For Jaime, Based on a Brom image

[s o u t h e r n]

A little welcome home image for Jaime. (Hes been on Holiday). Nice to have you back Buddy! You have some catching up to do in this forum let me tell you....

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1010098405ijp.jpg

http://www.southerngfx.co.uk/uploads/sig.jpg

[Stonecutter]

Beautiful and magical! :tu: :tu: :tu:
(Although I feel like an eavesdropper, thanks for posting where we can all enjoy it! And welcome back, Jaime!) :D

[rhom]

Beautiful image Glen-love the gathering of lens flare effects also-very magical.

[Ron Harris]

as always....Im in awe....very nice

[aurick]

This style suits you very well, Glen. :eek: Everything about it is perfect, but my favorite part is the way that you did the clothes. Those ties at the hip with the grommets and fabric gathered beneath is particularly awesome.

Completely believable, and suitable for the cover of a fantasy best seller!

:tu:

[drkwarrior]

How do you put these great pictures together so quickly?

[jaime]

Thank you so much for the honor of being your inspiration. This image is exceptionally beautiful and of my wife's favorite to date. I'm glad to be back in the saddle again.
Yeehaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! ;)
jaime & family

[drjjwow]

wow southern this is a beautiful image.. very magical... texture and modeling is out of this world...

[Smiles]

1st, to whom the picture honors. Jamie and Family :)Hope you enjoyed your holiday and welcome back :). 2nd to the creator. As my husband walked by his exact words were ... "WOW" My words were, This is the guy I was telling you about! I wish I had his talent! Thanks for sharing your welcome home present! :) :) :)

[PinheadPaul]

Welcome back Jamie and another killer image Glen! Magic!

Paul

[Le Discot]

Hello South!

Is this character is based on a real portrait of Jaime???
I knew he was nice...But not at this point.

Very cool stuffffffffffffffffffff!


Olivier.

[s o u t h e r n]

It is more like Ofer doing his Magic with THe Z code :_)

[s o u t h e r n]

The type of images that I have been producing this week are a direct result of the Thread that Pam started about full body morphs. She is working away at getting the Meshes back into Poser and still be usable however; these images are Poser Meshes that have been `posed` in Poser with the final image already in mind.

Take the Giant image as an example. I took a Poser 4 male and moved him into the hunched stance that I wanted for the Giant including some facial expressions. I saved him out as an OBJ with `world transformations` allowed (i.e. in the pose I set not the default).

I imported him into Zbrush with the POLYMESH tool and set to work turning him into a Giant with very low settings in the DRAW POINTER, MOVE, SCALE sliders in the TRANSFORM panel. As I had no intention of putting him back into Poser I increased the mesh resolution by using TOOL http://www.southerngfx.co.uk/uploads/arrow.gif MODIFIERS http://www.southerngfx.co.uk/uploads/arrow.gif DEFORMATIONS http://www.southerngfx.co.uk/uploads/arrow.gif DIVIDE. As this modifies the geometry I would not be able to use it as a morph target in Poser from this stage on.

The next stage usually is to create a Texture Map by using Texturemaster. The mesh still has its own UV co-ordinates that came with the .OBJ from Poser so the Texture map is laid out as per a true Poser map i.e. Showing the body, head, eyes, feet and hands flattened out. I use a wide range of Alpha Brushes, my own and the default ones, I use the Blur, Smudge, Shading Enhancer intensity brushes. The Texture map can take quite a while because I am essentially building up from a dark base colour to a final skin tone finish.

I then place the figure on a layer (I have a default document ready with 4 layers already open) and begin adding clothes and equipment and other assorted extras. An image like the `Floating Elf` was quick (about three hours total) for a number of reasons :

:b3: I had the image idea firmly in my head after looking at a floating figure in a Brom painting. I very quickly posed him in Poser 4 and had the export done in minutes.

