Precious, The Gargoyle

[feeb]

Hi.

Like essentially everyone else here, I'm one of these amazed artists that is in love with this software. I can't afford Zbrush yet, but I have a little experience with it, from a little bit of character work I was able to do with it at my last job a few years ago. So I thought, with my limited experience, I'd struggle like mad with Sculptris, but good grief was I wrong. My roommate told me about Sculptris Saturday night. I downloaded it and 2 days later (it's Monday night as of this writing), I'm still whittling away at the first model. I can't believe I started this friggin' thing with a sphere! I'll upload the early stuff soon. I want to finish him tomorrow if I can, though... at least the modeling bit.

So I'm learning as I go. There are plenty of things in him that I wish I'd approached differently, but once he's done, I'll incorporate that into the next model. Kinda went a little nuts on the foot detail, but I'll hopefully balance it out tomorrow.

One thing I love about this is the ability to control triangle count. Holy cow is that ever amazing. Kudos Mr. Patterson! Thanks for the freebie goodness, Pixelogic!

I'll update with the final stuff on him, and any other near-future doodles that might happen. Thanks for looking. Feedback greatly appreciated.

[F i L]

good sculpting and cool character

There are plenty of things in him that I wish I'd approached differently

This is one of the things that makes Sculptris so great. With the Reduce brush and Smooth you can erase any mistakes or things you'd rather do differently. I sculpted this fish-alien girl, then decided i liked her head by not the fish body. Erased everything to her shoulders (only took a couple minutes with reduce on max) and remade the whole thing to something i liked.

[feeb]

Ah yeah, FiL that's excellent. They have saved me, those tools. Maybe I'll still go back. So far I'll keep going.

One thing I'm curious about- the spheres of the eyes are now part of the sculpt, I guess because they were saved in a scene instead of an OBJ. Is there a way i can separate them again? Any clue?

Thanks for the feedback, by the way. Cheers!

[F i L]

Yes hold 'H' and Left click an object to hide it. Right clicking hides everything else. You can use your masking brushes from their (usually a good idea to keep detail off when masking).

[feeb]

YES!! That's excellent! Thanks again FiL.

Ah, man, I'm loving this.

[dreamz]

I love the unique look of your gargoyle. Kind of frog/fish/griffin look to it.

Everybody loves Sculptris. It's addictive, like rolling old ladies down hills; when I'm not doing it I'm thinking about it.

[F i L]

i thought i was the only one, dreamz

[feeb]

Oh man, dreamz, now I'm thinking about it. "Like rolling old ladies down hills." That... is priceless. I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight cuz I'll be laughing too much.

As for the progress on the sculpt, glad you like him. He's a product of free-form doodling to be sure. Started with the nostrils in fact. Ha! I wonder if I have that saved...

Man... seriously... priceless about the old ladies. Win city.

[Lotet]

wow, love the wings, were they hard to do? how did u make em?
I usually have problems when "extruding" big flat surfaces like that.

[feeb]

Thanks Lotet.

The wings are proving a bit tricky, yeah... but I'm learning as I go. I initially intended them as arms, but that's the fun of this program... make it up as you go along.

I forgot to email myself the early phases of this sculpt from home, so I'll have to post a pic to explain tonight. I'll see if I can word it in the meantime.

These are listed as steps, but other than step 1, they're more like ongoing principles for this.

1st step was grabbing and pulling out a section of the sphere, forming a slightly down-turned cone shape, I think keeping the division strength fairly low. I change the division strength modestly as I go- making sure it's at zero or very low for smoothing and other work in areas already sporting high triangle counts.
2nd step was using the flatten tool a bit (I think!).
3rd step was using the grab and rotate to build the rough shape of the wing. It looked really ugly, but here's where the important bit comes in.
4th step was using draw and inflate along the edges of the wings to unclutter the messy geometry there, as well as indicate the essential form I was going for, then using smooth up along near the edges, creasing the edges, and smoothing again- essentially building and cleaning up the geometry as I wanted it.
5th step is the step I might undo... the feathers. Just drew lines indicating the quills of the feathers, then an edge of each feather with the draw tool, and ctl+ draw tool to push down one level of feather to indicate the slight overlap. I'd smooth along each feather edge and crease it. Afterwards I used a slightly enlarged inflate along the quills to lift each feather and give it a bit more individual form. I think the feathers look a little nasty right now. I might be able to save them, but I'm not worried, thanks to the awesome ability to smooth and lower triangle count.
Oh... in addition to step 5, how I got the individual feathers to jut out: at the edge of the wing, I moved the camera looking into the edge of the wing, depressed the edge a bit at the overlap of each feather with ctl + draw tool, then moved the camera top-down over the wing, and pulled out the tip of each feather with grab.

[feeb]

Here's where I got him to tonight. I'll hopefully have the sculpt done tomorrow night. I gotta prep for my girlfriend, who's gonna be in town Friday. <3

[dreamz]

The wings are excellent! I love the details, too.

[Mr.T]

It looks superb! Can't wait to see more update

[Cezar Souza]

Nice sculpting! Really liked the eye area!

Keep it up!

[Tartan]

Hey Feeb,

I decided to visit this thread and am glad I did. I like the gargoyle and its unusual design. It looks almost like another creature tried to absorb the gargoyle and failed. It reminds me of Berni Wrightson's Swamp Thing days and Dr. Arcane and his UnMen
The feathers are really well done. I didn't really know you could do that in Sculptris but I should have realized. Not much to redo there I think.