deviantART: gallery:chemb0t/24451

My workspace - 2012

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 17:47:34 PDT

In case anyone's curious, here's what my bedroom/workspace currently looks like. Just finished a couple renovations/upgrades so it's feeling pretty fresh. =]

Details

For notes and details on my setup, check out this link: [link]

Some pics have notes on them: [link]

Space was limited in my room, so I decided long ago to remove my bed and build a lofted setup.

I do a lot of tinkering so I built in a U shaped desk that extends more or less around the full perimeter of my room with lots of space to work on things. My desktop setup lies directly underneath my bed and on the opposite side I have a soldering/electronics station.

I recently underwent a few hardware upgrades for my desktop which include a liquid cooled 6 core, 64 gb RAM custom machine and 3x 27” Achieva Shimian Korean IPS displays. These are mounted to the wall with monitor arms and can be pulled closer to the edge of the table if needed. The setup works really well for my 3d modeling and coding work.

They are also backlit by a RGB LED strip powered by an Arduino R3 and Python based client on the desktop which changes color according to the color on the screens. I find that it helps a lot with eye strain and adds a great ambiance to the room.

Hope you enjoy. Let me know if you have any questions as well. =]

Laser Etching - The great wave

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 17:20:03 PDT

Here's a recent weekend project I did; Laser etching on glass. This was done using an Epilog Helix laser etching/cutting machine. The design was a simple jpg import of 'The Great Wave off Kanagawa' The glass was mounted on a rotary assembly that turned the piece while it etched out the design. The whole process turned out to be a lot easier than I thought, although I'm certain tweaking could have been done to make the design pop more.

In any case, level up, skill learned! Expect more things like this from me. Now to practice more.. Anyone have any suggestions or want something etched/cut? I'm thinking this is something I can potentially offer as a commission service. =]

Beneath it all

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 13:35:25 PDT

"You can have all the armor and weapons you want, but beneath all that, you gotta have will, you gotta have compassion, you got to have soul.. Otherwise you're no better than the chunks of metal clinging to you."

Here's another portrait exploration, this time of my TG character Blitz. He's normally depicted with grafted metal arms and goggles, but story-wise, I think it would be unrealistic to have those on all the time, especially considering that he's supposed to have a 'day job'. Instead he wears artificial limbs that match his natural fur and skin color, usually with a long sleeved shirt to cover it up further.

Blitz on a conceptual level is meant to explore the divide between natural ability versus artificial ability. Due to a mishap in his past, he lost both his arms as well as most of his sight and hearing. However thanks to the Guild's help, he was rehabilitated and outfitted with artificial implants that allow him to do things which far exceed what he was once able to do.

But is that necessary? Do these things make one complete again? Does one embrace the enhancement, allowing the technology to define what they are now, or does one simply treat it as a replacement of something that was once lost?

Process

This piece actually started as an updated model I sculpted in zbrush then rendered out using a gpu based unbiased render engine. The resulting image was then cleaned up in photoshop cs6 and painted over using various 'engine' brushes that came new with the software. As you can tell, I kinda went a bit crazy with the fur, but it was an interesting exercise to find a good way to depict 'fuzziness' while still preserving a good amount of musculature.

The lighting setup was more elaborate this time around. I rendered out the image with a specific photographic technique known as 'ring lighting'. Instead of singular points of light, I used a circular source, which produces a more even illumination around the subject's face.

Results

The piece overall took about 5 hours total to finish. I found painting fur to be a painstaking process but it was a great way to get more familiar with different brushes and textures.

Anyway, enjoy! I'll put together a brief visual walkthrough of what I did here soon. =]

Online 3d Viewers!

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 00:56:17 PDT

While recently looking for digital anatomy references, I stumbled across a couple of awesome webapps that I think will be a great tool for those wishing to better showcase their digital sculpts and 3d models:

p3d.in and Verold

These are sites that allow you to upload objs of your work, along with texture maps and display them on their site or through embed-able widgets for people to view in full 3d from any modern browser! Think Youtube, but instead of video, it's full 3d that you can turn, tumble and zoom into like you would with a real 3d viewport.

I think it's an excellent way for viewers and clients to get a better sense of your model work. Rather than show them a bunch of static renders, they can inspect the model from all angles.

Service features

Verold - Limited to 3 projects/models per account at the moment. Shader support and render engine is much more advanced than p3d.in but I've noticed that it runs much choppier as a tradeoff. You will need a good video card and up to date drivers to see it properly

Here's my Soybean bust in the Verold system: [link]

P3d.in - Limited to 50mb total uploads, but they also offer a plus account that boosts that amount to 2.5gb. Performance is much smoother than Verold at the moment but texture shading and lighting is limited.

