Rob's Adventures In Sculpting

Oddworld Scrab Stage 1

2012-01-04T16:01:00.001-08:00

It's been ages since I did any sculpting. I've been busy doing some other stuff.

Recently I got myself Zbrush as I really wanted to mess with the Dynamesh stuff for quick concepting. It works. This model was made with dynamesh, mesh extract and started as a sphere.

It's a Scrab from the Oddworld games. I got the Oddworld book for myself a few months ago and just had to have a go at making something from it. Those creatures are great.

Here's a picture from the book.

I still want to detail it a bit more and I'll take it into Mudbox for painting. I'll have to do something with UVs for that though.

Nemesis Textured Stage 3

2011-08-14T15:55:00.001-07:00

New computer all set up and everything installed. Lovely. Loads more vram means it's much quicker for texturing. I finished off the spec and reflection masks in one sitting.

It'll be much easier to do a full length character on this machine so that'll probably be my next project.

I might also take Nemesis into Max to do a proper render.

Nemesis Textured Stage 2

2011-08-01T15:10:00.000-07:00

Finished off texturing the detailed bits. Adjusted the colour of the skin to add a bit of warmth. Played further with patterning, but thought I was overdoing it and reverted to the subtler look I had before.

No spec yet. That's next.

Nemesis Textured Stage 1

2011-07-31T15:15:00.000-07:00

First pass on the texturing. It's far from finished yet. I'm trying out some patterning right now. I'll probably adjust the colouring too. I might add more browns like the tip of the beak.

Nemesis Stage3

2011-07-17T15:21:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I had a chance to work on Nemesis. I've now finished adding the skin detail, worked up the spine and done a bit to the strap.

Next, paint.

Nemesis Stage2

2011-06-12T15:28:00.000-07:00

Added asymmetry, refined the mid level details, added a vein layer and the mouth grill. Brought in a strap model.

I've started skin detail, but that's going to take a while, so I've hidden the layer in the grab.

Gollum High Res

2011-05-29T15:20:00.000-07:00

Another high res grab for the article.

Cornrows Posed High Res

2011-05-29T15:09:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a few screengrabs for a Mudbox 2012 review. I don't know if they'll make it into the review or not, so I thought I might as well post them here.

Nemesis Stage1

2011-05-08T15:11:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to do a Nemesis The Warlock sculpt for a while now.

This design is based on the disturbingly fleshy Hammerhead Shark-like interpretation by John Hicklenton.

It's still fairly low res. There's a long way to go.

Goblin High Res Still

2011-04-23T14:57:00.000-07:00

I've been messing with this guy over the last few weeks.

I posed the goblin and sculpted a rock for a background. Then I rendered and comped a load of high res grabs from Mudbox. Composited in Photoshop Elements which is surprisingly capable and fully featured.

Goblin Turntable

2011-03-28T05:04:00.001-07:00

Here's the goblin turntable video. Check the Vimeo link for the HD version.

Goblin Textured Turntable from Robin Ball on Vimeo.

Goblin Textured

2011-03-27T15:08:00.000-07:00

I was going through some of my older models a while ago looking for things that needed finishing and I found the goblin. I stopped working on him as I'd run out of memory before I got to the texturing stage. Well now I've got some more I thought I'd revisit him.

Warriors CG Hub Competition Entry - More Final Renders

2011-01-09T14:07:00.000-08:00

Muay Thai Closeup Turntable from Robin Ball on Vimeo.

Here are a couple more large renders and a closeup turntable of my competition entry.

Warriors CG Hub Competition Entry - Final Renders

2011-01-09T13:23:00.001-08:00

Muay Thai Turntable from Robin Ball on Vimeo.

Here are the final renders for my entry to the CGHub Warriors competition. I have a few more high res stills that I'll post later.

Warriors CG Hub Competition Entry - Texturing Stage3

2011-01-08T09:28:00.001-08:00

Texturing Stage 3.

I've added a dirt pass and some skin blemishes to the diffuse texture.

I've done the spec and gloss maps now too. Makes a big difference.

