The baron

[Spyridon Boviatsos]

thank you all for your kind words

just realised that one fingertip in the last picture is lower res than the others meeh

so here are a couple more snapshots



and a closer one where you can see all the imperfections


also, i ve read a lot of comments about the alphas that i ve used, so here are some of them.

[Spyridon Boviatsos]

sammehSamurai here s how i ve been working so far.

I started using a basemesh of a male body which i reshaped according to the concept. This is my guide and thats where i want all the pieces to fit.
I duplicated that and i used dynamesh to make it take the shape of the armor. On that piece i used the retopologising tools to get nice clean pieces of geometry, which i extracted with a thickness. This also helps because you get the pieces with polygroups. then i sculpted and subdivided every piece and reshaped it if i had to to fit the body and allow some movement. i say some movement cause ok the dude has to move but helloooow, its still an armor he wont be able to dance in it. Some parts i ve just sculpted completely separately, because it would be easier to use the symmetry or reasons like that and then appended them. The thighs for example i made a flat repating pattern from a plane and then "wrapped" it around the legs. But now i m just thinking would be cool to make the thighs like reptile scales hmmm. Now for the visible stuff that are below the parts like joints or whatever, at first i started making a chainmail cause you know its what everyone does underneath an armor but wasnt crazy about it and then i had the idea of sth like a leathery bodysuit, sounds more out of somewhere else, which is good because i want it too be a bit retro-future and kinda different that the history of any culture. I m not even going to read my last sentence again.
Thats pretty much what i ve been doing so far hope this answers your question.
So far it has 134 subtools, and i would say i m 3/4 there

[Frit]

Wow, amazing details on that armor.
I really like the concept

One question,though. Is the metal material that you're using matcap-based or a standard material ?

[BrookeD]

Woah.
WOAHHHH.

Completely and utterly blown away by not only the beauty of what you're doing here, but also the technicality.
I'm only just recently exploring hard surface sculpting, and this is mind blowing.

Truly stunning work, i'm very excited to see it develop

*subscribes to thread*

[brian20]

Very nice ,really impressive! how do keep from getting distortion when use alphas like that?

[SammehSAMURAI]

@TheBaron

Awesome! Thank you for taking the time to go into such detail, I've also been recently working on armor for hard surface & topo study, our workflows are much the same. so many subtools you have! haha it shows and helps improve the intricacy of your armor.

I've also been thinking of what to add under it all, chain mail is done every where, (because it is normal that way) but for fantasy Armour it can be anything

[Spyridon Boviatsos]

so,

Frit, thank you, my material is a matcap i ve created by combining two matcaps i ve created that use pictures of metal balls. one really shiny and one like dark sterling silver with high contrasts.

brookeD, it was so nice reading your reply and it got me so excited that i took a snapshot of it and sent it to all my friend. ok i sent it to my enemies too. thank you so much

brian20, here s how i usually apply alphas in order not to get distortion. I use morph targets a lot. I store a morph target before applying the alphas.then i mask using the alpha. Then i use te simple brush with a very low zadd value AND lazymouse. Definitely lazymouse. Then the alpha is allover the place so i use the morph brush and i clean up everything but a small area which looks good. I also use the morph brush with a very low zadd value to smooth the alpha if i see the polygons streching or if i see artifacts or distortion. The morph brush works fine for that while the smooth brush just flatterns everything and makes all the sharpness go away. There s a lot of doing and undoing going on till i m happy with it. I guess thats pretty much it.

SammehSamurai, i saw your armor it looks pretty cool and the render is awsome. My renders are not very good i hope i manage to do sth cool and render this one nicely :/

whenever i do hardsurface modeling i tru to use a lot of subtools, otherwise its so hard to get sharpness and decent results.

[Yhago]

Spyridon Boviatsos

Thank you so much for this brief but accurate tutorial on the application of the alphas. They really are beautiful and enhance the nature of the armor. You got the color of steel is very real. again my most sincere congratulations Teacher.

[brian20]

Thanks for the tips,I really appreciate it.Keep up the great work.

[SammehSAMURAI]

I cheated and rendered in Keyshot :P latest render done in Zbrush, I found a new matcap that I like

[Freewaldo]

hhhmm, great work there body, this is going in my personal inspiratorial medevil folder.

[Spyridon Boviatsos]

i ve done a few bits and pieces that are not presentable yet.

i just wanted to upload a pic from my first insert brush, insert baroque spine brush x

[BrookeD]

It just keeps getting more and more beautiful!

[Spyridon Boviatsos]

Okaaaaay here we go

[wethand]

this is really stunning detailing!
awesome!!

btw: nice dickprotection :-P