Here's Soybean in p3d.in: [link]

I'm currently leaning more toward p3d.in since you can upload a lot more, but Verold can serve as a place to put models which need better shader support. I plan to upload more of these moving forward, so stay tuned! In the meantime, I highly recommend trying out a couple uploads yourself!

Possible applications

Along with better accessibility to one's own models, I think these kinds of systems can work wonderfully as anatomy reference. A lot of people use 2d reference, but they say that a real life model (or in lieu of that, a 3d model) would work better, since you have the ability to navigate around the subject and get a better sense of proportion, volume and placement of things like muscles and bones. The main hinderance is that -assuming that you have chosen to look at a 3d model- you would have to download a 3d package and model, install it, and then learn how to use it to make use of it as a reference. There is a fairly large amount of setup time and learning curve to tackle.

However, such is not the case for p3d.in or Verold. Since the webapps are so easily accessible and really easy to use navigation-wise, why not put up 3d anatomy reference there? People would simply have to pop the url in their browser of choice, and within seconds, they would have a fully detailed 3d model to use!

Heres a brief test of that: [link]

Let me know what you think! If people are interested, I can make more specific references and upload them for people to use.

Stargazing

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 00:35:00 PDT

This is Griffith Observatory. Below you can see Hollywood and the LA skyline. Above you can see the night sky... Either way you choose to look, you are still 'stargazing'."

Griffith Observatory, LA

The Grid

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 00:26:02 PDT

"The Grid. A digital frontier. I tried to picture clusters of information as they moved through the computer. What did they look like? Ships? motorcycles? Were the circuits like freeways? I kept dreaming of a world I thought I'd never see. And then, one day... " -Kevin Flynn

Griffith Observatory, LA

Domes

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 00:22:25 PDT

"Did I ever mention that I love domed structures? There's just something so majestic and otherworldly about them. They look solid... complete... Secure... as if you can take one and fly it into space with no trouble at all."

Griffith Observatory, LA

Sonic Boom 2012 Costume Contest

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 13:50:28 PDT

Here's my share of the Sonic Boom experience.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>YOUTUBE LINK HERE<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

For those of you unfamiliar, Sonic Boom is a newly organized concert/mini convention event to celebrate the Sonic the Hedgehog series. This year it was held concurrently with San Diego Comic Con at the House of Blues, which is a short distance away from the main convention center. They had special guests from Sega and Sonic Team; Crush 40 and CashCash performed live and there was a Q&A and trivia contest with Steve Lycett (SUMO Digital) and Takashi Izuka (Sonic Team).

Finally, in the spirit of Comic con, there was a costume contest! There was a lot of creative work up on stage, and the crowd, as well as the special guests looked and sounded genuinely impressed. Congrats to everyone who participated, especially to sporting the Mecha Sonic suit!

For more info on the event, check out this entry as well; [link]

Anyway, It was quite unplanned to capture this while I was there, so a lot of the footage came out shaky/blurry/grainy. However it proved to be a great test case for post-processing! I mean, the conditions were perfect (and by perfect, I mean the worst you can get); high fstop, no tripod, high iso, changing lighting conditions, etc.

I used the new Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 warp stabilizer to smooth out the jitters and fix rolling shutter distortion. To remove grain, I used the Neat Video plugin, which I was happy to discover was still compatible with CS6, and finally I did some quick color correction to boost the shadows and balance out the yellows. It took quite a while to encode but I think the results were worth the trouble.

It looks a bit wonky at full 1080p resolution, so I would recommend viewing at 720p for the best experience. Enjoy! =]

Also for some stills and additional shots:
[link]

Music ©SEGA and Sonic Team

A modern alchemist

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 13:57:27 PDT

It's been a while since I've done a full-on digital painting, but I somehow inadvertently found my way into it again. =]

This one I'm rather happy with. It's a relatively simple portrait, but it is the result of much hours of experimentation. I'll share the details on that in a later piece, but for now I'm curious what everyone's initial impressions of it may be.

About Dack and GEM

Dack is a member of the Guild's development division, specializing in energy manipulation, sensors and data management. Cerebral, analytical, yet always cheery and optimistic, Dack is always ready to tackle the next assignment. Whether it be an encyclopedic answer to a simple question, or a calculation of the odds of escape, Dack executes his tasks with such proficiency and enthusiasm, it almost seems robotic.. Indeed it's a bit strange to those around him. With his robot GEM quietly following him everywhere he goes, it's sometimes hard to tell if it's the fox driving the droid, or the droid driving the fox.. The fact that he is extremely courteous and level headed -even in times where one should rightfully be enraged- somehow adds to the mystique surrounding the two. On the other hand, Dack seems to be an avid tea connoisseur, and can regularly be seen out in the gardens, reading books on poetry and philosophy or meditating... or perhaps that's just his way of quietly analyzing the chemical content of the air or the trajectory of the stars.. One thing is for certain though, if you are in a tough spot, at the end of your wits, or just bursting with questions, Dack can prove to be a good friend, and a powerful ally.

