Three Dimensions

JSR 10th Anniversary

2010-06-29T22:22:00.003Z

For the 10th Anniversary of Jet Set Radio I put together this render of an old model of gum...

Check out the website Ross Burt put together here for other JSR art by other artists

Land Dragon update

2010-04-04T18:22:00.005Z

Never got round to finishing this one (from this earlier sketch - here), but thought I should post the 3D work so far. So here goes...

Some of the WIP sculpts in zbrush...

Astrofunk Issue 2

2010-04-04T15:55:00.007Z

Haven't posted in ages so here's something I did a while back for Ross Burts' latest issue of Astrofunk!

The image was mostly created/rendered in zbrush using passes. I did a separate render for the fur in max (which too waaay too long) as well as using Mental Ray for the background bots.

And here is the render as it appears in the comic!

You can buy a copy of Astrofunk right now! The previous issue is available too...

http://rossburt.blogspot.com/2010/02/return-of-funk.html

Joanna Dark

2009-04-03T13:01:00.004Z

I've been working on this the last couple of days instead of DWar stuff...

Shown here in the Marmoset Toolbag editor, basically ingame with normals and spec. Will post the high poly zbrush sculpt later once i've finished fixing seams and finished the rest of the texture.

It's a take on Joanna Dark, for the source engine Mod of Perfect Dark. See more here

2009-03-19T08:00:00.003Z

First sketch for the DWIV competition -

Mounty Rogers

2009-03-12T10:11:00.004Z

Did this bust for a friend from work, it's based off a character from this comic strip the he helped write, and his brother illustrated. Felicity. The comic is great, click and have a look!

Here's the model

Submitted

2009-03-03T01:53:00.003Z

First Pass at the textures

2009-02-28T11:32:00.002Z

Domwar mini challenge

2009-02-24T23:10:00.005Z

The Dominance War mini challenge has started on most of the 3D community forums. This is what I've been working on so far. The rest of the entries for polycount can be seen here.

Below is a quick test bake to see how the sculpt would hold up on the supplied base mesh.

Trap Jaw textures

2009-01-14T23:32:00.003Z

Head WIP

2008-07-25T10:38:00.002Z

Trap-Jaw

2008-07-25T10:15:00.002Z

Speed Sculpt

2008-04-30T11:12:00.003Z

Another super quick zbrush sketch, think this angry guy took aboout 90mins all in, built from a sphere, using mainly clay tubes and extracts. Shoved some teeth in to finsh him off.

Troll Slayer

2008-04-30T11:06:00.003Z

Some more speed sculpting in zbrush :D

Additonal view

Metabaron IV

2008-04-25T14:07:00.004Z

I've been meaning to do a sculpt of the cover for metabaron IV for ages now. The cover was originally drawn by talented artist Juan Gimenez, check out his amazing art here. You can see the cover for Metabaron IV in there too, which my sculpt is based on.

Dominance War III

2008-02-22T19:52:00.003Z

Just entered the DWIII. Check out the thread over on CGS here

Here's some inital sketches/ideas

Gum render 001

2008-02-20T22:45:00.002Z

First test render of Gum! Been tooling around, still loads I want to change/add but at least it's some progress. Hoping to also render in a cityscape and do some other poses too.

Gunner

2008-02-01T11:43:00.001Z

Whilst Erik was rigging and skinning Gum, I started on another character model. This one is based on a concept Ian McQue did. You can see his concept along with his other work here

Heres my take on it so far, still very early days yet, the bottom half especially. I've also got the gas mask and oxygen tank built, I'll show that in the next image. Working out a new way to strap the gun onto him at the moment, the shoulder strap looks a little weak

Rig and Skinning is done!

2008-02-01T11:39:00.000Z

Erik Brear took gum off my hands and skinned her to his rig. Very nice it is too! I'm in the middle of getting her posed and hopefully some final renders will follow.

Cheers Erik!

Base

2008-01-18T14:09:00.000Z

Started roughing out the base for Gum. Need to get her rigged and posed too....

