My first post, my first z-brush model and it's all Jaime Labelle's fault!

[voodoomonkey]

sans2012, thanks man. Yoda rocks...

Anthropus, Obrigado Kris... espera vai ter mais.

Pilou, Nope I've been sculpting since I was 13. Hence my excitement that I'm now able to do it in the computer.

alexleia, I'm working on my next... want to finish this one first color SSS and what not.
Ate mais.

pc, No real plans on rigging this guy. He was a quick sketch that turned into something more. Just using this as a learning tool for "Z".

Mr.Learner, Thank you.

Thank you all for your kind words. Keep on rocking in the free world!

I'll write up that Tut on the eyes tonight.
Sorry didn't have time this weekend, wife and 3 kids.

Cesar Dacol Jr.
Aka, The Voodoo Monkey

[voodoomonkey]

Hi all.
Sorry had to put the kiddies to bed.
Better late than never.
Any how as promised here's the Tutorial for how I create my eyes.
The technique has been around for a long time.
I've however modified it from its original application so that it works
better in a cg environment. You can't really add shaders to clay or marble.
But the again maybe you can... hmm
Any how... it catches light a little better and the shadows are deeper.
Please let me know if you use it.
It's always great to see what people are doing.
On to the Tutorial.

First off some basics.
I'm using Maya to create this. You can use whatever you're most comfortable with.

Step 1
Create a 4 Lambert shaders. In this case I choose some colors, yellow and pink.
I also chose shades of black and white.
NOTE: Name the materials as follows.
The yellow will be my Iris.
Pink my Cornea.
Black my pupil.
Finally white for my highlight.

Now create a polygonal primitive. In this case choose a sphere. You want the subdivisions around the axis to be 20
and along the height to be 20. make sure to choose, "Z" for your axis orientation. That will orientate your sphere
with it's poles in the Z axis. Leave the rest at default.
Name the sphere,"cornea".

Before we go any further we'll need to make this a Z-brush happy model.
So, on the poles you'll need to select every other edge and delete them.
This will ensure that we only have quads on out model.

Z-brush is happy

Now assign the pink material.

At this point I'll change 2 things, I make change my material type, to phong. I need a phong due to the specular nature
of the material. Second I change my surface normals to smooth.

You should have something like this.


WOW! A pink sphere. Yay!

Now you want to bevel the 1st edge loop and the 3rd edge loop. Select and bevel with an offset of 0.05 .
NOTE: I've colored the bevel green, this is only for ease of viewing.



Next select the faces that make up the iris and chip them off.


Apply the Yellow, "Iris", color. Select the chip and center the pivot. Hit the,"Insert" key and snap the center to a vertex on the last row of your chip off. Then scale it -1 in z.
This should position the chip in the right place for your Iris. Invert the normals, merge your objects together and finally merger your vertices.



Now select the center faces up to the first bevel and extrude inwards towards the center of the eye. You'll want to create a large cavity inside the eye that will allow light to travel in. This makes a huge difference in the quality of the blacks you get. Speaking of that.
Select the faces you've just extruded and assing the black, "Pupil".



I've sliced my model in two so that it's easier to see what I've done.
Take note that I've played with the bevels. Just move them around until you find the position that best represents the look you're going for.
Also notice the shape of the cavity I've created. You can have a ton of fun with this including using highly reflective materials.


Last thing to do is create a cylinder assign the white, "highlight", color. Place where you want the highlight to be.



Sub-d or smooth your model and voila, presto change-o a centuries old tradition carries on. A CG fine art eye.


I hope this helps.
Enjoy.
Cesar Jr.
Aka, The Voodoo Monkey

[voodoomonkey]

Hey all.
Here's the color map for my character.
They are all hand painted.
No spec, sss etc... only color.
Don't be shy.
Let me know what you guys think.
Cheers
Cesar Dacol Jr.
Aka, The Voodoo Monkey.

[MrLearner]

Thanks for the tutorial man! Helpful for me that have never tried making eyes

[spaz8]

hey Cesar, good to see you on here. Havent seen any of your work for a couple yrs now. Not sure if you'd recognize my name from sheridan or not. Every now and then I ask Paul what your up to.

Anyways cool first post and technique with the eyes, i hadn't seen the use of a cylinder for the highlight before. No longer into Marai? Where r u working these days?

[voodoomonkey]

Mr. learner, I'm glad it will help you. at the end of the day we're all here on this earth to learn. So if I have helped you in a little way... That makes me happy .
Enjoy!

Spaz8, Hey there... Thanks.
I've been around, travelling from gig to gig.
I'm back in Canada now. I'm the modeling Supervisor at Meteor Studios.
It's a fun company, great bunch of guys.
Lots of great projects on the go. 300 amongst them. So keeping really, really, really busy these days.
I'm still try and get back to teach at Sheridan at least once a year.
Didn't do it this year, Jim Sayers is away for the year.
And now on here... Lots of great talent on the board.
It's so inspiring.
Other than that, like I said keeping busy and trying to help whenever I can.
BTW, a plug for The wild, coming out on april 14th.
It's amazing the amount of work we did on that show in the amount of time we had. It looks amazing.
What about you?
Cheers
Cesar Dacol Jr.
Aka, The Voodoo Monkey

[spaz8]

I'm hopefully gonna get back to Sheridan to teach also. I was talking to Jim and Ken Walker through email recently. We'll see. August or Sept perhaps seems to be the most realistic with work. After school I worked on a couple movies at a VFX shop in toronto as a lighter, junior vfx animatior. Then took a character modelling/zbrush job in Vancouver, now im at Bioware in edmonton as a character artist.

-Ken Finlayson

[Ktaylor]

good sculpt man, it has that really nice heavy thick skin feel to it, I like the design as well you really avoided that easy to replicate goblin head look and came up with something that has a nice fresh feel to it. I think the color is coming along really well also!

[Ktaylor]

WOA! I just checked out your website, awesome scultpures!! I love the monkey looking head and the screaming guy, nice work!

[voodoomonkey]

Hey all just a hue change today... working on the SSS render as we speak hopefully something soon.


spaz8, That's cool about Sheridan I hope that works out for you.
So how do you like Bioware?

Ktaylor, The monkey looking thing was a bigfoot that I created for a movie called, "Beyond the Myth". that was allot of fun. Thank you for the compliments. It's always nice to know your work is genuinely appreciated.
I'm no Rick Baker, but then who is?

Cheers
Cesar Dacol Jr.
Aka, The Voodoo Monkey

[ryankingslien]

Fantastic! That color map is astounding! Great job! Can't wait to see it rendered with SSS.


Ryan

[LynneMitchell]

thanks for the TUT on the eyes! Your modeling is now one of the inspirational "must watch" list. Keep up the good work! Can't wait to see more...

[voodoomonkey]

Ryan, Hey Man you're too kind. Thank you for your kind words. they mean much to me.

Lynne, You are soooo welcome. I'm glad you liked the tut. I'm happy that you find my work inspirational. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Cheers
Cesar Dacol Jr.
Aka, The Voodoo Monkey

[voodoomonkey]

Hey all.
Not much time last night.
Any how, still no SSS.
Only playing around with some eyes and mood for my final composition.
By no means is this final, very much a work in progress.
Thanks Arnaud
Cheers
Cesar Dacol Jr.
Aka, The Voodoo Monkey

[froyd]

this is really nice, i like those kind of painterly shading a lot. If you are still experimenting with eyes, you could try to embed them more, but thats the only thing that could need some fixing. very well done!

greets
froyd