Johnny Destroy's sketchbook

[voodoodad]

Johnny the coat look fantastic! I don't think I'd shorten the arms since it's a stylistic sculpt and seeing how tall and thin he is they look just about right to me. Keep it up!

[JohnnyDestroy]

Johnny the coat look fantastic! I don't think I'd shorten the arms since it's a stylistic sculpt and seeing how tall and thin he is they look just about right to me. Keep it up!

Hmmm... Maybe you're right. I guess I'm mostly worried that they'll look absurdly long once I add the extra length provided by the hands, but I think you migth be right. On the other hand, even if they do turn out to be too long, I just realised that the simplest solution would be to make the rest of the body larger, so it shouldn't be much of a problem either way.

Anyway, I'm glad you like it. I'll post more pics once it's been retopologised and I have some finished details to show off. I'm realy looking forward to trying out TopoGun.

[JohnnyDestroy]

I haven't had much time for modeling this week, but tonight I sat down and worked on the coat a bit. It's more or less done, all that's lacking is a few subtools ( like buttons and things of that nature) and a surface noise, using a custom fabric alpha, that will be applied after posing in order to preserve it through the posing process. This is where it's at now:

[voodoodad]

The jacket looks great Johnny. Very clean and crisp lines.

[Sangius]

Nice and clean design! I like it very much!

[JohnnyDestroy]

The jacket looks great Johnny. Very clean and crisp lines.

Nice and clean design! I like it very much!

Thank you both, I get excited every time I see a reply in this thread.

The coat is now posed and ready for some finishing touches, but when I sat down tonight I felt the urge to start on the hands instead. At this point I realised that I don't have a good basemesh for hands, so I figured I'd start there. I wanted to create my own basemesh instead of using a hand from one of the provided tools, partly because I need the training, but mostly because I wanted some specific functions. Most notably, I wanted the fingers in a pose that would allow for the greatest possible flexibility in future projects and I wanted it to be bland enought to fit all purposes. For example, I don't want too many well defined wrinkles and I don't want nails, this way I'll be able to use the hand for gloves as well, and it will be adaptable for all ages and both genders with a minimal ammount of work.

This is the result, it's a speed sculpt (for me at least) using a combination of Zspheres and DynaMesh. It took me two hours and all that's left is to retopologize it using TopoGun. I welcome any input and ideas:

[JohnnyDestroy]

Finished the glove, gonna pose it as soon as I get back from a short trip to the north. As always, input is apreciated:

[Senka]

The fingers on the glove look a little too flattened to me, shouldn't they be a bit softer in their edges, more round? Love the detailing though, was it noisemaker with a leathery alpha? Good seam around the middle horizontal part of the glove too.

[JohnnyDestroy]

The fingers on the glove look a little too flattened to me, shouldn't they be a bit softer in their edges, more round? Love the detailing though, was it noisemaker with a leathery alpha? Good seam around the middle horizontal part of the glove too.

Thanks for the input!

Yeah, they might be a bit too flat. I'll try inflating them and see how that looks, but the squared look is intentional, both for cartoonish purposes and to make the fingers more "glovy". Could be refined though, I'll look into it.
And yes, I used Noisemaker for the leather, using the UV option and some minor tweaking.

[JohnnyDestroy]

Hello again, everybody.

I haven't been able to sit down and model for some time, but this week things got a little less hectic around the house and therefore I decided to fire up Zbrush and get cracking. I wanted to try out the new mannequins and also try to create some custom ones of my own, so I decided to let my "old guard"-project sit in the freezer for just a little while longer.

I made my first custom mannequin with no particular ideas in mind, I just fooled around with the proportions, trying to focus on the actual mechanics of the mannequin system. Once it was done, I took one look at it and realised that it's hulking physique, small head and hunched back was instantly recognisable as that of a Warhammer Ork! This was a great opportunity to both test the posing mechanics of mannequins AND try something I've never actually been able to pull off; model a posed figure without the use of symmetry.

I started out by posing the fancy new Ork Mannequin I just made. In my head I pictured an Ork Nob from the Warhammer 40,000 universe, with massive chunks of metal bolted to it's body and a dynamic pose. I knew I wanted it to have a large mechanical arm, so the first thing I did was to modify the mannequin to include a mecha-arm. Once I was happy with the pose, I started adding Zspheres to the armature to get a better topology and some early muscle definitions. I didn't want to have to change the topology later on, fearing it would break my stride, so it was important to get something that I could work with right away. When the armature was finished I deleted the parts that would become the mecha-arm (I wanted to create it as a sub tool, and only included it in the armature for posing purposes) and made an adaptive skin which I saved out as a separate tool.

Here's a screen of the posing process:


Now it was time to start the actual modeling! I prefer a progressive subdivision workflow where I refine the model one subdivision at a time, working my way up, so that's what I did. But before I started I had to add some edge loops for the eyes and the mouth, hoping that it would save me the hassle of a retopology. As a side note, I forgot to add edge loops for the ears, but I was able to add them in later on by exporting the lowest subdivision to Maya, edit in the topology and then export it back to Zbrush where I subdivided the new mesh a few times and then projected in the details from the old mesh.

Once I had all the topology I was going to need I started to define the major features and muscle groups using the move brush, not subdividing untill I felt I could go no further at the current level. I knew that most of the body would be covered by clothes and equipment, so I decided to skip the most intricate details for now. This would allow me to add them in once all the other subtools were in place, allowing me to see what areas needed more details and what areas were covered up anyway. I still wanted the basic muscle groups pretty well defined though, since I was going to create all the clothing by creating new topology on top of the base model. For this reason, I tried to always consider what kind of clothing (if any) I would have on the area I was currently working on. The feet, for example, had to have the basic shape of boots, instead of actual feet with toes.

