XSI Apprentice: Thank you, in my past landscapes I almost always painted the grass with the fiber brush. I’m finally happy I was able to figure out how to get the correct perspective with rendering Fibers in ZBrush!
Marsyas, thanks! I have not tried out the fog rendering yet via Zbrush’s renderer, but if I’m not satisfied, I have a really cool 2.5D technique for painting fog in ZBrush…although I’m not sure if it works in Zb 3.1…I guess I could always load up an older version of Zbrush though!
Yes I have to agree that grass looks great and done in Zbrush!..awesome
KOSOVA: Thank You!
To the ZBC community… I have had a really horrible week. My Father had a minor stroke on monday, and I blew a brake line on my car while driving to work on thursday…Thankfully I was able to stop in time and no one was hurt.
My father is going through rehabilitation and should be home in about 2 weeks. Also, I just finished replacing my brake line…(the most difficult one of course) so I’m going to try and get back on track, and continue working on my entry. My apologies for my lack of contribution this week. 
sirquadalot, sorry to hear about your troubles. Good luck to you 
Hey Brian, Sorry to hear about your dad, I hope he gets better. It is not a fun thing when your brakes fail, my main brake cyclinder karked it on me one day, thanksfully it was at night with little traffic, my brakes however did kick back in enough to get home and to the mechanic (phew). Look forward to your entries, and I am sure no one will have hard feelings about you not replying or posting etc, family comes first 
Sorry about your dad, I know how it feels, though I won’t get into that now.
I know it’s tough but don’t let this pressure you anymore than you already are. Family comes first, in every way.
Hope it all works out man.
Thanks for the encouraging words guys. I have some free time today so hopefully my entry will help keep my mind off things for a little while.
Heys guys it’s been some time since I had any updates. First off my Dad should be coming home soon, although he still needs some rehabilitation. I also finally made it to my vacation from work…now I just need to kick my work up a notch and get busy on my entry! Well here are some updates!
Image 1:
The Horse Man’s head. I took the Sphere3D made it into a polymesh, subdivided to about 2.1 million polys and began sculpting. I also created a simple gray scale alpha that I then used to mask the pumpkin’s face. Using the, “Size” deformation, I offset the surface to create the eye sockets and mouth. This model is polypainted, and I customized the Gorilla MatCap material. His eyes are painted using the HighlighterII Brush and the Intensity Brush after after I baked the layer.
Image 2:
[attach=73810]scared_silly_bg_newpath_wip_02.jpg[/attach]
I have updated my scene. I temporarily removed the scary tree so I could focus more on the grass and the path itself. As you can see, I changed the path just a little. I sculpted a sphere3D into a small pebble, and then used the spray stroke with decreasing pressure and brush size the create the perspective of the pebbles path. I also added a few larger rocks along the border of the path to see how the grass renders around objects place onto a surface with a different material. Just a side note, alot of detail is being lost by these small renders. (I halfed the original document, then AA halfed it). BTW rendered with shadows turned on.
Just some other things I’m up to… I also started modeling Ms. Katrina, the horse man’s horse, and some other trees, but they are in the intial stages. I still have much to do! I hope you guys are doing well!
Hey, glad to hear your dad is going alright :), progress is looking good to, love the pumpkin head
the pumpkin has a silly funny expression … i like it 
Michael, thank you he is home now, and is doing well, but still has outpatient therapy ahead.
nightwoodwolf, Thanks, Hopefully when the other characters come into play, it should seem pretty silly!
Ok, well here is this mornings work. I currently have two layer in my scene. I filled the background layer using the gradient alpha, dark blue color, and the flat material. I then painted the fog using the bump brush on subtract, and varied the opacity, while using the spray stroke and several of the circular alphas Zb provides. I then added the moon which was a previous texture I had. I changed the hue and saturation with some of ZB’s brushes(in a separate document…then cropped and filled with the MRGBZ and added it as a drag rectstroke). I also added in the glow using the highlighterII brush set to main and a and blue color selected.
The stars were done similar but I used the draddot stroke and over laped each star several times and with decreaseing sizes to add the glowing effects. The clouds were also created with the highlighterII brush described earlier. I then used the blur brush over the background. Keep in mind though that to be able to use my fog effect and the highlighterII brush in the manner I have, The entire layer must be filled with the flat material and baked. It essentially must have no depth info at all.
The foreground layer still contains the depth information. Once I finish placing my other props and characters in the scene, I will be able to have the fog spill over the grass and progress more fully into the scene. I also think I figured out my lighting solution as well. I’m still debating the placement of the trees though. Any questions feel free to ask!
Dude, that bg is sweet as, i love it, that moon is sooo cool, fog is real nice too, it would look good i think if it was wafting this way over the hill, which i think you metnioned you are going to fade it in. cant wait, cant wait to see the characters and final pic
Really great pumpkin! Love the coloring and expression.
Very nice scene! Like the mood of the moon!
XSI Apprentice, Thanks man! I have to add more elements to the BG before I finish off the fog.
Marsyas, thank you! the majority of the color is created using the MatcapGorilla material which I slightly modified.
dustbin1_uk, thanks…it should start to get even more spooky!
Well here is my update… I have been trying to use ZB 3.1 for making my Zsphere models, but since I was running into some stability problems(wierd random scaling issues/crashes), I switched back to ZB 2.0. Here is the rough 2.0 Ziff imported into 3.1. This is a straight ziff with no sculpting yet. Once I get my Zsphere models roughed out into 2.0, I will bring them into the current version of Zbrush for sculpting and mesh extraction.
Hey guys just a little sculpting…I’m not sure yet if I’m going to paint in the mane or use geometry yet, but here is what I’ve been up to (besides playing C&C 3).
Sweet as, the horse is looking really good, i think a cool saddle would be good too, for the main i reckon a painted one could be good standing up, rather then flowing over his back/neck
Thanks Michael, I never used subtools very much, but here is my first serious shot. Just a simple saddle and mask for the horse. I’ll be starting his bridal/ stirrups next.
No probs, that was fast :D, looking good, i think tho a bit more thickness and volume is required around the saddle, mainly maybe the edges. looking cool
Yeah… I noticed that also…I hope a simple deformation via inflate will do the trick so I don’t have to do too much redo on the saddle.