The character has come to be a kind of mascot for my work over the years. . Though one thing people don't usually realize is that the fox isn't my main 'persona'. It's actually the droid that follows him around all the time. It started out as a clever decoy idea, but I've come to realize that it's also kindof a reflection of the way I work. I do a lot of things behind the scenes, things that are challenging and fulfilling, and essential to those I serve, but are often taken for granted, simply because people don't understand what it is I do.. I realized that it is in essence the same kind of regard one would give to a wizard, mage or alchemist and their work. There's a certain kind of 'magic' being done to keep the gears turning, and I feel glad to somehow be a part of that. =]

Oh, and about the background diagram. That is what is called a 'Smith Chart'. It's used by electrical engineers to determine values for transmission lines and radio frequency related circuits. I thought it resembled a kind of Alchemical/magical circle (and indeed that's kindof how we regarded it in my engineering courses) so I thought it would fit well with the 'modern alchemist' theme. ;D

Render to ink workflow test - Dack

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 02:03:19 PDT

Here's a quick workflow experiment to get more familiar with several tools currently at my disposal;

Daz Studio and Zbrush - I modeled and sculpted a reference of Dack in Zbrush and then brought it into Daz Studio to pose and render. The idea is that if I was to make a full fledged comic or manga, this reference would allow me to draw out panels and keep a high level of consistency with the character, no matter what angle I would 'draw' him from. To get to the stage on the right, I took a render out of Daz Studio, desaturated and boosted the contrast, then roughly traced a sketch over it with the proper details. From there I took it into sai and inked the sketch.

Sai Painter - Practiced with the ink and stroke stabilizer to 'ink' my render. I then took advantage of the paper textures to give it a screen-tone look.

Samsung 7 Series Slate - All of this was done on my new slate pc. You can think of it as a wider, slightly thicker ipad, but runs windows 7 and has a pressure sensitive Wacom digitizer. Very light and responsive, even with the serious programs like Maya, zbrush and Photoshop. I made use of a custom touch screen buttons in lieu of a physical keyboard; [link] . It took some getting used to but it makes the tablet/slate experience quite enjoyable. =]

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Results

I found it to be a fun and very rapid process to do once I had the model at my disposal. The sketch and ink process took a little less than 30 minutes to complete, and I could definitely see myself working this way to block in comic panels or start full paintings from. Although I didn't use it much in this example, lighting in the rendered image would work as great reference as well if I wished to make a more detailed illustration.

Possible Uses

Ultimately I think the usefulness of this approach depends on the kind of detail and depth needed for a given character. Because of the extended setup time (modeling, sculpting, rendering etc.) it probably makes sense to use methods like this only if you plan to do more than one picture of the subject, and if the subject in question has a fairly finalized design.

So if it's a single illustration with a character that you don't really need all angles of, it may be better to do it the traditional way and draw from scratch. However if you are doing a series of images with many different angles of the character, say for comics or profile shots, this may be something to try out. It may also be useful as a general drawing reference. You could render out specific poses, expressions or angles and see if you can match it on your own.

Anyway, I hope you find this useful. Feel free to ask questions. =]

Sharkspotting

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 13:38:53 PDT

"...and remember to breathe."

A practice skin diving session before sundown. We were preparing to swim with Butanding the next morning. For those of you who are unfamiliar, 'Buntanding' is the term the locals use to refer to whale sharks; Bus-sized gentle giants in the waters. Literally the biggest fish in the world. They are filter feeders, so we weren't in any danger, but it was nonetheless a breathtaking experience. =]

Donsol, Philippines

Mind the gap

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 13:20:42 PDT

"Thank you for flying with us today. Please remember to check your seats for your belongings... and resist the temptation to linger on the tarmac. Thank you."

Exiting the plane upon landing at Legaspi Airport. Mt. Mayon greets us as we exit the plane. Possibly one of the simplest and breathtaking airports I've ever been to. They only had one baggage carousel, and it was outdoors.

Legaspi City, Philippines

The Dome Follows

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 13:13:23 PDT

"The dome will follow you in all your endeavors."

The iconic dome of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT), taken during my cousin's graduation. The subject of much inspiration, whether it be ambitious pranks (it was once dressed up to look like R2d2), or skyward scholarly and scientific pursuits, it is a great symbol of the ambition and connectivity of such a institution.

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Spiral

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 13:05:49 PDT

"We happened upon an interesting weathered artifact in the heart of the city. It seemed like a quiet, desolate island amidst the chaos."

