Turtle Beach

[ploon]

c and c welcome
New to ZB - 5th week - very basic mesh made in max - ZB3.1 sculpt - retopo'ed - sculpt - polypainted and then rendered in Max with MR.

Cheers

[niir]

Nice.

[jamespthornton]

Great work! The bad thing about this composition that's an easy and fun fix, is that you haven't posed the turtles at all!! Not only are they still symmetrical, they're all the same!

With such a potentially great render, it's silly to not go back to pose these with the transpose features. ZBrush makes it really easy and fun, you could do it in under an hour.

Otherwise, congrats on doing this well so soon, though!

[Giantsun]

Purple turtles rock...though it looks like they are invading.
You got such a great light and dof going on that render.

[ploon]

Hey thanks guys

Niir - thankyou for the thumbs up

JamesPThornton - Thankyou - and yes you are spot on, I was way too lazy with this! I've got to admit to being daunted by the transpose feature...its been trial by fire so far and a fair bit of hair pulled out but I'll bite the bullet and pose the blighters. I was going to...honest...!

GiantSun - Your post cracked me up!! I quickly looked at the renders and you are so right mate. They're bloody purple heheh!! We had some thunderstorms today and the light was weird and...damn...they didnt look purple earlier!!
Cheers!

thanks again all

[Mrguy]

Haha.. they didnt by chance look like this, did they?

[jamespthornton]

Giantsun, that would be one slow invasion! What are they invading? A sand castle kingdom? I think the tide will destroy it first......

Ploon, you lazy &*(#@#!!! Just kiddin'. The transpose feature is really easy once you learn it's strengths. Lower your mesh down to a medium low res sub division level, use edge loop masking combined with the lasso, and remember that the blurrier the mask, the smoother the bend. When you click and drag the three ring bar, make sure to drag the third ring out into the open canvas so that all three rings are the same size. Otherwise, it will attach to a part of the mesh, and your posing line won't be perpendicular to your point of view. If the three rings are different sizes, posing is harder. Could I have explained that any less clearly? Maybe go to the zclassroom. The video tips and tricks will help a lot....
http://www.pixologic.com/zclassroom/

[SalmonGod]

another little transpose trick... the lower your subdiv level when you blur your mask, the larger blur you'll get... can be really useful... sounds really simple, but it took me a long time to figure that one out on my own :P

I would also suggest adding some variation to the sand... it looks perfectly flat and smooth... at least add some very shallow ruts behind them

[mradamw]

these are so cute! i think some areas to pay attention to and this will be even better!
- pose of the turtles
- i think the eyes need alot of work, adding some wrinkles, eyelids and also making the eyeball much darker, black actually.
- variance in the sand texture, making it look more like sand than a flat plane.
- add some wrinkles around the neck and limbs

ive found a really cool pic that might help you out, both with the little guys and the sand

please dont take my list to mean its a bad sculpt and render, as that is far from the case, i just think that if you paid some attention to some areas, it would help this no end!

[ploon]

MrGuy - no they looked redder than that...

JamesPThornton - Actually thats a pretty clear explanation, particularly the bit where the ring has to be outside of the mesh. This might explain why a few things kept going wrong!

SalmonGod - cool with the blur, it makes sense. Totally agree with the sand being too flat unless.......you know when the wave goes back out and is waiting to come crashing in again? Thats when this picture is meant to be taken...the water smoothed all the sand down...

Mradamw - they are damn cute little fellers That was one of the main pictures I used as (rough) reference! I wasn't happy with the eyes I've got to admit, and the wrinkles were there originally but I ended up using the skin as a practising ground for drawing scales...

I'm on a tight deadline to get another job after leaving my old job (environment artist) of 8 years last week and the bills are piling up already eek! If I have time I want to do it justice but there is so much I want to get to grips with in ZB (including transpose!...)

thanks for all the great comments and help, I will improve this image soon!

[Mrguy]

8 years .. damn good luck with that. Atleast you ahve the experience under your belt.

[ploon]

Thanks MrGuy, it'll be good to have a change to be honest! We'd kind of split up as a company a couple of years ago and me and the dev team got sold along to another company and ..blah blah heh. Mustnt grumble, whole teams out of a job but its a chance to find something better, you have to be positive

[Ecthelion]

Hello ploon,

cute little animal (can't believe that some like to eat them). I really like the rendering (last pic). The turtle looks a bit stiff, but the rendering makes it quite realistic anyhow.
Great Ref pic, mradamw!

See ya guys!

[Mrguy]

Exactly Ploon! Always stay positive, people feed off of your energy and even though you may be going through the hardest times, staying positive will keep you and the people around you in a healthy enviroment.

Turtles is looking better and better each time. Now all you need is a swarm of them glittering the beach front.