In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.
Hi, my name is Victor Negreiro, I’m from Brazil and I work as an Illustrator and Game Artist for Ludium and as a freelancer as well for the last 10 years.
I do t-shirt illustrations for the Nerdstore and Threadless (my tee has sold out, unfortunately), do comic colors, and did some mobile games like Combonuts, Alien War and Deed. Right now I’m doing a new mobile game with the studio that made Deed, and I’m just hired to work for Tapps.
Working for Ludium I did a job for League of Legends. I painted most of the 60 wallpapers so I do many different things!
About 5 years ago I started to spice up my work with an interest in 3D.
I didn’t have a classic academic study, and had to learn my way with different tools by doing personal projects. I used this approach for drawing and painting, and did the same with 3D. Starting with Sketchup, using to boost the time working on the the perspective on the illustrations, and later pass for a short time on Maya until found my place in Blender.
Sketchup modelling with some photoshop colours on top. concept art work done in 2011
Right now, I’m a Blender fanboy and I’m taking the same path to become a technical artist the way I did before: starting personal projects for the joy of starting things, starting projects even without finishing older ones, working on it in the breaks between jobs and make me finish everything even if it took me months to have it all done for the joy of have things done.
I posted the computer model already a long time ago to prove that:
The Sad Office Room started as a project to learn about hard surface modeling and baking normal maps (one of my favorite concepts in the 3D world, an illusion of depth/complexity in a low poly mesh). It took me more than a year from the first block of the elements on the scene until the finish this last month, I found many ‘better ways’ of doing things and reworked a lot of elements. One of them was the fish tank that started as a piece of this model. As it slowly got a more Hand Painted style and didn’t fit the rest of the scene, I moved the fish tank to its own scene and posted it right here on Sketchfab.
This is my reference for ‘Sad Office’. A 80`s desk, koz the ‘theme’ when I started this was to make something with the sad and boring feeling from the movie ‘Office Space’, and make everything in the world of MS-Dos and no internet connection (sorry fellas with more age, I was born in 87 and be in this inpatient and with no analog nostalgia generations to come after…)
I changed the computer design to look more like the first mac computers.. and even attached the keyboard. So, if any part stop working, it will be much more complicated to fix, making the user much more angry about your life hahahahahaha.
I would choose death if I had to travel back in time to live in the world of the Past, without out technology. Sorry guys, don’t hate me for this :)
I did a lot of experiments on this project, like hand paint the fish and make a normal map using MindText. and you can see it is a ugly brother of the last fish I made
I made this test to see if the 3D scene will talk with 2D elements, an idea I still want to work on in future projects..
And at the end. I lost a bit of the details I freakly add on some small areas of this model when I merge all the 10 or 12 materials and uvs in one big Atlas( just to see how the Build Atlas Blender Addon works haha) and end with some parts a bit blurry, like this floppy disk texture I spend close to a hour to draw.
And I know nobody will notice it.
Right now I fear I don’t have any big insights to share, as I work on it walking in the shadows finding where to put my feet next. If I can just say something (maybe this is why I’m here) is:
Don’t complicate everything delaying to start learning something because you don’t have time to do it, or don’t have the money for pay for classes about it, just go, in the best DIY way, search online and start doing something. My first model on Blender was a small lowpoly hammer, because I want to find where are the related tools that I know in Maya, and search how to basic model, uv map and texture something as simple as possible… just to put the hands in the sides and say “Yeah, I started it, so now I need to go all the way to the end now.”
In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.
Hello, my name is Sal Falah. I am from California and I am a game artist and founder of a small startup company called FalX games. I have a strong 3D background mostly in vehicles, weaponry, buildings. props and other hard surface items.
I started drawing since I was a little kid and I was always fascinated by the look & design of all types of vehicles especially the ones made for military use. You can see my other 3D & 2D work on my online portfolio.
I am currently in the progress of creating 3D models for an RTS tank game. I will share with you today the steps I took to create the 1st tank for the RTS game. The overall design of the T-666 was inspired by the legendary “Tiger Tank” from the WII era. The sloped armor look was inspired by some of today’s modern tanks combined with futuristic details.
Here are the 6 steps I took to create the T-666 Concept tank:
1st step: Concept Art
In my opinion, this is the most important step because the success of the model depends on how appealing the actual design of the model. I created the 2D concept tank in Photoshop.
2nd step: High poly model
In this step I used 3D Studio max to create the tank in high details (high poly count).
3rd step: Low poly model
In this step I usually save a duplicate of the high poly tank from the previous step, and start creating the low poly model. This can be done by deactivating mesh smoothers and isolating all “extra details” so they can be used later on for baking the texture maps (5th step).
4th step: UVW
This is the most boring step especially when you have high detailed model. In this step, I unwrapped the 3D low poly mesh in order to texture the tank model. This how the UVW map looks like:
5th Step: Baking & Texturing
After I extracted the normal and the ambient OC map from the high poly tank (baking), I continued the texturing process in Photoshop. I usually start by bringing the exported UVW map (from step 4) into Photoshop and then I paint in layers using the normal map as guides. I created diffuse, normal and specular in 2048 dimensions:
6th & Final Step: Rendering!
This is the part where I use Sketchfab! Thanks to Sketchfab’s easy, quick and accurate rendering system, you will spend less time testing and adjusting the settings in real time rendering while getting amazing results.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my work with the world! I would be more than happy to help you with your 3D project! feel free to contact me through my online portfolio: www.sal-falah.com
In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.
Hello everyone! My name is Murilo Kleine, I’m a Brazilian artist and graphic designer. I was kindly invited to write about my work on the game Sprout’s Tale, a 3D puzzle-platformer that will be released in 2016. We are a 3 man indie team scattered across the globe — Tom Murphy from the US (Game Director/Designer), Mihai Cozma from Romania (Programmer) and me, Murilo, from Brazil (2D/3D Artist). We work on the game in our free time between jobs, freelances, projects, family and dawn, well, c’est la vie!
A bit about me
Being an artist has been my goal since childhood. The first contact I had with 3D was around 1995, as a 6 years old little dude watching Jurassic Park - and all its epic 3D dinosaur-y glory - for the first time. Oh man, that was awesome!
Of course I was too young to even understand the concepts of 3D, but the movie inspired me to draw. As years went by, from pencil and paper drafts I moved on to inking, from inking to basic coloring, then shading, perspective drawing and so on. Much later I met Photoshop, pen tablets and digital drawing/painting. Having worked with traditional and digital illustration tools helped me a lot when I finally started learning 3D, not only when designing a character or a scene, but also for modeling, understanding of the 3D space, texturing or even to understand topology based on anatomy for better rigging and animation. But enough of the past, let’s talk about what is worth.
