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Monkey King concept sculpt


Hammers
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As an exercise in slowly coming to grips with sculpting in 3d-coat, I thought a concept sculpt based on Jesper Ejsing's beautiful painting 'The Monkey King by Moonlight' would be a fun project. The painting is featured in the magazine ImagineFX Fantasy Icons 2012, p47. 

 

And you can see it here too

 

Well things are progressing a bit for me and I'm at the stage of probably getting to the limits of voxel work on the body, before going mostly to surface mode I think. This is all new and I'm still trying to understand good workflow, especially switching between V and S, and what the two modes are best at.

 

I definitely feel like getting tight creases (e.g. between lips) is a bit tricky, so any suggestions welcome.

 

I'm also wondering whether maybe going to Blender for the hard-surface stuff (armour etc.) might be on the cards for this sculpt, and I'll tackle learning that in 3d-coat in another project.

 

I'll probably do fine details in the normal painting, and try some texture painting too I'd say, before going to Blender Cycles for hair, fire and rendering. Probably not looking at retopo on this guy as he'll just be a still image I guess. Or?… If I want to do turntable renders, would I be better off doing a quick and dirty retopo to save render times?….

 

Anyway this is WIP and I am learning, so any thoughts, crits and suggestions are encouraged.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

 140219149122.jpg

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Your wip is looking great.

 

One thing I noticed is that you have about 11,500,000 appox polygons in surface mode for the body. I think I read it right as the numbers were cut off somewhat. The amount of detail you have in the body so far does not required that amount polygons. It is best to keep your blocking in stage to a lower polygon or voxel count so you have lots of polygons or voxels to add the detail where you really need it. The first image I uploaded is a wip on blocking in the body. It is only appox 1,300,000 polygons in surface mode. The fingers are less detailed but the head is more, so it is a good comparison. The second image is the blocking in of the other parts. The entire scene is appox 6,500,000 polygons in surface mode. I need to return one day and finish this guy... LOL.

 

Lips areas as you talked about are best produced using a combination of crease clay and pinch brushes. Which to use or both depends upon what area you are working on.

Hard surface can be done in 3DC as seen by images in the gallery or at the main 3DC web site. but if you are use to using Blender then whatever works... My wip so far is not a good example yet of hardsurface sculpting. It was not shown for that purpose.

 

Edit: I added one more... The wip creature is appox 1,800,000 in surface mode.

post-518-0-24650700-1402203862_thumb.png

post-518-0-25492300-1402203871_thumb.jpg

post-518-0-95082900-1402204503_thumb.png

Edited by digman
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Thanks for the feedback and ideas digman. I agree the poly count is a bit crazy. I did work on the head separately for a while and found I had to bump up the body resolution when I merged the head with the body. So I'm certainly hoping that's about as high as it goes now that I've started in surface mode a bit...

 

Good to get an idea of what to aim for anyway. I like your sculpts too esp. the armoured guy.

 

Yeah 3d-coat can do some amazing stuff with hard edge objects, and they seem to get a more 'real' look than some poly modelling, but it does seem like a very different approach than I'm used to so will save that for another day ;). Hope to post more tomorrow. Cheers.

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Feels like I'm getting bogged down and lost a bit of direction. Sculpting some fine detail on face hands and feet particularly, but probably doesn't stand up to close inspection. Still I'm very gradually coming to terms with *some* of the tools. And then there's all the Artman presets. Whew! I feel like I need weeks on this full time just to get a handle on what's possible and how.

 

But I think I'll move on now to armour. It won't be perfect but still been a good learning experience, and I just want to get into doing his paintjob and hair etc. Better I do more sculpts than work on this for too much longer  :blink:

 

post-37883-0-41227500-1402649385_thumb.ppost-37883-0-34062900-1402649646_thumb.p

Edited by Hammers
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And a few more hours work, dipping my toe into hard surfaces for the first time. Tried the Voxel layer tool for the vambrace straps - nice. Now just his loincloth to go, before starting on retopo(?) and painting. Yay!

 

 

post-37883-0-97530400-1402758798_thumb.p

Edited by Hammers
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Thanks Tony, I wasn't sure with a project like this whether to do a T-pose and then rig/pose it, or to just treat it like a clay sculpture - 'it is what it is'… :) There's certainly some ugly spots where parts of his body are merged together that I would have happily avoided.

 

Given that the project is up in the 16M triangle range, I suppose I need to at least do a perfunctory retopo job to make painting and rendering more practical.

 

Is that the most sensible approach going forward do you think? Every step is a new learning curve for me, though I've dabbled in retopo — it was the initial reason I bought 3dc.

 

Cheers!

Edited by Hammers
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You can retopo with painting in mind. You can easily keep colors separated if they are on their own UV islands. I've done doors where the wood grain would butt into a cross grain by giving each plank it's own UV island. I suppose that's just common sense but sometimes 'common sense' doesn't think strategically.

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@Tony Yes that's a great way to think of it for UVs, that actually helps me approach things.

 

@Methelina I hadn't made the connection with Hanuman. I think the artist who did the painting was basing it more on the Chinese Monkey King myth (as in 'Monkey Magic', Tripitaka etc.), But this guy certainly has some visual links to Hanuman, especially once his tail is on fire  :huh:

 

Tearing my hair out trying to do nice flat strips of fabric curved into loops in 3dcoat, so I'm going to do those in Blender and bring them in. In the end I've only done a couple of base mesh bits and the staff/knob in Blender so far…so yeah learnt heaps. Wanna paint now. And make hair. And Fire….mmmm fire…. ^_^

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Let the painting (finally) begin!

 

Here he is after many hours of retopo and uv work, with normal, ao and basic shader baking as a starting point. Not going to show wireframes as the topology is nothing to be proud of :) He's still high res too. With all the accessories he's down from 18M to 240K, but I'd always planned for that kind of thing. Not that you can see much detail in this render.

 

Wish me luck!

 

post-37883-0-17472900-1403534310_thumb.p

Edited by Hammers
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OK, time for an update. I had some strange challenges transferring UVs to Blender, especially using two UV maps on his body mesh, for his body and head. But found a solution that works, and have started working on cycles shaders and hair/fur. No proper eyes yet and much still to be done, but here he is for now :)

 

post-37883-0-76096500-1404190518_thumb.p

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Thanks for the comments guys :)

 

Had to break for other commitments, but here's another WIP with more armour, refined hair, eyeballs and whatnot.  Once I unravel the mysteries of Cycles flames, I'll set his tail on fire, do a bit more grooming, and work on lighting and setting for the final.

 

Haven't had a lot of success with SSS in cycles yet. Anyone messed around with it much? Complicated by the 2 UV sets on his body I think - same with the spec map.

 

Anyway, such fun :D

 

post-37883-0-73238900-1406168417_thumb.p

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Sorry for the previous image. I rendered a png with transparent background, which translated to white when I uploaded. I can't figure out how to edit the previous post so here's my next render which is easier on the eye.

 

Now with flame! updated eyes and a bit more grooming. Really going to stop showing now till I get to a final image contender :)

 

post-37883-0-47584000-1406296961_thumb.j

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Ok here he is. As always there's things that could be better, but I'm pretty happy overall. And he's been a great learning exercise. Did more in 3d coat than I had initially anticipated: all the modelling except for a couple of armour base meshes, the straps on his waistband, the final rock and his pearl necklace.

 

Still would have liked more definition between his lips, and had some trouble balancing visibility and mood in the key light, but it's all early days in my 3d coat and Blender cycles education. I did manage to slip in a bit of rudimentary cycles SSS in the end too, though not enough to get backscattering through his ears.

 

Hope you like! And please feel free to make crits, comments and suggestions. Not sure if I'll change much, but I do want to hear your thoughts. And thanks again for all the guidance and encouragement from forum members so far. :)

 

The Monkey King by Moonlight

Monkey King closeup

Edited by Hammers
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Thanks Carlos!

 

I'm not sure by your picture…do you think the sky/sky light should be more towards mauve/purple? I should do a composite friendly render so I can experiment more easily with lighting colours I think.

 

Cheers :)

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should be more towards mauve/purple, yes

 

and less saturated

 

it's very difficult to get both the subject and background in focus :)

 

give the character at atmosphere... use the background environment... it can tell a history about to the viewers and evoke feelings

 

my humble opinion :blush:

 

its a great job !

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