San Francisco, CA

Ashworth Profile Pic

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 01:07:55 PDT

A proper profile shot of *ElsonWong's Cursed Wombat protagonist Ashworth. This was done as a proof of concept to test the versatility of the custom Daz shape model I made along with this piece: [link]

More info on the model itself here:

Model sculpted in Zbrush, posing and expressions done in Daz Studio, lighting and rendering was done using Daz Studio's native 3delight rendering engine. Touch up work was done in Photoshop.

As I mentioned before, although it is capable of producing fairly decent renders, the intent for these kinds of pieces is more as a visual reference and mock-up tool more than a finished piece. The artist could conceivably take this piece and continue to paint fine detail into it like proper fur, hair, and background elements. Alternatively it could also simply be used as drawing reference for a proper sketched, inked and colored piece. Lots of ways of bringing this to the next level. =]

The main thing to take away is that the geometry and rendering capabilities are simplified so that they can be rapidly posed and lit without much of the pre-planning and forethought involved in setting up full blown 3d renders. I simply had to load Ashworth in, pose him, light the scene, set the camera angle and then 'render' a snapshot.

Ashworth © *ElsonWong

Additional Shots and info:

Blaze In The Snow Redux

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 01:04:53 PDT

Here's a 3d homage to *ElsonWong's Ashworth character piece "Blaze in the Snow". It was done as a proof of concept to test the versatility of the custom Daz shape model I made. More info on that here: [link]

The lighting and rendering was done using Daz Studio's native 3delight rendering engine, which is a Pixar Renderman compliant system. (Not bad for a default engine, I must say. =]). Touch up work was done in Photoshop.

As I mentioned before, although it is capable of producing fairly decent renders, the intent for these kinds of pieces is more as a visual reference and mock-up tool more than a finished piece. The artist could conceivably take this piece and continue to paint fine detail into it like proper fur, hair, and background elements. Alternatively it could also simply be used as drawing reference for a proper sketched, inked and colored piece. Lots of ways of bringing this to the next level. =]

The main thing to take away is that the geometry and rendering capabilities are simplified so that they can be rapidly posed and lit without much of the pre-planning and forethought involved in setting up full blown 3d renders. I simply had to load Ashworth in, pose him, light the scene, set the camera angle and then 'render' a snapshot.

Ashworth © *ElsonWong

Additional shots/Examples:

Night Lights

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 01:04:25 PDT

"The city feels so green, even at night. I wouldn't mind living here again. "

Long exposure and digital tilt shift experiment in PS CS6.

Vancouver, B.C.

Ash Demo Strip

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 01:02:53 PDT

So, those of you who have been following *ElsonWong recently may have run across a panel of this on his new comic site CursedWombat.com Well, here's the rest of it.

It's actually a brief 'demo' of sorts to demonstrate what could be done with the Daz Studio custom Ashworth model I made for him. I presented it on his birthday but the idea has been in the works way before that.

Process

The comic pretty much explains itself. Elson was interested in learning about Zbrush, so one day we did a skype session and I demoed the software to him, creating a sculpt in Zbrush which led to this:

At the time, I was also experimenting in Daz Studio with the Dack and Gem model you see in the comic (more on them in a later post. Just note that clothes on the fox are really reference placeholders made from stock items), so I decided to include Ash in the experiment.

Both of them were created in the same manner. I started with a full body sculpt in Zbrush, polypainted it and then projected the sculpt onto the 'Genesis' stock model in Daz Studio 4 as a 'shape' or 'morph target'. This was made possible through the projection and morph target tools in Zbrush as well as the asset transfer plugin in Daz studio.

Usage

At first it seemed like a strange way to go about things, since the geometry in Daz is comparably less detailed in terms of resolution, but the tradeoff seemed to be worth it. Through this technique, I was able to quickly take a static model and give it a fully skinned and tested rig along with every morph, shape and pose Daz Studio was capable of. The model could wear any clothing Daz Studio offered, pose any pose, take on any shape or morph, as well as do any expression etc. It seemed like a promising rapid prototyping tool to use, especially for us modelers who know how much time and effort would go into setting up a proper body and facial rig.

Case and point? The time I took to make Ashworth from start to finish was roughly one weekend. Not bad for a fully shaded, clothed, rigged, poseable, morphable, animatable model, no? =] Granted of course, it's limited by Daz Studio's simplified geometry and rendering systems, but if it is intended just as a drawing or painting reference (which it is, and that's important to note) rather than for full blown renders, this approach is quite nice. The artist can easily load in the model, pose the character for reference and render out exactly what they need. In fact the artist doesn't even need to render. They can just navigate around the model in 3d space like one would for a real figure or model.

My hope for this particular model is for it to serve Elson as a pose and volumetric reference to be used in his comic panels. Whenever there are odd angles, complicated poses, gestures etc. He can pull up this model and work with it for better accuracy. =]

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this little insight into the experiment. I will be producing more works with this technique in mind, so there is definitely more to be revealed.

