ZBrushCentral

escaping the lab - *.obj for download added

Hi folks,

been adding XSI to my toolset lately, my day is pretty much filled with testing things now. Been trying to transfer models between Maya and XSI the last couple of days, trying the various tools and render options. Well, ended up being inspired to build that guy, will finish his face tommorow and´ll abuse him to test displacement and such coming from ZBrush inside XSI. Currently a Maya 6.01 render in layers, comped for effect. Props to Zack Petroc for SuperAverageMan, btw. Initially had started with snippets of his mesh, helped quite a bit in blocking out the shape. Thanks for sharing your excellent stuff.

Guess I´ll give away the model for free as well then!

Just need to get it done, first :slight_smile:

Cheers tim [![Leydecker_escaped.jpg|768x576](upload://z9Fz6rFUMwlZtdabf0eKEGRFawc.jpeg)]

Unusual pose:D

The guy is actually leaning against a broken down wall.
Planned on doing a Maquette as the VFS guys often do
for their showreels but won´t be able to finish the whole
piece - there´s other things I need to get done instead.

That´s why I´ll give away the mesh at least…

Cheers

tim

Hi there,

haven´t had a chance to work on this piece during this week.
Have some hours left during the weekend, am currently cleaning
and quadrangulating the mesh. Reworking the feet, then moving
on to the left of the face and forehead. Should import fine then…

Cheers

tim

[Leydecker_wired.jpg]

Hi folks,

finally managed to quadrangulate that damned character…
As promised, the attachment contains the free *.obj download.

There probably are some quirks in the model but I won´t
be able to spend any more time with it - unfortunately.

Cheers

tim

[Leydecker_escaped_quads.jpg]

Hey Tim!

Very nice modeling! I opened in maya and took a look of the model and looks very well modeled.

I wonder if you can share your workflow when modeling, specially when modeling the head, hands, and feet. Maybe pictures of your workflow to see how you subdive the polygon. If you have the time of course, if not it’s cool. Thx :smiley:

Keep the good work Tim.

Javi.

Hi Javi,

For this model, I started with a rigged skeleton posed in place,
then cut up and mixed meshes and snippets from various sources.
The skeleton helped in getting the desired pose, the snippets
were great for getting an idea of the final mesh layout.

But beware, you get fast results for the basic shape at the cost
of quite some extra time when merging those different parts together.
Would have probably been faster to stick&bolean union those parts,
then redo the topology ontop. As one would probably do with a 3D scan.
(The making of Leon by CG Toolkit also has a video or two on this topic)

I´m currently putting together the references as used in this model.
Great for good hands and feet, Zack Petroc´s SlightlySuperMan:

http://206.145.80.237/zbrush/reg/superAverageMan_hi_m07.zip

Helped me alot in getting a good layed out mesh here, kept most
of the hands exept for an extra (poly)split along the fingers to get
around loosing too much volume when smoothing (in Maya).

I´d recommend to start with his hands to test the effects of splits
in different areas of the mesh for learning purposes since shape
and volume of those hands are allready spot on.

Alternatively, Anh Nguyen´s Sample Meshes available here:

http://pixologic.com/download/demo_pc2.html

Haven´t used any of those meshes here but really liked them, too.

For the head, I started using an XSI face/man morphed to my liking
but ended up using the most basic face plus a female head I´m working
on whenever I feel like doing so. The ears turned out the most difficult
part as I wanted them to look not too detailed. Redid them accordingly.

After all, the model is supposed to look like a real maquette element.
Good shapes with slightly exaggerated details according to reduced scales.

If I where to do this again, I´d make more use of shrinkwraps and custom
built lattices to deform larger portions of the mesh, use the sculpt poly
and soft modifications tool more and would see if I can get the same
feeling of wheigth on a model in bindpose rigged using a wrap.
Using XSI 5.01, where you can modify geometry and see the results
prpagate through too the envelope.

