Hugh's 3D Sketchbook

[Hugh Holder]

Hi all,

I just wanted to share a couple of commission builds I made over the last three weeks.

Here is my final sculpt & render of the Stormcloak guard helmet from Skyrim

Rendered all passes with ZBrush, then layered together in Photoshop to produce final shot.

I started by taking screen shots of the model in game then using them to set up my reference images in Photoshop.

Once I had all of the angles I needed I modeled the base mesh in Maya.

I knew that I wanted to produce a Pepakura model that had a texture, but to do that I would need to use the program's UVs (not Maya's) for the object. So I exported the low res model and did all of the unfolding. Once finished, I exported the model with UV data and brought it back into Maya.

Next I had to assign edge crease proxies to ensure that the model would properly sub-divide for detail sculpting (a tedious process that involves selecting sets of edges and manually assigning hold values)

Once I had a semi-hi res model converted I imported it into ZBrush to further divide the poly count.

Bump preview

I had to divide the model a few times to ensure that the texture would be somewhat usable. I ended up with the helmet being just over 3 million polygons. Next I just dropped the model to 2D space and used projection master to capture the color information from the reference I set up earlier in Photoshop. After picking up the object and returning to 3D mode the color information is imbeded into the UV information (the Pepakura texture)

I learned that Pepakura exports it's objects with a different rotation than how it imported them. At least this was the case with Maya. It also flips the UV direction but not the normals, which also causes issues. But after I realized what was wrong it was an easy fix.

The last issue I had was actually getting the texture to properly load into the unfolded 3D model in Pepakura. Even though my model was using the unfold as it's UVs, the texture was being skewed and distorted within the object faces. To fix this I had to export the texture bitmap to destroy the junk UVs - then use the bitmap scale to adjust my exported texture so that it would fit.

My only gripe is that I don't have the HD version of pep so the texture resolution was limited to 1024x1024 pixels.

All in all a pretty successful job I think.

About a week before this I did a sculpt of the Dragon Priest mask as well, only this time I made a Pepakura version as well as a hi-res .STL model for CNC or 3D printing work.

And here is an ongoing list of other models I finished:

Iron Helm - Skyrim

Ebony Helm - Skyrim

Clone Pilot Helm - Star Wars

Let me know if you have any questions, and thanks for reading.

-Hugh

 

[Nintendude]

This is pretty awesome. I got a few models of the Argonian characters from Skyrim that I was able to extract out of the game, have'nt done anything so far with them but except for the helmets the armor is the same. The characters look like lizards with horns I think.

 

[hellbait]

wow. im brand new to all this but the dragon priest mask is amazing! what can i do ta get the pep file from ya!

 

[maxrad99]

as do i, you have amazing work. ive been working on a dragon priest mask of my own http://smok1nn00bs.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=/#/d4ma7hg but looking at yours, i think i would have better luck. and the guard is better then anything ive seen from skyrim so far.

 

[jtm1997]

Awesome job, especially on the dragon priest mask I have one question, it's about zbrush, after sculpting something how do you reduce the polys enough for it to be possible to pep? Do you have to manually do it, or does zbrush have an automatic feature? ( I really only have experience with blender )

 

[Hugh Holder]

Thanks guys!

Awesome job, especially on the dragon priest mask I have one question, it's about zbrush, after sculpting something how do you reduce the polys enough for it to be possible to pep? Do you have to manually do it, or does zbrush have an automatic feature? ( I really only have experience with blender )

Thanks

Well, to give you the short answer to your question, I don't reduce the polys in Zbrush.

After I get the model to where I want it in Maya I export that out and into pep to unfold, then bring the unfolded .obj with UVs (which are in the 2D paper space of pepakura) into Zbrush. The reason I increase the resolution is to get a better texture and render. BUT, you can reduce poly count in a few different ways. Two of the ways that I'm familiar with are either using the Decimator plugin available through Pixologic's website for free, and/or using the re-topology tool under the geometry menu. If you want to use the re-topology tool though, you need to first select a Zsphere to access the geo menu - then re-selecting your hi res part. Kind of a pain, but I haven't tried in 4 or 4R2 so maybe they changed it. It's not my preferred work-flow but knowing how to do it comes in handy. You'll see more traditional artists that go digital using these methods as opposed to us vert pushers.

By the way, if you all want feel free to like my page on facebook. I'm better at posting progress shots of things I'm working on and answering your questions faster than on the forums. I just started it so you'll have to wait until I add new stuff

 

[jtm1997]

Thanks guys!



Thanks

Well, to give you the short answer to your question, I don't reduce the polys in Zbrush.

