R'Zalka - DW3 entry

[goldo_O]

Hi everyone!

Here is my Dominance War 3 entry. That was such a great experience, every character artists should do this competition once in their life!
That was intense, but at the end I'm glad I finished this character in time.
I hope you like her, and thanks a lot for looking!

RZalka_WinningPose.jpg

RZalka_Beauty.jpg

RZalka_Construction.jpg

RZalka_Textures.jpg

RZalka_Concept.jpg

RZalka_FaceHR.jpg

RZalka_Fish.jpg

RZalka_Artefact.jpg

RZalka_Artefact2.jpg

RZalka_Video.jpg
>> http://dl.free.fr/ouzbdSg2J/RZalka_Turnaround.avi <<

Cheers,

[Aeneas]

Ahhh...the honour of being the first to react.

I like it a lot. Because there's some very natural spontaneity in this.

The only thing I like less, but that is very personal and has nothing to do with the quality of your work or concept, are the two spear blades. Not only the brightness puts too much emphasis on them, and the "reduce" this work to an illustration of the type we all have seen too often and know too well.

I personally would make the blueish and non-glowing so that the attention is not drawn by a prop but by the characters and their boastings and negotiations.

This said, the characters and their pets are really sublime. There is even a kind of humour in them, and in their attitudes/posing.

Thanks for posting this. To me it's one of my all-time favourite entries here.

Success!!!

[mradamw]

this is incredible! definitely my favourite DW3 entry!
thats about all i can say, no crits here whatsoever!
all in zbrush? or did you use in conjunction with maya/max etc?

[jmturbo]

Great job goldo_O the textures are really amazing :tu:

[zzagno]

whi isn't it in tow rop yet? ;)

amazing work on model and textures, the diffuse one simply rocks!

[SixxPixels]

Wow! What a lot of work. Very cool concept, I enjoyed looking over every pixel/pixol of it. Top Row. Awesome!

[brettSinclair]

Cool sea monster dude. I like the feeling of the head. :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu:

[Intervain]

really love this one! Excellent finish :tu:

[cannedmushrooms]

Very good Rhythm in this.

It all flows well and makes you look it over a few times just to see if you missed anything.

The spear heads are a little bright but in underwater shots You have to grab the audience with something.
After all people have a 3 sec attention span with art. And a 1 sec attention span for digital art;)

Must place shiny objects in piece whenever you can;)

[gpepper]

Mortel !
Great job !
What kind of software you use to render this in realtime ?

[Aeneas]

Meanwhile I found your FAN movie (Google is my servant). Must say it was funny, charming and very well done.

One problem though: What codec to I need for the turntable avi? I have Zoomplayer pro which normally eats about everything, but this one won't digest...

[Thomaskl]

wow, this is amazing ! Inspiring !

Long time ago, since i`ve seen such wonderful phantastic characters in this expressionistic pose.

Congrats !

King regards,
Thomas

[iatriki]

wow dude! fantastic work! :tu:

[Thomaskl]

Come on, guys.. Give those slippery fishes some mountain air ! Earned it.
:eek: :eek:

[jseverson]

Very impressive work! 5 stars. :tu: :tu: :tu:

[justin.jacot]

wicked ass render man....i love the concept, sculpt, texturing, and lighting. it actually took me a second or two to figure out it was an in game mesh. with that topic in mind, i wonder if you could post a bit about your process.....particularily with the lighting, shading, and rendering.

either way, really slick job man.....

[Super Glitcher]

schweeeeeeeet! :tu: 5*

[Siah]

Wow, very cool! Props!

[Pedro Toledo]

Reaaaaally good! :tu:

[Lil'sister]

really good!!! top row baby! :tu: :tu: :tu:

[Webhead]

Outstanding work here. :tu:

[dtran]

I feel very lucky to have been there from the birth of this character to the end. Amazing work as usual. 5 stars from me! oh yeah excellent layouts!

-d

[troy1617]

I really love the rythym of forms and the flow of this piece the weapon is very creative also. do you mind if i ask how you went about creating the weapon and getting forms to wrap around like that?

Congrats on top row it is well deserved... :tu:

[fabianloing]

This is totally my favourite DW3 entry. I love everything about the model and all the elements feels they belong to each other. Awesome! Beautiful sculpt and amazing attention to details. Very very inspiring. Great work dude!

-Fabian

[gpepper]

Congrats for the top row ! you deserve it !

[yoink21]

Great job! The concept, the details, the render all great!

