Traditional Sculpture

Hello,

I haven't posted in awhile. I have been taking a traditional figure sculpting class as part of my MFA program. I haven't ever sculpted anything in clay before and so this has been a new experience for me. Anyway, here is a torso I finished last week. I don't know when I will post next, but I will try to get back into it. Enjoy.

-Henry

QuickSculpt Torso

Here's the quicksculpt for the day. I was going to post it earlier, but I had to run the wife to the hospital. Anyway, here it is. I know there are anatomical problems, specifically in the shoulders. Working on this, I realize that I really need to study my anatomy once more. I have forgotten a lot. I didn't have time to fix it before I had to leave.

Also, I am trying to stop the sculpts and not let them go long. So, even though I wanted to take the time to find reference and correct the muscles, I cut it off at an hour and a half. I will come back later and fix it when I have time.

The reason I did a torso is because I start my MFA in two weeks. As I was looking at the modules for my sculpting class, I noticed a torso that I will have to make. So, I decided to do this one for now. The video is below.

http://www.bawdenstudio.com/QuickSculpt/QuickSculptTorso.mov

It is 22 minutes 550 meg. Enjoy.

QuickSculpt Fat Man

I guess to be politically correct, I should say morbidly obese, big boned, or water retentive. Anyway, after the old man, I thought about going fat. After struggling with it once more, I think I need to start using some sort of a reference for these sculpts. If I do fantasy monsters or something I can fake it, but with these realistic subjects I really need to get my stuff straight. Below is the link to the process video.

http://www.bawdenstudio.com/QuickSculpt/QuickSculptFat.mov

It is 20 minutes and 620 meg. I may stop posting the process videos if no one seems interested. I will eventually post some of the better ones on my web site. However, for now I will post a few more and see what the feedback is. Enjoy watching.

QuickSculpt Old Man

I had many troubles with today's quicksculpt. I was struggling with being tired and unfocused. So, there was a lot of back and forth on what I was doing. If I had a clearer head, I could probably have done it quicker. I even had to restructure the skeletal bridge around the eye socket, as well as redoing the ears near the end. I can't believe I didn't notice those until so far into the sculpt. Anyway, it ended up working out alright. Below is the link to the process video.

http://www.bawdenstudio.com/QuickSculpt/QuickSculptOld.mov

Because I was unfocused today, I went long. I took almost two hours to do this quicksculpt. The video is 22 minutes, and the file is 788 meg. Like I wrote in a previous post, it is easiest to right click the link and select "Download Linked File", or "Save Target As" depending on which web browser you are using. There is no sound on any of these videos. So, to make the watching easier, just put on some music to help make it more fun. You can even select what you want the songs to be. Anyway, enjoy.

QuickSculpt Toad

Today's quicksculpt was a toad. I had some problems with it because I was modeling from a sphere. But it turned out pretty well. Here's the link to the video of the process.

http://www.bawdenstudio.com/QuickSculpt/QuickSculptToad.mov

It is 577 meg. But it only runs 17 minutes. The reason for this is because I was losing a lot of detail with the video compression. This video is much more clear than the previous two. Also, I know it is a pain to wait for the video to load up on the internet and it is difficult to tell if it has frozen or not. So, a way to make this easier is to right click the link above and select "Download linked file". Hopefully that will make it easier for you. Then you will just have to wait for the download to complete. Anyway, enjoy.

QuickSculpt Kappa

For today, I did my variation of a kappa. A kappa is a japanese water demon. Sometimes shown with a turtle's beak, or with puckered lips. Sometimes shown with black hair, bald, or wearing a leaf for a hat. Sometimes with slits for ears, elven ears, or human ears. There are a lot of variations. This took me about an hour and a half to do the modeling and the texturing. I have included the link to another video to show the process.

http://www.bawdenstudio.com/QuickSculpt/QuickSculptKappa.mov

This video is 500 meg, and shows the 90 minutes of work in 18 minutes. It will take a while to load, but I hope you enjoy it.

QuickSculpt Mask

Here's another quicksculpt. I did a tribal mask. Today I decided to try recording a video of the process. It actually worked. Beware though, it is a very large video. Almost 100 meg. But it is kinda fun. It is four minutes long. To see it, follow this link below.
http://www.bawdenstudio.com/QuickSculpt/QuickSculptMask.mov
Because I have limited space on my website, I will only leave it up until I run out of space. If people show interest in this kind of thing, I will post more of these process videos. Just let me know what you think.

QuickSculpt Boxer

I had a chat with a good friend last night. Because of that, when I was sitting down to do a sculpt this morning and couldn't think of what to make, inspiration hit. And, this little sculpture came to be. The sculpting took a little over an hour, so I didn't have time to do a texture pass. But, here it is. Enjoy.

QuickSculpt Ghostman

Today's quicksculpt is a ghost creature. Nothing special to write, I was just playing around and having fun. Enjoy.

QuickSculpt Dragonhead

Here's my quicksculpt for the day. I didn't get one done yesterday. I am working on a female base 3D mesh, and it is taking a lot of time. I will post on that project as I get further along. With the dragon today, I started with just having fun sculpting and ended up with the untextured model. I then added the detailed modeling, and a simple texture pass. I included both because I almost like the untextured and stylistic model better than the finished one. It was fun. I would like to approach this once more and adjust the horns to wrap down by the head like a goat, but this is what I did very quickly today. I will post another one if I get a chance tomorrow.

QuickSculpt Caricature

Here's my quick sculpt for today. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but when I started playing, I decided it would work as a caricature. Because it was so quick to sculpt, I took a little time and did a rough texture on it. Enjoy.

