Curious Robot

[Bosh]

Firstly, I’m loving the new forum - looks nice and clean, a much better way to view peoples work!

I’m starting a new thread because I can’t find my old one for some reason, it sucked anyway so no harm done.

Here’s my latest project, it’s based on an illustration by Matt Dixon. He’s awesome. I modeled it in Maya and ZBrush, detailed and posed it in Zbrush, textured it in Substance Painter and then rendered it in Arnold/Maya - The grass and caterpillar hair are XGen. I really pushed myself to learn some new things with this one so tried to mix up some of the techniques I’ve been teaching myself recently.

As always, I’d love to hear your thought’s, critiques, tips to make it better or whatever tickles your fancy.

Cheers!

P.S - the top image is now the final/revised image… still figuring out the forum…

[Pablander]

Great stuff! I love this type of render/illustration.

[Bosh]

Thanks man! I love your guides site btw, haven’t visited for a little while but it’s been really useful in the past, will have to take another look later.

[deVries]

He turned out great man! Really nice!
Two comments though;
Due to the light setup and face angle his face turned out quite dark/obscured. That is a bit of a shame, since you probably want that to be the center of focus for the image. You might want to consider either placing an extra light source somewhere (like in the back of the image to the left, so you would get some backlight happening on the face). Is lighting currently done solely by an environment map?

Another thing is the grass; it looks good, but also rather dark (and in terms of light value very close to the robot itself, which is something you’d want to avoid). Boosting brightness and saturation on the grass a bit might make the whole image pop a bit more.

The robot itself is superb! Great job on the material and detailing.

[Bosh]

Thanks for the feedback, you have no idea how useful it is to me.

I changed the lighting at the last minute and really struggled with it. It’s the first time I’ve tried to make a complete scene and balancing everything was trickier than I thought it would be. Originally his face did have a light nearby because I was worried it was a bit dark so probably should have kept it

It’s lit with an environment map but that was giving me really hard shadows so I placed a soft blue light behind his right shoulder (where I was trying to sort out the issues you mentioned) and a really soft warm light from the front to make him look less cold/metal.

The grass gave me a real headache because it’s just a sea of green and I’ve not used Xgen before so really struggled to get some variation in there… I was going to crop the image so there wasn’t so much of it but I quite like the framing because it makes him look a bit more lonely.

I didn’t render different passes because I haven’t figured it out yet and have no idea how to comp in PS but I think that’ll give me something to have a go at later so I’ve got more control over the final image.

Thanks again, I’ll try and make some changes and if it’s not a disaster I’ll post it up

[boozy_floozie]

Very sweet - I can’t help but imagine that little caterpillar becoming the robot’s smile.

Some constructive thoughts………
Adding some global warms orange/ yellow (which are in the specular highlights of the character ) to the whites of the clouds as well as the blue of the sky would help the harmony balance of the character with his environment. To this end I’d also consider dialling down the the highlight/contrast intensity of the clouds so that the highlight contrast of the character comes forward.

A little subtle and varied global noise in the background environment to pick up those variations that you have in the character would also aid the global harmony.

[Bosh]

Cheers Boozy (Floozie? I’ll go with Boozy), I’ve looked at quite a lot of your work over the last few months from when I first picked up ZBrush and before I signed up here, it’s always inspiring so thanks for taking the time for some feedback.

The sky has been bothering me since I put it there. Because I had no idea what I was doing I literally put a plane in the scene with a photo on it. It kind of worked but then I was stuck with it so found it harder to sort out the balance of colours or make any changes afterwards.

You’re right about the colours, I’ll try to tie it together a bit more.

I think I’m going to learn to render passes and composite next (or at least start too) so that I can look at yours and Deveries feedback and try to impliment it.

Thanks again, it’s exactly the kind of feedback I needed.

[Bosh]

I’ve had a go at improving my initial image following the feedback above. I’ve paid more attention to the lighting and overall colouring, I think it’s resulted in a more interesting image.

Made quite a few tweaks to try and address some issues but probably ended up creating more issues haha!

Anyhoo I learned a lot from this project and learned lots of new techniques, thanks for the feedback above it’s really useful and keeps me pushing on.

I think it’s time to take what I’ve learned from this and move on to the next one!

[boozy_floozie]

Definitely tastier !!

[David_Larks]

Love. Nuff said

[rodney71]

I like the character in this robot but i’m a little surprised no one has mentioned the importance of the eyes. they really are the “soul” of a character and i would think a little attention to some interesting type of iris/cornea would add a lot of life and emotion to this render…think of wide iris to express wonder and fascination.

great body pose already.

[deVries]

Look at that! Excellent improvement! You definitely made your little robot pop!

[Bosh]

The eyes are definitely a bit off, especially when compared to the original illustration.

I don’t think I’ll be adding iris’s/corneas because that would deviate a tad too far from Matt Dixon’s style but when I revisit it I will be giving them some attention.

Cheers for the feedback, much appreciated.

[Bosh]

@deVries Thanks! I’m really glad you and Boozy encouraged to make some changes (I’m still not happy with the lighting and his eyes), I learned a lot.

I’ll give it one final pass at some point.

Peace