Does anyone have any idea how they might have made the armor for this? I cant get in contact with the creator so im hoping the community can help me.
Heres the thread
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?p=560360#post560360
Heres the image
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/attachment.php?attachmentid=137951
as far as I know he starts all of his ridged body geo inside Maya.
Some of my hard surface stuff/mechanical model in ZB is up on my blog. There’s about 12 posts which have many of the most common techniques I use. As for armor, I use mesh extract quite a bit. Sometimes I will take level 1 out to Silo or Modo and clean it up a little, but more often than not, I’ll grab a mesh extract (or mesh diff) and then just go from there, customizing the sculpt as I go. Techniques like the stich brush for laying down a repeating alpha or stamp are also a must.
-K
OH i see , i checked out some of your mechanical modeling tutorials, this goes directly in my bookmarks, amazing stuff love it.
Quickly going back on topic, i guess then that most people start their armor in other modeling based programs, and import it into zbrush for the rest…Ok I see i see,
-So the trim on the armor, do you think this is simply a meshy extract using a mask?
-How would you go about making the scale portion like on the round armor on the shoulder? The shoulder itself?
There are a lot of tricks to trimming edges. An edge loop can be used to create a new ring of polygons. Once selected everything else can be hidden and the ring displaced a little. Hit edge loop again and the new loop magic fills the place between where the ring of polygons was and where it was moved to, giving a sort of raised lip. If I don’t need a whole lot of geometry, I can also just build up with a repeating/rolling brush like the stitch brush with a suitable alpha.
To make the shoulder scale, I would mask off part of the shoulder and extract a new mesh. Then using a scale-shape alpha I’d place the scales. If I need to be real careful with the scales, I might build up a big alpha of scales and apply it with projection master.
The ring-like apparatus looks like it started life as torus primitive. The build up on the other shoulder could be made a number of ways, but I’d probably just hammer a sphere into shape and decorate. The flatten brush would be essential to square off areas.
(I trained as a traditional sculptor in clay, so I tend to approach most things as a lump of clay of approximately the right shape and just hammer them into shape I need, usually through successive approximation.)
In this case, fairly low polycount primitives pulled into shape with the move brush can be useful starting points to build accessories. Also, bear in mind that if some parts are never going to be removed by the character, they can just be directly sculpted out of the character’s “skin.”
-K
Kerwin you sir have been extremly helpful. shakes Kerwin’s hand Btw Kerwin I see you are supervisor for pre-viz work. I recently graduated from a school that didnt really teach us very well/at all professional animation skills. Im trying to break into the industry and it seemed pre-viz wouldnt be a bad start, what skill sets would u recommend to get a job as pre-viz? What to improve upon.
Either pre-viz or concept artist are the main things Im trying to get a job for since I didnt go to such a great school but i wont let it stop me. www.coreyloving.com
Ill post it here incase someone else might need to know this information instead of a private message.
I’m reminded of the question, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice!” 
Almost everything I learned was On-the-job-training. I got interesting animation in the 70’s and started with claymation techniques. I got interested in computers about the same time and wrote a (very simple) program to computer animate shapes.
Pre-viz work is a multi-discipline (at least as I and my team practice it.) You have to have a sense of character, story, and plot more akin to an English major than Art student. Then you need solid art skills in some discipline. I’m an odd-duck since I consider my 2D work only passible (looking at your portfolio, you’d run rings around me) but I lucked out that “sculpters” were needed for maquettes and other other trial ideas when I started. Almost everyone work with has a strong sense of Seqential art (Eiser is a good teacher for this.) It is used to storyboard and to find the character’s “moment” when you’re designing attitudes. A healthy does of comic books as a child seems to actually pay off in this case.
Skills-wise, a sense of “design” comes into play. When doing previz you have to have a “purpose” for what you’re protraying and usually this needs to be aligned to the producer’s or director’s “vision” of the story they want to tell. Check your ego at the door, because you often have to align your designs in a meaningful and clear way with the director’s or the lead animator’s for whatever you’ve been asked to do. You really have to like working with people and have a desire to produce visuals that please them. Artists which sometimes have too much “artistic temperament” don’t last long in the previz/production design game.
For example, I do a lot of advertising work. Me and my team have sometimes busted ourselves for days to present the client with what we thought was a “brilliant” portrayal of an advertising sketch or campaign. The client hates it and we have to pocket our egos, re-interview the client and come back with something the client loves. (My world obeys “The Golden Rule of Arts and Sciences” which is: “He who has the gold, makes the rules.”)
Looking at your portfolio, I can already see that you have some good base skills as far as your draftsmanship and artistic sense goes. I would concentrate on “Story” and “Sequential Art” to round out your porfolio more. Contact me by PM if there is more I can tell you.
-K