Hey guys

I have decided to work a little bit on my hardsurface skills and hopefully make some cool stuff I could put into my upcoming portfolio.

I'm currently doing some futuristic/victorian column and I thought it would be nice to show you some progress. Crits are welcome; though it's still very wip so keep in mind that I will be adding more details later. I would love to hear any ideas and suggestions though

I will be posting more highpoly stuff here once I'm done with this piece.

Nice, looks like a good start. A fine mix of low/mid/high frequency detail.

(Geordie?)

Cheers. I will be certainly adding more complex details once I figure out how to use splines properly, haha.

(Geordie?)

Nope :p Actually I'm Polish; just studying in Newcastle.

Chain smoking Polish ey? I like it! Victorian yet futuristic? Can I suggest that you go for a less shiny look. When I think of Victorian times, I think of slums, opium dens and prostitutes. Also, you might want to look into a more steampunk look, with brass and generally a bit rugged. Just some ideas for later!

ohhhhhhhh Fancy. I like this.

For some reason i wanna see the primary column twizzle down like a sprial pattern.

Nice Job

missberetta: Thanks for the ideas I might render the ending result in Zbrush with some brass mat-cap; but I doubt I will be texturing it. This is merely a high-poly exercise ;)

Crazyeyes: Cheers I had this twisting pattern previously, but I didn't really like the results; felt a tad too simple compared to the rest.



Here's the update; I've been working mainly on the details whilst trying to figure out how to make the base. I want to completely cover the main column with these thin patterns, so it's going to take a while ;)





Looking forward to your crits.

Is that in zbrush or another 3d app?Looks fantastic!

Im also working with a column but i cant get the stencil wrap around my column like you have

very nice!!!!!

Thanks Everything was done in Max so far.

If you are working with cylindrical shape then play around with Bend modifier (or Path Deform) and use Array (or shift+rotate if your pivot is at the centre) to duplicate and rotate your shapes.

Other apps should have similar functions.

Phew, this is coming up together rather slowly; I've been having a major headache for days and my uni-related work doesn't help either.

Anyway, just started working on the base. After some playing around I have decided to go with simple round shape; I will add some ornaments later.
I have removed those long ornaments from the main column; they looked a tad out of place. I will probably go with simple bevels, cut it into blocks and bring it into Zbrush to add some surface details.



What do you think guys? Crits will be greatly appreciated.

I'm digging your thought process on the base since you want to pull the eye up to the high detail stuff. I would make the column's body ribbed as well so that it will reinforce your form since the details are also verticle in nature.


something like this?

Good call on not going overboard for the whole column. No real crits other than it looks great.

I think it looks great. Anymore detail in the center would be unnecessary, imo. Detail the bottom and lets see a nice texture for it.

A little detail around the base wouldn't hurt, but it depends on the texture, that detail could be painted not sculpted. I'm not a fan of adding Greek pillar ribs on this one. Nice smooth pillar, reminds of the Pompey pillar in Egypt or other middle eastern influenced pillars.

Very intricate. I like where this is going a lot.

Nice clean detail, one thing i think you should watch is the scale of some of these little bits and edges, as some of this stuff may not read well depending on what resolution you use when you bake to normals.

Cheers everyone Really happy to hear positive comments.

Not sure if I will be texturing this piece anytime soon (mainly due to lack of time); I would prefer to do more highpoly pieces in similar style. Maybe I will create a scene out of them once I'm less busy.

I was planning to include the ribs at first, but KillingPeople and Vig made valid points that they might not be necessary.

I will also try to increase the size of those small details a little bit; EarthQuake’s concerns are right.

Thanks once again guys

Small update, I thickened some of the details a little bit; though I'm sure I could still improve some areas. I have split the main column into segments and tomorrow I will try to bring one of them into Zbrush.



Looking forward to your comments guys

looking great dude!
I'm curious what render setup you have been using. Is that a mental ray AO overlay?

Clean and neat!

Amazing...Really love what you have done with it!

Could I ask how you go about making those patterns on the column?

Great stuff, it looked like you were pushing too much hi frequency detail through the patterns at the top and bottom at first and you sounded like you wanted that level of detail all over so I was kind of worried how this would go.

Taking a step back, leaving the moddle section as open as you have and also, a key point here is that you made those super thin horizontal extrusions into the pillar and thus demonstrated scale and construction really help to sell this piece.

I would still remove the flowery trims you have above and below the dagger like leave deco you have that transitions into the plain central section, they will be lost ingame and muddy the bold forms and transitions from the deco stuff at the base and top as they blend into the plain center.

Other than these little nitpicky suggestions this is a very strong piece, its always the bold designs that work best, well played!

Brad: Thanks mate
I have used Scanline with Light Tracer, 3 point lights (weak orange rim-light, fill with spec disabled) and a Skylight.

I used X-Convict's material setup and did some post-work in Photoshop (level adjustment and colour balance; cool shadows and warm highlights). Pretty cool results with minimum effort, though I does take a while to render :P

vj_box: Cheers

John: Thanks! I've made the patterns using Splines with Bend and Path Deform Modifiers. Other details were poly-modelled. Hope that helps

Kevin: Thanks It's always great hearing feedback from you, especially because your work inspired me to start this piece.

Thanks for reinforcing my belief in removing some of the details; I started this piece with no clear idea in mind and experimented a lot with different kinds of ornaments, I felt that I started loosing consistency midway through. This piece took me a lot of time so far, but I have learnt a great deal about hard-surface modelling, detail distribution and design. I'm really satisfied with how it's turning out.

You have a good point about those flowery-trims, as now they seem slightly out of place. I still can reuse them later on, while making other pieces, so no effort wasted.

I'm still thinking about taking it into Zbrush to add some subtle surface detail; I don't want to destroy this piece with random noise and cracks, so I will try to be careful with sculpting.




I'm considering doing a scene with similar themed pieces. With some proper planning it might not take me too long. I'm getting more free time on my hands. Since I have put my other project on hold it would be a great chance to make a nice portfolio piece and learn UDK (finally :P).

Phew, I have finally found some time to do some work on this piece.

I went with Kevin's suggestion and removed those thin-ornaments. I added subtle Zbrush pass to the main column; it probably could use some tweaking, but I would like to make a test bake first. In case you don't see any significant problems, I'm calling it done - at least for now ;) Time to move to another piece

Nice job!

Looking ace, can't wait to see the bake..