After I get the model to where I want it in Maya I export that out and into pep to unfold, then bring the unfolded .obj with UVs (which are in the 2D paper space of pepakura) into Zbrush. The reason I increase the resolution is to get a better texture and render. BUT, you can reduce poly count in a few different ways. Two of the ways that I'm familiar with are either using the Decimator plugin available through Pixologic's website for free, and/or using the re-topology tool under the geometry menu. If you want to use the re-topology tool though, you need to first select a Zsphere to access the geo menu - then re-selecting your hi res part. Kind of a pain, but I haven't tried in 4 or 4R2 so maybe they changed it. It's not my preferred work-flow but knowing how to do it comes in handy. You'll see more traditional artists that go digital using these methods as opposed to us vert pushers.

By the way, if you all want feel free to like my page on facebook. I'm better at posting progress shots of things I'm working on and answering your questions faster than on the forums. I just started it so you'll have to wait until I add new stuff

Well that's sort of what i figured, though I haven't used zbrush or maya very much I haven't had very good experiences with decimate modifiers. Thanks for answering my question

 

[Hugh Holder]

No problem, I don't mind answering questions.

I also haven't had any luck with any polycount reduction methods or auto-quad commands for that matter. I hear of scripting gods that have had success writing their own but that seems to be one of the many holy grails of the industry.

 

[jtm1997]

No problem, I don't mind answering questions.

I also haven't had any luck with any polycount reduction methods or auto-quad commands for that matter. I hear of scripting gods that have had success writing their own but that seems to be one of the many holy grails of the industry.

Luckily my school offers a python scripting class and Im going to take it next year, and blender 3d runs off of python

 

[Hugh Holder]

Luckily my school offers a python scripting class and Im going to take it next year, and blender 3d runs off of python

As a good scripting guru you should never have trouble finding a job

 

[jtm1997]

As a good scripting guru you should never have trouble finding a job

That's the hope anyway

 

[rundown]

Loving the helmet and it's topology! Great work.

 

[Hugh Holder]

Loving the helmet and it's topology! Great work.

Thanks Rundown!

I have something new to share, this was for ACDCrockr here on the 405th. For those that don't follow my work on facebook:

I wasn't aware that jtm1997 was working on one of these as well.
Be sure to check out his pep thread for some awesome work.

Everything except the last image was created Sunday.

Blocked out the 3D shape - several patches were used in different areas.

At this point I fused the separate surfaces together and began refining the geometry.

Assigning smooth edge proxies

Projected a temporary texture from the photo reference provided - used as a guide to model in additional details that weren't visible from orthographic angles. (back, top, bottom)

Finished model for pepakura. I had to keep the details low enough to remain build-able.

Separated the model to be a more modular pep build. More work but results in stronger, more symmetrical peps.

Projected textures in Zbrush for a quick screen cap. I decided to ditch the projection and paint my own.

Final Zbrush render

 

[rundown]

loving the pony pinup haha Nice and clean!
I'm guessing pony asked for that? =3

 

[Hugh Holder]

loving the pony pinup haha Nice and clean!

Thanks again! Too bad the texture doesn't stay that way for pepakura. I should probably look at going with the HD version, but I don't see it making that much of a difference since it's going to get covered anyways.

I finally got the texture imported into pep from zbrush. Had another troubleshooting session. When I tried to create the texture from polypaint some areas were blackened. When I looked online other people that had this problem said that the UVs were ruined and had to be re-done. This would have meant that my pep-work and texturing in Zbrush would have been wasted so that wasn't really an option. After some messing around in the program I figured out that it was a stored mask, again. That seems to be the bane of all things that slow me down in zbrush - But at least it got done. Turning the final into the customer now

By the way, no he didn't ask for the pony but I knew that he'd appreciate it lol
I thought it would be cool to do something custom for people that ask for commissions just to make it a little more worthwhile for them.


UPDATED THE DRAGON PRIEST MASK

 

[Hugh Holder]

WELL, it's fun to build

 

[Hugh Holder]

Did this one yesterday
Took me a little over an hour to build from scratch and texture.

I'm thinking about modeling the bracers, shins, chest, sword, and shield for this one - with textures. What do you guys think? It might be fun to quickly print off, glue onto 6mm foam, and seal for a quick party costume lol

Also, I haven't bought The Old Republic yet but was kind of wanting to make something from it. Does anyone know of anything that people are really wanting from that game?

 

[Hugh Holder]

At someone's request

 

[maxrad99]

love the Ebony helmet. how would i go about getting these files from you like the dragon priest mask and perhaps the ebony helmet.

 

[rundown]

Neat textures on the iron helmet, All I had back then were the trailers to rip it off, omg mine looks terrible >.<
I'm so doing deadric next, What's your next model?
Just asking, since I don't want to compeat in anything.