[SsSandu_C]

Hello! Awesome process diary/development diary pending...

[cvbtruong]

Hi, SsSandu_C!
I join with you

[SsSandu_C]

So with every project I try to plan things out and try to anticipate what problems might appear and avoid them. So I’ll try and write about every step I take during this project . Hope it helps and feel free to comment and don’t hesitate to point out mistakes or alternatives to what I do.
The first think that I do in a project like this is write down the objectives, what is expected to me to do and achieve. Of course in the case of this challenge the objective are set by the rules of it. So if any of you are thinking of starting this challenge I urge you to visit the main challenge page:
http://cghub.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8942 and read carefully and get a clear picture of things.
Aside from the sculpt I chose to make the characters into a game ready characters which itself is another challenge. Either way I still have to make the scupt. The only enemy that I am aware from the start is my pc. I know It will not handle the millions of polys that the sculpt will end up with. So my option is to model things separately and after all are done I’ll decimate and bring them together for the final presentation of the sculpt. The baking of the maps needed for the low poly I’ll bake them in chuncks, but I’ll talk about that when I reach that stage.
Now that I have some of the thing figured out it’s time to get things started. I am aware that I can distribute a limited daily amount of time to this project so I chose to start with the skulls that are repeated in the concept. So best practice everytime when you get to sculpting objects that are from real life is to get reference. So it doesn’t take me long and I find some really great reference images of skulls on deviantart.com . I will create 3 skull variations as they do repeat in the concept art. I will mix them up and move them around and the viewer will hopefully not be aware of the 3 skull repeating so many times.
Reference:
http://t-tiger.deviantart.com/art/Sk...reference&qo=0
http://deiby.deviantart.com/art/39-S...eference&qo=22
http://hoschie-stock.deviantart.com/...eference&qo=97
http://ccthemonkey.deviantart.com/ar...ference&qo=103
http://ccthemonkey.deviantart.com/ar...ference&qo=104
http://ccthemonkey.deviantart.com/ar...ference&qo=103
Now that I have enough reference I can get started with the sculpting. I’ll keep things organized and will create folders for the ztools with relevant naming. So... I know it’s a lot of text in this post but I don’t want this thread to be just like... here I sculpted this and that... finished. I want it to be a development diary where you are aware of what I was thinking and why I started like this and done that and so on. Hope you guys don’t find this too boring and don’t worry images will come. Time to get to some scupting.

[Vastarien]

I really like this approach. Looking forward to seeing how it develops!

[SsSandu_C]

Vastarien - Thank you!



So i finished will the skulls for now. Made a main one and 2 variations from that. The process of creating these is really simple and direct. As you can see in the picture I started from adynameshed sphere. The standard brush, dam standard and the move brush are the only brushes I used. In my opinion the standard brush is a really nice brush to work with when the mesh is at medium res polycount. I didn’t go with a really dense mesh mainly because the skull in the concept area kindve small in comparison to the main characters and and that was enough of a reason not to go wild with details on this. The sculpting techniques... like I said before are really basic. I really like to use the masking options and mask the area which I want extruded and then invert the selection and use the move brush and make the changes I want fast and easy. Personally I think that lots of people have forsaken this fast technique. Another helpfull thing that will always help to practice is to sculpt on lower deatil levels for getting the deifining forms of the sculpt. The best example of this that I have found lately is from a fellow cghub member. Jozulus worked as it can be seen with a low/medium res mesh and got the forms of the character right from the start and I have to say that he did a great job.
http://cghub.com/forum/attachment.ph...2&d=1327246515
This idea was actually pointed out to me in a challange here on cghub. I adopted it in my workflow after trying it out on some projects. I used to go to a high level of detail and start sculpting on that and my thoughts are that if I did this „mistake” then other people outhere are still making it. So if you are one of them then just give it a try.
My next step is to create the bones. From what I see from the concept I have to create a femur, a humerus bone and some ribs. So I’ll do the same as I did with the skull and start with getting some basic reference and start sculpting.

[pabgo]

thx 4 refernce

[sezar1]

almost like a mini blog :P, but cheers to you man. Making a development diary is the right way to go about improving your skills and efficiency. Also hopefully watching your thread will give me a nice reference to inspire/shame/convince me also in creating one for my workflow.

Also i wanted to ask, do u generate your normal/AO etc maps from the decimated pieces or the original piece?