Johnny Destroy's sketchbook

[ArtBot]

I really appreciate your views on using QRemesher, as I am just starting to look at it myself and your details are very helpful.
I think if you subdivide your results again will be x4 not x2 for the number of resulting pixels. Over the next few months I hope others will contribute their perspectives on this new tool like you did here.

Thank you, much appreciated.

[JohnnyDestroy]

@ Etcher: Thank you, kind words from an instructor.

@ArtBot: Glad someone found it useful, that's the whole reason I keep posting lengthy explanations with every screenshot. If I manage to find the time, I might post a more exhaustive explanation regarding my findings, with comparison screens and such, but I'm pretty pressed as it is.

[JohnnyDestroy]

Just a quick update with some larger screens. I'm getting close to completion with this project, and it's been a while since I posted full body screens, so I figured I'd do just that. All that's left to do now is:

1. Lower part of the Mecha-arm.
2. The boltgun.
3. A decorative base for the model to stand on.
4. Detailing the visable parts of the body subtool.
5. Unwrapping UVs and applying final surface noise to all subtools.

I'll consider the project complete at that point. It's very likely that I'll also texture it at some point, but that will be a whole project of it's own.

And this is what the model looks like right now. As you can see, I've added some studs to the belt and a set of boot straps to the boots, complete with a chain running under the sole. The upper part of the Mecha-arm is finished and posed, and it's turned out to be a great asset while blocking out the rough shapes of the lower part in Maya, since I now have a general look and line flow determined for the arm as a whole. I also added a msall toy bunny in one of the back pockets, as I felt that the model wasn't capturing one of the most important parts of the Warhammer Ork Lore; the laughs.

As always, any comments and/or critique is greatly appreciated:

[Jharford]

The bunny toy is a really neat idea. Nice sculpting

[JohnnyDestroy]

Thank you Jharford, I thought so too. At first I was afraid it would be too cute, but it worked out pretty well. It kinda balances out the otherwise "Waaarghy" model.

Anyway, here's a quick preview of my progress so far on the mecha-arm. It's more or less done, I only need to add some hosing and then split bolts and hose fittings to seperate subtools so I can apply surface noise correctly. One drawback of the arm is that it's weighing in at roughly 3 million polys on it's own, and seeing how the complete model is currently at 15 million polys even without the mecha-arm and is missing the boltgun, I most likely have to use HD geometry when I detail the main body. The HD geometry function is great in many ways, but I'm not overly fond of working with it. I find that it often locks your model out of workflows you did not consider when you added the HD geometry, what with it having it's own undo history that isn't completely coherant with the rest, and the simple fact that you can't really delete it once it's there...

But enough of that, here's the preview of the arm, minus surface noise and hosing:

[chris-carter]

Great work! And nice use of the IMM brushes!

[JohnnyDestroy]

Great work! And nice use of the IMM brushes!

Thank you very much, I'm glad you like it.

Yeah, I try to stay organised, so every time I stumble across something that could benefit from an insert mesh, I tend to spend a few hours making some variations of it and creating a custom IMM brush. It's a truly great new function in Zbrush, and I can see my self playing around with it for hundreds of hours. It' actualy time well spent, since the larger my library gets, the more time I save on future projects.

[Likesyrup]

nice work

[Sangius]

Love the orc and followed your thread for some weeks. Keep up the good work!

Your orc would be a nice opponent for my space marine.
But your model is much cleaner, better and ... posed. Far beyond my WIP-status.

[JohnnyDestroy]

@ Likesyrup: Thank you.

@ Sangius: Thank you, glad to know you're following the thread. I saw your space marine, and I think you have a good foundation. With some fine-tuning it could become a truly great model, and posing wont be a problem considering you have him in a convenient T-pose. I also want to add that I fell in love with your other model, the dreadnaught looking one. The round shapes and crisp lines were perfect! Keep up the good work.

And here's the finished lower Mecha-Arm. I had some more fun with IMM brushes and added a lot of dials and buttons to the control panel, and also some hosing as planned. I had quite a lot of trouble with the hoses, much more than I had expected. First of all it's very hard to make the ends of the hoses line up with the hose insets while moving the curves around. Locking the start/end points merely locks said curve points in place, but they van still rotate freely, and boy do they like to rotate. I wish there was a radius slider tied to the lock start/end point buttons, that way you could make sure that the curve point closest to the start/end point was locked as well, preventing any rotation. To make matters worse I also had trouble with my IMM brush, where the triPart welding didn't work correctly on ane of the hoses. But it all worked out in the end and this is what it looks like:

[JohnnyDestroy]

Haven't been able to work as much as I'd like to the last couple of days. The kid is teething, so... well, need I say more?

Still, I did manage to get a few hours in, and I blew them on a concept sketch for the only remaining subtoll; the Bolta. It's actualy a rather simple subtool to make, and I would have been able to make it without a concept sketch, but I'm trying to refine a a wide skillset, so I figured this was a good opportunity to work on my drawing skills, practical and theoretical both. First I gathered some reference material from the web and threw together three very rough drafts by hand, then I picked various bits and pieces from the drafts and made another rough draft that finalized what parts I wanted on the gun. Last, but not least, I made a tilted view of the gun in a full 3-point perspective, drawing out vanishing points and perspective lines and all.

It's not 3D, but maybe someone will find it interesting anyway:

[Sangius]

Nice controls, its not a really critique but aren't the knobs and buttons a bit too 'fine' for bulky orc hands?

[JohnnyDestroy]

Nice controls, its not a really critique but aren't the knobs and buttons a bit too 'fine' for bulky orc hands?

Haha, funny you should say that. I was thinking the same thing the whole time while modeling them, but in the end I liked them so much that I just decided to include them anyway.

I guess the arm could be buildt from looted parts and the controls just got left in there, even though they aren't used.

[Sangius]

I guess the arm could be buildt from looted parts and the controls just got left in there, even though they aren't used.

Yeah, thought it too ... Orcs loot everything on the battlefield and rebuilt it with their own style. So its absolute ok to leave them like they are.
To control those tiny controlls orc-Waaghbosses mostly have small helpers.

[JohnnyDestroy]

Finished the Bolta. Now I'm going to sort and merge/split my subtools to keep things organized and then I'll have a look at each subtool and see which would either benefit from, or absolutely need, a pass of detailed HD geometry and once that's modeled the project is complete. The Bolta currently lacks any form of detailing since I know that it's going to need HD anyway.

Turns out the concept art I created was pretty helpful after all. I'm mostly used to following my gut feeling and see where it takes me, but it was pretty nice to have all the shapes and major detailing planned out in advance and I feel I'm most likely going to use more concept art from now on, even for single subtools. Here's what it looks like: