Resin Helmet: Part One

I needed some practice splitting a sculpt into several pieces, so that I can make sure I mould my Current Big Sculpt properly (The Mother in the post below)… so I decided to make a helmet!

I’ve included a shot of the ZBrush concept, which I’ve then built on a plaster cast of my own noggin. This cast was wrapped in cling film and then duct tape to protect any clay (as the plaster cast is getting old and flaky, and I’m fed up of picking bits out of the clay when I reuse it!). I then started building the helmet in Monster Clay medium, getting the basic shape down.

After that, I cut off the face plate, which I’ve refined and is now almost ready for moulding. I’ll mould it in silicone with an two-part Easyflo 120 resin mother mould, then cast it in the same resin.

The face plate will then be stuck to the front of the rear piece of the helmet, which will be sculpted, then the face plate removed so that the rear piece can be mould and cast too.

I’m planning on hohlding the two final cast pieces together with rare earth magnets, and it *may* have some lights. The two areas on the side of the head (on the rear piece) that are inset, I’ll cut out and place a dense wire mesh into. I’m *planning* on painting it as worn/ battle damaged, but it shouldn’t take too much work with some fine grit sandpaper to make it much smoother if I change my mind and want a more polished look.

Cheers,
Jim

ZBrush Sculpt: Super-Secret Project

For an upcoming something…

??? … Click to enbiggen…

This will be one of my next physical sculpts in Monster Clay… but the reason shall remain a mystery, perhaps for some time…

Reptoid Sculpt

Part of a series of Zbrush concept sculpts that I might turn into a silicone mask.

The upload quality of the turntable video is pretty awful. It was recorded at 720P and the file on my PC is absolutely fine. Something I need to look at in more detail for the future, I think.

Fishy Sculpt: ZBrush Turntable

This might be a long-term project to sculpt and mould into a silicone mask. I guess that the accessories would be made in resin, perhaps with a sintered mental finish that I can polish up. I’ve got another project to finish first, however, and I want to pull more of my focus back to writing.

So, I might never actually make it… but as a mask, I think it would be awesome!

Attack Ship

It’s been a long while since I posted to my blog… Busy world, lots of distractions and a lot of home improvement.

I bought Substance Painter a few months ago, and have been blown away by the ease of texturing a model. With so many filters, so much control and a great ability to customise, paint and make a model worn/ dirty, it’s an exceptional piece of software.

The model was sculpted in ZBrush, then retopologised and UV mapped in Maya.

Original ZBrush Sculpt

To allow for high resolution textures, there are nine different texture sets/ UV groups, each with their own materials assigned, set up as different objects. The component objects are then unified into a single object that now has multiple texture sets, and it’s exported as an .obj file; importing this into Substance Painter then allows for the different texture sets to be worked on. I’ve included a UV snapshot of three of these texture sets below for reference and, whilst one of them doesn’t fill up the space as efficiently as it might do, it did the job.

The modelling took far more time than the texturing. Completing the ZBrush sculpt was pretty rapid, and I was happy with the overall design. This was created via Dynamesh and then reduced from 5m polygons to 36k using Decimation Master. The model was then made live in Maya, curves drawn across the surface which were then smoothed to make the flow of the individual piece of the model in the next step more regular.

The retopology was then completed at a low resolution; only around 25k polygons for the whole ship. The borders of the model’s pieces were checked with smooth preview, before the next step in Maya.

Substance Painter doesn’t have an option for smooth preview, so to prevent any blockiness the objects need to be at a higher resolution. So the pieces were subdivided, and unwanted edges were deleted. The final object is around 100k polygons which, when imported into Substance Painter, made my machine run like a dog.

However, because I’d UV mapped in groups and created several texture sets, the various pieces can be viewed and worked on in isolation in Substance Painter, speeding things up considerably. It’s also worth pointing out that by cycling through the material options with the ‘m’ shortcut key, you can effectively turn lighting and shadows off, allowing the whole object to be visible with very little slow down.

I was going to take everything back into Maya to render… but the in-built renderer in Substance Painter does a very nice job using HDRI maps for lighting. Since this is just a static image, just some beauty shots of the model and no scenery or posing, I’m just going to leave it as it is.

Trainers!

Sculpted, retopologised and then textured in ZBrush.

Head Bust

Exploration Buggy: Test Comp

Much to do still: model the rear and inside, and add texturing… but couldn’t resist posting!

Armored Scout Buggy: Teaser

A quick update of the model. The exterior has been completely retopologised (thanks to the use of Maya’s Quad Draw function and lots of curves to help smooth out the edges and various interior pieces of the body panels). The front wheels now have brake pads and suspension modeled too. The textures are purely placeholders… lots of exciting stuff still to come: interior modelling, full texturing, the weaponry and maybe some exterior armor plating.

Another Alien WIP!

Sculpted, retopologised and textured in ZBrush 4.5.