Would allow to work in a clean coordinate space but see the result/copy
distorted according to the wrap/envelope. Could be cool…

Cheers

tim

Tim thx a lot for taking some time and posting back. Also for the links too.
I asked you this because I like to learn different techniques from different artists and to learn different ways how to model. Im going to try to use your workflow to see what can I get from it. Thx again.

Javi.

Hi Tim,

I hope you don’t mind, but your model brought this to mind.

ahhhhhhhh.jpg

Can you export it in Ztl format for the Demo users ?
Pilou

I hope you don’t mind Tim
but I have posted the model in ZTL format for the demo users such as Frenchy. It is really great when we can look closely at this kind of modeling to examine the polygonal structure. Helps a good deal to perfect ones own modeling format.
So here you are Frenchy hope this helps.

Bill

Hi folks,

I´m sorry for the late response - been out in the sticks.

Regarding the model, go ahead. Use&abuse it to your liking.
I also learn alot from looking at themesh topology of others.

Is see willog allready made it a *.ztl, would have allready
done so myself but thought the 6 MB wouldn´t be accepted
as an attachment. (Seems I had saved it somewhat wrong,
willogs *.zip is reasonably small)

Can´t promise to create a version with good UV´s due my
hefty workload currently but hope you may still find this thing
useful anyway.

Cheers

tim

Hi there,

finally started to paint textures using ZBrush, rendering
done in XSI using a fast skin SSS node, ambient occlusion
piped into the diffuse wheight to darken things down.
Depthpass multiplied ontop to stregthen the front lighting.

Don´t know how far I can take this model, still don´t really
have any sparetime but do enjoy learning the XSI rendertree.

So yes, I may find an excuse for myself to go on with this…

Cheers

tim

[![Leydecker_escaped_skin.jpg|576x768](upload://ekuftaSx1dPrecJJqHE6606BTAx.jpeg)]

Love this model. Keep the updates coming…!

cool render. I think you need to keep going, animate him so that he can do a duet with Joe_Seig’s Melanin dude.:smiley:

hooooh, this skin is awsome, Tim:+1:

Hi folks,

thanks for the kind words. Actually, my model is awning to reach
anywhere near the quality of Joe_Seig’s Melanin dude :slight_smile:

I´ve been doing a cheesy comp of some seperate layers instead.

Next step is doing displacement and setting up the XSI shaders
with Normalmaps accordingly. Then redo everything from scratch,
then do another dozen of models, then maybe…

Cheers

tim

:slight_smile: Hi Tim nice work, for such pale skin you may appreciate the photos of Loretta Lux.
If you’re not familiar with her work, she digitally manipulates them, so where’s the cheese in that? :slight_smile:
Love your last image, subtle translucency seems just right.
Hope to see more!

Hey Joe,

cool link you´ve got there. Seems Loretta set a trend.
The latest KoRn release also has a freaky, paleish kid
on it´s cover (Example links to a german mailorder):
KoRn limited edition coverimage//See you on the other side

The way it´s painted comes close to how I tried to paint
my diffuse layer. It´s just quite a bit better:-)

Cheers

tim

P.S: Do you have a portfolio page or something? I understand
you don´t post much usually, but I´d still like to see some more
of your stuff. Really admire your edgeloops and resulting volumes.

Hi there,

cut the mesh into seperate parts, slapped a 1024px GUV map
on each, and´ll later move each UV set to a seperate space,
then scale everything down to fit the 0-1 range of the 4096px
map resulting of arranging the texturemaps accordingly.

Currently start to nail down the luminance values and desired
scattering of the skin compared to the clothing stuff, mixing
two or three passes created in XSI with the textures painted
in ZBrush piped into all sorts of channels. XSI ambient occlusion
added in to tone down cavities for the mouth area and such.

No bump or specular maps yet, just a painted compositing mask
to get an idea how the shadows and shattering should look like.

Cheers

tim

[Leydecker_escaped_cloth.jpg]