Thanks again for everyones replies. As promised, here is more on the making of the balrog piece. I had started to post last night and had everything uploaded when I lost my internet connection. “Doh!” So this will not be too long but hopefully hit the highlights that might be useful.
Before I got started in Zbrush, I actually did small sketches of what I was hoping for in the composition. This helps me sort things out and figure out how many parts or pieces I have to model for the scene. Then I try to hunt for any reference material I can get my hands on whether it’s off the internet or from pictures from magazines and books. This helps me, at least in my experience, set up a visual goal for what I want to achieve with the image.
Once I have what I want to do in mind, I began modeling parts with 3D Tools in Z. At the same time I am also hunting for different material settings and testing them on spheres to see what effects might be useful in the scene. Sometimes I keep a notepad by the computer and write down slider settings or material numbers that could be useful for for a project. Maybe not
this project but another one down the road. One of the materials that was used for the balrog skin was Material Pack #004. I saved it as a potential balrog skin candidate and went back to model the body parts.
Once the body parts were all modeled, they were each brought into texturemaster where all the skin cracks were added. The RGB mode was only used as I found that I get better results adding the glow material near the end when I tested on spheres. The picture below shows the material settings, the texturemaster texture at the bottom and the final skin combined of
the two above it.
Before each of the individual parts were saved with the textures imbedded, I went to the object preview window in the tool palette and move the red pivot cross to the outer extremity of the part where it will join with the part already in the scene. So for the head, I moved the pivot cross to the back of the neck. That way when it’s placed on the torso which would already be in the scene, it will scale away from the pivot making for it to be positioned into place hopefully faster. Here’s a visual to also better explain:
The floor was made using a 3d plane tool with the H/VDivide of around 200 set in the initialize section of the Tool palette. An alpha of stone pavers was made into a stencil and brushed over with
Zadd set to 01 intensity. To better see the results of your stencil, turn off the Show button under the Stencil palette or hit ‘Ctrl-H’ to toggle the stencil on/off. Make sure the stencil is scaled in a little because the perspective deformation found on the second page of the palette will be applied on all three axis’. After this, we’ll rotate the floor in the object preview so the width of the floor is running along the Z-axis. It’s here that the SBend deformation was applied just slightly to the Z axis of the now perspective plane. This helps give the illusion of a longer distance because the curve appears to foreshorten the stone pavers faster than they really are. Once a material is found with an appropriate amount of noise and bump, the floor is the first object set in the scene.
After the floor was scaled, rotated and moved into place, the balrog was assembled and posed. The leg was the first piece in the scene and I moved the pivot to bottom of the foot. Now when the leg is aligned on the surface of the floor plane, it will scale up away from the floor. The torso was then placed next, scaling off the leg and moved into position. You can also assemble a model using the multimarkers but I didn’t use it this time.
Next was to create a billow of smoke that surrounded the balrogs midsection and feet like in the movie, oh and hide the fact that he has no waist. This was created from the 3D terrain tool and shaped into a cloud shape. It was then mapped with a texture that was MRGBZ grabbed from a baked fiberbrush/glow material creation. The material used was BasicMaterialB. I was hoping to use it for it’s unique transparency settings but I ended up not using it like I thought but I stayed with the material anyway. The smoke was given it’s own layer. If I do smoke again,
I think I’ll try to use the clonerbrush as it has a nice blending effect as seen in Zoids recent script. I just need more practice with it.
The firey mane of the balrog was created similar to the smoke except glow material was applied with transparency settings to where the black area was clear. This means the transparency slider is usually set to -100 and the transcurve ramps up to the left corner with one point in the middle of the graph anchored to the bottom with the right point. This same texture would also be added to the fog alpha which I will get to shortly. Like the smoke, the fire got it’s own layer where it was scaled and moved into place.
The whip was painted in a layer filled with black and had the transparent glow material selected at the time. The layer was brought forward using the z displace located in the layer palette under modifiers. With Zadd/Zsub/Zcut off, the whip was enhanced with the highlighterbrush tool and smudge tool. It would later be discovered that when I do a best render, I would need to use the erase tool to eliminate any material and black around the whip that was behind the other transparent objects in the scene. It just didn’t get along with the other transparent layers. That is what accounts for the irregular shape when you see it below.
The fog alpha was painted earlier for R&D purposes yet it conveniently fit the composition with little modifications. This was added to help give the balrog a smoldering effect. The firey mane was layered into the fog through photoshop and scaled a little wider than the actual fire model in the scene. This was to help the fire look like it would be blending even more into the scene. This was saved as a texture and loaded into the fog alpha slot located in the render palette under modifiers.
There were four lights in the scene. One sun light was used located over the balrogs back and three point lights. One point was placed directly on the back, one was in the mouth and one on the floor directly under the lowest curve of the whip. As far as final touches go, the body parts of the balrog were blended with smudege tool in RGB mode and Zadd/Zsub on a low setting. This is something I picked up from Picsas, another talented Zbrush artist, that inpired me to try to take a crack at a larger figure.
Two more glow materials were used as well. One with an intense glow used for the eyes, mouth, back and larger cracks in the skin. The other glow was a more subdued glow used to give a molten effect used on all the other cracks in the skin. The skin cracks were applied with Zsub ON to give a recessed look. Since the texture already had the color, only material was applied.
Wow, I feel I still went on too long. Just one more thing about transparencies and layers. They can get funny sometimes so when you render, of course make sure you have the Flatten Layers button turned off under Render/modifiers, but you may have to select another layer with Best Render still activated to get the results you were hoping for. Once the render passes are
finished, just click on the layer next to it and see if the finished render is better or worse that previously. Mentat7 had to brief me on that tip.
I hope that this has at least given you ideas for some of your own projects and if you come up with something cool, I know ZbrushCentral would love to see it.
Keep the dream alive,
jelee
Absolutely brilliant. Sorry for the bad pun, thanks for the great tip 
Such an amazing image!
FABULOUS!
but this really has my attention . . . the texturing is superb, great pov . . . he is terror incarnate !!!
+ kudoskudoskudos!