Guns. Lots of Guns

Just finished my second gun. I found them to be a great way to practice my hard surface modeling as well as material creation. I'm sure I'll look at it a few hours from now and think how horrible it looks but like I've mentioned before, it's a never ending journey of self improvement. 


I have lots of ideas for my next project, the challenge will be narrowing it down. Time to start researching and gathering references. 

It's Never Done

There's always more that can be done. As someone who's constantly learning and improving, this is always true. Here's the iterations I've gone through with this environment from when I was "done" to it's current state.

To the Future!

Today I received The Art of The Mass Effect Universe book and after looking through it I was inspired to make an awesome SciFi scene. I'd like it to have some organic element and not all hard surface. I think it would be cool to have some plant growth and roots coming in where panels are missing or over some of the top area coming down. Something like an abandoned lab or military base.

 Here's a screenshot from what I have so far using Unreal 3. I've created many of the panels and deco pieces with modularity in mind. 

A quick paint over to have my target look down. I may push back how far the plant life has grown in but this gives an idea the look I'm trying to achieve.

We call it Happy Time

For the past few days a coworker and I have been taking 20 minutes out of the afternoon to do some paintings, we call it happy time. We can choose to do whatever we like as long as it's for the sake of increasing our creative knowledge and understanding. The first one is from the art book of Spirited Away and the rest are referenced from photos. 

Trees Everywhere

Been practicing different ways to make trees, found some really helpful tutorials on polycount. I settled on making a thin tall tree using references from south american jungles. Brought one of the trees into UDK and made a small scene full of them. Overall great experience. 

Maya>Photoshop>UDK

+1 Trees

Purple Canyons

Quick painting I did while thinking of a place I would want to go and get lost in deep thought. 

small update

Continued work on my values. Not sure what it is... just found it while painting swatches.

Painted Texture Exercise

Did some quick painted textures to improve my ability to hand paint different material types.

Working On My Digital Brush Mileage

Some more paint studies, I like keeping the brush strokes loose but have to think about refining the forms in the future.

Light and Color Study

Just a few quick paintings I felt like doing, both are more of a light and color study. I referenced a photo from Yosemite National Park for the first one and painted the second one from scratch. I may complete them at some point but most likely I'll move on to another painting. I'm digging the more dynamic lit environments so I think I'll do more of those in the future. 

16th Century Cannon

Been taking some time off from other projects this week to make this 16th century cannon. It was originally built for a weekly challenge for one of the forums I visit, the theme was pirate props. Looking up references, I ran into one called the Tsar Cannon which is the largest of its caliber. It would be fun to make that one, I'll have to put it on my list of things to model.

2116 Tris

1024x1024 Diffuse/Spec/Normal Maps

On to the New Year!

Happy New Year Everyone! I've been pretty busy with family events and holidays, will be getting back to finishing up some work this coming weekday.

Look forward to the next update

+ 10 Maya

Home Sweet Steampunk Home Pt.1

Next project lined up is a Steampunk inspired house. I wanted to make things modular so I have a couple instances and some tileable textures. Still have a ways to go, I need to unwrap some of the pieces and texture them and also polish up the rest of the textures. The model is still in it's initial phase and the details can definitely be pushed. I currently have 4000 polys in the scene with my goal to not exceed 10000 polys.

Here's my progress so far. Only using diffuse textures for now with some basic lighting from Max.

 ...Needs more gears, valves, pipes..

Cliffs

Sculpted some additional pieces for the cave temple environment. These Cliffs will be used as the backdrop to the cave temple environment. 

Sandstone Cliffs

Optimized Version: 1536 Polys
High Res: 1.5 Million Polys

Mudbox

Temple Pillar Pt.3

Completed the last section of the pillar, could still use some more work but it's fine for now. I may start to block out the rest of the environment this will fit in soon, couple other small props I would like to work on first before I get to that..definitely be a more contemporary piece.

Temple Pillar

Optimized Polycount: 2800

Mudbox

Mahab Temple Pillar Pt.2

Lion section is done for now, I have to remember next time to keep the pieces in separate files... I had frequent crashes and poor performance from Mudbox. I should have the rest done sometime this week.

Mahab Temple Pillar: Lion (WIP)

550,000 Polys

Mudbox 

Mahab Temple Pillar Pt.1

Found some amazing references from temples all across India that are carved out of the side of mountains and cliffs. Lots of intricate designs that will be a good challenge to try and replicate it. The prop I'm starting out with is a pillar that is found at the entrance to one of the temples. I already got a good start on the project... gathering references, modeling the base mesh, getting familiar with Headus for UV mapping, and sculpting the base for the pillar.

The current count for the base is 1.55 million polys, I will begin baking the normal map from the hi-poly mesh when I complete the rest of it. Next I will be working on the mid section then the Pillar Top. It really is a great feeling when you see things starting to come together.

Mahab Temple Pillar: Base (WIP)

1.55 Million Polys

3DS Max/Headus/Mudbox 

+ 10 Headus

- 4 Sleep 

+ 120 Exp

 

Armored Guardian

Another Mudbox session, first time sculpting a character even just a bust. I had a lot of fun doing this, it really was an interesting challenge. Started with the base head mesh and chipped away at it. Didn't have too much in mind just looked for interesting shapes and silhouettes. I will definitely continue this process to gain some more mileage with this program.

4+ Hours
512,000 Polys





+ 253 Exp
* I think I'll stick with Trebuchet Font from now on. I like Sans-serif fonts.

In the Beginning

I'm not exactly sure where this will go but I wanted to make a place online to post my on going artwork and creative experiments. I'll try and keep it updated as best I can.

As of this moment I am working with the Digital Sculpting tool Mudbox and have really taken a liking towards it. Lots of cool tutorial vids from Wayne Robson that show the awesome potential of this program. I have already used it for 2 portfolio pieces and am working on getting more efficient with tools and pipeline.

Here are two things I've created using Mudbox

Tree Stump
I took a base mesh from Mudbox and used sculpting tools and the paint tools to add texture and details. I created a normal map from the high poly mesh and added it to the lower poly version for in game use. Polycount for the tree stump reached 1.8 million for the high res model and the lower res 1800.


Bricked Vent
I wanted to see if I could create some type of wall detail using stenciled alphas of vents and brick material. I also experimented with masking out multiple sculpt layers to create some detail on the wall. I have also found that the power to paint specular and gloss right on the model with make for powerful combination later although I didn't get the best results but I'm getting my muscle memory for the tools so that's what counts right now. Final polycount for the Hi-Res version is 409,000 Polys and the Low-Res with baked normal map has 1600 Polys.


+ 3 Mudbox