Frog Illustration

[KrakenCMT]

Well, I got an illustration project due on Tuesday so I loaded up ZBrush to start sculpting the model and texturing it. I brought him into Lightwave 9 for a quick test render using the new sss nodes.

I think he's looking OK but maybe needs a bit more work here and there. But he's almost there and now I gotta design a scene for him. Any ideas? I have a couple ideas in mind I'll sketch up and post, but maybe somone can think up something else cool for a frog to do! Frog.jpg

[marcus_civis]

I always think they look kinda cool riding bicycles but that's probably not what you meant. ;)

Very cool frog. Great work! :tu:

It's presumably a tree frog? Rainforest type... perhaps leaping through some rain or splashes on some leaves, that sort of thing? I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

[bicc39]

Run for President or

apply for a job at Geico.

[KrakenCMT]

Here's another test render in Lightwave 9 with most of the scene added. I still need to add some other elements to balance the composition. The background was painted in PS and blurred. But everything except the grass was imported at some point into ZBrush for sculpting and texturing.

I thought about doing a more interesting pose, but seeing that this is the first 3D project with the client, I wanted to make sure it had wider appeal and a more crazy pose/concept could perhaps turn off some people. I'll go crazy on the next one! :)

Everything needs refinement. The displacement maps are not in full effect due to it was 2 AM last night before I rendered it and emailed it to the client and I needed to speed things up. As well as the SSS is a bit grainy because I lowered the qulity for speed purposes. I need to work more on positioning the frog as well. You can probably see where parts of the hand are too far into the mushrooms.

Frog1.jpg

[Jason Belec]

Simply wonderful! ;)

[marcus_civis]

Good work :tu:

I have to say I prefer the first pose but I'm sure this frog will make someone very happy. :)

[Frenchy Pilou]

...froggy :cool:

[acmepixel]

Beautifully done. (5stars)

Can we get a step-by-step at some point? :D

I took advantage of that ridiculously cheap Lightwave 9 upgrade deal. Although C4D is my primary 3D app. I'd be very interested to see your Zbrush<->LW workflow, as I'm learning both of those apps right now.

Thanks for posting! :tu:

[jaxxx irons]

I like it so much tou frog, the subsurface is very sutil but is more realistic , congratulations, Could you show me a wireframe and you model in z brush .

[KrakenCMT]

I appreciate the comments, guys!

Once I have time, I'll upload the wires and base meshes, zsphere setup.etc... Hopefully I'll have the time tonight.

I barely had time this morning to do a small adjustment to the image to brighten and soften things up a bit. Some areas got a little too soft, but this is just another test to see if I like the general look of the brighter colors. I like the softer look of the flowers and mushrooms, but the hands seems to loose definition. But overall I like the look.

frogadjust.jpg

[acmepixel]

In this one, I like what you did to the background, but I feel you lost too much of your superb Frog-texture details from the first one.

I'd try keeping the lighter version#2 background with a in-between version of the frog? #2 seems washed out. But I like the over-all warmth of the greens in #2. I'd hate to loose the delicate purple texturing and translucency you achieved in the first version.

my 2 cents. ;)

[abbasi]

nicely done!! i luv it

[hawkline13]

Fabulous :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu:

[boozy floozie]

Hard to decide which one I like the best.
Lovely punchy image!:tu::tu::tu:

[Giantsun]

Love it. Great 3D.

[Elixir]

I love the high saturation version. It compliments the colrful nature of the frog rather nicely.:tu::tu::tu::tu::tu:

[jantim]

Its not a big deal, i think, that the froghands loose definition..they seem to draw your eyes to them in the composition and that is not a good thing !
It should be better if they would get some shadow so they would blend more in the rendering !
I like the mood of both the renders :tu: ..great stuff

jantim

[Bas Mazur]

Great image!!

[jmeyer]

Congratulations ! :tu: :cool: Kribbit !

[Art4med]

Great coloring, love the SSS showing into the nose.

But maybe the fingers don't really weigh onto the shroom?
frog fingers spread with weight, the fingertips are what hold them on--- think 'exaggerated fingerprints'.

Beaut--- how'd the client like it?

[Magician]

simply in awe! Any info on your workflow would be greatly appreicated, and how do you do the leaves and grass.

[Art4med]

LOVE to hear the workflow in any submission.

[X14Halo]

How did you go about texturing it? Did you paint them in Zbrush using reference photos? Did you use projection master for the small details? I am a somewhat decent modeler in Zbrush, but when it gets time for texturing and SSS, I am somewhat new to it. Any tips/tricks would be greatly appreciated. Love your work by the way :)
- Ian

[hawkline13]

Showing my ignorance, what the heck is SSS?

[X14Halo]

SSS means Subsurface Scattering. Gnomon has a free quicktime torrent they just released on it here... http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23 its basically for use with materials like skin, grapes, wax, etc... as they absorb light in a unique way. Such as putting your hand in front of a flashlight and you can see the redness from inside your hand. :)

[hawkline13]

ohhhh, glad I asked! Thx for the link :D

[KrakenCMT]

Thanks again for all the comments everyone! It's really helping me iron out a few things. I tried to address the big problem areas that were pointed out and a few of my own that I spotted.

As for the workflow, it's not all that different from what's been shown here on the forums.

Here's the ZSphere tool I built for the frog along with the detail levels and painted texture. Wanted more detail in certain areas like the underbelly and shoulder joints so I rendered the frog with a cavity material. Then used ZAppLink and Photoshop to apply the rendered cavity areas to the texture itself. Then did the usual exporting of the displacement maps for Lightwave.