There are a few steps I usually go through when creating a character, scene or even the simplest of the models. I will talk about these steps below, but keep in mind that most of them are related and may influence one another.
Concept art and visual reference
Sprout’s Tale began as a 2D game, and because of that, when designing the characters, enemies and almost anything that would have to be frame by frame animated, we decided to follow a very minimalist approach.
Colors would have to be simple and yet meaningful, shapes would have to be of easy recognition. An enemy should look like an enemy even if it was just plain smoke or a simple ball.
At the same time the world of the game would have to change from a dreadful, dangerous and desolate land into a much brighter and full of life place as the player makes progress. Our main character has the unique ability of “growing” life (his name is Sprout after all, right?), so grass and trees would have to grow as he goes through the levels, not only as a decorative element, but also as a gameplay mechanic. So how do you, as an artist, transform all those ideas from the game designer into visuals? Well, concept art!
Drawing and loose painting is much faster than modeling and texturing, it’s also much easier to erase and redo parts of an image then to change your mind halfway through the modeling of an object and completely redo it because it’s not looking the way you first imagined, so I really like to spend some time designing what I’m about to model or at least spend some time observing and learning from images on the internet, books, etc.
I don’t usually draw or paint too much detail when I start creating these concept pieces, most of them are just drafts that nobody on their right mind would use in an art book, they work mostly as reference for myself, and can be easily discarded if not suitable for the game.
After the drafts are approved I usually redo some of them and add some detail, clean up the line work, add color and shading in Photoshop, just until I feel comfortable enough with the result.
Modeling
Following the minimalist aesthetics, the models used in the game are usually simple, symmetric and considerably lowpoly. I use Blender as my main 3D software, so I normally start from cylinders or cubes, add a mirror modifier along the X axis, a surface subdivision modifier (depending on the model) and then use basic tools to change shapes, add loop cuts, extrude faces, join vertices, split edges and so on. My first objective when modeling is to get the object shape and proportions right and then, from there, add detail, tweak the topology to fit animation or visual needs and add or subtract polygons.
Once a model is ready, we test it along with other assets to make sure its scale and proportions won’t need any adjustments and then test it in-game to see if the bounding boxes are working the way they should. Being the only artist on an indie team often means modeling objects that require you to step out of your comfort zone, it’s a great experience but it also demands extra attention and testing.
Texturing
After the model is tested and approved, it’s time to unwrap it. I really like to take some time to organize the UV coordinates in a way that makes sense when creating, painting and editing the textures in Photoshop. After I’m comfortable with the result, I export the UV layout and a simple AO (Ambient Occlusion) map.
The workflow is pretty straightforward, using the selection tools, I create masks or layers filled with the base colors, apply the AO texture map at a low opacity and use a pen tablet to add more shading, colors and details. Gradient layers of color set at different blending modes can be used to tweak the coloring, make warmer shadows and lighter or darker areas, edited stock textures and filters can also be used depending on the model.
Working with a lot of layers can get really confusing, so I try to keep it as clean as possible by giving names to important layers and by separating different parts of the model UVs into groups.
I don’t usually use sculpt tools for this game, the game visuals allow me to bake the normal maps from simple displacement or bump maps as most details are just painted into the diffuse textures.
Specular maps, when needed, are also created in Photoshop by adjusting saturation, grey scale values, inverting colors, adding or removing details and filters (Glowing Edges filter, I choose you!).
Rigging and Animating
I had never worked with 3D animation before Sprout’s Tale, so I’ve been trying to learn as much as possible since 2013-2014, when the project evolved from a 2D game into a 3D one. The rigs used for the animated assets and characters in the game are simple. In part because there’s no real need for very complex rigs for the animations that we use, but also because I still don’t know as much as I would like to know about rigging. For better or worse, the lack of better IK solvers don’t make a huge difference when creating our simple character animation cycles, the simplistic rigs can get the job done with no problem.
I assign the bones to parts of the mesh via weight painting and test its behaviors, if needed, I make changes to the topology of the model for better bending and tilting. A little knowledge and visual reference in human and animal anatomy can help a lot when it comes to rigging and topology, it makes it easier to animate and the meshes deform in a more natural way.
Just like designing a character, animating one without proper reference can be a pain. I watch as much material as I can find on the internet, study it and then transfer what I learned to the models considering how the animation should look in the game. Once I have the key frames right I add some in-betweens to correct the poses and the flow of the animation and try to consider the weight, balance and impact of each movement as much as I can.
Well, that’s all folks! I hope this post was helpful and interesting to some of you! It was hard to write about the different topics without making the text overly long, even harder to make it not too shallow! I’ve got a long way to go and a lot to learn when it comes to 3D and art in general, and Sketchfab seems just like the right place to do so.
Thanks a lot for reading, if you want to know more about the game and its development process please follow us on twitter @sproutgame or IndieDB.
Thanks a lot for the opportunity, Sketchfab! You guys are awesome!!!
As part of our effort to support museums and cultural heritage, we learned about the #NEWPALMYRA Project. The project is an online community platform and data repository dedicated to the capture, preservation, sharing, and creative reuse of data about the ancient city of Palmyra, in Syria, which has been under attack from ISIS.
#NEWPALMYRA is based on a 3D virtual reconstruction of Palmyra started by Bassel Khartabil, a Damascus-based technologist and community organizer. (Detained in Syria since March 15, 2012 he has an active petition for his release.)
Their mission is to preserve the memory of the ancient site using 3D scanning and reconstruction technology, to begin they are organizing a hackathon in Paris this weekend.
The two days will be dedicated to the exploration and reuse of the available digital and scientific and archaeological archives of the archaeological site of Palmyra : mapping, visualisation, 3D modeling, etc. All the projects and data will be released under the Creative Commons Zero license, for everyone to visit and use.
If you are in Paris, we highly encourage you to join them! All projects will be made with Open Source tools so others can contribute worldwide.
In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.
Hello! My name is Adam Beamish and I am currently working in England as a graphic artist for Autodesk. You can usually find me moderating the 123D Sculpt+ community where you can see some of my latest work. I have been using Lightwave 3D, Mudbox and Zbrush for a few years now but I was drawn to the portability of 123D Sculpt+ on the iPad as I don’t have to be tied down to a desk. For my personal work I use 123D Sculpt+ as my main tool for starting a sculpting project and then using Zbrush or Mudbox for finishing off.
