Lee Greatorex Photo/3D blog

This week I've done a bit of everything. Drawing in photoshop, sculpting in Zbrush and working in Super Sculpey polymer clay.


 Clay: I spent about 3-4 hours on this guy so far. It's my second go with super sculpey and it's great fun! For the eyes I used cheap pearl beads from a craft shop. I am still working on the shape the aluminium gives me underneath when I build the armature.

 Photoshop/2D: These were both done in photoshop.  I added a filter using snapseed on the ipad for the demon.


Above: 'High Demon' based on the sculpture by the Shiflett Brothers (minus the wings!)
Below: Still going through Casey Love's design and sculpting video on Stan Winston school. It's improving my concepting a lot and I'm enjoying just sketching in Photoshop now. 






Finally this wasn't done this week but I completely forgot to upload it on here. This is a torso based on Scott Eaton's anatomy course. It's a course I'm really interested in taking in the future so wanted to see if I could get to some level of anatomical understanding before.



The timelapse of it can be seen here;

Sorry for not updating. Been away and very busy at work. That hasn't stopped me sculpting though! Here are a few done over the past month or so;

I've been doing some studying on Zbrushworkshops.com - One of the free lessons explains the many ways in which you can start your sculpt. I wanted something which was similar to clay sculpting so tried the Armature/wire maquette style which utilises Zspheres. Rather than getting the main form from the spheres you instead keep them at minimum width and treat them as a wire base for the basic curves/shapes (much like a wire armature in clay). I used a basic dynamic pose here to see how it worked within the program.

 From there you can then start adding spheres with dynamesh (and insert basic shapes) to block out the main form, as if you were sticking the clay on the wire. It allows you to sculpt in pose which I like personally (as I want to eventually work on maquettes/statues for personal work).


 A Couple of pros and cons for this technique:

Pros:

• You have the potential of getting extremely dynamic/organic sculpts from using this
• Traditional sculptors I see this as the most natural way to get in to digital sculpting
• The model will look more natural if sculpting in pose rather than doing that after, this technique forces you to not work symmetrical.

Cons:

• This technique is no good for game characters or animation, riggers would have a nightmare!
• As I worked out (as I didn't really follow it exact) you have to get your proportions correct with this then keep to them (once the zspheres are moved to correct lengths use ctrl while moving to ensure they don't stretch. This is important for all sculpting but you can quickly mess up as in pose.
• Can be harder to fix errors. Due to the non symmetrical nature of the sculpt mirror and welding will not work. 
• It can take longer than a regular static pose - working with no symmetry and likely using in dynamic poses, constantly checking shape can take longer. Also working out how anatomy moves at certain angles really takes a precedence!

Overall I'll definitely try this style again, perhaps with a nice simpler cartoon style character and build my way up, not quite there yet to utilise the strengths this technique can produce.



Oops need to work on legs sometime!

Ok so here are a few of many done this week. For this week I only sculpted ears in Sculptris, with various references and starting points.

While I didn't exactly improve with it overnight I do think I've reached a point where I can at least add ears to a sculpt roughly, then be able to add detail as I go. The results of practise are below. Note some of these are really bad, and it's a learning process. I'm putting these up to hopefully give some people confidence that yes although they may suck they will get better over time!

 Test 1: This was my first attempt using a reference found on the net. I was using masks and getting pretty detailed too early on, making smaller adjustments pretty hard. The end result at least looks like an ear which isn't too bad!

 Test 2: This was actually following an ear modelling tutorial for maya. The first 5 minutes the guy explains the key lines in the ear so I tried to sculpt with an emphasis on the lines and curves. It was sculpted a little quicker than the first and the simpler style gives it a little flow. (Sculptris doesn't like too much masking or pushing geometry back in on itself, lesson to self remember to save!!)

 Test 3: This to me is a little step back but an experiment. I followed a clay sculpting step by step for a small toy head. It was 3 images next to each other and had the steps laid out above. It 'kinda' works in terms of exterior shape however it is stuck on to the side of the head and whereas in clay you could stick a palette knife behind and pull it out it can't be done easily in 3d sculpting.


