Shady Businessman

I had a little freestyle session and this is what came out of it. Meet the shady businessman with his perfect, yet disturbing smile.

Bump mapped the skin and a touch of ambient occlusion to finish the job. I like the way his smile is between honest and just plain diabolic. "Let's put a smile on that face!"

Bio Suit -Mark 2-

Right, with that out of the way let's focus on modeling. Yesterday I continued working on the Bio Suit and felt like it needed a reboot. The chest, head, arms and legs have been remade. Also: I'm using depth of field and ambient occlusion for the final renders. Another feature I really like in Mudbox. Here:

I really like his face now. The older model was more of a scuba suit than a real battle armor. Also, he has more character now. I gave him a backpack attachment as well. The style and muscle seen on his back is where I want to go with this model. Still thinking on doing something else with his chest though. Might play around with that later. Cheers.

Edit: Looks like I have to check my depth of field filter, the first three screenshots look to blurry. Whoops!

Blogger is wonky!

Ok. Having a little mental breakdown with Blogger here. Can't seem to find an easy way to get every post in the right order. It seems that Blogger doesn't have an option to post everything from old to new. It's a pain in the ass to re-order everything by hand. So I decided that I'll just post away and don't bother getting everything sorted. Sorry for the inconvenience. Have a good one.

Let's get this show on the road!

First of all let me explain where my love for Mudbox really started. It began with Maya in 2002. It was before I even started studying at HKU. I began simple: with Kaneda's Bike from the Akira motion picture. Yeah simple enough huh? What can I say? I'm really crazy that way. After that I started making different Autobots. As if that is simple. I thought maybe if I force myself to make complex models I'll learn the software faster. I was kinda right. 'Kinda' meaning it took me 2 weeks to make a model and one week to texture it. But at the same time I learned a lot of extra gimmicks I could use for later models. So when I started my 'real' education at HKU I had a small advantage in making 3D models. During my study I was inevitably forced to work with 3DS which I really hated. It was unstable, not user-friendly and ugly as hell. HKU just wasn't that into Maya and it was way above their budget to be honest. Ah well. So in a period of four years I was getting better in 3DS and losing my mojo in Maya. Which felt as if my whole world was crumbling down. Well sort of anyway, maybe a little less dramatic. In the meantime I was looking for various 3D software to replace my four year 3DS overdose. From Softimage to ZBrush, I tried them all! Until right after my graduation I came across a program called Mudbox. It was as if a whole new world opened up to me. I felt like a 10 year old with a pot of clay and somebody was like: 'Here you go son, go play around. But remember not to put it in your mouth'. That's how I found Mudbox. So without further a do, lemme show you what this 10 year old can do!

Hunter

Let's start it simple. So my first ever model in Mudbox was this fella. He's the protagonist of a RPG I designed a long time ago. I was thinking 'scar', 'long hair' and 'emotionless'. This was kind of a practice model to get to know all the tools available to me. I started at the eyes, nose, the rest of the face, hair and the chest. No bump mapping, no diffuse. Just the plain sculpt brush. Pretty straightforward.

After I finished this model, I kinda felt that his hair was somewhat 'blobby'. So I dug into Maya to figure out how to create a somewhat realistic hairdo. He's also a bit too 'pretty boyish' to be honest. Ah well. Good enough for the first time. Let's see what's next!

General

So after Hunter I began with bump mapping.. An easy way to get a lot of detail on your models without the hassle of sculpting everything by hand. I wanted to try something new. My own experience with software like Mudbox and ZBrush is that 9 out of 10 times people tend to make symmetrical models. So I was determined to create something asymmetrical. Seeing my first model was kinda 'pretty boyish', I wanted to correct my mistake by modeling a manly man. Behold the general.

I really liked the way this was heading. Got a nice skin bump going on and his hair looks a bit more realistic. So I started by making his face first. After I had finished with the basic layout I stretched the eyebrows and mouth to create the desired asymmetrical look. Suddenly, out of the blue I thought: 'He should be smoking a cigar'. I tried to make this model look a bit more square than Hunter to give that rough manly effect. Atten'shun!