If you haven’t seen Autodesk’s 123D Sculpt+ app it is a sculpting application for the iPad, Android and Windows tablets. It is basically an introduction program to sculpting. 123D Sculpt+ may be limited and simple but it’s ease of use makes it quick and easy to learn. It’s no Mudbox or Zbrush replacement but is very handy as a mobile sculpting companion.
The idea for the zombie bust came about because at the time it was Halloween and zombies were popular in the media. I wanted to see what I could accomplish in 123D Creature/123D Sculpt+ (123D Creature was the previous name of 123D Sculpt+) without using Mudbox or Zbrush.
First of all I wanted to see what I could sculpt from just a sphere. As 123D Sculpt+ has a polygon limit you are restricted to how much detail you can add so every polygon is valuable. First in the model skeleton section I created a sphere model. A sphere can be made using the skeleton sections or by selecting one of the model presets. Next onto the sculpting, but first you need to press the bake button to transform the skeleton model into an editable model to sculpt on.
I used the grab brush to pull the sphere into a head, neck and shoulders shape. From here I start to block out the basic shape forms of the face with the sculpt out brush.
Once I was happy with the basic shape I then started to add in the basic facial features. Knowing there is no subdivision and a limit to the amount of polygons I made the best of what was available.
With the basic features blocked in I started to add more detail and refine the overall shape. The limitations of the brush size stopped me from getting the best detail out of the model, but with a little bit of pushing and pulling with the grab tool I was able to move surrounding polygons to nearby areas where extra polygons were needed. Getting to know the sculpting tools first helps to learn their strengths and limitations.
In the painting section of 123D Sculpt+ I gave the model a basic mid tone colour. From here I added dark shading into the crevices and added highlights to help accentuate the sculpted forms.
Once I was happy with the main colour I started to add a skin texture all over using an alpha map in the image rub section. As 123D Sculpt+ only has a colour image map I try to add as much detail into the texture as I can. Alpha map textures in the image rub section is a great way for adding additional detail quickly. The rest of the model was finished by painting in wrinkles and extra details into the eyes.
The model is now basically complete and ready for light setup and final image output. In Sculpt+ you have a few limited light preset settings which you can adjust in the environment settings.
Within 123D Sculpt+ you have the ability to export the model for 3D printing. It was the following year that the zombie model was printed for the Autodesk stand at the 2014 Paris 3D Print Show as a full colour print.
To get the model working properly in Sketchfab I exported the model from 123D Sculpt+ into Zbrush to clean the UV mapping as models from 123D Sculpt+ can create white UV lines which can be visible in other software programs. Then I exported the model as an obj file with the image file and zipped the project up and dropped it onto the Sketchfab website for editing.
When I discovered Sketchfab I was impressed by the realtime rendered look of the models in the community. I decided to try out my models from 123D Sculpt+ and I was pleasantly surprised by the results I got. I will definitely be using Sketchfab again and making better use of the texture options in the future!
Wow, you guys weren’t kidding around when you entered our Haunted House contest! You sent in 28 entries and they were top notch - most of them even made extensive use of our annotations system to tell an interactive story. We actually heard one colleague shriek while browsing the scenes (no, I won’t tell who). Awesome job :)
So let’s get on with the winners and keep reading - there’s a little extra at the end!
3rd place: Thriller by oskarsdzenis
Prize: $50 Amazon voucher*, a Sketchfab Cardboard VR Viewer and 3 Months of Sketchfab PRO ($45 value).
As the quality of the entries was so amazing, we felt that having three winners was just not enough. So we decided to throw in some Sketchfab PRO subscriptions (3 months each) for the following three runners-up:
In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.
Hello Sketchfab users !
My name is Thomas Veyrat, and I am happy to show you one of my latest creations : The Mystic Forest. I am a Freelance 3D artist, and I have been working on 3D projects for the last 10 years for animations, product design, interior design and advertisings.
Last year I designed the “Sleeping Forest”, a scene which attempted to capture the spirit of a very tranquil forest such as the one in the Disney movie the “Sleeping Beauty”.
For the Mystic Forest, I wanted to try and make an even more realistic forest. So this time, I decided to use more reference photos. I collected images on the internet, and went to the woods to take reference pictures. I also drew trees and vegetation, grass, moss, mushrooms,…
And then, I began designing the scene with 3DS Max.
For this project, one of the challenges was to optimise the scene for ideal results when rendered using the Sketchfab realtime engine.
Sketchfab is a great tool for showcasing this type of scene. Below is a video presenting the various steps I went through to make this scene:
Designing a 3D forest is far from being easy, it requires a lot of patience, care and a good experience with 3D software.
Here are several steps of the creation process :
I am satisfied with the final result, and I believe it matches my expectations :
Thank you for reading. I would love to hear your thoughts about this model. Feel free to contact me through my profile page, and I will be happy to anwser your questions.
Thanks Thomas!
Wow, I really think you’ve set a new standard for our Art Spotlights, that was a great read!
In Inside Gaming, we invite Sketchfab game developers to talk about their work. Nuberu Games is a small indie game studio located in Asturias, Spain. Gabriel tells us about their first game Metal Tales.
We’re developing our first game for Windows called Metal Tales. At the moment we are a four person team with just two programmers, and two artists. Now that the project is ramping up more, we’re looking to hire a couple more people to help with development.
What’s your Project?
Metal Tales is a heavy metal influenced rogue-like game, set in a modern world of metal music.
The story behind the game starts with a young guitarist who is learning to play guitar when suddenly out of the blue he realizes that all his idols and fans have been corrupted by an unknown evil. To save them all, he must free them from a curse with his music. He uses his guitar as a weapon to perform killer riffs that generate magical projectiles.
Why did you use Sketchfab?
We decided to use Sketchfab because we think it’s the best tool to show our game development progress to all our fans on social media with an in-game experience. Being able to show all our assets in a “3D viewer” instead of using static images like a gif is such a step up. Sketchfab gives us the opportunity to really bring life to our content.
Why do you use tilesets instead of 3D environments?
Since we’ve created rogue-like game, we need to use randomly generated levels and worlds. So we decided to use tile sheets to create our environments randomly. We still use 3D characters, but this was the quickest and most efficient way to do this. So now you can enjoy a new level every time you play our game, auto-magically.
If you like our game, you can support us with just a single vote on our Steam Greenlight page. Every vote counts and helps us get one step closer to being accepted on Steam! Thanks for reading, rock on.
