You are warmer than the Sun

[tchaikovsky2]

Hi everyone!
Been a long time since I last posted anything. I guess I had too little ZB percentage in my pieces. XD
But this time, it's different.

This piece is a fan art of probably the most amazingly beautiful and inspiring game ever - Machinarium - by Amanita Design.
I really recommend you getting this game; it's perfect for those days of art block.





So, to bore you further:
Everything in this piece was sculpt in ZBrush, just the robots and the BG terrain had a base mesh done in 3ds max. The wall was made from a zsketch.
Also, the textures for pretty much everything here owe their looks to ZBrush's cavity maps, displacement maps and AO maps. Some hand-made polypainting and photo-pasting was also involved.
Rendered with mental ray in 3ds max, sky added in postwork.

Any questions? Go on ahead!

I guess that's it. Enjoy! ^^

[spaceboy412]

Man i loved that game! it was so freaking wonderful, i wish it were longer.
i really like what you've done here, its really sweet and well done.
if i had any crits to make it would be to have the camera closer to the characters, or pan more to the right, but that's what i'd do.
this will make a nice wallpaper. thanks!

[Mouthrax]

Beautiful piece there, very inspiring.

Could I trouble you to go a little more in depth on the map creation and polypaint techniques you have used please?

Thanks

[Intervain]

cute I loved the game though it was darn hard - had to cheat

[tchaikovsky2]

@ spaceboy412 - Yeah, it was too short, but at least it's far better than any of the commercial stuff you can find these days!
I've been thinking on getting the camera closer AND panning it to the right, but I REALLY wanted to stick to the rule of thirds, and generally pay heavy attention to the composition. I think it actually paid off.
Thanks for the comment, dude!

@ Mouthrax - Sure! When I'm making a map, I start with using ZBrush's procedurals and mask-to-map abilities. First, I go down to the subdivision level I want to include in the final rendering. For this level, I generate a displacement map (and a normal map, but of course, this one isn't used for the actual diffuse map), set to adaptive scan. Then, I go up to the highest and generate a cavity map (settings differ, really; I'm usually just testing to find the look that I want) and an AO map with scanning distance set to around 0.5. If it takes too long, I go one subdiv level down and try it then.
After I got my maps exported, I go into Photoshop and composite them on top of a base color. Displacements are usually used for slight value variations (mode: overlay, or similar), cavities for detail extraction (mode: soft/hard light), and AO, well, you know.
After I got my base diffuse, I go into ZB and polypaint some heavier, hand-made AO with black on white, keeping it simple, and painting mostly where the procedural AO failed; where I wanted it to appear and it didn't...
When I need some color information, I use the same method - polypaint masks to later use in Photoshop (yes, you need to save many variations of the same model with those mask in it...).
It's a more time-(and disk space D: )-consuming method, but it lets you change or correct things really easily.

I hope this helps.

And thanks.

@ Intervain - I cheated too a couple of times, but don't tell anyone. :P
Thanks.

[Maxim_fleury]

Woohoo, machinarium rocks, nice sculpt man!

[undoz]

Cool work on the characters. Love everything from Amanita.

[dlb]

Cute!

[maxinkuk]

I looove Machinarium, very good tribute. Lovely.

[brettSinclair]

Cool characters. Very well executed. Never heard of the game though .

[tchaikovsky2]

Big thanks, everyone!

@ brettSinclair - You can play the demo here: http://machinarium.net/demo/