Ashworth © *ElsonWong

Additional shots/Examples:

Ashworth turntable

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 00:59:49 PDT

Here is the original sculpt that spawned a part of my Zbrush-Daz model experiment. More info on that here: [link]

The model was done mainly using dynamesh, subtools were made from extruded masks and rendering was done straight from Zbrush, single pass bpr. Download for full resolution. Enjoy! =]

Ashworth © *ElsonWong

Additional shots/Examples:

Dack Maquette Walkthrough

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 01:25:02 PDT

Here's a brief walkthrough of my Dack sculpt. Hope you find it helpful. =]

The Palace at Sunset 2

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 13:21:25 PDT

Light Terminology:

Sun rays or 'god light', also technically referred to as 'crepuscular rays', are parallel columns of sunlit air separated by darker shadowed regions, usually streaming through gaps in clouds and large objects. The rays appear to diverge because of perspective effects, like the parallel furrows of freshly ploughed fields or a road wide at your feet yet apparently narrowing with distance. Airborne dust, inorganic salts, organic aerosols, small water droplets and the air molecules themselves scatter the sunlight and make the rays visible.

The Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco

The Palace at Sunset

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 13:18:17 PDT

"Hmm, needs more 'god light'"

A rare sight in a usually a very touristy location. People seem to miss out on it in the early evenings. In any case, it's an excellent example of real-life volumetric lighting.

Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco

Dack Sculpt 1

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 13:49:13 PDT

Here's another long coming project of mine; a full body maquette of my character Dack. I had wanted to do something like this for the longest time, and I finally got the chance to do so in one of my sculpting workshops.

Just like my Delrin sculpt, I took sketches and drawings of the character and used them as sculpt reference. The piece is roughly 11 inches tall with an aluminum wire and foil armature. I used a combination of Super Sculpey and Sculpey Firm to make the piece. The Sculpey Firm was used to add extra detail like his hair, tufts, coat extensions, and gadgets. Super Sculpey was used as the base for the rest of the piece.

Overall it was great practice for detailing and finishing of my traditional sculpts. It also doubles as an excellent reference/development tool for future works involving the character. It's very useful to see such a thing from all angles, wouldn't you agree? =]

I'll upload a walkthrough of what I did soon, but in the meantime, enjoy these extra shots:

Dack Sculpt 3

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 13:55:03 PDT

Additional shots of my Dack maquette. More info on this piece here: [link]

Dack Sculpt 2

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 13:53:10 PDT

Additional shots of my Dack maquette. More info on this piece here: [link]

Along with the sculpt, I also had a good chance to practice lighting and photography techniques. This set uses a black, backlit background. There's a colored LED based light on the left and a diffused strobe on the right. =]

Moonlit Skies

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 03:08:56 PDT

"The night walked down the sky with the moon in her hand."
-Fredrick Lawrence Knowles

Another long exposure shot. I like how the sky came out. It almost looks like dawn but it's actually taken in the dead of night.

Vancouver, B.C.

Figurative Sculpt - Standing Male - front

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 13:06:53 PDT

Front shot of [link]

Additional Shots:

Figurative Sculpt - Standing Male - back

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 13:04:07 PDT

Back shot of [link]

Additional shots:

Figurative Sculpt - Standing Male

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 13:00:08 PDT

Here's another figurative sculpt I did a while back using Chavant NSP medium, which as the name suggests, is a softer version of the NSP hard that I used on my previous sculpts. It was a little difficult to work with this one because the clay had a certain stickiness to it that made smoothing a challenge.

In any case, it was a nice way to practice further, both in terms of anatomy and sculpting technique. It's not as refined as I would like it to be be since I didn't have much time to dedicate toward it, but I'm slowly coming to the realization that I don't need to complete every piece, especially since we start on new ones so often in our studio. Some of my colleagues seem to just sculpt as far as they can go, take good pictures and then reuse the clay for new sculpts.. Which actually makes sense. If they kept each one, they would run out of places to keep them.

Additional Shots:

Soybean Bust - Front

Sat, 09 Jun 2012 17:40:35 PDT

Here's a quick study I did in zbrush a while back to become acquainted with its new features;

Dynamesh

Can you believe that this entire bust started out from a simple sphere? That's what dynamesh does. It dynamically adjusts your topology/polygon count to the shape of the model as you are sculpting. Before you would have to plan ahead and create a base geometry to sculpt onto. For example simple cylinders/tubes for the antennae would have to be in place, otherwise it would be quite messy to do in zbrush without creating separate meshes.

