Thread of Madness - Joseph Drust

[Piggyson]

@troy1617,gabo1991: Thanks!
@DannyMcGrath: Hah! Yeah I have framed stuff other projects correctly in the past, these steps were not getting the framed treatment (mostly b/c I’m Lazy =) )

For today’s randomness I wanted to make a super quick environment concept image. The scene was all created inside of ZBrush using mostly tessellated planes of Geometry with noises (and transpose move to skew areas.) The setup is pretty simple; scene was then sent to KeyShot using the Bridge for rendering. I did a few Photoshop passes (three! b/c I liked elements in all of them…)

Here is the setup inside of ZBrush, lots of floating geometry covered in noises

-Joseph

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[slothkins]

Hi Joseph,
First, thanks for all the great tutorials and Zplugins over the years.

I’ve really loved seeing your new work like the 30 day mini-mech challenge (I’d love a mini-tutorial with you discussing your process on one of those!) and this space diorama (For a long time I thought you were physically incapable of modeling anything that wasn’t military grade!).

What are you doing with the perpendicular planes here that seem to affect the atmosphere?

Thanks!

[Piggyson]

@slothkins: Thanks for the kind words! Ha!, Yeah I attempt to create items like the robots every-once and a while (It doesn’t last long before I’m back making military things )

I have timelapses of the March of Robot’s I’ll see if I can get a few posted up this week. For the quick environment concept: the planes of geometry I use inside of KeyShot with ‘Xray’ materials. They create a faux horizon effect (you can see the horizon lines, those are being generated from those planes of geometry. The topology is 100% flat but those planes give the illusion of hills and valleys creating a nice depth effect I have been using that process more then depth passes recently.

-Joseph

[slothkins]

Cool. I’d like to see them… Well I hope you stay AWOL a little longer!

Noise is something I haven’t really experimented with in Zbrush. It seems really useful and powerful, but that modal window interface scares me off, as it seems it hasn’t received the love that other areas of the software have gotten over the years. Everything else in Zbrush is so tactile/hands-on that it feels a bit foreign to the program (maybe Zb5???). Are you just using the noise as a mask, then using the move tool to pull things out?

I still can’t figure out how you’ve made those little alien turkey giblet particles with noise? As well as the shale-like rocks on the ground plane…

[Piggyson]

@slothkins: Turkey giblet things are Fibermesh (needed something to fill the space a little.) The shale effect is surface noise that is applied to the plane. Then the plane is masked by cavity then I use Move transpose to skew the geo to create the effect. I’ll see about doing a video on the process. For the Robots here is a timelapse of one of them for ya.

https://youtu.be/CfpuGVc396g

For Today’s Madness here is another quick Environement concept ~2hrs. Scene was setup in ZBrush then sent to Keyshot to render. Then I had a little too much fun playing in Photoshop (multiple images for ya.) Trees are surface noise spikes with some random fibermesh leaves applied to them.

-Joseph

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[Piggyson]

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[slothkins]

This is great - I liked the use of dragRect alphas to get creases and details and the color swatch on geometry. So you didn’t do any sketches or pre-planning? Did all your bots actually stand up without balance issues?

I’d love to see a process on these space terrains. You have to come clean with how you did the water - planes in Zbrush and some shader that I can’t find in Keyshot???

Thanks!

[nebular]

It’s amazing what can be done with ZBrush. Very inspiring stuff Joseph!

[boozy_floozie]

Love the landscapes Joseph.
I remembered you talking about using noise spikes with fibermesh on the 4R7 reveal when you turned a dragon in to a rat with a wave of your hand.
The work of a ZBrush Thaumaturge no less.

Thanks for inspiring and great to see Sculpt Corner has been launched.

Yours etc,
Boozy.

[Freewaldo]

Good work Joseph, always a big fan of your Art.

[Piggyson]

@slothkins: For pre-planning I had one single idea for each robot per day. So the one in the video was ‘flying’ and that was about it. Then I just started modeling stuff and looking for shapes I liked No balance issues on any of them they all stood; you can get a sense of the weight from orthographic views (making sure to give them substantial feet also helped.)
@nebular, @boozy floozie, @freewaldo: Thanks for the kind words!

So for today here is another quick 3D Concept ~2hrs. This time I time-lapsed the ZBrush process. Video is below I had a starting idea for this one sorta war of the worlds ish. There are some things i’d change on this one if I was to do it again but oh well

Timelapse of the process:
https://youtu.be/hahaIvVBzTQ
(Music-Less version Gema Friendly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfCNxBJAkOA)

-Joseph

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[slothkins]

I like it! Really cool look. I’ll give it a good watch and listen tonight when I get back home - also appreciate the Axel F background music!

[carver]

Joseph,

As always. you are an inspiration. Any chance you can do a similar video on your process in Keyshot?

[jmeyer]

The last video can’t be watched in germany because of the background music.
Gema problems.
Thought you might want to know.

[Piggyson]

@carver: Thanks! I’ll see what I can throw together I mostly use Keyshot for camera placement then just throw on random materials heh
@jmeyer: Ohh Gema =( I’ll make sure to check that for the next video I upload.

So here is the quick one for today; changed up the style a little. Went for a little less gloomy; I did a timelapse for this one but then I went over 2 hours and I killed it (trees took longer then expected. Next time im going with the ZTree plugin.)

Anyhow on to the images! Lots of Nanomesh usage in this one (2% surface noise for the stones)

-Joseph

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[boozy_floozie]

Ah the path back to the Shires - very sweet and darned good progress for the time spent.
But the video capture is lost?
Would loved to have seen it .

[Piggyson]

@boozy floozie: yeah it’s gone; after about two hours of recording camtasia doesn’t enjoying the editing process (so I killed it =\ )

Here is another simple image concept for today. Went to the beach this weekend so I had ocean on the brain. Used Array Mesh for the pier, then some clip and trim dynamic for the rocks. Water and sand are just geometry planes with noise. Fibermesh for some random weeds. HDRI map from the ZBrush KeyShot pack filled in the rest (Thomas Roussel’s HDRI.) Then I went crazy in Photoshop some

May switch up from environment stuff next, will see…

-Joseph

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[slothkins]

This one’s pretty convincing. I’m still wondering what you’re doing in Keyshot for water… especially in that environment with the hills and trees.

[Piggyson]

@slothkins: Nothing special for the water; geometry is a plane with surface noise (for faux waves.) Then I just throw a ‘liquid’ material from Keyshot on it. Usually end up using the ‘liquid beer’ one

-Joseph

[Piggyson]

Here’s a quick one for today Made a robot this time then threw him in a silo filled with some water. Probably going to do another Mech tomorrow

-Joseph

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