QuickSculpt Crabcreature

Today I just did a quick sculpt. Basically, it is like sketching in 3D. I start with nothing, and let my imagination take off. In ZBrush, they have something called Zspheres. I can quickly create a form using the spheres, and then convert it into something I can sculpt. Just for practice with sculpting, I think I will be doing a lot of these quick sculpts. Because I am not doing them for any sort of specific project, they aren't getting a color pass. For this one, I just stuck a Pewter material attribute on it. Enjoy, I will post more as I get to it.

I'm done with the snail

I'm finally done with the snail. For real this time. I want to move on to another project. I just couldn't let this one go until I finished a few more things. Along with fixing the wood texture, I wanted to show how this model and process could actually be used in video game creation.

The first picture is the completed model in ZBrush. The second picture shows how the normal and texture map transferred onto the model in Maya. The final picture shows the snail in an actual game engine. I put the low resolution Maya version of the model into the Unreal 3 editor. I then imported the textures and normal maps. A few duplications and light placements later, and we have a group of snails in a video game engine at a low resolution that doesn't look half bad.

So, there you go. Hope you enjoyed this little excursion into the world of 3D content creation with the snail. If you have any question, just let me know. I am happy to explain the process and answer any questions. The lack of easily accessible knowledge in some of these areas has been an extreme frustration to me in the past. So, I want to help others get any information they need without going through some of the pains that I have had to.

I will try and post a new project when I get a chance. I will be starting something tomorrow. I just haven't decided what yet. Have fun.

Final Snail

Here's the final snail. I gave it a stand and modeled it to look like a little statue in order to give it a more finished feeling. I like how the bronze work turned out. I may come back and do some adjustment to the bottom part of the stand though. It isn't reading as plastic the way I want it to. If I get time, I need to come back and give it an actual wood grain modeling and texturing pass and turn it into a straight wooden base. Anyway, I also adjusted the shell to give it more vibrant colors. I took the yellows that are in a natural snail shell, and adjusted them to be not only more vibrant, but to also shift into some purple and greens. I thought that this would add to the statue appearance. I just wanted a nice finished product after all the hard work.

The main goal of this was to learn some new skills with Zbrush, and to brush up on my old modeling skills. It isn't totally hyper realistic like I had hoped though. I was able to pull off a bit of a subdermal appearance in the skin. However, I couldn't get a decent translucency. It is totally opaque. I have yet to find anyone that has been able to pull off translucency in Zbrush, or any kind of alpha blending for that matter. If anyone reading this has been able to, please let me know how. I am very eager to learn.

Anyway, we will be celebrating the 24th of July out of town. So, I will start a new project on Monday. I will post as I get around to it. For now, enjoy the snail statue.

Textured

Sorry it's been so long. Life is getting in the way of my art right now. However, here is the textured version. The first four are screenshots from zbrush. The final one is in maya after I have transfered all of the textures and normal maps to the low resolution model. I need to do some more work on it. I will post an update when I get some time.

Normal and Occlusion map

Apparently I have a lot to post today. Using the high resolution model in Zbrush, I created normal maps (the bluish one) and occlusion maps (the black and white ones). These give the low poly model the illusion of having more detail and sculpting than would be possible with a normal flat texture. I will be creating the texture on the high resolution model, and then will transfer that to the low poly model so that the low poly model will have the illusion of having much more detail. (That is how they get the illusion of having detailed environments and characters in games without breaking your game systems).

I will post updates as I get them. I still have a lot to learn about the matcap system in Zbrush though, and am progressing as fast as I can find information and answers to my questions.

Zbrush Pass

Here's the high resolution pass I did in Zbrush. I can now transfer this information to the low resolution model through using a normal map. As I get time, I will post the transfered normal maps. I will also be starting on the texture. I need to run through more tutorials and I am also trying to figure out how to pull of a really good translucency to my textures in maya.

Anyway, I'll post more as I get time and make progress.

Updated Mesh and UV map

Sorry I haven't posted for a bit. I was busy running through some tutorials yesterday. I still have a lot I am trying to teach myself. Anyway, After some more studying of my snail reference, I decided to redo the mesh and make some adjustments. The front portion of the snail has more of a bulge. It doesn't extend to the back. It is like a large muscle that comes out of the shell and works to the front. I wanted to get it right. So, here is the new mesh.

I also updated the UV map. Although I could get away with the seam running down the middle of the shell, I decided to just unwrap the shell in case I decide to make some adjustments in Photoshop. I am still trying to learn how to use the matcap painting system in Zbrush. I also decided to do two UV maps. One for the body portion, the other for the shell portion.

So, enjoy. In a little bit, I will post the work I did in Zbrush today.

UV Map

Just finished the UV map. It took me awhile to get around to it today because I had to go deal with inspection and registration for my vehicle this morning. But, here is the tweaked snail, with it's UV map. I split the shell because I will be doing the texture work in Zbrush rather than Photoshop. So, there shouldn't be a seam. However, if there are any issues I will have to redo the UV map and try a different approach to the shell. It will take longer, but will look better if I can't pull it off in the first pass.

I am going to do a quick test to see if it will work. If I have to redo it, I will try to post the new UV map this evening.

Snail Mesh

Two posts in one day. It's been awhile since I've done that. Well, I have the basic mesh modeled. Here are some screencaps of it. I will do some tweaking and cleanup tomorrow. I will also be doing the UV mapping.

For those who are unfamiliar, UV mapping is when I tell the model how the texture needs to be applied onto the surface. If I remember, I will take some screencaps of the final UV map and show how it works. For now, here is an extremely basic model. The shell was a little tough to get right, but It worked out well enough. Like I said, I will tweak it tomorrow when I have some fresh eyes to look at it with.