According to some solid wisdom from an industry veteran in the CG art world: if you want to get known, you need to show your work, a lot! One great way is to post your art on CG sites and forums. Most of them support Sketchfab, and adding a Sketchfab embed will definitely help attract attention to your work.
As a quick reminder, here are just some of the most popular sites where you can post Sketchfab models:
And of course, don’t forget it’s also easy to embed your work on Facebook! Just paste a model’s URL in your message and it will expand into our viewer, and people can interact with it right in their news feed.
Looking for more forums? You’ll find a full list on our Help Center. And if your favorite forum doesn’t support Sketchfab yet, strike up a conversation with the admins - we have plugins for most forum software and we’re happy to help them set it up!
Is it The Kiss? Or maybe Han Solo’s Hibernation? Ah wait.. ‘I Am Your Father’. Right?
Whatever it is, with the upcoming premiere of The Force Awakens, we’re getting pretty excited about Star Wars, and we bet you are too! So we’re launching a new challenge: model famous Star Wars scenes and compete for cool prizes, like your own Sphero remote-controlled BB-8 droid.
The grand prize is an Oculus Rift! Star Wars had the first holograms after all, and you can now build your own Princess Leia scene in VR on Sketchfab :)
To level the playing field, we have selected 2 cool scenes from each episodes so far, and we threw in a bonus scene! Your job is to tell that story in a 3D scene, using annotations or animation.
These are the scenes you can choose from:
Episode I - The Phantom Menace: Pod Race & Journey through the planet core.
Episode II - Attack of the Clones: Yoda vs Dooku & Bounty hunter chase on Coruscant.
Episode III - Revenge of the Sith: The Order 66 & LightSaber fights: Duel on Mustafar, Duels of Fate, Windu-Emperor.
Episode IV - A New Hope: Death Star Trench Run & 3D princess Leia, the first hologram!
Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back: “I am you father” NOooooooooo & Han Solo being carbo-cryo-whatever-ated.
Episode VI - Return of the Jedi: “It’s a Trap” & Death Star Millennium Falcon Core Dump Run
Annotated scenes. Annotations are an excellent tool for taking your viewers on a guided tour through your scene. Check out the winners of our recent Halloween Contest for some inspiration. All participants in this contest will receive a free month of Sketchfab PRO to raise the number of annotations in their models from 5 to 20!
Category 2: Animations. Can you animate a scene? Then sign up for our animation beta and tell your story that way. We’ll fast-track all contest participants to enter the beta program.
We will be promoting all winners on our own site and social media and with our partner sites such as IA Magazine, CGChannel and 3DTotal. We’ll also do a final big media push on the December 18th - the day that The Force Awakens will be released.
Of course, we have a big prize pot:
Grand prize: an Oculus Rift, a Sketchfab Hoodie and 12 Months of Sketchfab PRO ($120 value).
Model views and likes will also weigh heavily in this contest, so be sure to get your model 'out there’ - post it on the relevant CG forums, Star Wars fan art sites, your own Facebook (read our Rockstar blogposts for more suggestions). If your favorite forum doesn’t support Sketchfab yet, ask the admins to contact us. We have many forum plugins available.
Starting on December 11, we’ll announce one winner through our partnered media sites. On December 18th, a full round up will appear on our own blog too.
How to enter
Select your favorite scene from our list above.
Start your own topic in the dedicated Star Wars Contest 2015 forum where you document your work in progress (WIP). Post regular updates (with images and Sketchfab embeds), and be sure to mark which entry is your final submission.
All participants will receive one month of Sketchfab PRO.
Publish your final entry to your account, and tag it with #starwars-2015-still or #starwars-2015-animation
You can submit as many entries as you like. Only submit new work that you created for this contest though! Entries close Thursday December 10th.
Our Museums Page highlights our ongoing support of museums and cultural institutions with free accounts and access to tools. In Museum Spotlight, we’ll explore museums who are using 3D technology to bring new life to their collections. Here’s the story of the Tula State Arms Museum in Russia.
The history of Tula State Arms Museum is a story of transformation of a small limited-access museum into one of the major tourist destinations in Russia, an institution with passion for collecting, learning, and sharing knowledge with its visitors. Through our collection and narrative tours we want our visitors to explore Russian history during tough times of war and peace, and show them how the current weapon making process was formed along with the development of the whole nation.
We have only recently discovered the powerful tool of Sketchfab with which we can speak to a wider audience than ever before – to the whole world. If you live on the other side of the Earth it is now possible to explore the Museum collection without being physically present in one of our exhibition halls.
Let’s have a look at the wonderful selection of Oriental cold weapon represented in our museum mainly by knives, axes, shields and swords from the end of 16 century. Examples of such arms are known for their original shape which tells us about culture, traditions and beliefs of their owners. Rich decoration methods including etching, carving or inlaid golden patterns give an idea about outstanding skills and mastery of oriental blacksmiths.
This Throwing Knife Pinga has a pretty unusual shape distinct from ordinary knives. It has three steel blades pointed in different directions with the purpose of increasing chances of hitting and causing severe damage to the target.
Mainly utilized In Central Africa by Zande People for warfare and hunting, it is believed that the same weapon is depicted in Libyan wall sculptures.
The label “throwing knife” was used by ethnographers to various objects that didn’t fit into other weapon categories even though they may not have been thrown, like a Trombash.
Another example of Oriental cold arms is the Kris Dagger. Originating in East Java around 1361 AD in the form we recognize today, this stabbing weapon has become indigenous to other parts of South East Asia like Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei and Southern Philippines.
Three parts of Kris – blade, hilt and sheath are objects of art richly decorated by using various materials such as precious types of wood, gold or ivory.
The specific wavy blade with metal alloy decoration is one of the Kris’ main features. In order to give the blade its layered damascene pattern, alternating laminations of iron and nickel iron occur. It is interesting that for some time the smiths of Vorstenlanden used rare iron with small percentage of nickel obtained from the Meteorite that fell to earth at the end of 18 century near the Prambanan temple complex. They etched the blade with acidic substances causing the distinctive silvery pattern to light up against the darkened steel or iron.
The hilt was often carved in meticulous details representing various animals and demons coated with gold and adorned with semi-precious and precious gemstones, like rubies. The curved pistol-grip hilt helped in stabbing strikes.
The Kris sheath (warangka) can also be made of various materials, often a wooden frame coated with metals like iron, brass, silver or even gold. The upper part of the sheath formed a broad curved handle made of wood or sometimes ivory, adorned with precious or semi-precious stones. It is performed in the shape of a pirogue and presumably symbolizes the “moon boat” where, according to the legend, a Javanese hero Pangi lives.