The below test wasn't from reference but using the key areas from above. It was a 10 minute speed test just to see if I could make something with a start point so that from here a more detailed model could be made with the rest of the head.


Test 4: This was more about the characteristics of the ear to me, I used a regular standard brush to pull out the Tragus (the little knobbly bit on the right) and then a mound for the general ear. From there I used the standard brush on that mound to drag out the lobe and helix (helix is the curved bit at the top left/ the main arch). Doing it this way already pulled the ear out of the model and gave enough room to sculpt inside. A quick crease tool to extenuate some lines and emphasis on the lobe and it seemed to be ok.

I think the below test is my favourite. While not the most accurate it was the quickest with average results. It would fit in to the style of a more cartoony model which is fine and more detail can be added.

All of these (and all my sculpting in previous posts) has just been with a mouse for now (wacom on loan to a friend) so hopefully that should encourage others to try 3D sculpting!

Here are my thoughts on it all:

• Practice! Keep at it and things do improve. Keeping a log is great to show before and afters. I have my first ever zbrush sculpts in the first or second post on here as a reminder.
• I think that using reference is great for this however it can get easily confusing, the geometry just doesn't make sense when trying to convert it to 3d at times! Modelling it in a 3d package like maya may help give a sense of which bits are lower or higher in the ear extrusion itself.
• To me after trying this it helps me realise that in a lot of sculpts the ear while an integral part of the head isn't that needed to nail as much as say the face. It is still important (particularly if basing a sculpt of another) but the 'feel' of the ear tends to be acceptable, especially if just doodling. It does improve your head sculpts even if basic, adding to the overall shape and feel of the model.

Finally I completely forgot to add this in a previous post but here is a very basic doodle in zbrush using a base mesh Danny Williams use. It was just a basic orc with a helmet but the mesh is a great starting point to practise some basic busts. Danny also sometimes runs seminars and lessons which hopefully one day I'll take!

Carrying on with the previous tutorial theme I made a simple cube in Maya then moved the vertexes in to the shape below. I DELETED HISTORY then this time as my model was already Quadrangulated I thought I'd see what it was like to import straight in to sculptris as an OBJ, it worked!



Here's what I ended up sculpting using that base mesh;


I then added the arm created in the previous scene just to see how it looked and it didn't look too bad! I've decided I'm going to work on a sculpt of Colossus from x-men so this is a good example/practise shot!


I changed my material to a metallic one then instead of using the crease tools for the lines (which would have upped the triangle count substantially) I went to paint mode with both objects and painted an inverted bump. Hopefully I'll refine/neaten this technique when I start to work on the proper model!

All in all this took about 30-40 minutes so I think it is really good for concept modelling. Give it a go! (remember you wont really be able to use these for games or animation, adding multiple items can be a bit of a bodge job like the arms but no harm if just for fun/ one particular angle!)


Update above!: Just tested out meshmixer07 another free piece of software to extrude parts of the mesh to make the clothing to test it. Just a quick painting test will work more with both packages properly soon!

Just a quick post. I currently have a nasty virus/bug/food poisoning thing at the moment and I've been in bed and off work for the past week or so. During the time I've not even been able to get any 3D stuff going but I needed to do something to take my mind off it.

I had some clay I bought over summer and still hadn't used it so I got it out and for the first time ever I tried sculpting.

Aside from the few little tries at making things (my original plan was to make Christmas decorations for a tree which went a bit pear shaped). I tried making a foot using a simple wire base and building on top of it. I have now found out you are meant to fill out the wire bone/base with something like tinfoil to give it more form so perhaps I might try a torso using that technique in the near future. Here's where I got anyway;

I have rarely had more fun testing out/ 'Hobbying' as my lecturer used to call it than when recently trying out digital sculpting in Zbrush. It has got me hooked and I intend to learn this along side my current modelling / lighting tasks. It may slow my initial learning down but it is great fun and is helping me get more of an interest in organic modelling.