Larissa

Right. After all that testosterone overkill I decided to model something feminine. I didn't want to get stuck in that 'manly man' vibe where all I could was model big men in big armor suits smoking big cigars. Errr-no thank you. So this one was dedicated to my girlfriend, cause basically it was her idea to begin with. I started, as always, with her eyes, nose, mouth and the rest of the face. After I was finished with her face, I came to a point where I had no idea what to do with her hair. Again my girlfriend stepped in and told me she looked like a statue 'cause of the material I used for her base skin. That gave me an idea. What if she was an Egyptian queen of some sorts?

There we go. I CAN make a female model. Come to think of it, the breasts are a bit too high on her chest and she's a bit too broad on the shoulders. Again, something my girlfriend saw in an instant. Well that's what you get if you are focusing too hard on her face Sin. It felt finished. No need to bump map it or anything, because it's a statue anyway.

Iron Man

The reason I wanted to model Iron Man was simple: All of my models so far were all very 'muddy' and I wanted to try something more 'square' and mechanical. First I needed a good picture of Iron Man. At this point Google was my best friend. Or so I thought. Most of the pictures I found through Google were in pose. So I ended up using 5 different pictures from different angles. What a pain in the ass that was. I used the Wax and Flatten tool to get the best results for his armor. In the end I gave up on this idea after I had finished his face, due to the lack of proper concept art.

It's a shame I never really finished this one, but I think I will in the future. It felt good though, that I had proven to myself that I could model Iron Man if I wanted to. I think that counts for something, right?

Kabaal

Kabaal is from the same RPG as Hunter. I really liked the fact that I could just grab my pen and start modeling all of my game design characters to life. This guy is a mean demon. He looks kinda mean huh? Well that was where I was going with this one. My first idea was to give him horns, but after thinking it over I decided that it would be way to cliché to do that. So instead of horns I gave him scars all over. Well sort of. It's more like a protruding scar.

I liked the way his nose worked out. I tried an oldschool vampire look on him. It gives him a more violent feel. Tried something new! His eyes really glow. Mudbox 2011 has a new mapping feature called Incandescence. Awesome stuff! Also: I used a different material and played around with textures as well.

Mercer

One day I was playing Prototype on my Xbox360, when suddenly I stopped and took a look at Alex Mercer's model. I took a good look and realized that it was pretty low poly lo res. Pretty logical, I mean have you seen how many models are onscreen at once in this game? Anyway. I thought: 'I could that'. It's still a work in progress. Have a look.

Still working on the face, the proportions (the shoulders and the position of his 'behind') and the overall textures and highlights. The pants were a real challenge, how clothing folds in general. I think I did a good job here. Though I'm not really pleased with the materials. Maybe a bit too shiny? Need to work on that. I'll keep you posted.

Demon Hunter

Partially inspired by Diablo III and a Mudbox community challenge, I came up with the idea to create a series of warriors from different worlds and times. Think of it as a mix of models ranging from Undead Nazi soldiers to super enhanced bio-armored assassins from the future. Anything goes! I'm working on several of these models at once and most of them are work in progress. First up is the Medieval Demon Hunter.

Working on the diffuse and the bump mapping. Will post the model when I'm finished with that.

Bio Suit

From the same series as Demon Hunter, I tried a more futuristic approach. Eventually it turned into a Crysis inspired model with some medieval touches. Like Demon Hunter this model is still a work in progress. With over a half million polygons, this is by far the highest poly model in the list. The first revision was over a million, but that kinda ate my CPU, so I had to tone it down a little. Still thinking on remaking the head. He looks like a scuba meister. Take a look.

I really liked his back and chest. The armor layer on top of the more squishy muscle layer gives an awesome effect. But like I said, his head is still a bit meh. Need some inspiration at this point. Will keep you posted on this matter. 

Deadpool

Being a Deadpool fanatic that I am, making a model of this wisecrack was a quick decision. I like this guy. His humor, his powers, his outfit, his history. Everything he does is with a certain 'je ne sais quoi'. See what you think of it.

To be honest, the first version of this model looked kinda dull. It didn't have the glowing eyes and stretch effect on the mask (which was my brother's idea). Feedback really helped me out on this one. Here's to hoping that the new Deadpool movie is going to be a blast!