That is just a tiny little part of what you can see in the Arms Museum and there is much more to be done to digitize our objects in the near future.
Our Workflow
Since most of our objects have very complicated shape varying in length and thickness, for example swords with glossy surface or rifles, using photogrammetry techniques can be either inconvenient in some cases or give poorer quality meshes. So for these particular models we had to do manual modeling in 3ds Max using photographic material as a reference and some sculpting in Zbrush. Also, modeling museum objects require certain approach in texturing process, as there is no place for random textures, scratches, dirt effects, etc., which are often used in creating game assets. That is why such programs like Quixel or Substance Painter with their own libraries of effects and materials could not be used in obtaining at least Diffuse maps in order to speed up the process. As long as we want to achieve maximum accuracy in our final models, making textures can be the most time-consuming part for some objects. In order to bring native textures to our models, a series of photographs of a particular object are made from different angles, which then combined with UVs in Photoshop.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that using Sketchfab is a great leap forward for cultural institutions to grow and prosper on an international level, providing more opportunities for education, research and enjoyment for people of all ages, and we are very grateful for being part of this developing community. In our turn, as museum, we promise to continue working in that direction, constantly improving the quality of models and including new features such as Animation to make a difference to our visitor’s virtual experience.
-Thank you Michail! You can explore the full collection of the Tula State Arms Museum on their gallery page.
If you are part of a cultural institution, get in touch with us at museums@sketchfab.com to set up your free business account.
In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.
Guten Tag,
My name is Sebastian Irmer. I’m 28 years old and I’m living in Germany. I’ve studied applied media management at UAS Mittweida. After receiving my Bachelor of Arts degree I’ve been working as a 3D artist in Berlin. My passion for games began with the “SNES era” and since then
I’ve wanted to create games.
I’m currently working at a company with the lovely name “sMeet Communications GmbH”, working on a game called Metamons. I’m responsible for creating the environments and assets
of the game. Metamons has got special technical requirements as the polycap is about 10k and the texture size is about 2k. Every asset and the stage itself must fit on a single 2k map. There is no real time lighting or shading I can use for this game which means diffuse map only. Therefore I’ve created a technique, which allows me to bake effects like light, shadow, gloss, reflections, ambient occlusion and global illumination into the texture. This proves beneficial since the game runs with a high frame rate by 1080p on browsers and mobile devices with nice but faked light effects.
I start with a concept that is provided by our lead artist Ersin Soyer. He defines the size, the details, the proportions and the overall look of the stage. We have to keep in mind, that there will be two monsters fighting each other in the middle of the stage. That is why we have to
care for plenty of space for them in order to interact.
The modeling is really straight forward. I start with rough shapes and create more details by inserting edge loops. I try to go as low poly as possible, since the game has to run on browser and mobile devices. That means that I have to delete all faces, that cannot be seen by the user.
After finishing the meshes, I insert a basic lightning setup to get some feeling and tone to the stage.
The unwrapping is critical. Since I want to bake the texture in the final step, I have to make sure, that the unwrapping is as clean as possible. All edges have to be neat and straight on the uv
layout in order to avoid disorders and artefacts. Assets near to the player should get more texture space to provide more details.
After unwrapping the stage I start with some simple bakes like ambient occlusion, falloff and gloss to get a feeling of depth and haptic. I start with a rough coloring, using the ambient occlusion map as a guidance to see, where assets make contact with the ground and with each other. I use some footage of the Switzerland Alps to get the color scheme right. Blue green and
brown in a light manner will do the job here. Its important to bring a variety of values to the
color. For example, wood is not only brownish in this stage. It contains traces of yellow and
green to make it more vibrant. After setting the base colors I start to draw more details until I’m
pleased with the result.
When the base texture is done, I start with some test renderings to see how the stage will look
at the end. When I’m happy with the result, I start the final bake. The bake includes light,
shadow and global illumination combined with the texture. I use a minimum sampling rate of 6
to avoid artefacts . The baking takes several hours to a full day to complete. After the bake is
done, I start with the post production in order to correct details and color values of the texture.
The last thing to do is implementing the stage into our engine. Here I add some particle effects and an animation for the gondola in the background.
The final result can be seen here:
If you want to experience Metamons by yourself, just visit us at metamons.com.
Now you know how its done. The work flow is quite unusual regarding the baking part. Nonetheless the result can be awesome. It feels pretty good to see how many people liked this stage and I’m honored to be a small part of this Blog. Sketchfab is a great way to share cool 3D Art with the community and colleagues and I’m really glad I’ve found you guys.
Are you into Lego? In this tutorial series, LDraw veteran Nathanel Titane introduces us to the different LDraw tools and shows how you can easily construct your own LEGO models and publish them to Sketchfab!
Things are going to get rather technical today, so be prepared for some code :)
Hello again everybody!
First and foremost, I would like to sincerely apologize for the delay in publishing this post: unforeseen circumstances, work and life have taken over and I’ve had much less time on hand to spare.
I am eager to share with you the last (sadly) and most valuable tidbits of information regarding LDraw Lego model editing and some of the hidden (or not so obvious) secrets of how to get by in manipulating a model and on how to share your builds using what I consider to be the find of the decade: Sketchfab.
I hope you’ve had plenty of time to play around with some of the editors and setup requirements to get yourself to a comfortable level of understanding of how things work, without having to explicitly spell out ‘who does what’.
So, one assumes you will get the point in understanding the general indications in matter of relative and absolute transformations, basic parts and model positioning and LDraw file structures. If not, please refresh your memory (and possibly skills) after reviewing what was stated in the previous article from this series.
Laying out the requirements:
One fully set up LDraw editing suit of your choice, complete with parts database (and configuration of your liking for shortcuts, preferences and whatnot).
One UTF8 locale compatible text editor of your choice (my Linux people know what I’m talking about. If not go check out Notepad++ and install it).
One WebGL compatible web browser (preferably Google’s Chrome, or Mozilla’s Firefox - updated or latest revision installed).
One mean desire to make bad-ass models and show them to the world using the Sketchfab platform ^_^
Advanced editing:
The use of the term 'advanced editing’ depicts any form of non-standard method used to create or modify an LDraw model. The obvious method is to use one of the editors mentioned in the previous posts and manually adjusting the spatial positioning and other obvious properties attributed to a part, such as colour, grouping or array assignment for duplication purposes, with the use of an interface.