Ink outline

2008-01-10T16:52:00.001Z

Quick and dirty outline test using a clone of the mesh. Works not too badly. Might play around with varying the thickness and changing the colour from plain black.

Gum Textures

2008-01-09T08:10:00.000Z

A very quick image of the how the diffuse textures are progressing. My graphics card has just about died so theres no AA on the image, I'll upload an updated one soon.

It's good to talk

2007-12-18T11:04:00.000Z

Gum is up for crits over on CGS with updated pics and more progress, click here.

Roll

2007-12-18T10:57:00.000Z

I've been fighting with zbrush for a while now trying to get the mysterious roller brush to work. The idea is that you can roll on alpha brushes like you would use a roller brush with paint on your walls at home. This is perfect for doing fabrics, skin pores and all kinds of cool stuff. Thing is i couldn't bloody do it. As it turns out it wasn't the roller brush i was after at all, but a little button in the stroke menu "roll" which modifies your current stroke (dots and freehand work). So bloody obvious! Works outside of projection master too.

Straps and shaders

2007-12-12T18:00:00.000Z

A little more work on the straps, knee pads and little bits n pieces. Think I'll start on the lowpoly version soon.

Pores n stuff

2007-12-11T17:12:00.000Z

Started adding some micro details using alphas and projection master, and other stuff like eye lashes that you'll probably never ever, see. Good fun though! I updated the hair a bit as well, used clay tubes to give it more volume although I'm still not happy with it.

Import Groups

2007-12-03T10:46:00.000Z

When importing a subtool that was generated from an extract in zbrush, keep the groups boxes ticked in the option box in max. If you keep your settings as shown, you will get the outside section of the mesh, the inside, and the edge section as well. This is particularly useful if your mesh is very dense, you can select the inside section and delete, saving almost half the polys.

AO with MR

2007-11-23T10:25:00.000Z

I really liked the results from an ambient occlusion bake with mental ray in 3DSMax, but I always got loads of errors (black splodges). Turns out that this is the low poly mesh intersecting with the high poly mesh, for some reason Mental Ray isn't able to hide the low poly mesh its baking to. So to get around this after you set up the projection cage simply go down the stack into edit poly, select all the faces and then select hide (not the hide command for objects, but the hide button in edit poly), this will hide all the faces of the model. Go back up the stack to the projection modifier and you'll see the cage again. Hit bake and you'll get a nice AO map without the black areas. Here's some settings I've found useful when doing this. The higher spread seems to bake a cavity style map rather than AO which can be very useful. (I'll post an example soon). The memory spinner will need to be increased if you have brought in a very high poly mesh from zbrush (as an .obj) and your getting an error when baking. I usually increase it to 3000MB and don't seem to get an memory errors.

Hard Surface Texturing

2007-11-22T19:16:00.000Z

Stefan-Morrell has posted a very nice tutorial on how to texture hard surfaces in photoshop over on CGSociety. Not directly character related but this kind of stuff can come in really handy when doing armour etc.

Click here for the tutorial

Print Screen

2007-11-22T11:51:00.000Z

Recently I've had trouble doing a print screen into Photoshop. I tried all the usual clear clipboard stuff but it never worked. This did though:

click here

Speed = No UVs

2007-11-21T21:10:00.000Z

At least it does in zbrush:

http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/Deleting_Your_UVs

Apparently it speeds up sculpting.

Character Sheet

2007-11-21T15:37:00.001Z

Quick zbrush tip to quickly create orthographic and perspective renders. Align the camera to front view (use shift+left click drag). Click Document>Zapplink Properties, then click the front button. Do the same for the right view. Then approximate a 3/4 view and click custom. Then simply hit "Make Character Sheet" and zbrush will punt out multiple views of your character to photoshop. It uses 2 separate layers too, so you can composite your character into a different background. You should get an image like the one below.

Zbrushed Dwarf

2007-11-21T13:04:00.001Z

Not very far on with the zbrushing of this guy, he's got way too many parts. Started the guantlets, cloth, boots and the leather apron. The beard and head are just about done, the little metal hair thingys havent been touched though.

Gimbal Lock is back

2007-11-20T20:46:00.000Z

Progess is verrry slooow, but he's still going. A wee bit of texture work shown here, some pics of zbrush work to follow...

JSRF!

2007-11-20T20:38:00.000Z

Very early WIP of Gum from Jet Set Radio.

Texture

2007-03-07T23:26:00.000Z

Quick first pass on the head and the helmet. More to follow soon.

Head AO and Normals

2007-03-07T12:53:00.000Z

I did a quick first pass in zbrush on the head, after I was done sculpting the pain began. Firstly I made the critical mistake of missing a few stray polys when I was unwrapping the head which zbrush doesn't like. So when it came to rendering the normals in zbrush (which I usually do to save having to export silly poly counts in and out of 3ds Max) zmapper popped that infuriating screen that doesn't actually tell you what you've done wrong nor lets you know that anything is indeed wrong...I'll post the most annoying error screen in the world later. SO i investigated in Max, found the offending polys and then tried to use zbrushes import function so it would use the new UV's...but of course zbrush wasn't happy. Seems I messed something up with the import/export settings. I didn't want to lose the work I had done on the head so I started looking at other solutions (baking the normals in max not only took forever but the results were bloody crap) and then I remembered xNormal, which I first found on the polycount boards

Jogshy has produced an incredible program, it managed to load my +1million poly object so fast I wondered whether it worked at all. It had, and it then calculated my normal and AO maps in a flash. I had some small problems with banding in the AO maps but it does it job fine for now, I'll need to tweak and play with it some more. xNormal is also a model viewer that allows you to preview your work with normal maps, lights and stencil shadows. A truly excellent little program.

Here are some quick shots of the AO from the high poly sculpt and a couple of zbrush renders. The metal tassels on the bottom of the beard are going to be made in max using sub-d techniques, so ignore those blank areas on the sculpt for now, and teeth will be added in later also.

Realign Symmetry tip

2007-03-07T01:51:00.000Z

To speed up my workflow in zbrush I usually use Realign Symmetry function after working on one half of the mesh. This allows me to hide lots of unnecessary polys speeding up viewport performance. There are however a few tricks to make sure you end up with a clean mesh in the end. As the image above shows instead of simply applying your realign symmetry to the final subdivision (level 6 in my case here) apply it on every sub divisional level starting with the lowest. This can take a while but the results are worth it, you should end up with a seam free mirror of your sculpt. If you don't do this chances are you will get an ugly seam which will be a total pain to get rid of.

Quick AO render

2007-03-07T00:00:00.000Z

I was trying out Faogen and decided to quickly render out some ao maps for Gimbal...which was a little pointless without smoothing groups etc, but I couldn't help myself. Faogen seems really nice too, I'll put it through its paces with some high poly stuff later..

Gimbal Lock

2007-03-03T00:42:00.000Z

Haven't had much time recently to update the blog or do anything outside of work. I somehow managed to squeeze out this guy after getting some unexpected free time last weekend. I've been zbrushing the head now and unwrapping the rest of his body, so the next update should be just round the corner. Thanks to Erik, the dwarf is now called Gimbal Lock!

Evil Ryu

2006-09-29T13:01:00.000Z

The tutorial is on hold for a short while. I've been side tracked with stuff at home and also the new polycount challenge. I decided to have a crack at modelling Evil Ryu, I doubt i'll get the whole model finished in time for the contest deadline but I should at least have a finished bust. I started roughing out the model yesterday, don't have a clue what im going to do with the hair...

More UVs

2006-09-14T13:21:00.000Z

In these steps I will stop using symmetery, lay out the uvs unflipped, and begin to resize and fit in the uv elements.

Right click on the UVW Unwrap modifier in the stack and select collapse to (if it does nothing hit ctrl+s and try again, seems to be a bug). Now apply another UVW modifier above the symmetery modeifer in the stack. This modifier can now be used flip the mirrored UVs so the the checker pattern reads from left to right all the way across the model and the numbers on the checker are not back to front, flipped or upside down. Quickest way to do that is to box select all the faces left of the centre line of the model in the front view and then in the UV edit window flip horizontally (I have this bound to shift+f, alt+f for a vertical flip). Then move the UV elements together and weld the corresponding verts down the centre of the face (and beard). You can do this with all the parts that were mirrored down thier centre, like so....

