and then create a new topology over it to compliment the sub div model.

Originally Posted by SuPa-

innervision961, you make the ZSpheres and then go to Topology and then click Edit Topology. It allows you to draw geometry over the ZSpheres

Really awesome hard surface sculpting! I'm digging the design as well

Why didn't I know this sooner lol Thanks SuPa! And I concur, Awesome work Jensen, I love it!

Originally Posted by SuPa-

innervision961, you make the ZSpheres and then go to Topology and then click Edit Topology. It allows you to draw geometry over the ZSpheres

Really awesome hard surface sculpting! I'm digging the design as well

When I do this it allows me to draw spline-like things over the zspheres and make those into a model. How do you get more area with this tool?

@DEElekgolo: Hey dude. For the armor my basemeshes are zbrush cube3d primatives. First I just go to initialize and make it the size I want, then go to unified skin and move all the numbers to really low numbers, then make a unified skin. Then I move it into place and start sculpting it there.

For sculpting it i use a lot of the dam-standard brush, clay tubes, layer, and flatten. I just kinda outline where I want the details to be, use the layers brush to bring it up, then flatten the edges at an angle. Pretty simple process just done over and over.

Here is a breakdown of a few of the meshes:





So yeah they are all cubes. I think it's actually easiest that way to figure out the shape you want. For me at least.

@SuPa- thanks bro!

@innervision961: Thanks :P

@uneditablepoly: This should help you out

Pure awesome. Keen to see the finished product.

As a halo fanboy, I can appreciate some nice halo-related art ;) I think my main crit would be that the armour around the forearm and hands seems too bulky, restricting movement. It doesn't look like he'd be able to clench his fist properly.

Otherwise, it's all looking awesome. I'm digging the fin-like detail on top of the recon helmet.

Hey, Jensen, thanks a lot for that link and for answering my PM so quickly. You rock, great work on this. Can't wait to see it finished!