I'm still not 100% happy with the hair, I'll revisit that I think.

I'll also make a simple background for the final renders.

Warriors CG Hub Competition Entry - Texturing Stage2

2011-01-06T15:26:00.001-08:00

Texturing Stage 2.

I've done the diffuse texture for the skin as well now.

I still have to add a dirt layer and there's no spec yet either.

Warriors CG Hub Competition Entry - Texturing Stage1

2011-01-04T15:56:00.000-08:00

Texturing Stage1.

I've gone for the clothes first as they're easier to do with projection paint and easier to get textures for (mostly from CGTextures.com) . They're made of several paint layers with various blend modes plus an AO layer and cavities painted with the drybrush.

The skin is just a very quick pass with the first brush I made. It's not in any way the right colour yet. This is the next stage.

Warriors CG Hub Competition Entry - Sculpting Stage7

2011-01-02T15:02:00.000-08:00

Stage 7. Hair and skin detail sculpted.

I've moved the model over to the workstation as I ran out of RAM on the laptop. Unfortunately I've been having weird display issues and lockups so I think I might have a bad stick of RAM. Luckily the model isn't too memory intensive so if I can isolate the bad stick and pull it I should be ok to carry on.

Next texturing. I might refine the sculpted detail more when I've got some textures on him.

Warriors CG Hub Competition Entry - Sculpting Stage6

2011-01-01T13:47:00.001-08:00

Stage 6. Sculpted the face more extensively. Added detail all over.

Warriors CG Hub Competition Entry - Sculpting Stage5

2010-12-28T15:18:00.001-08:00

Stage 5. Detailed the rope gloves and various bands. Added another level to the body and added finger and toenails. Refined hands and feet and started general detail pass.

I still have to work on the face. It's still symmetrical right now.

Warriors CG Hub Competition Entry - Sculpting Stage4

2010-12-26T15:18:00.001-08:00

Stage 4. I've refined the muscles and changed some stuff that wasn't right before. Worked up the shorts and knotted rope gloves. And added the various arm and head bands.

Warriors CG Hub Competition Entry - Sculpting Stage3

2010-12-24T03:42:00.000-08:00

Tightened up the muscles, refined the shorts and added basic sculpting to the fingers and toes.

Warriors CG Hub Competition Entry - Sculpting Stage2

2010-12-24T03:33:00.000-08:00

Reposed the hands, did a bit of work on the face and added a bit more refinement all round.

Warriors CG Hub Competition Entry - Blocking In

2010-12-24T03:26:00.001-08:00

Here's the basic blocking in stage.

Warriors CG Hub Competition Entry - Muay Thai

2010-12-24T03:13:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to enter the CGHub Warriors Competition for some time but haven't really made much of a start while I was at work as I didn't have much time. Now I'm on holiday I've got time to really go for it.

I've decided to go for a Thai boxer. The Muay Thai and Muay Boran fighting styles are very dynamic and dramatic which should make for a nicely dynamic pose. It should give me a chance to practise my anatomy, my posed sculpting, a bit of cloth and importantly isn't too complex so I have a good chance of getting it finished.

Here is the base mesh and basic pose.

Gollum

2010-11-01T16:32:00.000-07:00

I got sick of trying to get Cornrows to work in Unreal so I made this little guy based on a quick drawing in my sketchbook.

Original geometry sketched in Sculptris, retopologised in Silo and sculpted and painted in Mudbox.

Cornrows Normal Mapped Stage 1

2010-10-11T15:42:00.001-07:00

I'm in the process of making a low res normal mapped version of the Cornrows character, hopefully to get it working in UDK.

So far I've made the low res model, UVed it and baked the normal and diffuse map. Model made and UVed in Silo 2, textures baked in Xnormal which gave me great results. I didn't get a very good result baking in Mudbox. I got nasty seams all along the UV boundaries.

He's a bit too shiny in these Mudbox grabs, especially the clothes but I'll be adjusting the spec to suit the game engine anyway.