Also if your UVs are getting in the way and would like to move them 1 square left pixel perfect then click the little icon at the bottom left as shown and enter a value of 1 in, to move it back change it back to 0. This can come in useful when your using polygroups in zbrush but more on that later!

So thats the uvs laid out kindof, they could be making better use of the space and arranged a little better. I also need to get the eyes mouth and teeth in there too. But thats all for today.

UVs Step 1

2006-09-12T21:39:00.000Z

Here's the UV layout so far.

What I've got here is a very basic first pass on the UVs. I've been modelling so far with the symmetry modifier above edit poly in the stack. This gives me a quick preview of what the mesh will look like after its copied and flippped. Just be sure to turn off the "show cage option" in edit poly under Subdivision Surface...can't see a damn thing with it on. And also be aware of the the show end result toggle button which looks a little bit like a test tube right under the stack in the command panel. I want to keep the symmetry active when im uv mapping so I apply the unwrap uvw modifier inbetween the edit poly and symmery modifiers like so. You can turn off symmetry by clicking the light bulb icon to the left of the modifier. Be sure to also apply a nice checker texture to the model to easily check for distortion and flipped UVs etc, Steffen 'Neox' Unger has a great little checker download it here and have a look at his excellent blog here.

I then selected regions of the mesh using face selections either directly on the 3d model in the viewport, or in the UV editor window (hit the EDIT button in the UVW unwrap command panel). Try to select regions where a natural seem occurs, like a seam on cloths where the garment has been stitched together, in between two different garments/materials or even a seam between hair and skin (although the latter isn't a great example and should be avoided if at all possible). Once I've selected a region I hit the Planer button and unclick Normalize Map.

Make sure you deselect the planer button and then select either best align or an appropriate axis (x,y,z) after it has planer mapped your selection (this happens to be one of THE most annoying things about mapping in max currently, why the hell it doesn't just click once like every other button is a mystery).

Now relax the element by selecting the relax tool from the UV edit window menu like so...

You can toggle on keep boundary points fixed to keep your edges free from getting relaxed. This is useful for areas like the eye and mouth and the centre line of the head if you are using symmetry.

Move the planer mapped element out of the way for the moment and move onto the next piece. If you like keyboard shortcuts for everything like me you will have to manually setup keys for the Unwrap UVW modifier as it doesn't match up with edit poly shortcuts by default. I usually stitch together elements maually using the target weld uv tool (shortcut to t) but this is because most of the global weld functions cause problems with the scale I have to work with.

That pretty much brings us to the first image, I'll continue on with this tomorrow.

No UVs yet!

2006-09-12T12:55:00.000Z

Unfortunately I didn't have time to do the UVs last night, I was having too much fun grouting the bathroom floor. But I did play around with the model a wee bit more so here is a crappy mini update. I lobbed in some teeth from an old model, I think there are probably about 1.8 million polys right now but rest assured they will be substituted for something slightly more sensible! Mashed the beard and the mouth around a little to give him a little bit more character, the eye area is also looking dull so I might revisit that too. But first UVs! I shall do them asap.

Also be sure to check out Rick Stirling's blog. He's pretty much an expert in everything...yes everything. Quick click here.

Max UI

2006-09-11T15:12:00.000Z

For the sake of completeness I've uploaded my Max User Interface which has all my keyboard preferences. If you have any tips or better methods than those I've suggested feel free to leave them in the comments.

Download the UI here.

Thats all for now, if I get 5 minutes tonight I'll do a bit UV mapping on the dwarf.

Step 1 - Lowpoly

2006-09-09T12:57:00.000Z

I decided to model a dwarf's head for this walkthrough, which has been significantly inspired by the warhammer universe. I used to paint the mintures a long long time ago and its been something i've wanted to model for ages now so here goes. So far I've really only roughed out proportions and i've tried to keep the polys flowing in the form of the muscles and direction of the hair whilst maintaing mostly quads. The reason im sticking to quads for now is that im about to detail him up in zbrush, and zbrush desciminates against triangles, areas with triangles tend to pinch badly after subdivsion. Im not keeping quads for ingame use at all (although for areas of extreme deformation its probably best-i.e. elbows, knees and shoulders and the mouth area and eyes on the face) as the engine with most likely triangulate meshes anyways.