[mrskullface]

nice work, i love the final render, its locks everything together so nice!

[d4me]

yep i have to agree with Dtran, it was nice to see this from start to finish dude, amazing final result! So when you win dominance war take the money and take us out for drinks. lol

keep doing what your doing :)

[Slosh]

I don't normally go for fantasy creatures, but I really like this entire concept and image, so I had to comment. I have to say, the DW3 entries have really impressed me, especially since I don't even know what DW3 is...but this is by far my favorite so far.

You'll get my 5 stars.

[Ldgree]

this is a beautiful entry in DWIII, amazing work!!

[slocik]

That work is a pure win, i find no wrods to say how good it is ;]

[baker17]

awesome work here!!! great design on the character, and love the colors!

[raindog]

A wonderfully creepy and beautiful work. Congrats!

[Drummer]

awesome design for the mermaid face!
congrats! :tu:

[waiyeh_L]

Amazing design and attention to details. Definitely one of my favorite DW entries... 5 stars =)

[Jason Belec]

Very nice concept and execution, very creative. ;)

[Morph Division]

Very cool creature!
What material did you use for the zb screen shot?

[aesis412]

amazing work, this is truely inspiring to me, great textures.

[Pegasus]

Just WOW, this is an amazing work.
I am deeply impressed. Thank you for sharing...

[skulll_monster]

its amazing !

[goldo_O]

Wow! Thank you so much guys for your kind words! I’m so honoured to be in top row since it may be the very first time I post my work on ZBC!



@Aeneas: About the spear blade, we had to create a warrior who would use a magical artefact. That’s the reason why the blade is so bright. I wish I had more time to make more interesting effects on it though.

Maybe the kind of humour you’re talking about comes from a previous version of her magical weapon ;)

http://www.3dvf.com/forum/mesimages/7083/Goldo10.jpg

By the way, the concept was a paintover in photoshop, based on a quick doodle made in Zbrush with Zspheres.
For the turntable video, I used the MJPEG compressor in Max, I don’t understand why you can’t read this file :-\ I can play it in Windows Media Player 11, or VLC without any problem.



@ mradamw Thanks mister! I used Zbrush for the concept, the high res sculpt, and the base for my textures. Max and Photoshop did the rest.



@brettSinclair :O Thank you so much Brett! I’m so honoured that you posted here: your crayfish guy is in my favorite references folder!!! I love sea creatures and yours is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. You actually make me want to make another one :lol:



@ gpepper: Merci! I used Max default renderer for this project. I wanted to try Crysis engine to test their shaders, but time was against me, so after few export errors, I came back in Max. Lazy me!



@ Iatriki: Thanks a lot Andrei! I wish I had your knowledge in rendering! You and Maddamart are so talented to give life to your sculpts!



@justin.jacot: My process is pretty generic I guess. I start blocking the proportions on a basemesh in Max or with Zspheres, then sculpt in Zbrush. I cut the character in many subtools, and had the chance to get the Subtool Master plugin right in time when I had to mirror hands or arms. Then I do the retopology in Zbrush or with Polyboost, and unwrap my final lowres with Unfold 3D. For this project I used the polypaint feature in Zbursh, but since I had my basemesh was different from my final lowpoly, and had no uvs, I transferred the polypaint on AUVs and projected the diffuse color from the high to the low with the Render to Texture in Max.

With this color base and an occlusion map in Mutiply, I had a good base for my diffuse map. The lightning is pretty generic too, especially for the first picture since complex lightning and shadowing was prohibited on this one. We were able to use a 3 spots lightning only. Here is a screenshot of it in Max:

RZalka_Lights.jpg

Thanks to the strong backlight, I had some interesting blue highlights on the fish’s tentacles in the renders.

I used the same light config in the second render, but had some point lights here and there to accentuate the magical effect of her weapon.

A depth map for the fog, added few effects in Photoshop and that was done. Nothing too complex since this was made during the very last hours of the contest :D





@Dtran: Hey Man! Glad to have your third post on these forums! You know that the idea to make this character was born from a discussion with you, so I owe you a tons for the inspiration, advices and nice comments you gave me! I personnaly feel lucky to work with talented people like you!



@ D4me: Thanks to you as well buddy! I have your first post! The dominance war was such a great experience, and I’m so happy we shared this all together. I made some punk fins on top of her head for you, remember?;)
I won’t win any price for this, but we can still have a beer when you want!