Cornrows Complete High Res Stills

2010-09-20T15:55:00.000-07:00

Here are some high res stills of the complete Cornrows character study. I'll upload some other angles tomorrow.

Cornrows Complete Turntables

2010-09-20T15:17:00.000-07:00

Cornrows Textured Full Length from Robin Ball on Vimeo.

Cornrows Head Complete from Robin Ball on Vimeo.

I got my workstation up and running again. That allowed me to merge the head and body together and I grabbed some footage. Here are the full length and head turntables.

Follow the full length link to Vimeo for the HD version.

Cornrows Clothes Textured Stage 2

2010-09-12T14:51:00.000-07:00

I've added a layer of dirt over the clothes. Projection paint is good for that. No worrying about seams.

I also painted the hands. Mostly projection paint again, but with an underlying layer using random scattered brushes like the clothes.

I'll probably have to collapse all the layers on both this and the head before I can merge them together. I'm a bit low on memory with both loaded.

Cornrows Clothes Textured Stage 1

2010-08-30T15:00:00.000-07:00

I've done the first stage of the clothes texturing. No lighting on this one as I haven't done any spec maps yet.

This part was done with different tools to the head. There was too much shading on the clothes to use projections. Instead I made a couple of brushes from the source photos for the shirt and trousers and used them as stamps with random offsets and rotation. That's a nice quick way to cover a surface with textured detail. Flatten to UV space was handy for making sure the hidden bits like armpits got covered.

Then there's an Overlay layer for the cavities and wear on raised edges. That was done with the Drybrush tool. Particularly good for jeans.

And then there's an Ambient Occlusion layer Multiplied on top.

Cornrows Head Turntable

2010-08-23T15:18:00.000-07:00

Cornrows Head Textured from Robin Ball on Vimeo.

Cornrows Head Textured

2010-08-22T15:27:00.000-07:00

I couldn't texture the whole character at once on the laptop, Mudbox claimed I was out of memory even though it was only using 1.3 gig out of the 3 I have access to on this machine. Never mind, I can just work on the head and body separately and merge the texture layers when I'm done, or work on the desktop once I've got it set up again.

Anyway, here's the head. Textured mostly with projection paint. I tweaked the sculpting detail a bit after to match it.

There's a slight problem with the image based lighting making the eyes come out a bit milky as it's using the same material as the skin. I'll have to make it a different one to resolve that I think.

Cornrows Full Body Stage 4

2010-08-15T13:10:00.001-07:00

I'm pretty much finished with the sculpting on this guy now. I refined the pockets on the trousers, added some ring fittings. I've sculpted the shoes up and the hands and merged in the head.

I'll probably texture him.

Cornrows Full Body Stage 3

2010-08-01T15:49:00.000-07:00

More work on the clothes. I've added the seams and pockets to the trousers and refined the fabric folds. I've still got to work on the shoes.

Cornrows Full Body Stage 2

2010-07-25T15:02:00.000-07:00

Not much more work on the clothes just yet. I wanted to bring in some hands and feet first and take them up to a basic level of work. I also had to adjust things to fit the head properly.

Cornrows Full Body Stage 1

2010-07-19T15:59:00.001-07:00

I decided I needed to do some contemporary clothing practice. I wanted to do something baggy and as it happens the cornrows guy reference I used for head 4 was wearing some baggy clothes. So I've decided to make a full length version of him.

Here's stage 1. Level 3 subdivision. Just enough to define the basic folds. No seams or details yet.

Head 4 Stage 3

2010-06-27T07:52:00.000-07:00

Minor change. Changed the overall shape of the top of his head and moved the hair line forward a bit.

Flat Top

2010-06-26T16:58:00.001-07:00

I fancied doing some monsters. Inspired by Guillermo del Toro's awesome nightmarish creature designs and the solider demons in Constantine.

Sketched from the Mudbox base head, retopologised in Silo, further detailed and then painted back in Mudbox. It's the first time I've used Mud 2011's new painting tools beyond playing around. They're certainly improved. I still want selections and masking though.

