Earth's Builder [Section-UW-B18]

[MiguelAngeloCBT]

Did this one inspired by the Matrix philosophy, kind of building a dimensions, in this situation... an alien building one more jellyfish. :sw:
Hope you like it!
http://a.imagehost.org/0329/Earth-BuilderSection-UW-B18WEB.jpg

http://h.imagehost.org/0833/Earth-BuilderSection-UW-B18WEB_CLOSE_UP.jpg

[PascalR]

Great stuff Malanjo! Great to see your works here and welcome to cgfeedback!
:welcome:

What softwares did you use for this one? Great amount of details

Cheers

Pascal

[MiguelAngeloCBT]

Really Thanks Pascal! The pleasure is mine! :love:

In this one I used 3DsMax for modeling and render passes (Mental Ray), DeepUV for UVW relax, Zbrush for sculpting and texturing, and Photoshop for matte painting, composite and texturing.

Some pictures of the process:

Wireframe
http://i.imagehost.org/0479/EarthBuilder-Wire.jpg

Old head Design sculpting
http://i.imagehost.org/0581/EarthBuilder-Zbrush.jpg

Light Rigg
http://i.imagehost.org/0615/EarthBuilder-Light.jpg

Thanks once again!

[PascalR]

Awesome! Thanks for sharing your techniques and screenshots, love them:dance:

Just looking at your wireframe, it looks like you've used the HD model for the face and hands, so you didn't extract displacement maps at all? Is MR able to handle tons of polys?

Cheers

P

[MiguelAngeloCBT]

Thanks Pascal! :D

Yeah, for stills, if I can, I use HD geometry because the render is faster (Just add a normal map on top) and no need optimized geometry like i do for animation.
Yeah, mental ray is cool handling lots of polygons (I'm running on an i7 12gb), just up the amount of memory on options and is OK (I think Maya have the same option on MR). I do this because I'm a picky one, and try to keep the right exact shapes that i get in Zbrush (just in stills images). Also I prefer to have more polygons organized and just a subdiv level 1, instead of a low poly with 2 or 3 subdiv levels on top (I think the shapes in this situation get lost, cause with a lot of subdivs and less polygons the mesh looks like an egg, not to much defined shapes on it + silhouette).
Normally for animation I use a medium poly mesh and then use displacement + normal, or in some situations (like the girl I'm doing on the other thread) I do the normal retopologize and just use the normal map. (depends on the project that I'm working or what I need to show to the viewer, and relevance of the model inside the hole pipeline of the project).

In my personal pipeline for animation, the normal process that I use is to start with a good base mesh (even if is not for animation, I like to use nice loops - Max subdiv is not as good as XSI's or Maya's subdivs... :( because can handle a nice subdiv with crazy loops and polygons), do the UVS, and later do a nice free run sculpt in Zbrush.
If the mesh need some retopologize in the end of sculpting, just do it, and export it to do the UVS, and later I re-project the sculped mesh in the new retopologized one (with UVS), inside Zbrush. Another tip (that I didn't check yet in the new version of Zbrush 3.5 - crazy to try it) is to do the sculpt and then export the subdiv level that I need, do the UVS, and replace the mesh just doing "import", and then can keep the same mesh, but now with UVS and the required subdiv level. (as from my side, couldn't do this using Zbrush 3.1, cause in the time of leveling up the subdiv, the mesh just get a crazy explode on view port).

Grrr... lots of words...lol
Will continue with the girl model now! :D
What do you used to do Pascal? Any special pipeline or tip?
Thanks once again Pascal!

best,
-Malanjo

[PascalR]

ahah that's a nice and long explanation Malanjo :beerchug:

To make it short, I basically never render high res models if I want to do textures, because using cyslice or mudbox for displacement extraction + renderman will ensure a perfect result at render time (subd+displacement will look exactly the same as the HD model - except some spikes in the maps that you can clamp). And renderman is super fast at rendering displacement :)
But I definitely want to try modo or MR for a change.

Cheers

P.

[MiguelAngeloCBT]

Ah, gotcha!

Well, in fact, there is no bi reason to use other pipeline in stills, can use the mesh+displacement like you said, the difference between the sculpted model is not so big.

Thanks for the tip Pascal! :thumbsup:

best,
-Malanjo

[Intervain]

I really love the colours in this one - great job Malanjo :)

[MiguelAngeloCBT]

Thanks Mag! :notWorthy: And welcome to the forum! clap For sure we will learn a lot with you!

best,
-Malanjo

[PascalR]

Indeed, great to have you on board Magdalena :welcome:

cheers

P.

[Intervain]

aww thanks guys :) though Malanjo, I'm quite sure you can learn nothing from me eheheh

[MiguelAngeloCBT]

aww thanks guys :) though Malanjo, I'm quite sure you can learn nothing from me eheheh

"Yes we can!" - Obama's voice! :P

I don't do digital paint from scratch, you do! See! :D I have a lot to learn from you! :thumbsup:

[StephaneS]

Wonderful ! Great job !

[Addictive/LP]

Excellent!
I've been visiting your website and you surely have some great pieces of work in your portfolio!! Great job! clap

[MiguelAngeloCBT]

Really thank you StephaneS and Addictive/LP! :D

I'm thinking in the next one, maybe will evolve Gnome's world and Goblin's world.

Thanks once again! :D

best,
-Miguel

[sebcravoisier]

you make me dream!

[kinetiknz]

Hey Malanjo, I really like this piece. Congrats great work. I especially love the face texturing. Is it a single colour map fully painted in ZBrush colorize? And some SSS I presume..

I'd love to know any tips you have for using Z's poly paint to get some depth.

[bneall]

I saw this a while back and thought it was really cool. You did a scuba girl too which was really interesting, though I have some critiques on the girl, I will refrain until you post that portion :D

[MiguelAngeloCBT]

Really really thanks for your words! :beerchug:

bneall: You can see the WIP thread here: http://www.cgfeedback.com/cgfeedback/showthread.php?t=34
You can do the comments on that thread or in this thread were we are writing on! The model is closed, BUT more critics are most welcome man! For sure will help me in my the next artworks! :beerchug:

Thanks once again,
-Miguel