@troy1617: for the weapon, I had the idea of twisting eels, so I just started from zshperes and sculpted a rough concept for it. I did the retopo in max because I had extra geometry to add or some parts like the handle to redesign, then final sculpt in Z and final retopo to reduce the polycount.


RZalka_Weapon.jpg


@Slosh: Thank you very much! Dominance war is THE contest for character artists working in the video game industry. Each year the event is getting bigger and bigger, and this year, forums from various nationalities (Korean, French, English, Russian, Chinese…) were hosting the fight. You can find more infos on their website, and see the wonderful characters that were created this year and during the last two years.

http://www.gameartisans.org/dominancewar/en/index.htm





@Drummer: Thank you dear neighbour! J I love your works!



@Morph division: I used the ZMaterial pack that Adam Lewis (http://tweakcg.ning.com/xn/detail/u_n5vb14jnwsgm) provided in Kolby Jukes' new website:
http://tweakcg.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=2071630%3ABlogPost%3A721

Thanks Adam for those!



Big thanks to everyone who took some time to post a comment!



Here is her background story, that matches to the Dominance war 3 story, for those who are interested:






At the dawn of the third millennium, the first killing machines fell from the sky like angels of death, come to change the face of our world forever. Resistance against the Biggun army was pointless and our people had no choice but to seek refuge in a place where the machines could not hunt us down: The ocean.


But as our morphology started adapting to our new environment, so did the robots' technology, and the first submarine prototypes obliged us to descend even deeper into the abysses: Down there we discovered an unexpected fauna, but while fleeing from a threat, we awakened an even bigger one: Bioluminescent creatures of formidable scale, aroused from deep torpor by our arrival in their pitch-dark realms: Once more, left without any options for retreat, our people had to evolve to last, and we chose the art of underwater combat as our path to survival.

Then came the explosion, a thousand years ago. A luminous flash from space enlightened our world, reaching down to the deepest levels of the sea, and from that day, machines stopped functioning, their lifeless wracks being all that was left behind.


Robots were not the only one to be struck by the effects of the supreme weapon though, as our people underwent its ultimate mutation, resulting in a line of chosen females that could control the immensely powerful magical energies that were lingering in the dark realms: From our ancestral legends, these creatures from the deep, the Rusalki, are as beautiful as they are merciless: Air becomes water on contact, and when they venture onto the surface, tidal waves announce their arrival. Accompanied by other creatures of the dark that sense the power emanating from them, these awesome foes have mastered the ultimate art of invocation, controlling the spirits of the four abysses through a harpoon retrieved from the deepest point of the ocean, the artefact's ominous glow flickering nervously in the hand of its cold-blooded bearer, waiting for the powers to be unleashed onto her enemies.


The mightiest among them, R'Zalka, is our chosen one, our only hope against an emerging threat.
Cheers!

[ilusiondigital]

Yes... one of my favourite entries. Good luck, and congrats for a great work

[Aeneas]

Thanks for your reply and explaining why the blade is so shiny bright.

I also can now view the turntable: I had right-clicked and had gotten a 11kB "thing", not the real file. Now I have downloaded the right thing.

Once again: I really love your work.

[Layer01]

amazing work goldo_O
I hope one day i am at a level where i can make characters like that :) Lots of inspiration i must say!

Thank you so much for sharing your workflow, its great seeing how such fantastic models are made :cool:

[mradamw]

goldo_Othanks for giving some insight into your workflow. its truly amazing to see the work you can do.
i hate to ask this, but i recon its the only way ill get answers considering your workflow and expertise.
i wont bog down the wall with it here, but if you could please go here (http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=58927) and maybe help out. there are lots of us struggling with integrating zbrush and 3ds max, so i started a thread to maybe get some insight from people who know what they are doing.
if you were to take a look and maybe give some help, that would be tremendously cool of you.
thanks man, congrats on the toprow too!!

[yangbo]

think you!

[Ladysoul]

Great work Goldo_O!!! i really love the sculpt,all the details... :tu: :tu:
top row!!

[Maxter]

Beautiful design, fantastic work!!:tu:

[hammondb]

that is some stunning work indeed
the details are quite amazing looking at the closeup shots
thanks for such a great post

[konjo kothar vignar]

as a fantasy/zbrush fanatic, your model almost made me cry (lol its very inspiring!) i appreciate all your efforts

[Gokster]

amazing work!!!!

[rv_el]

Really awesome. The big fish really pushes it all over the top. The head is very original and cool. Great work!

