Senator Tumblestone - Statuette

[Jelmer]

Hi all,

Pascal, this forum has been flourishing rapidly! Two friends of mine reminded me to have a look. Seems like a great community already! So here's my first contribution to the boards.

This is Senator Tumblestone. The model was initially made for a double presentation at CGCon in Montreal last month, where I spoke about design and modeling in Maya and Zbrush. I kept the model fairly loose and sculptural, since I always had the intent to have this sculpture prototyped. The guys over at Offload studios took care of the printing and delivered the final result yesterday at the studio. We decided to go for a natural grey tone with the ambient occlusion baked into a 14 inch print. Needless to say I was more than pleased with the outcome and felt it was time to share! Hope you like him! (The photos sadly don't really do justice to the coolness of having a physical model in front of you :))

Basemesh, Cloth mesh and render Maya / Mental Ray
Design, Refinement and Detailing of Tumblestone: Zbrush

A turntable of the digital model (8 mb quicktime):
http://www.jelmerboskma.com/Tumblestone/Tumblestone_TT.mov

http://www.jelmerboskma.com/Tumblestone/Jelmer_goat_f2.jpg

http://www.jelmerboskma.com/Tumblestone/Jelmer_goat_f2b.jpg

The statuette:
http://www.jelmerboskma.com/Tumblestone/Jelmer_Tumblestone_02.jpg

http://www.jelmerboskma.com/Tumblestone/Jelmer_Tumblestone_03.jpg

http://www.jelmerboskma.com/Tumblestone/Jelmer_Tumblestone_01.jpg

[kskovbo]

Welcome to the forum!

Thats an amazing model and even more impressive 3d print! I was at your presentation for VFS a month or so ago and really enjoyed your presentation. Cool to hear to talk about the industry and your methods.

I myself just graduated yesterday and hope we cross paths in the future.

Congrats on the model.

_____________
- Klaus Skovbo

[PascalR]

:welcome:Jelmer !
Very nice to see you here, and great model you've done, thanks for sharing! My only comment would be about the hoof, they feel slightly distorted from the front view.
Love his expression, nice work!:thumbsup:
the physical one looks awesome:beerchug:

[Storm]

Awesome model/character, and the pose just add so much more character to him ;)
And the print looks really really good, I think I like it better than the renders.

[Intervain]

good to see you here Jelmer :welcome: said it before - awesome character

[gordon-v]

Welcome to the forums Jelmer!

Another very nice piece from you. The only critic that I would have is that some of the folds in the cloth are looking a bit too edgey.
Nice to have you here!

[Jelmer]

Thank for the welcome and kind words :)
One more shot from zbrush.

[oglu]

great char...
i like the expression...

may i see a closeup of the face..?

[collings]

looks terrific man, full of character and emotion. :)

ps i updated your first post to attach a nice thumbnail, it will bring probably more views ;)

[Ken]

welcome Jelmer,
love this character! great sculpt clap
yeah, I'd also like to see his face more closely...if you could.

[PascalR]

plugged!!!

[Infinite]

Super work! and :welcome:

The 3D Print looks fantastic.

[Jelmer]

Thank you Nicholas for making a thumbnail! Thank you Pascal for the plug! That's an awesome welcome :)

I will try to post some shots of the face later today, have to get to work right now! I wrote a little breakdown of the cloth modeling to answer some questions people had over on Zbrushcentral. I thought it may be worth it to share this here as well. Thanks again guys, I really appreciate it!

With regards to the cloth, I'll break it down a little. It's not a frozen sim, it's all modeled. The way I modeled the cloth is the same way we did the clothes modeling for the aliens in District 9. The drapery is a fairly dense polymodeled mesh with subtle zbrushed breakup applied through displacement maps. Reason to model in every single fold was to give the riggers and animators individual control over the main folds while a cloth sim was applied to the general shape.

For a sculpture like this, one could obviously have done more of the work in zbrush, but for the sake of sharing these techniques used in production I decided to work this way.

Another reason to do the main chunk of work in maya is that it's easier to just push stuff around without worrying the cloth may start looking too soft. I find that having harder forms in cloth work really well. Where many times in sculpture (both digital and traditional) folds can look like brushstrokes. Those brushstrokes may represent cloth folds and be convincing enough to give the feeling of cloth, but it's a huge difference with cloth-folds that actually look and feel real. Folds that have form and weight can add so much to a sculpture, instead of quickly brushing in some strokes

To illustrate the point I am trying to make, I have attached these two examples. Sculpture A is showing the brushstroke-like folds while sculpture B has cloth with weight and form. Aesthetically a lot nicer to look at

http://www.jelmerboskma.com/Tumblestone/jelmer_cloth_exmp.jpg

Concerning my own workflow, here are some images covering various stages of the cloth.

A: First couple polygons blocked in to get an initial sense of the design.
B: Cutting in the first folds, based on reference from a live model. Staying true to the quality of the fabric and trying to keep this consistent.
C: Final polygon cloth mesh. Ready for Zbrush
D: Subtle breakup of the bigger forms in Zbrush. Giving the cloth it's final fabric feel.

Hope this all makes sense! :)

http://www.jelmerboskma.com/Tumblestone/jelmer_cloth_a.jpg

http://www.jelmerboskma.com/Tumblestone/jelmer_cloth_c.jpg

http://www.jelmerboskma.com/Tumblestone/jelmer_cloth_d.jpg

[weiluntsai]

dude!! it's a awesome piece!!
and :welcome::welcome:

[sam.balzer]

Dude thats SOO cool man! love the fabric :notWorthy:

[Manuel Poehlau]

Great model and print! Would like to have this one on my desk :thumbsup:
I love the gesture, it has a really nice flow to it. Also great work on the cloth!

Just the wrist of his right hand might bend a little bit to hard, I mean the transition to the hand looks a bit straight and sharp. Maybe it´s just a design choice , so that this fold is leading more to the leg?!

Again, great sculpt, well deserved toprow clap

[drummermenco]

:welcome: again great piece bro!! have to see that print...

[fundanish]

Really a powerful and impressive work... clap overall character is nice. Best of luck. And waiting for face closeup..:)

[tingles]

Wow, hand modeled cloth ... freaking awesome!
I couldn't do something like that with polys straight in maya ... I'd have to zbrush the folds then retopo it ... pushing verts around and cutting into a complex form like cloth would do my head in.
Fantastic model!