I made a quick rig in Lightwave for posing. The rig is not animation quality, but good enough for quick poses.

Frog1.jpg

Frog2.jpg

Frog3.jpg

Frog4.jpg

The log was built with ZSheres too. Just a basic blob with an arm sticking out. Then I sculpted the basic crevases and overall shape. I used the rollerbrush to apply a bark texture to the model in Projection Master. When it was covered, I used the texture to make an intesity mask which I used to pull the detail from the model.

LogMasking.jpg

Log.jpg

The flowers and 5 leaved plants were simple low poly models created in Lightwave modeler then imported into ZBrush to make more organic looking. I also painted the leaf veins texture in ZB.

Plants.jpg

The mushrooms were fun and frustrating at the same time. I had made a nice mushroom in ZBrush but when I exported the displacement map, it was doing some wierd things. I concluded that the displacement map was overlapping itself when it was made. So I had to paint the displacement map myself. The white mushroom on the right shows the black and white texture used for the displacement map. The one on the left is the original mushroom made in ZBrush. ZBrush wins hands down for mushroom making!

Shrooms.jpg

Here's a quickrender of the scene so you can see the lighting setup (minus the radiosity). Saslite was used for most of the grass.

If there's something I missed that you wanted to know about this project, just gimme a holler.

QuickShadeRender.jpg

Definately learned a lot from this and from others here with keen eyes and good observation! I'm still waiting for my final rendering to finish, so I'll post that soon.

[X14Halo]

wow! thanks for all the info :D quick question...in the renders i see like a kind of scaly texture but i dont see it in your painted texture. Did you use spec maps or bump maps at all? If you used a spec map can you post it? Thanks again. -ian

[X14Halo]

by the way I'm thinking about modeling and texturing a snail once I get my new computer in 2 weeks so thats why im asking all these questions :)

[shandaman]

Congrats on the top row, this work should be up there!

[50'sKID]

Yes, yes, great frog! I especially like the mushrooms. Thanks for the indepth info. :) 50.

[Art4med]

For the workflow-- it takes time to put those screencaps up, so many thanks for your valuable effort!

Great result, BTW!

[Drummer]

wonderful colors !
keep it up :tu:

[sooon]

I rendered the frog with a cavity material. Then used ZAppLink and Photoshop to apply the rendered cavity areas to the texture itself.

can you elaborate more on how this is done?? thanks and nice work:D

[KrakenCMT]

Here's the final rendering. I used Photoshop to bump some colors and increase contrast in areas. And also to hide a few wierd artifacts that popped up. I cropped it in tighter as well. The composition was too open in areas.

FrogFinal1.jpg

sooon,
to apply the cavity effect to the texture, rotate the model to reveal the part you would like to add the cavity effect to. Then render the model in basic lighting with the cavity material added and color texture applied to the model. Then I would export the render as a file. Then without moving the model, I send it to projection master and use ZAppLink(using shaded layer). I open up my exported rendering which should look exactly like the image projection master just sent to Photoshop. I then copy and paste the cavity rendering over the ZAppLink image and erase any areas that I don't want the cavity effect showing. Save and return to projection master.

I think there is a ZScript which does this to some degree, but I haven't downloaded it. This way also does it to only the parts you want it to and not the entire model.

[Elixir]

Just wonderful. Worth the wait. :)

[X14Halo]

kraken, did you use a spec map at all? did you handpaint it in Zbrush?

[KrakenCMT]

X14Halo,

No spec map used. Just the color texture, sss nodes and general spec values.

[sooon]

hi KrakenCMT (member.php?u=41167),

thanks for sharing. anyway, do you mind to screen cap your node setting for the frog??

i m a lightwave user too. but due to the fact that i only know lw, so node is something very unusual for me.

but i m impress with your work. well done and keep up :D

sooon

[bicc39]

Congratulations, fantastic job!!!

Really liked seeing it from beginning to end.

[Prospect]

Yeah I have to say also, this is some fantastic work, keep it up man :)

[KrakenCMT]

wow! thanks for all the info :D quick question...in the renders i see like a kind of scaly texture but i dont see it in your painted texture. Did you use spec maps or bump maps at all? If you used a spec map can you post it? Thanks again. -ian

Sorry X14Halo, I didn't see this until now. I did paint a stippled greyscale texture which I used as an overlay layer on the color texture in the node editor. Just like the effect of using the overlay filter in Photoshop, it had the same effect on the texure.

Good catch! I'm glad you brought it up. It's a cool trick to add subtleties to the texture and worth mentioning.

[acmepixel]

This final version is , dare I say it?, perfect! :eek:

And thanks very much for the process insights. :D

[- FoOD -]

wow very nice

[weyvin]

That's a really very nice lil' frog! :tu:

Love the textures and Skin ;)

[calum5ZB]

Well done,thats some cool frog work ! Love it.

[jaxxx irons]

hey man!! is amazing image, comgratulations, I like the final work

[leswilson3d]

Hi,

I have a job on the go.

Want to sell your model? Does your model come with bones so I'd be able to manipulate different poses and animate?

Cheers
Les

leswilson3d@runbox.com

[leswilson3d]

Les

leswilson3d@runbox.com

[vipsvarma]

:D :lol: :p ;) i love love love this work dude

[skdzines]

Just wondering if you could explain how you did the grass in the composition? Are you using Maya paint effects or what?

Thanks!

[KrakenCMT]

Hey, skdzines, the grass was a Plugin for Lightwave called Saslite (a free version of the more feature rich plugin called Sasquatch). The newest versions of Lightwave 9.6 now have FiberFX which will work well for grass and hair.