How did you get that glow/bloom effect on stuff?

[dustbin1_uk]

This is one of the most amazing models I have ever seen,

Will you adopt me and teach me to make 3D this good? ;)
Very inspiring work!

[Revanto]

This is some incredible work. I've seen some incredible work for Dominance war 3 and I have to say that it's gonna be a tough competition... and your definitely not helping :p

Well done!

Cheers,
Revanto

[romilkchoprazb]

this is very different,i really like the illustration and colour scheme.keep continue the good work friend.:tu:

[Wang ShengFeng]

:tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: You Great:D

[goldo_O]

Hi everyone! Sorry for the late answer, I'm very busy at work those days. I thought I could chill out after DW3, but no rest, never! :D

Thanks again for the nice comments, I'm like > :o

@mradamw: I hope that it can help you, even if it's not a real solution to your problem. Good luck with displace maps! :)

@Ladysoul: Thank you my friend! How was your first day as a teacher?

@rv_el: As the emissive map was just plugged in the self illum channel in my Max shader, and since I don't know how to apply a glow effect with a texture in Max (from my poor knowledge on this topic, it seems to work with material IDs only), I had to do this in photoshop. I guess it would have been better with a glow in a real time engine such as Unreal or CryEngine.

@konjo kothar vignar : I didn't know she could convey so much emotion! I'm very glad you like it!

@Maxter, hammondb, Layer01, Gokster, romilkchoprazb, : Thanks a ton guys! I really appriciate your kind words :tu:

@Revanto: Indeed I wouldn't like to be a judge this year! I've seen so many breathtaking works that during the contest, I tried not to browse the forums too much. Some works were so perfect that I wanted to give up watching them! My personnal victory is that I went until the end of this contest :).

@dustbin1_uk: :lol: Feel free to ask whenever you need an advice, I'd be glad if I can help you!

Thanks everyone for the nice feedbacks! It makes me really happy!
Cheers!

[mietestromgras]

the very best I`ve seen so far!
I dig the color concept, the creativity and believability that`s gone into the character and it`s surrounding and ofc the detail! no error or lazy spot at all!
congrats!

[Bryan Wynia]

Amazing man. I love the design, the sculpt, your comps. Great stuff man!

Bryan Wynia
BLOG (http://bryanwynia.blogspot.com)

[konjo kothar vignar]

heh... well when somebody devotes a certain amount of months to zbrush sculpting and trying to learn the program, it shouldnt be surprising when seeing quality work evokes emotion. im also guessing that most other people that r obsessed with zbrush view it as the current peak of art/technology am i wrong?

[Tom Savage]

Another inspirational piece! Thanks also for the decriptions of workflow, etc.
Congratulations on top row!

[madmatt]

Have you find the time to rig this great piece of work??!!

Impressive!!

Great Job Man!!

Bye

[WhiteGuardian]

Oh, man. Really awesome. :tu: Nice to see you post here. We're in the same team on DW 3 :D

[goldo_O]

Madmatt: I had to! I had so many tentacles, tails... that would have been a big pain to pose the model by hand.
The fish is mainly done with IK splines, the mermaid is a mix of Biped for the upper body and IK splines for the tail and tentacles.

RZalka_Rig.jpg

Cheers,

[Geser.]

Very impressive modeling!

[Leshiy3d]

:tu:
masterpiece work, no words, only 5 stars :D

[stalsby]

amazing character! looks like it came straight out of the abyss! haha, wish i would have finished mine! better luck next year!!

[yu13]

Wow!!! Well done!:o :tu: :tu: :tu:

[aph0x]

holy ****:I

the colors... the model itsel.. the scene... all perfect :I

i' cant remeber when i saw a render & model that was as good as this one is ... definitely a timeless masterpiece of work

[Kupo]

simply outstanding
great form..detail...and amazing texture work
love it :D

[supriyo]

superv :tu:

[Black-Tooth]

Absolutely superb! The finished images look so smooth and the scaly effects on the fish are amazing!

[nightwoodwolf]

those characters rocks ... great work

[Etcher]

Congrats on top 10! Hope you start a sketchbook thread! :tu:

[threetails]

goldo_O, so cool to be in the top ten of the action hero contest with you, loved your pc from the start. Congratulations. hope to see some more from you soon.

[gillispy456]

I love all the about the model and all the elements feels they belong to each other.It Very impressive modeling!.It very nice character.The image is very unique.The concept engraved on this platform is highly qualified.