Zbrush progress

Since this morning I have made quite a bit of progress on my final version of the Zbrush sculpt. The first thing I did was create the eyes as I felt most confident doing these. They are very simple gecko eyes that I turned sideways and then added a little detail to. This was done through Spotlight.

Next I created the detail for the neck parts. I decided on a warm colour scheme for the alien, much like certain breeds of gecko, and so wanted to feature both mechanical colours and some natural colour in there. The end result was 2 shades of grey, a browny orange area and some yellow lights. I'm very happy with how these turned out.

I did the teeth after that. I struggled to get some teeth that I liked at first as I was being to gentle with my colours and contrast. In the end I used a bone texture in spotlight. Afterwards I went through adding darkening, variation and a few lighter scratched areas. 

After this I finally blocked out my final colour scheme. It features mainly yellow, more bone texture and some orange in areas such as under the chin and some stripes along it's back. I also have made the glands a quite deep red, trying to add some variation to the model.

Zbrush - First impressions, colour schemes and experimentation

Today I started learning how to use Zbrush for one of my hand ins for this module. Overall, whilst enjoyable, I find that it isn't user friendly in the slightest (at least for the newbies). I get lost in the software and struggle to figure out what is happening half the time. However, when it works it's a lot of fun and I can see some of the potential of the software. So far I've experimented with different ways of texturing, different brushes and some tools.

One of the most important things I need to work out now is what colour scheme I want to do. I've played with quite a few colour schemes so far yet not found any I really like. I tried playing with white and blue a fair bit as shown with the first picture below. I'm happy with it how it looks there yet I'm not sure it'll work with the head as whole but rather the detailed plates on his neck.

I did several tests with eyes. The first was done through ZAppLink which involved taking my angle into Photoshop, painting it, saving it and then it would automatically apply. This method will almost definitely be used in certain areas of the model such as the bulbous glands on the sides of his head as I think the method would be well suited to texturing them. 

Below is another method of texturing that I did using Spotlight. This involved taking a picture of something and using it as a stencil. It worked really well and came out nicely. I can see myself using this method for the eyes and possibly any other details I like, perhaps for some kind of scaly material across the head?

I have also thought of how to paint the other areas of him. The teeth I think will be painted by eye in Zbrush as they are relatively simple. The same could go for the metal plating. The skin itself is the part that worries me most as I don't yet have a solid idea of what to do for it however I'm sure I'll come up with something.

Finished door

I finished off my door today. This is the finished diffuse, normal and specular maps. The diffuse had just a bit more editing done to it since last time. The normal map was done quite easily too, using my previous map in combination with diffuse maps which I changed to normal maps which were then normalized and overlayed. The spec was just edited from the diffuse map and was done pretty easily.

Here are two maya renders of my door. 

And the two renders I did in Marmoset. 

Cottage door

I started an assignment this week which involves texturing an entire supplied cottage (very similar style to fable cottages). The first thing I did was normal map the cottage. This was problematic for quite a while as I didn't know about the unlock normals tool. However once shown this I finished the task quickly.

After the normal map I made an AO map which whilst not baking all that much information certainly gave enough for me to work with, any areas I wasn't happy with I went and quickly painted in.

When working on the diffuse, my first attempt ended up being a very washed out door made from driftwood. Whilst I liked the look of it, it was a bit dull and the cottage looks like it's from Fable, not exactly the right scenario to use this kind of texture in.

Following this I made a brighter more fitting diffuse. I added old metal hinges and door handle along with celtic patterns along the arch and the pillars for decoration and a slight fantasy feel.

And here's the door whilst still missing more normal mapped details which I can't do yet (need to use another computer for converting normal maps) and the specular map. I'm really happy with it so far and hope I can get the normal map working really well.

Photo Manipulation

Today I have been working through some new techniques to edit photos which have been a lot of fun. This is the image that I wanted to edit.

First of all I removed the writing on the brickwork by using a mix of the clone stamp tool and the brush on a low opacity setting.

Next I experimented with changing the colour of certain objects in a picture. I changed the electrical fan unit into a darker green and the chair into a reflective red. I changed the fans colour by using a layer that I painted a dark green, lowered the opacity of and then setting the layer style to colour burn. The chair was done in a similar way but using the colour layer style instead.

I decided I wanted to try a bigger change and so I found a picture of an arched window to out into the picture instead of just plain bricks.

Here I put the window into the scene. It required a little distortion along with changes to it's levels which I then cleaned up with the brush tool. I also added some cracks into the floor using two methods. The first method was hand painting and then using bevel and emboss whilst the others were taken from another photo which I then had to change the perspective of.

The last change I made was a gradient map adjustment layer using purple and yellow for my gradient. This unified all the elements of my work, making them sit together easier whilst looking more correct. Whilst this was quite quick and easy work I learnt a few new things which will surely be useful someday.

Exploring channels (and match colour!)

So today I did a small quick task teaching me about how I can use colour channels along with a few functions such as match colour. I started with this photo and the end result was to change the sky and have the environment reflect this.

To get rid of the sky I went into the blue channel, used the curves editor and made a mask from it as the contrast between sky and canyon was very high making the task of separating them a lot easier than it could have been. Next I found  a picture  of a desert sky. I brought this in below my canyon layer. I then duplicated the canyon layer (along with the mask) and edited the mask to keep the foreground similar but letting other areas be influenced more. I then selected match colour and used my cloud layer as the source layer, changing the colours and making them fit the sky more. It was a lot of fun and could be really useful in the future for any mock up images among other things. 

Textures applied

I finally got to apply my tiling textures. For the most part I got really good results which I'm happy with but there are a few issues with some of the maps which I'll talk about now. 

This is my bricks on a plane. This worked really well in my opinion, tiling well and looking very 3D. There are a few bricks which noticeably repeat which I will be wary of on future projects. 

Here's the brick texture on a cube, much the same though you can see more of the specular map working here. It looks nice, tiles well and I'm really happy with it.

This is my standard metal texture tiled. I'm quite happy with it but there is a slight colour change where it tiles. However having looked at it from a FPS camera, you wouldn't really notice it without actively looking for mistakes. In future I would take more time on the textures too.

My 3 variants of the metal texture together. From this angle it looks pretty good but there a few issues I'll explain with the next image. 

As you can see here, these don't tile perfectly. Some colour issues are prevalent around the edges of the tiles along with the grips themselves not fitting onto the textures perfectly.  

Overall, I've learnt a lot from this task and it will really help in the future. Next time I make a tile-able texture, I will do a few things. The first will be to have a more thorough check of how well it tiles. It shows that I spent more time on the brick texture than the metal one. The second would be that I would be to check if there are any more noticeable areas of the texture that could be noticed when tiled, such as on my brick texture. And my third thing is to think of how big the textures should be. Spending so much time on small details that won't necessarily be seen much isn't smart when time could be put into more attention grabbing parts of a scene.

Normalized normal maps

I finally managed to normalize my normal maps by using a friends computer and these are my results. I will be applying these to planes soon.