This is perhaps the greatest advancement in digital sculpting thus far. It further removes the tediousness of 3d modeling and allows the artist to jump straight into the concept without having to initially worry about things like geometry, edge flow, or polygon count. As such, it also drastically speeds up the process. In the time it would take to produce a simple sketch on paper, an artist adept with zbrush could conceivably sculpt a 'sketch' in full 3d.

Case and point? The time I took for this piece: Roughly 40 minutes, all straight from my head. No previous sketches or plans involved. =]

Material blending and rendering

To go along with the rapid prototyping idea, zbrush also now has material blending and rendering capabilities that are slowly becoming comparable to those of higher end packages. Before I would have to take sculpts into maya or 3ds max to get subsurface scattering for skin or image based lighting for ambient effects for example. All of that is in zbrush now and it's fairly easy to use.

The entire render for this piece was done in zbrush. No external renders or composites needed.

Tiling, noise and advanced brushes

There are also a bunch of new brushes and sculpting features too. Most notably is the surface noise feature, which lets you quickly apply bumps or patterns to a model. I used it to give a kind of bumpy/smooth pattern you see on beetle shells.

So yeah, those are some of the things I tried on this piece. Hope you enjoy! Next things to play with are fur, image composting and render passes for an even higher level of fidelity. =]

Additional Shots:

Soybean Bust - Side

Sat, 09 Jun 2012 17:46:45 PDT

A back shot of my SoyBean sculpt. More info here: [link]

Additional Shots:

Soybean Bust - Back

Sat, 09 Jun 2012 17:43:52 PDT

A back shot of my SoyBean sculpt. More info here: [link]

Additional Shots:

NCCLegacy - p1

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 13:34:48 PDT

Here's a long coming commission for my friend =Trakker. He had made a diagram of the ship and was looking for someone to model it in 3d:

At the time I was looking for a good opportunity to practice more hard surface modeling so I offered to take it up as a means to learn more. The subject seemed to have just the right amount of hard and organic elements to challenge my current skills, and even though it took far longer than I anticipated (mainly due to work and other obligations getting in the way), I can say that I got a great deal of experience doing this piece.

As you may guess, it's a ship based in the Star Trek universe, so I decided to roll with the recent reboot/refresh/update and try to match the look of the Star Trek 2009 film. Below is a bit of what I did to make this piece.

Process

I started by blocking out the basic shapes in Maya, then took it into Zbrush to warp and curve. From there I went back and fourth, readjusting the the topology and applying subdivision surfaces (sometimes called 'clark-catmull' or smooth preview)' to the model.

I then started unwrapping the uvs for each component and then procedurally tiled the textures and layered them with appropriate effects like bump, specular and incandessence. As a final touch, I used uv sets to project decals and lettering over the procedural textures. I'd say that these parts were the most challenging. There was a lot of trial and error involved. I tried zbrush to texure but the model resolution was becoming problematic. I also tried photoshop's new 3d features but it was too slow/memory intensive to work. Ultimately I settled on Mudbox, which is Autodesk's answer to Zbrush. I'm not fond of the sculpting tools in there compared to Zbrush, but the texture painting is much more streamlined in that you can edit the texture file itself and preview the effects as opposed to painting directly on polygons.

From this point, I began developing the shaders for each component, experimenting with material based lights, caustics, transparencies and glow sources. I also experimented with image based lighting (IBL) and used an environment sphere of the milky way galaxy from a site called sIBL. I also figured out how to render out different passes in an efficient way through mental ray.

Finally I took all of the passes into AfterEffects to composite together and add finishing touches, which was a fairly new process for me. I learned about image masks, light wraps, pre-comps and anamorphic lens flares (Yes, those lovely streaked flares you see in sci-fi and action flicks all the time XD).

Anyway, the next plan for this model is to make a short fly through/around animation, which will certainly hone what I learned in AE so far. =]

Many thanks to =Trakker for your patience and encouragement. I hope you enjoy the piece as much as I did making it. *bows respecftully*

Additional Shots:

NCCLegacy - p3

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 13:42:17 PDT

Additional shots of the NCC Legacy project. Go here for more info: [link]

Additional Shots:

NCCLegacy - p2

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 13:40:50 PDT

Additional shots of the NCC Legacy project. Go here for more info: [link]

Additional Shots:

Prop Making - DTK broach

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 14:16:28 PDT

Heres an impromptu commission for a close friend of mine. He had been planning to do a cosplay for an upcoming anime convention but was running short on time so I offered to help finish off some of the props for his costume.

The character is Soul Eaters Death the Kid, which has a set of special guns and a number of metal and bone ornaments on his costume. The original plan was to make most of them out of simple paint, paper and foil constructs but we decided to push the envelope and do a live action treatment of the character. We bought some toy guns to mod and came up with more realistic designs of the ornaments for me to sculpt.