I kept on working untill I had all the details I would need in order to create new subtools. My general workflow goes like this; at the lower subdivision levels I mostly use the move brush and to some extent the inflate brush. Once I start working on the higher subdivision levels I tend to mostly use the various clay brushes along with a smooth brush with a low strength. If I ever feel that the proportions are getting out of hand, I will go down to a lower level and use the move brush once again.

Here's a screen of the early modeling process:


As you can see, I am currently in the process of creating and adding subtools. I began with the interior of the mouth, creating lo-poly meshes in Maya that I exported to Zbrush where they could be scaled and moved into position. I then used the same progressive technique as earlier, working on one subdivision at a time before moving on. The skull cap was created in TopoGun, since I find Zbrush's retopology tools inferior. I rarely manage to click each point in the exact right position on the first try, and moving them around later on will move off of the bound mesh in Zbrush. TopoGun is simply superior when working with new topology, but needless to say, once the lo-poly version is created, I export it to Zbrush where I can either project the details back in, or start modeling right away. It's a very nice workflow, and I've grown fond of it.

The face is a great example of what I mentioned earlier about holding off on the most intricate details untill all subtools are in place. Once I had all the facial subtools modeled out, it was much, much easier to start detailing the face. The position of the subtools allowed me to see where I should make folds in the skin, position the lips in a more dynamic fashion and create scarring to go along with the mechanical eye inserted in the right eye socket.

Here's a screen with closeups of the face and it's various subtools:


Hope you like what you see. I'll update the thread as I go along, please let me know if you have any particular questions...

[SolidSnakexxx]

Love your style! Very clean and very nicely sculpted!

[JohnnyDestroy]

Thank you SolidSnakexxx, glad you like it.

I've managed to squeeze in a few more hours of work and now the pants are all done, including belt loops and a custom surface noise. I've also added nails to the hand and a set of leather chest straps that will function both as clothing and a means of strapping the massive shoulder pads to the body.

The shoulder pads are not finished, but I have started on them. As usual for that kind of geometry, I created a base mesh in Maya and then exported them to Zbrush. Once I had them lined up on the model I was forced to repose the arms slightly using transpose, something I was kinda expecting. I have found that adapting outlandish fictional characters to 3D often causes issues where I suddenly realise that while the original design might work well on paper, it's often physically impossible in 3D. In this case, the sort of huge shoulder pads that the Warhammer Orks often sport, would in real life leave them pretty unable to perform any form of complex movement with their arms without hitting the pads. Since I'm doing a still shot, I could simply move the arms to a position where they did not clip with the shoulder pads, but if I had intended to animate the model, something like this would present a very big challange.

Here's a closeup of the pants and chest straps:


And the composed current WIP, including the unfinished shoulder pads:

[JohnnyDestroy]

I'm now more or less finished with the detailing on the shoulder pads, and it's been the most interesting subtool to work on so far. I've had a chance to try out lots of new techniques and brushes, most notably the new IMM tripart curve brush.

It's kinda funny, I've had this vision of lots of chains hanging from the pads since day one, but I had no idea the new Zbrush version would contain exactly what I needed to make them. Just the other day I was telling my wife about it, and how I wished there was some way to let a mesh duplicate itself along a curve, and less than 24 hours later I got a mail telling me that there was a new version of Zbrush to download.

Anyway, here are some screens of the detailed shoulder pads, let me know what you guys think of them:

[JohnnyDestroy]

Last night I decided to try out the new Qremesher function in Zbrush 4R4 on my Ork's main body subtool. It was very dense at 1.4 million polys, and it still needed two additional HD divisions to keep the face from being faceted, yet I was not in the mood to do a complete manual retopology. In other words, the subtool was a prime candidate for Qremesher.

I had to play around a lot with the settings and delete/add topology curves auntill I got a nice result, and I spent at least six hours doing the "retopology". But most of that time was spent getting to know the function, and I'm confident that the next time I use it it will be a much faster process. The end result is great for it's purpose; a posed still shot. Had the model been created for animation I doubt I would have used Qremesher, but to be honest that's obviously not what it's for. It's ability to quickly (once you know how to use it) generate new topology more suited for the model using nothing but topology curves to suggest the desired flow, and the possibility to drastically reduce the polycount by doing so, makes it a very powerful asset. For any model that needs a new, and very exact edgeflow, such as models made for animation, it's still better to do a manual retopology I thinjk.

The old subtool had 1.4 million polys, with an additional 21 million polys in HD geometry. The Qremeshed subtool weighs in at 733,000 polys and still manages to be much smoother than the old. The HD geometry is lost, but that can easily be sculpted in again, and with the reduced size of the new subtool, I can afford to divide it once more and get 2.9 million polys to edit without even using HD geometry at all.

Here's a preview of the result:


And today I had some time to sit down and create some new subtools, so I'll show them off as well. I made back pockets for the pants and then modeled a pair of boots. I'm pretty satisfied with the result, in particular with the time it took me. As I get a firmer grip of Zbrush and how to do things, the time it takes me to create is consistantly lowered. A year ago I would have needed a week of hard work to create these subtools, and now I managed to do it in an afternoon.

Here are some screens of the new subtools. As always, don't be afraid to leave your remarks in the thread:

[Etcher]

Hi senile old man, I'd say you're off to a flying start with ZBrush! -> keep'em comin'