When an editor does not have all the appropriate features already embedded into it to help us manage such properties, or does so in a way that cannot answer the user’s or creator’s way of handling a given workflow, you can also refer to 'advanced editing’ as new measures or tools that are built, created or added to help with such needs.
The first thing one can look to understand how advanced editing works and how to go about in making changes more efficiently is to probe and understand the contents of the model file itself (and the information it contains).
Handling and modifying the information that translates into the model we see is a means of such editing measures that vary and expand into a multitude of techniques, one of which will be discussed later on - keep in mind that whatever you are creating, rather than simply take the result of the application or editor’s processing as the final result you are searching for, there is surely another way to go about things.
What you see vs. what it really is…
Let’s use a less complex example as a model to make you understand - both image previews depict one and the same thing: a red 2x4 lego brick.
On the top, the editor view - on the bottom, the actual data contents of what the model file is and what parameters are being edited by the operations submitted via the editor’s interface and tools.
All this being said, an LDraw model file (ldr or mpd), is an assembly of relative and absolute vector coordinates attributed to a part’s identity or reference number…
Let’s analyze the contents of the simple model shown in the example above:
The LDraw specification defines the way the file and data content should be built to be universal and cross compatible for all editors and viewers. (The full LDraw file specification is available for consultation here.)
The first character on each line defines the attribution of either the line being optional or non compliant to the specification [0] or and actual part data or sub-file reference for a program such as an editor, viewer or renderer to parse to be able to display and manipulate the model [1].
Line 1: Header line (META) as optionally described by the LeoCAD editor, attributing the model’s AUTHOR tag information as described within the preferences panel of the application.
Line 2: Model BACKGROUND COLOR parameter (META), that can be set individually for each and every model created using the program.
Line 3: The actual data corresponding to that red 2x4 Lego brick we set into the 3D virtual editor plane and is described as follows:
flag color x y z a b c d e f g h i part
Where:
'x y z’ are the actual coordinates of the part in the virtual space
'a b c d e f g h i’ is a top left 3x3 matrix of a standard 4x4 homogeneous transformation matrix (this represents the rotation and scaling of the part)
The entire 4x4 3D transformation matrix would then take either of the following forms:
⎡ a d g 0 ⎤ ⎡ a b c x ⎤
⎢ b e h 0 ⎥ ⎢ d e f y ⎥
⎢ c f i 0 ⎥ ⎢ g h i z ⎥
⎣ x y z 1 ⎦ ⎣ 0 0 0 1 ⎦
The idea in presenting this seemingly complex bit of information is to present you with another view of how the model file is built, parsed, handled and how it can be understood - one can easily avert the use of a full 3D LDraw editor to make or change a model when understanding how a line (part attribution and placement) is composed. This also leads to even more creative solutions (such as stream editing to modify the values through scripting), which can help in modifying a tremendous amount of model files (main and sub assemblies, single or multiple files) that can easily contain thousands of lines.
Scripting
I have scripted such utilities (BASH) to help maintain all my models, to help change and update them through new part releases and revisions, implement colour changes and standardize element positioning throughout a given model series. The possibilities are endless when you open up to the idea that and LDraw model file is nothing more than lines of code referencing vector coordinates and part or sub assembly properties.
Such a use of advanced editing techniques is paramount when serious about putting minimal effort in creating quality content and maintaining it and I do encourage you to look into scripting to make any burden or repetitive task a breeze to handle.
One of those tasks may just be the mass export/upload/re-upload (for update and maintenance purposes) of your model files to Sketchfab… wink wink
Sketchfab Uploads
So, all is just fine and dandy when you produce a few models here and there. Oh! how lovely the weather is when you take some time to manually sign-in and upload your file after having taken a few minutes to review your export settings! The world is also beautiful when you go about in taking your sweet time to review and tweak the fabulous array of render settings provided to us by the Sketchfab developers…
When you have close to 100 models already built and continue to create more consistently and want all of them to be presented evenly, in a clean professional and seamless manner, the game changes - drastically. (Simply put: S**t just got real.)
As you might have noticed under my blog’s 'Lego’ section, all my models are presented using a consistent and uniform language, using automated measures backed by scripted tools and routines, all housed and hosted under Dropbox (and all of it auto-updates on any given change whenever new renders and exports are triggered after I finalize a new model build or finish updating another). All those files and models are all handled, edited or created by the editors and renderers that I’ve already mentioned in the early stages of the series.
With a little scripting magic and some API usage (graciously provided by the Sketchfab developer team), anyone can achieve this level of worry-free automation and can enjoy the greatest part of it all: creating virtual Lego models!
Using the Sketchfab upload API provided here, you can customize and tailor the upload process of the model and tune the environment it will be showcased in directly from the command line using GET/POST HTML requests (authenticated by your user token (found in your user profile under the 'Password & API’ section)). From there, you simply make sure to retrieve and transpose your newly created model ID on Sketchfab which is returned to you when the model upload has been confirmed as successful!
Your private API token lets you upload 3D models from exporters and other applications directly to your account.
Command line samples for the exporter and uploader utilities:
You can basically plug this iframe content and use CSS code to tailor it to your needs for it to fit the page it will be put in or the elements that will sit beside it.
I leave you to explore the fabulous world of digital Lego model editing via the use of the LDraw system and its many tools, utilities, editors, renderers and great surprises! ^_^
My experience with LDraw has been one of great enjoyment, up to this day, as I continue to create, build, maintain and update continuously (when time permits it), and I sure hope to be doing so for many more years to come, alongside the physical Lego builds I’ve come back to develop and assemble after a very long hiatus.
Sketchfab has proven to be the key tool in letting people into your creations, making them see and explore every little detail of your passion, and I cannot thank them enough for having created such a beautiful tool, and wish them great success in their endeavour. The platform has seen many great improvements since its debut and is heading in the right direction, merging creativity, abstraction, reality and communication under the same roof.
Up to you now to explore and find your inner child (we all have one still lying around in there) and get back to enjoying the pleasure of model building, virtual or not.
Don’t forget to stop by my blog to find more interesting posts about builds, other tips and other various updates!
Happy building!
LEGO® is a registered trademark of the LEGO Group. LDraw is a trademark owned and licensed by the Estate of James Jessiman.
In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.
Hello people, my name is Raphael Hatencia. I’m living in Brazil and I work as an art director, illustrator and 2D/3D animator for advertising agencies. Currently freelancing.
I’ve earned a course for free through a draw that Felipe Castanhari (Nostalgia Channel) advertised to study at Melies Film and Animation School. I choose ZBrush as I really wanted to get better and learn more on 3D, anatomy and character creation.