At the moment, the guns and skull broach have been completed. For the guns, I carved in the teeth notches, added the skull emblems on the handle and applied a better metallic finish to simulate real metal. I also replaced the blue leds with pink and white ones to better match the effects seen in the anime (Ahh, it's refreshing to do more electronics work again ^^).

As for the skull broach, I sculpted it out of super sculpey, wet sanded to a glass-like smoothness and used the same metallic treatment I did on the guns. Overall it was a fun process. I was very impressed with the quality of the metallic finish, especially when compared to what the toy guns looked like before.

Anyway enjoy. The white bone accents on the suit will be coming shortly.

Please check out my newly reawakened tumbler for more detailed shots: [link]

Prop Making - DTK guns

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 14:14:50 PDT

Here’s an impromptu “commission” for a close friend of mine. He had been planning to do a cosplay for an upcoming anime convention but was running short on time so I offered to help finish off some of the props for his costume.

The character is Soul Eater’s “Death the Kid”, which has a set of special guns and a number of metal and bone ornaments on his costume. The original plan was to make most of them out of simple paint, paper and foil constructs but we decided to push the envelope and do a “live action” treatment of the character. We bought some toy guns to mod and came up with more realistic designs of the ornaments for me to sculpt.

At the moment, the guns and skull broach have been completed. For the guns, I carved in the “teeth” notches, added the skull emblems on the handle and applied a better metallic finish to simulate real metal. I also replaced the blue leds with pink and white ones to better match the effects seen in the anime (Ahh, it's refreshing to do more electronics work again ^^).

As for the skull broach, I sculpted it out of super sculpey, wet sanded to a glass-like smoothness and used the same metallic treatment I did on the guns. Overall it was a fun process. I was very impressed with the quality of the metallic finish, especially when compared to what the toy guns looked like before.

Anyway enjoy. The white bone accents on the suit will be coming shortly.

Please check out my newly reawakened tumbler for more detailed shots: [link]

C Sculpt - Daydreaming full

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:19:00 PDT

Shortly after I did the male Chavant sculpt, I did this one. It's a far more relaxed piece, both sculpturally and figuratively but I actually found it more challenging to accomplish. There is just so much subtlety to capture in the female figure.

Chanvant NSP hard. 6 week session.

Chavant Sculpt - COA 1

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:06:01 PDT

Here's another figurative sculpt from my ongoing advanced sculpture class. Unlike the beginner's session I took a while back, this class is a self-run setup with no instructor. You simply drop in and sculpt with a live model. =]

The material used this time is known as Chavant NSP-Hard which, as the name suggests, is considerably harder than most modeling clays. You have to heat it with an oven or electric heater to make it pliable, and the approach to sculpting can be very different than usual methods. For one, it is very difficult to use your fingers to move the clay, so you are forced to use tools like wire, ribbon, rakes and dental probes to do your sculpting. I found myself carving and cutting instead of simply moving the clay around.

It was a challenge to get used to, but I find myself appreciating the quality of the clay more and more. The hardness actually allows more control over the look and shape of the sculpture. Fine details are easy to add in without worry of smudging.

As for the pose itself, it's a bit of a riff off of "The Creation of Adam", I suppose. It was good practice for muscle interaction in flexed and relaxed states.

Chavant Sculpt - COA Back

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:07:56 PDT

C Sculpt - Daydreaming back

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:19:51 PDT

Chavant Sculpt - Daydreaming

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:17:06 PDT

Chavant Sculpt - COA Closeup

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:09:36 PDT

Chavant Sculpt - COA Side

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:08:39 PDT

Chavant Sculpt - COA 2

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:07:14 PDT

One Fullerton

Mon, 02 May 2011 19:11:19 PDT

"Just in case you forget where you are..."

A rather striking sign sculpture placed opposite Singapore's iconic Merlion fountain (which was disappointingly covered by an art exhibit at the time).

Source: See picture, Singapore.

Marina Bay

Mon, 02 May 2011 19:15:06 PDT

"I don't know what it is or why it's shooting lasers at us, but it sure is pretty."

The Marina Bay Sands hotel serendipitously giving off a crazy light show as we walked around the opposite side of the marina. Definitely a fun surprise for us.

Source: Marina, Singapore

Out on the town

Mon, 02 May 2011 19:02:45 PDT

"It's true what they say. Singapore is beautiful and clean... almost too clean.."

A weird realization while going around Singapore marina at night. There is no wildlife. No birds, no frogs, not even a fly or mosquito to be seen.. It's kind of eerie.

Source: Singapore Marina near Fullerton. A test with long exposure using my new Panasonic GH2.

Are you feeling alright?

Mon, 02 May 2011 18:52:51 PDT

""

We had one of these moments upon encountering these subjects. Poor things were taking refuge from the summer heat.

Source: Laguna, Philippines

Time Travel

Mon, 02 May 2011 18:40:19 PDT

"I always loved flying East. It feels like I'm travelling to the future."