Head 4 Stage 2

2010-06-26T16:44:00.000-07:00

Finally got the time to finish this guy off. The cornrows took quite a bit of effort but I'm quite pleased with how they turned out in the end.

Head 4 Stage 1

2010-06-07T15:33:00.001-07:00

I started sculpting this guy a few weeks ago, but went on holiday before I got it to a stage I was happy with so didn't want to post it before I went away.

It's still at a pretty low level of subdivision, so there's not much detail yet.

Head 3 videos

2010-05-12T15:24:00.000-07:00

I uploaded a turntable of head 3 to Vimeo.

Head 3 Turntable from Robin Ball on Vimeo.

And the timelapse recording.

Head 3 Timelapse from Robin Ball on Vimeo.

Head 3

2010-05-09T13:24:00.000-07:00

Third head study. I haven't posted work in progress images of this one, but I have recorded the whole process as Mud 2011 adds that ability. I haven't worked out what I'm going to do with the movies yet, but I'll probably upload them somewhere or other and add a link here.

Recording slows down the sculpting quite a lot so I doubt I'll do it for anything too detailed. The hair and detail stage was a bit of a pain. It is interesting to see it played back at high speed though.

Head 2 Stage 4

2010-04-25T14:54:00.000-07:00

Minor update really. I've fixed the weird bit of hair I didn't notice before, and added a few wrinkles and some pores and a bit of skin detail.

Head 2 Stage 3

2010-04-22T15:38:00.001-07:00

Added a couple of subdivision levels and worked on the hair. Bit more detail to the face and refined the overall shape of the face and neck some more.

Head 2 Stage 2

2010-04-19T15:27:00.000-07:00

I did some more on the head almost immediately after I posted last, so this represents two sessions really. I need another level of subdivision to do the hair really.

Head 2 Stage 1

2010-04-11T15:32:00.000-07:00

Here's the first stage of the second in my set of head studies.

Bald Space Marine 2

2010-04-11T15:22:00.001-07:00

Updated the guy's head shape and added a bit of detail.

Bald Space Marine 1

2010-03-28T16:15:00.000-07:00

I wanted to do some anatomy practice so I decided to make a generic base head model that I'd be able to use for a number of sculpts. I don't like the Mudbox base head as it doesn't have an open mouth or eyes. So I made this one. I also made a set of teeth, gums and tongue although you can't see them in this one.

Although I plan to do a set of more characterful heads, I thought I'd start with a plain and generic one. What could be more plain and generic than a bald space marine. :)

Goblin Sculpt Stage 6

2010-03-14T17:00:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted for a while, but I have been working on the goblin. I just never got to a good point to take some grabs.

I've been working on surface detail so the pictures are quite large. Sorry about that.

I had to move over to the 64bit desktop for the detailing stage as the laptop wouldn't let me divide to the level I needed. It's nearly using all 4gig I have at the moment. I'll have to get another 4gig if I want to take it any further.

Goblin Sculpt Stage 5

2010-02-14T16:12:00.001-08:00

I took it up another level of subdivision and worked on the head. It's now asymmetrical and more detailed. I've also added vein detail to the exposed areas of skin.

I've still got to refine the hands and feet at this level. I should be able to define the finger and toenails better.

The whole model now stands at 9.5 million polys which is near the limit of my laptop, so I might not be able to add another level to add skin detail and surface detail to the clothing without having to move it to the desktop.

Goblin Sculpt Stage 4

2010-01-24T15:53:00.001-08:00

I've made a start refining the skin. Still quite a way to go. I've also roughed out the fingers and toes and the gums and mouth interior too.

Goblin Shirt Stitches

2010-01-17T15:27:00.000-08:00

I've now done the seams and stitches on his shirt and jerkin. I decided not to add patches to that for a bit of variation in the fabrics.

I've also added a couple of levels and refined the scuffs and scratches on the helmet.

Next I'll add detail to his skin.

Goblin Pants

2010-01-16T14:16:00.001-08:00

I wanted the goblin's clothes to look scrappy and homemade, so I added a load of overlapping patches.

