Wompus Winter

[Dan-Burke]

Wompus-Winter.jpg

Having fun with Z-Brush! I made some minor tweaks and added some visible breath and a large moon...thought it needed something over there on the right side. Hope nobody minds me updating this image, but I didn't want to clog the new uploads area for minor changes. I left the original as a thumbnail so people can see what I intially uploaded.

If there are big changes I'll upload another image in the thread. :D

[marciani]

compliments,
you have done a very good work.
Could you share some steps with us, please?
Bye
Leo

[ron m]

nice one dan ! how about some frosty breath coming out of their
mouths and nostrils!
ron

[vlad74]

Bravo Dan. Really nice composition and colours. I love the atmosphere.:tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu:

[SolidSnakexxx]

Exellent stuff man...very beautiful models and render.

Yong
http://www.himmapan.com

[KingSalami]

that's great!

[mmbenya]

Sweet looking ride Dan, now the orc can cruise in style! Great scene! :tu: :cool:

Matt :)

[Dan-Burke]

Hi there..thanks so much everyone for the feedback and nice words...makes it fun to post images. ;)


Could you share some steps with us, please?Sure!

I am still new to Z-Brush so I used some components which were built in MAX, though some of the models were created in Z-Brush as I was learning.

Everything you see was textured and rendered in ZBrush using a little bit of fog, some GI (14) and there are three lights in the scene, a main light and two fill lights. I also added some cheat bounce light in my texturing process for some of the creatures who weren't getting much bounce light.

The background is a flat plane which was placed all the way in the back before the clipping plane and then painted in Projection Master. I used a fairly high resolution texture map to allow finer detail.

The mini dragon is all z-spheres, my first Z-sphere character. I posed it a bit and then stuck him on the Orc's shoulder.

Dragon-zsphere.jpg

The pumpkinhead and Orc's helmet were also created in Z out of a sphere with poles placed at the top using the sculpt tool and Projection. Actually, the Orc helmet was something I did following a tutorial I found right here on the ZBrush forum. :tu: What a great resource this website is...I buried myself in tutorials before even attempting this scene. ;)

The snow was also made in Z and pretty quickly too...I used a terrain primitive and used the initialize modifier to reduce the extreme rise of it...then I just subdivided and sculpted a bit for a soft snow feel. Very easy to do this with Z as opposed to other programs. I also made a new shader for the snow to get the right mix of specularity and I've uploaded it later in the thread if anyone wants to check it out.

The Wompus and Orc were already modeled from old projects in MAX...so what I did was export each element as an OBJ from MAX then import into Z. First step was to place the Wompus in a way that would show a lot of it and still work with my scene. Then, I textured it and imported the next object and placed it in the scene until I had all the details. For really small stuff like metal rivets I just made new ones in Z and used the snapshot tool to place them. I also saved each tool as I imported and textured so I could reuse it in another scene later. Each tool was textured with AUV tiles since I find that to be the cleanest way to texture something using Projecton Master.
The fog helps a bit with the whole scene as well, and on final render I played with the 'adjustment' sliders to get the contrast and color balance I wanted.

After all the objects were imported and textured I added a light dusting of snow to some with some actual snow material to other parts for a wetter look. I definitely wanted to add some hot breath in Z but wasn't sure how to do that in Z. ;) However, I thought it was a good idea and added some breath in Photoshop and updated the image.

I hope my explanation is clear enough..please ask if there are any more questions and I am always open to feedback and suggestions. ;)

[ReplicA]

Really cool stuff, very Warcraft. :D I like the beast the guy is riding, and the trees are very cool. The trees seem like they end a little early, but I don't think there's any rules for fantsy trees.

Good Work.

[Dan-Burke]

The Orc in the scene is especially influenced by Warcraft, definitely! ;)

[Jason Belec]

The trees are great. The lighting needs work, like your former picture of that magnificent beast. The lights will make it pop. However it is your image, so do what you want. :)

[Dan-Burke]

Hey Jason, thanks for the comments...any recommendations for getting shadows to show up better? I have shadows enabled but they are pretty subtle..and the snow doesn't seem to be catching shadow from the characters...I'll have to try some more renders with various shadow settings to see what effects I can get.

[Jason Belec]

Hello Dan-Burke,

Did you set Shadows darker under Lights?

Have you dropped your ambiant - that always hurts renders?

Where are they? Try to stick with the 3 light rule. Large above (moon) white, a low down and off to the side less intensityblue, and a warm light to define and contrast with the colour, larger intensity than the blue but less than white. Now they have to be colours that work together (don't make muddy colours).

I'd set up a simple test scene.

Give me some info and I'll do my best to help.

[ron m]

nice world you've created there! great atmosphere!
looks 'cool' in every sense of the word.
here's a link to a thread that has some suggestions by
mestela regarding shadows that seem worth a try.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=21457

ron

[Frenchy Pilou]

...Tim Burton :cool:
It's a compliment ;)
Pilou

[Dan-Burke]

Hi there,

Thanks Jason and Ron, I checked out the lighting thread and it was very helpful...I re-rendered my scene with different lighting...the main light is more of a backlight where the moon is and I have a bluish fill light as well.

Frenchy..a comparison to Burton is definitely a compliment..thanks! :D

Just for fun I added some snow in Photoshop. :lol:

Wompus-Winter-Snow.jpg

[Jason Belec]

Now that looks better. The light in the treehouse door needs to spill out onto the snow. A simple texture/decal would do it. The same for the light on his lamp, it should bounce off the tarp, metal bars, and even his face a bit. And a warm glow from within the pumpkin would also help the warm/cool contrast. These all could just be painted on. You really can do all this in Zbrush including the snow.

A suggestion , the beasts breath - should be more visible, he his huge, lots of moist air coming from those lungs. Which would lead to some ice crystals around the mouth.

I'm just mentioning these things, as the details are always the things that make an image better than a sketch.

[Sav]

Stunning, I love this, I haven't read the whole thread properly yet but just in case, I'd like to hear a bit about how you created your snow.
The only thing I would say is that I'd love to see a bit of detail in the moon, maybe something like this:

http://www.boxy.co.uk/html/noirlge.html

I think you might find something at NASAs website.
Loverly!!
Sav

[herdmann]

thats a terrific scene dan! watching it grow from day to day has been great fun. each time you post it i think 'it cant get any better'. how moody dare you go? with the moon as the main light source you could go a lot darker in terms of front light - that lamp above him could help you keep the details visible even as the rest was darker.very moody!

but sounds like i dont already think its fab- it is!

hans

[Dan-Burke]

Thanks for the comments! :D

Hey Jason, all good ideas..I think I'll take a crack at getting Lantern bounce light in Z by adding another low intensity light. I think you're right on about the frost on the bigger beast too, though I picture them as not having been outside that long and the snow is just starting...still, the frost may just help sell the snow and cold weather and I am all for that.

Sav...hmm I may try your moon suggestion and see how that works. It's more of a graphic style right now using a flat Z-Brush disc as the moon but I'd be curious to see it with a more representational moon. The snow was a shader I came up with...bit of specularity and such. I'll attach it so people can check it out.

Herdmann glad you've been following the progress...it's been interesting for me too...and a learning experience as well, of course. The feedback here is great!

Thanks again! :D

[_dado]

that's fantastic man! love the animal the orc is riding. i would not wanna be chased by a herd of those things... :lol:
i'd be really interested to see him dancing over some thin ice... :D


dado

[Sav]

Thanks Dan
I'll check out your shader. Still just learning myself, there's so much to learn I haven't even got round to materials yet :)
Keep up the good work!
Sav