Posing

It's all been going a bit too slow as I've been stuck in a bit of a rut and have also been a bit lazy. Anyway.... I've finished the ZSphere posing and now I'm cleaning up the pose deformation and getting the muscle definition sorted out to match the pose. I've just started on her upper torso. Once that cleaning up is done, it's on to the expression. Shouldn't take too much time to get that all done then I can start setting up the final scene. I've also been testing some VRay shaders, but more on that later.

I'm also about halfway with the clothing. I'll post some updates on that soon.

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Rigging and Posing with ZSpheres.

I've really been been enjoying the freedom and ease that ZBrush's ZSpeheres offer for rigging and posing. I always used to have to painstakingly set up the skinning and posing using Max's biped and Character Studio, which would take ages to do and never really gave me great results (probably because I'm not a character rigger).

I find this works so much more easily and not to mention quickly for what I need. It took roughly 10-15 minutes to create this rig, and the best part is that it skins the character on the fly. It works incredibly well; even really hard areas to rig and manipulate like the shoulder areas are no problem - the arms rotate upwards and the mesh deforms with no problem.

There are still a few areas to pose and tweak: the hands and fingers haven't been touched yet and I might still tweak a few other areas. Once the ZSphere posing is done, I'll do a bit of clean-up sculpting to areas where the muscles have deformed and shifted and then also give the her an expression of some kind.

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Render tests...

I started testing out VRay for the fist time in ages. Okay I lie, I tested  it on a earlier version of this model months back and she's changed a lot since then. It was quite a basic quick test only using a diffuse map and no SSS. But honestly, the last time I used VRay was back when it was free and still in Beta testing.

These are a few of the latest renders I've been testing. The first two in the row of four have GI enabled whilst the last don't, thus their more waxy quality.

This full figure one is the last one that I've done today. The shading is by no means finished, but I'm still really happy with these results. There's still a lot to do to her, mostly:

- Finish sculpting and cleaning up her anatomy;

- Add asymmetrical anatomical detail; 

- Her texturing (diffuse) is about 95% done - finish a few things here and there;

- Update and tweak secondary maps (glossiness, bump, etc.);

- Add hair (her eyebrows are only textured in at the moment but I'll be grooming those with a proper hair system as well);

- Pose her;

- Clothe her;

- Create environment;

- Render, render... and render...

More to come...

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Some new character stuff...

I have just finished a couple of months freelance work on some characters for a game trailer cinematic, so now I'm officially back to some of my own work for a bit.

This is what I started working on a while before I started the above mentioned work. Nothing too exciting, just a standard base nude figure for a character I'm working on (more on her at a later date). The nice thing about doing this base figure is, I can use her for multiple characters just by making a few model changes and texture tweaks, which will allow me to focus on the character. She's not going to be a real-time character either.

(edit: I have just realised that this base mesh was derived from an older model made a couple of years back that was never finished.  I've essentially adjusted a lot of the anatomy and proportions - I think I've also added in some extra topological detail as well. Looking back at that old one it's really quite bad and I think this one is quite an improvement over that... hopefully...)


The texture work is about 98% done - just a few small touch-ups here and there. At the moment I've got one 8K (8192x8192) texture for the skin and one 4K (4096x4096) texture for the eyes. I've left her eyebrows in for now as a guide for when I get to do the grooming of the hair later on.

As far as the sculpting goes, I'm only 3 subdivisions in as I'm still just fleshing out the shapes of the muscles and proportions, etc. She'll most likely be a lot less toned than she is now, so I'll be smoothing those muscles down a bit when I move on to higher subdivisions.

Hopefully I'll have more updates on the actual character soon...

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Zombie slowness

I've been rather slow lately getting any personal work done of any sorts.

Anyway a small update on this severed zombie head. Still some detailing to do (sores, etc.) and symmetry to remove. I also still need to work on the severed area as well as finish off the teeth, and then it's on to texturing.

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Severed zombie head progress

Some progress with the head. Still filling out the basic symmetrical volumes before I go in and add any detail and offset the symmetry.

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Severed zombie head sculpt

Finally got back into some Zbrush work this weekend. Started this severed zombie head prop. No detailing yet; just bashing out the basic shapes and forms of the underlying anatomy. Decay and whatnot yet to come.

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