Sci-Fi Scene -Early Concept Art

[iversen]

Did you make that?! In Photoshop? That's insane dude! Hoping to get as good as you one day ^^

 

[Zeealex]

thanks! it was a mixture of Photoshop, 3dsMax and Mudbox, 3dsMax and Mudbox are free for educational/non commercial use all 3 are pretty easy to use with a little messing around

 

[Zeealex]

Sorry, kind of died again...

Started working on this some more recently, I recreated the entire thing plus some more in 3ds max using edge modelling. The outcome so far:



there's a few funny bits, but I was just winging it most of the time this meme pretty much sums it up:


critique welcome!

 

[MrToM]

Yes yes yes....this is what we want!
Thats awesome! (And being from the UK that's not an expression that's used lightly!)

I love the way you've got his little tongue hanging out...so cute!

OK, joking aside I do actually think you've done an excellent job there.
this may sound like a stupid question but is the first image a render of that mesh?
(Or did you meshsmooth/turbosmooth it first?)

I never use subdivision if I can help it which is why I ask.....and I see you have some tri's in there too which means you wouldn't really mesh/turbo smooth it anyway....would you?

Whatever....looking good.

Regards.
MrTom.

 

[Zeealex]

haha, thank you
It's taken a while, I'd still call myself a 3ds novice when it comes to this sort of thing so excuse any sort of newbie mistakes.

The first image is indeed a render, it's a tweaked scanline render; I added a (much) less green background and some DOF just to balance it out better.

I've tessellated the goggle area, and that's about it, they needed an extra subdivision just to help along with the smoothing groups, but there's no turbosmooth/mesh smooth modifier at work, it's just a poly with smoothing groups, the second image is basically how it was when I rendered it aside from the the fact that it had a material.

Like you I tend to steer away from turbosmooth and mesh smoothing, simply because of the shapes of the polygons I get. turbosmooth is okay, but it's a bit laggy on my PC. mesh smooth, isn't good unless it's a high resolution render of a human being even then quadifying the mesh and using smoothing groups works out relatively the same.

that reminds me I'll have to quadify the head for the next render. It's all quads, all triangles or nothing. never both... apparently.

 

[MrToM]

that reminds me I'll have to quadify the head for the next render. It's all quads, all triangles or nothing. never both... apparently.

Ah, well, now, you say 'apparently'.....but who said that? Someone who doesn't know why probably.

If you don't intend to sub-divide the mesh then a mix of tri's and quads is fine.....you proven that already.
People do 'say' you should stick with all quads but for a 'hard surface' model its not really necessary...sometimes it can't be avoided.

Tri's are good for animation, they allow for deformation of surfaces but again, with a 'hard surface' its not going to deform so quads are fine.

I'm rambling here but its really good to see you not using turbo/mesh smooth....its a sign of a very good modeller!

Looking forward to the next instalment.

Regards.
MrTom.

 

[dv8_fx]

You've gone a long way since your first 3d images, Z.

This one's a beauty.

As for your meme.... nice one. But frankly , you know what you're doing and where you want to go with your 3d knowhow.....

 

[Zeealex]

Ah, well, now, you say 'apparently'.....but who said that? Someone who doesn't know why probably.

If you don't intend to sub-divide the mesh then a mix of tri's and quads is fine.....you proven that already.
People do 'say' you should stick with all quads but for a 'hard surface' model its not really necessary...sometimes it can't be avoided.

Tri's are good for animation, they allow for deformation of surfaces but again, with a 'hard surface' its not going to deform so quads are fine.

I'm rambling here but its really good to see you not using turbo/mesh smooth....its a sign of a very good modeller!

Looking forward to the next instalment.

Regards.
MrTom.

my graphics tutor told me that... says a lot.
I suppose seeing as it's a biological model that will deform i suppose i should leave the head triangulated, i do plan on rigging it. It would explain why game engines tend to favour triangulated models over quads.

it's great to know I'm doing something right though. thanks

You've gone a long way since your first 3d images, Z.

This one's a beauty.

As for your meme.... nice one. But frankly , you know what you're doing and where you want to go with your 3d knowhow.....​

Thank you Dv8, funnily enough, I've touched 3ds max very little for some time, I've mostly been using it for importing basic models(mainly just slightly modified boxes) into a game. I started this project off not knowing how I was going to approach the new revision and I just settled into it after a few failed attempts to start it off, I knew the basics of how to edge model (hold shift and move the new edge out) but I didn't think I was very good at it not as good to create something like this with a half decent poly flow and no rendering errors.
most of the time I just looked at the basic shape and thought about what more I needed to add to make it look better, I wasn't really following a specific concept, other than the original to use as a guideline, so long as it looked okay and rendered fine I was good. But there were a lot of times where i was just making the best guess possible, especially when I was fixing errors that cropped up and joining troublesome edges.
It's the first time I've used a multi/subobject material and multiple material IDs, as well as multiple smoothing groups.
It was a pretty steep learning curve nevertheless; i learned a lot from it, and I'm still learning a lot now while doing the body armour.

It's a good little project to keep me occupied. I'm going to see about porting it into UDK, or real virtuality or Cryengine, whichever makes the most sense at the time. Real Virtuality is a pain in the ass, but it's a pain in the ass that I know how to use...
I want to see what it will look like lit properly.

 

[Zeealex]

finished the main part of modelling the torso:

Just need to UV map it now, I'll merge the clones together when everything is complete, but checking a quick mirrored clone it looks fairly okay. I'll be relying heavily on distortion maps to do most of the work when it comes to detail though.

 

[Zeealex]

this is it now, fresh from post processing in photoshop.
I've found that MentalRay is much less resource intensive for some reason, unsure why, probably the way they utilize the processor.




The model has now made a home for itself in Arma 3(old screenshot):

I swear it just accidentally imported itself! XD

 

[Zeealex]

made some improvements to the helmet and body armour, i've still got a long way to go though.













i've since added detail to the spine, texture to the helmet and improved the transitioning of the shoulder plates but i'm not able to get to my PC and upload them