I was half way through the stitches on the patches when I changed my mind about how to do them, so I had to go back and erase the old ones and redraw them. Lucky I was using layers for them and the patches so that wasn't a big deal.

Mudbox seems to have been behaving OK on the laptop, which is good. No idea what I did to change that. Might have been a defrag or cleaning up some space on the C drive, or moving the data off the swap drive.

Goblin Sculpt Stage 3

2010-01-10T14:41:00.001-08:00

I've done the first pass on the clothing now. No real detail yet, just basic folds.

Next stage will probably be seams and patches which I plan to add as layers.

And then some more work on the skin. I might have to either break the exposed parts off as separate objects to help performance, or take it to the workstation as I might have difficulty with them all attached.

Goblin Sculpt Stage 2

2010-01-02T15:39:00.000-08:00

Shirt and trousers sculpted to a fairly basic level. Gloves and Boots taken a bit further with wraps and rips done.

Goblin Sculpt Stage 1

2010-01-02T15:33:00.000-08:00

Here's the rough Level 3 sculpt I used as a base to build the clothes models on. Not much of him is going to be visible under the clothes in the end, but you never know, so I wanted the body to be ok to start with.

Goblin Base Model

2010-01-02T15:20:00.001-08:00

The base model was modified from the Mudbox base human model. I gave him toes and a new head (based on the one I did below for the Brink test).

I then modelled the clothes on top of the roughly sculpted body in Silo. Mostly by cloning the polys, surface snapping new geometry and pushing them out along the normals or Shelling.

After running into problems with keeping the character whole for Fat Face, and suffering performance issues on the laptop with Mudbox 2010, I decided to keep as many objects separate as possible for this one.

Brink Character 1

2009-12-13T16:23:00.000-08:00

I was commenting elsewhere a while back that there was something I just really don't like about the characters in the forthcoming game Brink by Splash Damage. I've been finding it hard to quantify though. I love stylised characters, but these don't sit right with me.

Then someone posted a link to a blog covering the art direction and that included some concepts of the characters. And although they're pretty similar to the end result I find them much better than the models.

And that bothered me too, so I thought I'd have a go at sculpting a character from the concepts to see if they came out like the models I don't like and maybe figure out what is I don't like about the end result and at what point it changes.

Here is the original blog post.

And here's my sculpt so far.

Anatomy Study Woman Standing Stage 2

2009-11-29T13:33:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to catch up on my anatomy studies, but haven't gotten around to it for ages.

This is still at subdivision level 2, just with more work done.

Here's the earlier version since it was so long ago.

Zombie With Ripped Clothing

2009-10-18T12:27:00.000-07:00

Here is where I would post a picture of the latest update of the zombie model. But Blogger isn't having any of it today.

I'll try and edit this post to add the image another day.

Edit: Now it's working.

The rips are on a layer so I can mask them out or add new ones for variation.

Zombie Now With Pants

2009-10-11T13:25:00.000-07:00

The poor zombie has gone for long enough with no trousers. Now he has some. And a shirt and a T-shirt to allow for some mixing and matching.

No real detail yet. I'll add pockets and stuff shortly. I also plan to add rips and damage as layers so they can be dialed in as required.

Zombie New Head

2009-10-11T13:19:00.000-07:00

Although I liked the original head, I thought he looked too nice for a bad guy. And I needed the character to have an opening mouth and eyes. So I transfered the head I did recently onto the full length body.

Zombie Sketch2

2009-10-04T13:59:00.000-07:00

More like the full figure style, but with seperate eyes and an open mouth.

Zombie Sketches1

2009-09-29T15:22:00.001-07:00

Some rough zombie sketches. Trying out ideas. These were just sketched out from the Mudbox base body and head.

More to follow when I get the chance.

Fat Face Specular Texture

2009-09-20T14:58:00.000-07:00

I've now made the specular texture for Fat Face. It's been mostly a question of taking the various diffuse layers and adjusting their brightness and levels or turning them off in the case of things like the tattoo and camo patterning.