I gave my best trying to get as far as I could with all the exercises. Then the final work came and I decided to make Alice in Wonderland based on the concept by Akcho (see below). His concept really inspired me, I was searching for something Disney related and something that is challenging to me, but also reachable for a first time sculpt. I decided to do her, but not realistic, more like an action figure.
Here’s Akcho’s image that I used as a reference:
The sculpt started from a simple ZSphere on ZBrush, and from that point I went shaping the silhouette and the big parts. After I got the base mesh, I did some simple ZRemesher (ZBrush retopology tool) to get a better polycount. Then blocked the accessories, proxies and clothes.
The hardest part in my opinion was the hair. I did it 4 times, it was soo hard because it is soo detailed, curvy and dynamic. That part really made me sad because the hair was getting blooby, strange and not good at all. Then I gathered a lot of action figures from the wall and used then as reference which helped me A LOT.
To give you guys some tips, don’t give up on your sculpt (any work too). Some parts will be hard, but by polishing, and polishing and doing even more polishing, when you realize you’ll be happy with you work. Always give your best.
I am still new in 3D, but the Sketchfab plugin really made my life easier to upload my model with all texture maps, subtools (24 objects in total) and it is great to show people your model whatever angle they want to see it. Its a nice tool, it can be used to show clients how is the progress on your sculpt. I had some problems with the plugin because it only works on ZBrush 32bit version, and got some errors when uploading because my model was too heavy (Editors note: we updated the Zbrush exporter yesterday so this should work great now!). But that was good because that made me worry and learn about the model, texture without seams, to do retopoly in every subtool, learn about normal maps. I know I need to study a lot more in anatomy, topology flow in the face and a lot of other things, but i’m glad this exporter made me learn a lot and made this process a lot easier even without knowing some things in 3D.
My next sculpt will be a character from a Blizzard’s game (try to guess it) =D I have this project to make nice, beautiful girl characters from games and animations that inspires me.
As of today, about 150 crowdfunding campaigns have used Sketchfab to show their innovations in 3D! It has been a busy fall, with many new amazing projects sharing real-life product experiences online. Perhaps they’ve been reading our Crowdfunding Tips?. Let’s take a look…
One of the most exciting project out there for the 3D enthusiasts community is Eora 3D. They have already raised half a million dollars for a very nice 3D laser scanner that transforms your phone to make awesome 3D scans!
Now that Kickstarter has launched in France, several interesting projects have gone live, such as Ulo. It is a very cute surveillance camera!
In the games category, a noteworthy campaign is Sword and Sorcery. It is a fully cooperative fantasy board game where one to five players control heroes with unique powers. Want to be a part of it?
A Windows 10 PC that fits in your pocket? Introducing The Ockel Sirius B from $189 on Indiegogo!
If, like me, you’d love to have the same experience that astronauts get, check out Overview One. This virtual reality camera will be sent to the observation deck of the International Space Station to capture immersive virtual reality video.
Kerv raised $160k to bootstrap its contactless payment solution: a ring. Pay with a single gesture anywhere in the world that accepts contactless payments. No card, PIN, bank account or smartphone required.
With ShockStop, you won’t feel the shocks of the road again. This adjustable-stiffness suspension stem smooths out your ride. Perfect for performance cyclists, recreational riders and commuters.
Forced Eternal Arenas. In this game, Diablo meets Hearthstone in a 3D action brawler with deckbuilding from the creators of FORCED. The campaign just finished and was successful, with many beautiful embeds!
Are you a 3D printing enthusiast? Felfil Evo will be your new open source filament extruder. You will be able to choose your filament colour, diameter and material daily, according to your creativity and curiosity.
Are you dreaming of being noticed by the big game studios? Here’s how to do it!
We are working closely with more and more AAA studios, and when we spot good work in our community we always recommend it to them. Over the last few months, we suggested some super cool World of Warcraft and Heroes of the Storm fanart to Blizzard and they loved it! These six models were featured prominently on their official Facebook pages and got hundreds of likes and tens of thousands of views.
The easiest way to get YOUR work noticed too is to make sure you add the right tags: we’re always scanning the tag galleries for the best new models. In this case, make sure you add tags like #wow, #heroesofthestorm and of course #blizzard!
If you’re not sure of the best tags to use, visit the Popular gallery, and enter the tags that you think could work. By browsing the related tags for each model you’ll get a great sense of which ones you should use.
For now, here are the six lucky artists who received a HUGE audience boost with their features:
Robin Dao is a 3D environment artist living in California. He works for Warner Bros, but still manages to find time to create amazing characters like Mukmuk the Deep Sea Murloc. 1,000 likes? Not bad!
The Coldlight murlocs reside in the darkest pits of the Abyssal Depths. So no, there’s no getting away from murlocs!
Sebastian Figueroa is Game Designer and 3D Artist from Vancouver, Canada. He cleverly used our beta animation feature to produce this walking ‘Wooden Horde’ orc! When Blizzard featured him, he collected a nice 35k views on his model :)
The Iron Horde is in shatters. The time has now come for… the Wooden Horde! But maybe it’s not Grommash’s brightest idea…3d animated fanart created by Sketchfab user Sebasfig
Learn how to create stylized, hand-painted textures for your 3D models in Photoshop with this tutorial by Sketchfab community member Emilie Stabéll. She published this tutorial on her own blog and allowed us to republish it. Thanks Emilie! :)
About This Tutorial
This tutorial will take you through my process of creating stylized and painterly textures using Photoshop. Furthermore, we’ll have a brief look at how to create a toony finish in Maya using quick and easy methods for fast results. I will explain my workflow and the importance of simplicity when texturing as well as share my resources so you can experiment with the techniques yourself.
Blocking in Maya
Since it would be quite difficult to paint without a model to paint on, the first step is to block out your model using Maya. Some people might prefer ZBrush, which is certainly more efficient for complex organic shapes, but for something as basic as this, I personally prefer using Maya because it simplifies my workflow. This particular model was created as part of a larger illustration piece, so it was modelled in front of an image plane to resemble the concept as closely as possible. From a very early stage, I check my silhouette by hitting the “use flat lighting” view option. Once I’m happy with my model, I’ll UV it in Maya and unfold using the “Unfold 3D” and “Smooth UV” tools.
