Warriors CG Hub Competition Entry - Sculpting Stage5

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

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

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

Warriors CG Hub Competition Entry - Sculpting Stage2

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

Here's the basic blocking in stage.

Warriors CG Hub Competition Entry - Muay Thai

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

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

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

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

Cornrows Complete Turntables

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

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

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

Cornrows Head Textured from Robin Ball on Vimeo.

Cornrows Head Textured

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flat Top

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bald Space Marine 2

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

Bald Space Marine 1

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

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

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.