A shot of a rather futuristic looking elevator. If it wasn't for it's relatively short height, I would have thought it was an exit to a Jetsons/Futurama style pneumatic tube system.

Source: Expo MRT Station, Singapore.

Delrin Bust - Front

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 16:37:20 PDT

Here's a recently completed bust sculpt that was done at a six week workshop in the studio. It was held by veteran(read: Jedi master) sculptor Richard Miller, who has been sculpting and prop making for over 25 years. If you enjoyed movies like Star wars, Flubber, Terminator 2 and Pirates of the Carribean, you probably have also enjoyed his work. =]

His assignment for us at the workshop was to come up with a design on paper and produce a maquette out of it, during which time he would guide us individually on how to accomplish such a task. I initially had no idea what to sculpt, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and use an old concept I had lying around and flesh it out further.

The character Delrin has been floating around in my head for quite a while. In fact I attempted to do a digital sculpt of him before but I just never got around to completing it. A real-life bust of the character would definitely help me conceptualize his look and personality so I decided to go with that, and I can say now that I'm very happy with the result.

As far as details go, the piece is roughly 8 inches high and was made with super sculpey, armature wire and various plastic parts for the underlying structure and finishing touches. The piece was baked on low heat for several intervals to avoid cracking, and was spray painted and embellished to look like bronze using enamel paint and a special wax metal filament called 'rub and buff' for embellishing. The sculpture really came to life once those finishing touches were added. =]

For more details, feel free to click through the WIPs and other angles. Enjoy!

Original concepts:

WIPs:

Finished Shots:

Delrin bust WIP - Side

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 16:13:27 PDT

Here's a side shot of the finished piece. The glasses were fashioned out of simple armature wire that was hammered flat with a jeweler's hammer and anvil, then wrapped around a thick brush. Finally transparent plastic from simple product packaging was darkened, cut into circles and glued to the frame.

Original concepts:

WIPs:

Finished Shots:

Delrin Bust - Back

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 16:07:18 PDT

Here's a back shot of the finished piece. During baking, the hair cracked a bit so there was some patch work and sanding done afterward. I feel like I could have refined it more, but as it often is in the industry, you need to learn to know when to say it's good enough and let it go. =]

Original concepts:

WIPs:

Finished Shots:

Delrin bust WIP - Back

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 16:00:24 PDT

Here's some work in progress shots of my recent Delrin bust sculpture. Here's a good look at the back details. As you might see in the concept drawings, Delrin has no set outfit, so I was sortof making it up as I went. I tried to keep the general 'modern wizard'-esque feel while embellishing in certain places.

Original concepts:

WIPs:

Finished Shots:

Delrin bust WIP - Front

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:54:23 PDT

Here's some work in progress shots of my recent Delrin bust sculpture. In this shot you can see the detailing on the face and hair. My instructor suggested several approaches to accomplishing the wrinkles including sharpened wire, paint brushes and these interesting silicon tipped tools called 'color shapers'. The eyes are plastic doll's eyes used as placeholders, so the color of them isn't necessarily indicative of the character.

Original concepts:

WIPs:

Finished Shots:

Delrin bust WIP - Side

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:49:31 PDT

Here's some work in progress shots of my recent Delrin bust sculpture. The armature (base structure to hold the clay) was just a simple styrofoam ball with some wire to wrap around it and hold it to the wooden base. In this shot you can see the beginnings of his hair, which was both fun and frustrating to do.

Laying down the volume required putting in additional wires to keep up the spikes. Sculpting in the detail took a bit of experimentation and planning as well. The softness/bounciness of the sculpy clay allowed for decent detail, but it was very easily smudged. I would finish one half, move on to the other and then relize my fingers had messed up the half I was just working on!

If only real life had a 'mirror' function.. an undo and save button would be great too.

Original concepts:

WIPs:

Finished Shots:

Figurative Sculpt - Female 1

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 01:38:41 PST

Here's another recent sculpt I did as part of my sculpture class. Our task was to sculpt a live female model using the techniques we acquired from the male sculpt. I chose to keep this one mainly figurative instead of an anatomical study.

Like the male sculpt, this is a 15" figure done using armature wire and professional modeling clay known as Roma Plastalina. I found the female figure to be more challenging than the male. Getting the volumes and proportions proved to be difficult due to the intricacy of curves. Everything seems to blend and flow together whereas the male seems to have more rigid/segmented and easy to identify volumes.

If you would like to see some additional pics and works in progress, please feel free to check out my picasa album here: [link]

Figurative Sculpt - Female 2

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 01:37:55 PST

Figurative Sculpt - Female 3

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 01:37:00 PST

Figurative Sculpt - Female 4

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 01:36:15 PST