I constructed the low poly head in 3DS Max using edit poly. I generally start with the eye area and work out from there (see the very popular Joan of Arc tutorial by Michel Roger for a detailed and thorough explanation of this, 3d total have a good translation), building strips of polygons and connecting them up and afterwards adjusting the polygons so they flow correctly. I'm not really going to spend much time detailing this process if you would like to know more about basic modelling techniques head over to subD modelling and in particular check out the modelling primer, although mainly for high poly models the techniques used can be adapted for game models, the same principles apply.y

In 3ds Max I have several customisations to speed up my workflow. One of the things I use very often is sliding verts along the edges they are connected to. This is extremely useful for adjusting polygon flow after you have roughed out a model. I have this setup up to shift+x as a keyboard shortcut (it might even be setup this way be default if I remember correctly) the only downside of using his command is that there is no visual indicator to tell you its active, so if you forget that it is on the you may start accidentally moving verts along edges instead of in normal 3d space-a tiny inconvenience. I also use the bridge command a lot to connect up polys, I have this shortcut to the b key. Target weld verts is set to t (ctrl+t is default) and the most useful shortcut of all is setting collapse to c. I use collapse all the time to join verts, edges and faces when modelling and retopologising areas of the mesh. This comes in especially useful when used along side the edge loop and edge ring commands (get those bound to keys like alt+e and alt+r for efficiency) and can speed up tedious tasks like creating LODs. The only other tool i use quite a lot is the paint selection tool along with ignore backfaces turned on. This is a great way to select awkward areas of the mesh where box select becomes cumbersome. I have this set to shift-q and box select set to ctrl+q.

Next up is UVs for the low poly model.

Edit>After looking at the model again the beard is waay too small....some soft selecting will sort that out! Will update with UVs soon.

Zbrush UI

2006-09-06T12:10:00.000Z

Over the next few weeks I am going to try and do a step by step walkthrough on creating a character for a game. It's going to be pretty quick and dirty but will hopefully show a few tips I've picked up recently. Most of the stuff in the walkthrough will be techniques posted around the CG community websites, but with this one they will focus on a realtime character.

So to kick off I've posted up my custom ZBrush user interface for you to try out. It only has the tools and functions I most often use for realtime character creation, which should be a fair bit more streamlined than the usual clutter you have to sift through. To use this you will also need the ZMapper plugin and I the hotkey editor too. You can find both of these over at www.zbrushcental.com. The .CFG file gets copied to C:\Program Files\Pixologic\ZBrush2. Backup your own Custom UI first if you have one.

The only other major tool I use not on the side panel of the UI is smart resym, but only because I haven't figured out how to get it over there. Instead I access this normally by going through the Tool>Deformation menu. If you know a way of doing this feel free to let me know in the comments. You can always switch back the normal layout by hitting the Standard button at the top right if my UI is missing something you use.

Next up will be the low poly Head in max.

Click Here to download the Zbrush UI

Ye old model

2006-09-05T16:28:00.000Z

To get the ball rolling here is an old model I started when I was travelling through to edinburgh every day for a few months. I never got round to finishing it, but it has since been worked on. I'll hopefully post some further progress on it soon.

Let the blogging commece

2006-09-04T21:35:00.000Z

Finally managed to get this blog up and running after various acts of witchcraft. I'm hoping to use this blog as a testing ground for portfolio material which will eventually appear on my website (once I get a web provider sorted) and also to share some techniques and methods I've picked up over the years. Updates probably won't be all that often at least until I get finished with house renovations. Thanks to my good mate Stewart Wright for helping me out with the blog, you can visit his blog by clicking on the link stoot. Oh and no laughing at my gamerscore, don't have much time to play new 360 games especially with Res4 and Halo2 still keeping me occupied.