Setting up the Workflow
When I’m happy with my UV’s, I take a UV Snapshot, import it into Photoshop and begin to set up the workflow. I create a mask for all UV shells and group them into appropriate subgroups, in this case: bird, wing, thighs and legs. This approach will allow you to create clipping masks for each group so you don’t have to worry about ‘colouring within the lines’. Another important thing to note, is to always make your masks a couple of pixels wider than the actual UV shell, otherwise you might run into issues with Maya displaying black edges around the seems.
Colour Blocking, Smudging & Detailing
Here’s when the fun part begins – painting! I begin by applying a flat base colour to everything using the Paint Bucket Tool. Next, I quickly paint some rough gradients and colour vibration using my “Awesome Paint 1″ brush (it really is awesome). At this stage, you shouldn’t worry about precision at all as it is simply about applying some nice gradients and bold colours. Once you have something decent looking, it’s time to switch to the smudge tool using the “Smudge Blender” brush. This brush is optimized for the tool, so you won’t get any of the lag you’d normally experience when using smudge. Furthermore, it’ll leaves behind a bit of texture creating that nice, painterly effect. From here on, it’s a back and forth process between painting and smudging until you’re satisfied. Note that you want all the layers you paint on to be ‘clipped’ to the mask at the bottom of your group. This will keep your structure simple and easy to navigate in.
For these assets, I chose to paint in all light and shadow. The reason being that it spared me from worrying about light setup’s, advanced render settings and displacement/normal maps. When you paint your lighting information, you’ll only have to worry about the silhouette of your model, as the rest can be “cheated” in the textures. Furthermore, it creates a nice handmade look that I find quite charming. All details and all light were painted with the exact same method, going back and forth between the “Awesome Paint 1″ and the “Smudge Blender”.
Adding Lineart
When you’re happy with the overall texture, it’s time to add the icing on the cake: the lineart. This will make the look pop and come to life. To create the lineart, I use the “Ink” brush which has a nice textural feel and dynamic stroke. It’s impossible to draw a straight line with, which is exactly what we want. I only draw the inner lines, as we’ll apply an outline as our final step. For this project, I had a concept to follow so it was easy for me to place the lineart. However, if you’re designing as you’re going, I would advice you to place your lines where there’s a clear change in colour, where there’s a cast shadow or where there’s a hard break in the model; in general, all clearly visible edges are a good place to start.
Time for Outlines
Adding the final outline is an easy step. Simply go to “Rendering” in the dropdown menu, select your model and go to Toon > Assign Outline > Add New Toon Outline
In the attribute editor you’ll find a few helpful sliders to tweak the look. The first thing I do, is to change my Profile Lines from Paint Effects to Offset Mesh as this will allow you to smooth the outline. You can now go in your Outliner and select the ProfileMeshes group and either subdivide it or simply hit 3 for a smooth preview. Now you want to tweak the Line Width under the Common Toon Attributes. Here you’ll have to play around to get a thickness you like.
Next, you’ll have to decide if you want Crease and Intersection Lines, also found under the Common Toon Attributes. I tend to stay away from Crease Lines as they tend to create some ugly artifacts; Intersection Lines are sometimes helpful, but it’s very case dependant. The final thing to do, is to choose the colour of your outline. You do this by expanding the Profile Lines menu below the Common Toon Attributes menu and set your profile colour. If you’ve chosen Intersection Lines or Crease Lines, the colour of these can be changed in their respective menus as well.
And that’s it! Now you should hopefully be left with a cool looking 3D model with some nice toony textures. If you’re interested in trying out the brushes mentioned in this tutorial, you can download my brushpack by clicking HERE.
In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.
Hello, I’m Matthew. I work as a 3D environment artist for Snowcastle games in Oslo.
I started making the Fox Tree in April 2015, but only got around to completing it recently. In my previous portfolio work the weakest part was the tree (particularly the canopy) so in the next piece I decided I would make the tree the main part and work on improving my skills in that area. Additionally I wanted to add a few simple characters to the scene to give it a bit of life and tell a story.
For reference, I looked at the gnarled trunk designs of Alexia Tryfon and Raquel Martinez. The foliage was inspired by Airborn Studio’s nice fluffy trees, the rock was based on reference photos of West Macdonnell National Park, while the Chicken, Fox and Mushrooms were based on whichever photos were top of Google’s image search.
I don’t specifically base my work on any specific piece of concept art but I do have a Pinterest page with pieces of artwork which act as a benchmark; a level of quality I should aim to achieve.
I start in ZBrush. I use cylinder primitives and sculpt these into the tree trunk, the canopy, the rock base and the two mushrooms. The initial sculpt is very rough: it is about getting the silhouette and the shape correct. I use Dynamesh and Zremesher frequently to re-topologize the mesh as I go along. This allows me to alter the shape (for example pulling out branches) while maintaining an even topology.
The brushes I use are fairly common ones: Clay tubes for adding volume, trim dynamic to flatten things out and Orb’s Cracks brush for making cuts into the sculpt.
When I’m happy with the shape I decimate the models and import them into Maya. I then use Maya’s modelling toolkit and the Quad draw function to re-topologize the models with a new mesh. As this is the final mesh I can UV map this and also use the lattice tools to reshape it a bit as well as making branches longer and so on.
The new mesh goes back into ZBrush for the second sculpt: this time I have the basic shape so I am adding fine details to the sculpt.
After the sculpting is finished the Low poly mesh and the decimated high poly mesh go into xNormal to bake Normal and AO maps. Now I can start making a diffuse map in Photoshop using the AO map and the Green channel of the Normal map as a base texture.
At this point most of the work is painting in photoshop as well as adding details to the mesh like the foliage, the tree roots and the animals, and amalgamating the tree mesh with the rock mesh, optimising the triangle count and so on.
The final big task is the foliage for the canopy. This is created by lots of 2D cards with Alpha maps to give the foliage a ‘fluffy’ feel to it: I make little clumps of cards and place the clumps around the mesh by hand.
Finally I do an AO and light map bake in maya to give the scene a little colour variation and to provide some shadows.
I use Sketchfab for portfolio pieces; it’s a neat little tool and allows people to interact with the models a bit more than with a showreel or static image and I quite like that I can embed models into Facebook.
We’re excited to announce that CGSociety forums have added Sketchfab support so you can display your work in full 3D.
CGSociety members can manually use bbcode like this: [SKETCHFAB]eb88f06b4bc342d6bfa99e7608f1d7be[/SKETCHFAB], or click the Sketchfab button and paste the model URL to generate an embed code, like this:
CGSociety joins an ever growing list of site and forums with Sketchfab support, and we encourage you to post there to get more exposure for your work within a vibrant community!