:b3: The Texturemap was based on that used for the Giant with some minor colour adjustments and added skin effects. The leather was based on a tequnique I created while doing the Giants loin cloth (A soon to be released new tutorial)

:b3: All post work except the flares was done in Zbrush after I had rendered the final image. I turn off all the layers, create a new one and import the exported PSD file. I use a the FLAT material and do all blurs, fades, burn and dodge type stuff, smudging etc. in house. No more Photoshop for this that type of work (A soon to be released new tutorial)

:b3: My Wife was out so no one pestered me ;)

To be honest, I have always been a bit of a purist when it comes to Zbrush images and you will notice that I very rarely use 3RD Party meshes in my ZB work. However, this year I have decided to move on from heads and do full bodies so it seems a waste not to have a go with the stuff provided by DAZ and Curious labs. BTW The marine was 100% Zbrush, no external meshes used at all, that was fun.

See you all later.

[The Saint]

Very Tastefully Done!

I'm a big BROM admirer myself but never had the inclinations to copy his style.

I'm glad that you've moved on from doing just heads and working on full figure. (by the way., I was blown away by your space marine image.)

However, (this is just me) the problem with Poser figures is it tends to make your characters looking too "generic". (Poser fans will hate me for this but wait..)

The great thing about ZBrush is you can create "unique" and "original" characters customized to your taste and style. This is just one of many things that sets it apart from other programs.

Anyways, keep rockin' our world Glen!

sonny

[aurick]

Thanks for the detailed explanation, Glen. I had been wondering if he was Poser when I noticed the break at the right elbow.

As for Poser figures being generic, I disagree with TheSaint on two points. The human body actually is pretty generic -- lots of variations, but the same basic structure. And Michael (especially Michael 2) has enough morphs built in to allow most anything. I'm not mad at TheSaint, though! I'm mad at all the Poser users who never bother to take advantage of those morphs, leading to the impression that Poser is generic. :)

But as Glen has shown here, Poser and ZBrush together can be a deadly combination. I'd wager that if that break at the elbow was fixed, this would quickly hit the Poser Hot 20 at Renderosity...

I still can't stop staring at that clothing. Wow.

[s o u t h e r n]

Hi Guys.

Sonny: I still have your Dragon/little warrior pinned on my wall from when I printed it last year. Your compositions always inspire me and I can`t come close to getting the light and cheerful images that you create with ZB. I use poser on and off to test/try things out but I am not a regular user.

As to Brom, he features in my top 10 artist list and I would love to watch the guy at work on canvas. I wouldn`t want to be acused of plagearism (which is why I stated clearly that it was inspired by his work) but I think a lot of what he does can be re-created in ZBrush and to widen the user base I would want to show as many techniques as possible.

If you posted a set of ZBrush images by done by you, pix, le discot, adman, me and Ken Brilliant I bet you that this forum could put an author to the image in seconds. If however we all did a poser based image with no post work I should think it would be a different story.

I spent time doing the heads (a year) because;

1. I don`t do it for a living and I can afford to take the time to learn how.

2. I wanted to become as good as Pix at doing them. This was a goal for me before I knew he was Ofer and I feel a bit silly about it all now :)

3. Heads are quick and sometimes I only have time for a quick Z fix.

NOTE: Very few people mentioned that Admans hands in his Dutch masters images were from poser meshes, because the `ART` itself is far more important than the medium/method.

Sonny, do you have a personal gallery anywhere?

Things like the crappy elbow could easily be rectified. He was a three hour job, imagine a thirty hour job with a V2 or Mich2 mesh. It would look nothing like a Poser mesh when ZBrush spat it out.

In fact, I`ll go get V2 and Mich and have a go, I`m sure Chad at Daz gave me them the other month to do the Poser Ogre.

ANyhoo,

Take care.

G

[aurick]

You left out Impending. ;)

Lots of great points. Once again, it all comes down to using the best tool that will do the job in the amount of time that is available.

I'm just glad that ZBrush proves to be that tool, more often than not!