There's been a bit of custom painting like the shiny nose but not much.

While I was at it I touched up a couple of dodgy bits on the normal map. Following Ben Mathis' tutorial method of doing it one channel at a time made it much easier. Re-normalising after of course to prevent weird lighting.

Fat Face Paint Stage3

2009-09-13T15:33:00.000-07:00

More work on the diffuse texture. Mostly done now I think. At least until I've done the specular map.

2009-08-23T05:53:00.000-07:00

I just got my copy of Mudbox 2010 installed and the free Turntable plugin, so I thought I'd give it a go.

Fat Face Paint Stage2

2009-08-02T13:45:00.001-07:00

I've now done many layers of texture on Fat Face. Mostly they're layers of dirt and stains.

Since Mudbox doesn't support layer blend modes or paint layer masks or selections yet it's been assembled in 2D, just using Mud to do the projection paint to make opaque layers of whatever dirt, stain or patterning I've wanted for each surface. Even though it can't do it all yet, the ability to paint seamless layers was very useful.

I haven't done all the details yet and nor have I made a specular map. Those are to follow.

Fat Face Base Paint

2009-07-29T12:35:00.000-07:00

First stage of the texture. Just the base paint so far. The ambient occlusion map has been overlaid to give it a bit of definition, but that's all.

Fat Face Stitching Normal Map

2009-07-29T12:17:00.001-07:00

I've added the stitching and seams now. I used Mudbox's ability to paint bump maps for these. I made a series of stitch and seam stamps, set the paint brush to have quite wide spacing, made the stamps follow the stroke and turned on Steady Stroke. It's basically the same process as using the sculpting tools, but no need for a super high resolution model.

It was surprisingly straight forward and successful. I was quite pleased with the results. Then it was just a question of converting the black and white bump map to a normal map and overlaying it on the main normal map.

Next stage, paint.

Fat Face Normal Mapped Body Update

2009-07-28T14:59:00.001-07:00

Here's the updated low res model. Now with a properly seperated bullet belt and the UVs moved about so that the left and right arms and legs can have their own texture space which has helped the ambient occlusion on the right thigh.

I also added the previously missing hog-tags.

Next I'm going to try adding seams and stitching to the normal map.

Fat Face Normal Mapped Body2

2009-07-26T07:14:00.001-07:00

I've added the bullet belt and accessories. Not bad.

I attempted to just have the belt intersect the body geometry but I'm not too convinced that it works too well like that.
And I also forgot that the two sides weren't going to be identical so sharing UV space wasn't such a great idea. For a start the ambient occlusion shows up a seam on the leg on one side. And although I haven't done it yet, the "Danish" tattoo on the upper arms wouldn't read the right way round on both sides.

So I'll have to re-arrange the UVs a bit. And since I'm doing that, I might as well seperate the bullet belt too.

Fat Face Normal Mapped Body

2009-07-20T14:28:00.000-07:00

I finished re-topologising the body of Fat Face and rendered out the normal maps and ambient occlusion maps. Here's the new low res model (about 6000 tris) with the normal map and ambient occlusion map applied. I'm quite pleased with how it's turned out so far.

Haven't done the bullet belt and accessories yet though. I'll have to find space for them on the UV map.

Fat Face Re-topologised Head

2009-07-19T08:56:00.000-07:00

The next stage is making a low res model based on the geometry of the high res one.

I thought it made sense to see how the baked normal map came out on part of the model before doing it all. Especially as Silo was choking on the scene and I had to divide it up anyway. The top image is the above model mapped with the normal map generated from the original sculpt. The tusks need a little work, but the rest is looking pretty good.

Fat Face Sculpt Fine Detail

2009-07-19T08:36:00.000-07:00

I've now detailed the main body of the character. I've given the fabric an overall texture pass, but I can't get enough detail for things like stitching on this 32bit system. I'll try adding that with a bump map or overlay it on the normal map later.

