ZBrushCentral

Some of the latest work I've been doing

Hi there,

For nearly a decade I have been working as a technician and project manager in a 3D scanning business, working on various AAA games such as Medal of Honor, Mass Effect, Grand Theft Auto, and a whole variety of movies. Recently, I decided to start my own business as I could no longer afford to work for my former employer. Having never worked with Zbrush or any other sculpting package (I’ve tried blender, because it seemed more accessible, but never really got into it) I had quite a few skills to master in a short time.

I thought I’d share some of the more recent work with the pro’s in the house.

As I said, I work in the 3D scanning industry. I don’t want to offend the hardcore zbrush artists out there by claiming I can actually ‘sculpt’ things that look this good, but it does take some effort to take a raw scan, retopologize it and make it look presentable and usable for a client. The process from scan to final asset typically takes approximately 8 hours for a headscan; a body will take up to a few days.

Here’s me, quite literally. I made a scan of myself in my one and only suit and tie. For this model I did separate scans of my head, shirt, tie, jacket, pants, hands and the shoes were done with a NextEngine desktop laser scanner. In the picture, all parts except my head are cleaned up, retopologized, UVed and texture maps have been created from the original high resolution photography that comes with the scanning process. To go from a ‘rough’ scan to this final result took me about 4 days.

I would like to add that I am in no way a texture expert. All the texturing is done by a friend of mine whom I’ve worked with for years. She’s excellent and does it way faster than I ever could. I take NO credit for the textures! If anything I can take credit for the high resolution photography that comes with the process, which allows for the creation of excellent texture maps.

This week I’ve been working on another piece to highlight the creation of crowd or video game characters, showing how to create very low resolution models which show all the details of a 1M+ polygon model. I like to think there’s a lot of use for these types of assets, where companies or artists can access a database of existing characters for any kind of situation (parade, carnival, restaurant, angry mob, …) and pop them into a scene to fill up the background. The way I’ve been doing this over the years is by creating assets that can be switched out to create a variety of characters using the same building blocks, much like a little Lego character, popping off the head and legs and sticking in new ones. I can proudly say I’ve done hundreds of those for some of the video games I’ve worked on. My plan is to create my own database of downloadable assets, though I realize this may take some time!

On a few occasions in the past I have worked together with artist, both traditional and digital, on projects where people were looking to either create a backup of their art or use 3d scanning and modeling as a source for creating new art. Some of the crazier projects were scanning a 40 foot statue, manipulating it and having it printed life-size for somebody’s backyard! On some occasions artists used a 3d scan of a person they found visually interesting and used it as a base for their own projects.

I would like to invite all artists out there who are interested to try it out! I would be very much interested in working together with people and be a part of their work.

I hope to post more of my work soon!
Cheers,
Jan

Attachments

bodyscans.jpg

tshirt_comparison.jpg

Awesome!!! :wink:

Here’s a bigger render of me in my suit, with the texture map this time.

bodyscan-large.jpg

Here are some close-ups of my hand and shoe.

bodyscan_closeups.jpg

Most of the work I do is with head scans. Here is one of them:

With the lowest subdivision wireframe showing:
Chuck_Wire.jpg

High resolution details:
Chuck_Red.jpg
Color map:
Chuck_Color.jpg

This work is very great, thanks for share…indeed, you think this action figure is made with this same technique? :wink:

Greetings.

12070621001bfdeb0b10c14c23.jpg

Hi Patokali,

It looks like this is the showroom model of an ‘action figure’ or one of those collectibles you find on sideshowtoy.com (which has some amazing stuff!). When an action figure is created, they make a few initial models; one is the showroom model, one is the model used for paint reference and another is made to make molds off of to create a few hundred duplicates in China or so. At least that’s how I did it in the past for some pin-up projects. I know there are some companies out there who scan the actors or models for specific games or movies and then take the data further and convert it into a printable model like the one shown in the picture. I’m very certain this one has been created by starting off with 3D scan data for the movie. When a model like that goes into printing, some details will be exaggerated because subtle detail on a face doesn’t really show that well in smaller figurines.

Personally I have printed some of the work I’ve done using online services (not exactly the super high end stuff, but it’s neat as a gimmick), and you can get some great results with it! Once a character is scanned and posed it’s very easy to turn it into an action figure. Let me know if you’re interested!

Jan

Very interesting work, the models look great.

Cheers,
Brian

:wink: Jan thank you very much for your response, it is interesting to know how to make these action figures. I have your website in my favorites and I hope in a future to do something similar with one of my characters.

Thanks again for your answer.

Greetings.

For years I have been working with scan data, but because my work would go to a VFX or Video Game company, rendering was never something I had to do or worry about. As I had some spare time I figured I give it a try this time. I still have to work on the eyebrows and other facial hair, but here’s a first pass with specular and sub-surface scattering.

frank_render_v2.jpg

Amazing Render congrats!..

Really Nice!

Awesome skin effect!!:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:

wow, they looks great :slight_smile: