Draculas Castle

[sirquadalot]

Hey guys, This is an advanced WIP for the Halloween gallery. The original file is 3600X2000. This image has been heavily compressed, but I would apprieciate some 121. Please note, I am going to be adding a watch tower on the left hook shaped mountain, a main castle on the center flat topped mountain, and more details in the fore ground (i.e torches, skulls, bones etc.) There is alot of detail that has been lost due to shrinking the image down, but I hope this current image is suitable for viewing. haunted_tree_background37.jpg

The upload seems to be working fine Matt.

[Jason Belec]

I like the whole thing, except the face in the one mountain outcropping. Very nice feel to it all.

[sirquadalot]

Thank's I've been debating that aspect. The lighting in the eyes kinda bothers me.

[sirquadalot]

Here is a small cropped section at about the AA half setting. It still has some jpeg compression artifacts. Everything was created in ZBrush except for the moons texture (which I got from NASA, and altered it in ZB.), and the cheap signature.

crop_dc_h20041.jpg

[vlad74]

This is f***n amazing my friend. I love this atmosphere. The bump of the rocks rocks too. :eek: Is this the hell. I wish I had my holiday dream house on top of those rocks. I am joking:D . Really impresive.

[sirquadalot]

Thank's. I'm in the process of designing the castle and towers now. I've got a decent idea of what they will look like and how I'm going to build them. I still have alot of work to put in this. I'm most likely going to add more environmental elements such as fog/steam to the back ground . The torches I'm going to add in the fore ground should give some dramitc effect as well. I'm more than likely going to have to paint in the additional lighting and shadows they give off, but that's pretty easy using the HII brush.:cool:

[MrJamela]

Very, very cool.


I'd love to hear more about your workflow with this project. Are you creating your tools separately and then importing them back into your main project document?

How are you doing this?

Jaime

[sirquadalot]

Thank's MrJamela! Some of the shapes I created in a smaller document. I created a polymesh from the the flat plain tool and used a comnination of sculpting, PM, and the AlphaCent. technique. I then created a nifty little material and applied it. I created a document and sized it to 3600X2000. I then dropped the 3D plain onto the canvas.
I prefer to add high freq. details using the bump brush..but ZB was crashing too much with it. So instead I switched to the simple layer brush and with ZSub/ZADD added the rough cracks and crevices. The smaller rocks were modeled in the full sized document as well the mountains (Zspheres) The tree is a Zsphere model (I modeled this seprately as well...this is the onlt tool I think I saved..?. The mountains are on a second layer, and the majority of the sky and the moon are on a third. I have a good deal of RAM BTW.;)

[jantim]

Great atmosphere, dark and moody, and i understand your pain in not been
able to use the bumpbrush:cry: i hope there is an update soon to cure that !
Oh yeh,...great material(s)

jantim

[Mr micro26]

very dark man love it !!;)

[matvara]

Very nice composition and execution! I like the weard type of atmosphere
in your rendering, it reminds me of a children book I read as child called
something like "My Mio"!
:tu:

[Vox]

GREAT work!
Even in this stage it is one of the best landscapes I've seen so far in zbrush central. Great use of light. Dark looking sky.
great.

[sirquadalot]

Thank you guys! I appreciate the kind words.:D

[sirquadalot]

I'm working on the towers now. First one is at 8.3 million polys. I suggest Corsair RAM.

[mmbenya]

Really excellent mood and scene sirquadalot! :tu: :cool: Great work!

Matt :)

[marciani]

Good work around the atmospere feeling.
I know what you are talking about the big size canvas;
me too , i need to follow everytime a different flow , because sometimes crash the mesh sometimes crazy Mmarker, sometimes shadow is'nt correct.
I'm a huge fan of this incredible tool, but is lack more often at big size.
You can't spend more time to enlarge your image then the whole realisation at less big size.........

Bye
Leo

P.S could you show some steps about the tower, with more light?

[3DP]

Thats a great image you've created there. It manages to avoid the plastic look that some zbrush landscapes can have.

About the eyes in the tree, my suggestion would be to experiment with elongating the 'eyes' vertically...maybe have one larger than the other. Try offsetting them so one is higher than the other so it isn't as obvious that they are eyes. Maybe remove the mouth altogether or make it larger and more gnarly. This would make whether or not the tree really has a face more ambiguous, which is more creepy. Have you tried using the google images to search for 'scary tree' and so on for some references?

Excellent work in creating a spooky atmosphere!

[sirquadalot]

Thank's guys! Umm 3DP... that's a mountain.:lol: Thank's for the critique though! Kinda Ironic though I was thinking when I first started this piece that the main "scary point" would be a haunted tree. Maybe next year...:rolleyes: Leo... I did not get very far with the towers yesterday, so as luck might have it, I might be able to show you some shots before I insert the model into the scene.