Fat Face Sculpt Stage3

2009-07-15T13:15:00.001-07:00

Lots more detail on the jerkin and clothing generally, some refinement of the arms and hands, lots of wrinkles on the face and some asymmetry, updated canteen and some work on the trotters.

Next stage is going to be veins and skin detail I think and maybe some fabric texture too. I might add that as a bump map however.

I'm Back

2009-07-15T13:12:00.000-07:00

Long time, no posts. I've been moving house. Now I'm installed in my new office/studio with lots more space for my sculpting which is great.

Fat Face Sculpt Stage2

2009-06-18T14:43:00.001-07:00

Second stage of the sculpting on Fat Face. Mostly clothing and accessories here. Still fairly low res.

Fat Face Sculpt Stage1

2009-06-08T15:32:00.000-07:00

Here's the first stage of sculpting. I've done the basic body mass and I've just started adding the layers of clothing on the body mesh. Not much detail on the trousers or body warmer yet. Pockets and trouser folds next probably plus a couple more layers for the belt.

Fat Face Concepts

2009-06-08T15:14:00.000-07:00

I was going to add a set of links to the concepts on my brother's blog, but he's been too busy recently to post them so here's an image with some of the concepts pasted together.

I used this image as a background plane in Mudbox to keep the reference visible while I'm working.

Edit-

John has had time to post a Fat Face image now, so here's the link-

Fat Face Concept

Thanks Bro.

Fat Face Base Mesh

2009-06-01T15:50:00.001-07:00

It occured to me recently that I haven't really done any full current gen characters from base mesh to full high res sculpt and back to in-game model with normal maps. I've done tests and little bits and pieces like heads, but no full models. So I thought I'd have a go.

Here is the base mesh for Fat Face. He's a character designed by my brother John. I thought it would be a good idea to make a character designed by someone else. It's a significantly different skill to working from a design you've come up with yourself and my brother does great illustrations.

Rhino Base Mesh

2009-05-28T02:53:00.000-07:00

Here's the base mesh for the rhino sculpt in the previous post. Modelled in Silo.

Rhino

2009-05-23T09:04:00.000-07:00

This is a model I've had hanging around for ages from way before I started the blog. I never got around to posting the finished sculpt on my web site and didn't have any screenshots of it when I came to put the blog together. I remembered I had it when doing some backing up and decided to do some screengrabs.

I think it was the first full model I sculpted and I didn't UV map it before I stated the sculpt. I've had terrible problems importing UVs with this model. It always blows up or the UVs don't propogate up the subdivision levels. Possibly because it's very small compared to Mudbox's default models and I'm having tollerance issues or some other unknown reason. Whatever the reason, I can't at this stage easily paint it.

Format Change

2009-05-23T09:02:00.001-07:00

I've decided to change the format a little to have fewer images but with more angles in each like the hand anatomy study I posted recently. That way I won't end up filling the front page with lots of images of the same model.

Hand Pointing Anatomy Study

2009-05-11T14:20:00.000-07:00

Here's a set of hand anatomy studies I've been working on this week.

I've been planning on doing some anatomy studies for a while and then just as I start one model, a related weekly challenge pops up on Wayne Robson's Mudbox Hub so I thought I'd take time out to do that one.

This is my own hand sculpted directly from life. You can't get better reference than that but it's not easy to hold the same pose. Nor is it so easy to have to use the hand for working keyboard shortcuts.

I plan to do some other poses when I get the chance.

Anatomy Study Standing Posed Woman Stage1

2009-05-04T14:55:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to get around to doing some anatomy studies for a long time. This one is using the Stephanie free sample images from http://www.female-anatomy-for-artist.com

It's only at subdivision level 1 so far. I'm still messing about with the basic form and pose at the moment.

The model is based on the Mudbox Human Body. I didn't want to spend time on the base mesh this time out.

Octopus colour detail stage 1

2009-04-20T15:52:00.000-07:00

There's two layers of colour detail here. The first is a layer of scales or pigment sacks added using projection paint on an 8bit version of the small scales stencil image. These don't line up with the geometric detail particularly so it only works as a base layer.

