the wrestler (WiP museum_scene)

[schiefer]

Wow! Hey michalis i totally missed this one!
I love your sculpts especially the ancient busts. And thanks for sharing the 'ancient hair' technique it looks very useful

[stanley82]

the sculpt is great i love it do you sculpt it in position or sculpt and then pose?

[michalis]

SD, D.Liatsos thank you!
@ schiefer, thanks, this technic is the natural way using a surface massive sculpting app like zb. Unfortunately some stretching on faces isn't friendly for painting textures or displacements in zb.
@ stanley82: thanks, these are sculpted in position. A t-pose isn't the best approach for ancient sculpture. Base body mesh in blender (groups there), trying to have in mind some stretching on shoulders or around the sensitive hip-thighs area. I was close to the final pose but in a more practical way you see. Final pose adjustments in zb.

[michalis]

I like to share this, its a test for a matcap, a kind of graphic novel style is what I have in mind, not a photo-real render. Somewhere during WW1.
"complaining again Ludwig, is there anything I can do"?
"no sir, the facts are my concern, not things"

I need some help on english here.

Its a groboto, 3dc and zbrush one hour sketch. No PP. A doodle. Eyes as matcap - a fast preview.
BTW Have you noticed that a zero angle value in shades-BPR-palette makes shadows more precise and render time less than a sec?

[michalis]

Our flag.
Used 3dcoat and zbrush. Julian's excellent material.
A simple 10 min modeling, zb best renderer.

[SpiritDreamer]

Nice one Michalis
Where is the ball and shackle..that's all that is lacking to make it a complete statment..

[michalis]

thanks SD
ball and shackles are just things
here we have the fact.

[Julian_K]

Is that dropped to the 2.5d canvas michalis?

[michalis]

Yes Julian, I wish I knew how to work in 2.5 d.
But here is what dropped in 2.5d. A nice topology with UVs. In ten min, are you interested? Any profile can be used, not just this chain. Same method for the gas mask tube as well.

[Julian_K]

profile? method? I am not quite sure I can follow, but I am certainly interested

[cherub_rock]

I'm interested too

P.S. I got 3d coat, on to discoverey

[michalis]

Its about the latest 3dcoat beta build.
The curves-splines tool.
A fine bezier like tool, just import a low def mesh from zbrush in voxels room, wrap as you like with the curves tool, select a profile (the chain) but don't apply, there's a direct export option, so here it is. I edited the preset profiles lowering the amount of faces and deleting cups, I also made some new using blender. As these are already grouped, autogroup in zb and have nice uvs via UVmaster. (respect groups)

[Julian_K]

hm, while I can see use for things like rope etc, it's not quite ideal for a chain.
for one because it deforms the links, truning them into rubber and for the other I'd rather have one or 2 uv mapped and then multiplied/cloned, than having separate uv maps for each and every single link, which is a bit overkill.

nevertheless...I gotta check it out when I have some time.

btw, I had a look at lightwave on the weekend and now I know why it isn't quite popular despite having some incredible features. viewport navigation is anything but intuitive. in fact it's so idiotic it hurts. if you expect iot to be similar to other packages ( most of them do it very similar, even Zbrush) then you are quite puzzled about how to even just pan an object. for most of the to make matters worse, the navigation in perspective view has a different scheme/shortcuts than in orthographic. it really makes me angry when such simple basic functions are made completely unnecessarily complicated for no damn good reason.
too bad, lightwave lost me in the first 40 minutes I spend trying to figure how to navigate my object and grab a vertex to pull.

[michalis]

Yes it deforms the links. This is my fault, there's an option that doesn't deform them but they should be elastic as testing different sizes, noticed this? I also added some more loops in the middle of links. If the middle has no loops, no elastic but difficult to paint in zb.
You may want to paint them in 3dcoat instead and there you can have the UVs you prefer. Here I presented a zb friendly method. I also constructed very low poly versions, thin gold chains, necklaces
This is an ultra fast workflow. At last.
About LW, patience Julian.
zb, 3dc, groboto, blender, sketchup, renderers, ps, il, I started to learn modo and stopped, though it has a great UI. I still remember z-form, maya... somehow. All these UIs, I feel tired, suddenly.

[Julian_K]

ah, that's good then.

I don't have patience for software idiocy.Life's too short.

Don't get me wrong, I am open to different approaches where it makes sense.
Look at Zbrush which is totally different to any package in almost every aspect, but A) it's a little 3d world on its own and within that world it's homogenic and B) you easily get a grip of it. at least I did when I first tried it.
Yet, even Zbrush keeps navigating around your model fairly similar to Maya, or Max or Silo etc... actually you even need less keys to rotate and pan and zoom, since you don't need any key at all to rotate.
In lightwave they are not only different, but you need to press 2 keys for panning and zooming and as soon as you switch from perspective to orthographic those keys are different again. from what I have gathered ( I might be wrong) you can't and really change that behavior and customize it. in forums even die hard lightwave fans complain about viewport navigation. for heaven's sake - it's not rocket science and the wheel does not have to be reinvented.
so.. for that, I have no patience.