The second layer is a set of hand painted scales that are painted on the most prominent large scale details. It didn't take all that long, but it would certainly have been quicker if Mudbox had cavity masking.

At this stage I only painted them in white. I can always use this layer as a mask for more complex colour in Photoshop later.

The ambient occlusion layer is overlaid here. It certainly helps bring out the sculpted detail.

Octopus base colour

2009-04-20T15:38:00.000-07:00

This is the first few layers of base colour for the octopus. There's still a very long way to go.

The bottom layer is a mass of red and blue veins over a dark base. You probably can't see much of that at this stage as the top layer is 100% opaque. Then the base colour is overlaid with a rough sponge stamp.

I haven't touched the inside of the tentacles really. The brushes go through to the far side of the objects so I'll just end up painting all over them by mistake. I'll do them later with smaller brushes.

Second pass at ambient occlusion

2009-04-20T15:28:00.000-07:00

Now I've added the larger scales I needed to recalculate the Ambient Occlusion texture. This is the result.

Actually it's three texures with different filter sizes layered on top of each other. Each accentuates different scale details.

This resulting texture will be used as the top layer of the textures over all the colour layers. If I could I'd set it to a multiply layer, but Mudbox doesn't support blend modes for textures yet. Instead I'll have to take this greyscale image and use it as the transparency of a black image. That's a bit of a pain as it's very difficult to see what the results will be in Photoshop. The sooner Autodesk get around to adding blend modes for texture layers the better as far as I'm concerned.

Octopus Large Scales

2009-04-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

I added some larger scales around the eyes and base of the body of the octopus so it doesn't look so uniform.

These were made by sculpting several scales onto a subdivided plane and extracting them as a texture. I used this image as a stencil to sculpt them back onto the body. That way I didn't have to sculpt them all individually. Some like the ones around the eyes were sculpted by hand.

Ambient Occlusion test renders

2009-04-06T14:43:00.000-07:00

Here's a set of grabs of the rendered Ambient Occlusion maps. The viewport has flat lighting to see them more clearly.

I can see from these that there's a few flat spots I've missed when applying the surface scale stamp. I'll fix them up when I apply the larger scales. I'll have to re-render the AO maps then anyway.

Octopus Sculpting stage 3- Surface Detail

2009-04-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

Here's the surface detail stage of the octopus sculpt. I plan to make an additional stamp for larger scales for some areas as it's a bit uniform in some areas.

Octopus Sculpting stage 2

2009-03-15T14:53:00.000-07:00

Here's the octopus with the second stage of sculpting done. This one has medium level details done at about half a million polys.

The suckers were from a custom stamp I modelled in Silo and rendered to a displacement map in Mudbox. They could benefit from another level of subdivision, but they're on a separate layer so I can remove them and reapply if I need to.

Edit: Oops, I miscounted. The octopus was at 5million polys already, not 0.5million. Shows the speed of mudbox that I didn't notice. No wonder my filesize was so high. I'll need to take it to 64bit to be able to divide it another time though.

Octopus Sculpting stage 1

2009-03-15T14:50:00.001-07:00

Here's the first stage of the octopus sculpting.

Octopus Base Mesh

2009-03-15T14:40:00.000-07:00

Here's the base mesh for an octopus model I'm working on. It was modelled and Uved in Silo (2.1). It'll be going into Mudbox for sculpting.

2009-03-07T13:08:00.000-08:00

Here's an alien head sculpt I did a little while ago. It was done in the trial of Mudbox 2009 as a test for how the painting tools worked. And to see how well the program worked on my laptop.

I ended up using the same techniques for the Giant Immortal head.

Giant Immortal WIP

2009-03-03T14:37:00.000-08:00

This guy is a character I've been working on to try out the sculpting and painting tools in Mudbox 2009. He's based on some wasted concepts from the film 300. He was an earlier version of the giant Immortal.

First Post

2009-03-03T14:24:00.000-08:00

Hi all. Robin Ball here. I intend for this blog to be a handy place to post my digital sculpts.