Mayan Orb

Just a sneak peek at something i'm working on.

The Player controlled "sphere" which will explore an ancient Mayan Temple in a Puzzle based game rewarded exploration and clever thinking.

(If it ever gets made since its a Unity project)

- Nutter

Knight of the Lionheart Order (Work In Progress)

Hey everyone, so its been a few days I last uploaded anything and thats mostly because i've been working on something big. Well complicated anyway...

After all the weapons and props and monsters I decided to try something a little more difficult in Mudbox, a full human character in armour. I've started with the base Mudbox human template and worked from there.

2 Days later and heres how he's looking so far. I'm going for a Knight sort of look, heavy plated armour with some nice ornate details on it. He's a member of the Lionheart Order so a few Lion insignias too. Anyway take a look let me know what you think.

- Nutter

Octo Brain Pt 3

Hi All,

Been hard at work with this all day and the modelling and texturing is just about done now. Painted the Diffuse map, reworked the Normal Map a little and finally got my head around Specular Maps.

In total i've spent about 3-4 hours modelling the base shape in Max, another 3-4 hours creating the higher poly version in Mudbox and then around another 4 hours painting and texturing it. Its starting to look pretty cool now. If I can be bothered i'll be rigging it next, then maybe creating a scene with a few of them swimming around in a tank.

In the mean time I wanna do a decent render then touch it up in Photoshop.

- Nutter

OctoBrain

Hey everyone

It probably won't surprise people reading this to find out that my room and bags etc are filled with little doodles and sketches for various creatures, monsters and other random thing i'd love to make.

Now that i've handed in most of my work for my final year of Uni I thought i'd model one of them. The model shown below is based on a (tiny) sketch I did during one lecture last year. The model is obviously very low poly and the detail will be added Via a Normal Map created in Mudbox.

At around 1.2 K poly's right now it doesn't look all that impressive but the higher poly version in Mudbox that im working on looks much better. I'll upload a pic of that tomorrow hopefully. The really annoying thing is, ive made the base model in about a day, and the Mudbox high poly version looks almost better than the Monsters I created for my 3D module, I guess it really is easier second time round.

Its also semi based around the creature I created during my random concept art sketch HERE

- Nutter

Eyes of a Carnivore

Hey All

No doubt by now you'll have seen my monster project in some shape or form. Well one of the things that has been bugging me lately are the eyes. Until now its had fairly human eyes, admittedly an unnatural colour pupil but they were very much still human shape. I also recently discovered they were a very high poly count for what they are. This pretty much forced me to re-do them. And since I was redoing them anyway I changed how they looked, now they're more reptillian which I think makes the monster look ever better.

I've also texture and added the creature's tongue although it still needs a little work on specularity anyway check it out.

The new eyes certainly make him seem a lot less friendly atleast in my opinion but what do you think?

- Nutter

Not so Normal Monster

Hey Everyone,

Finally got Normal Maps working on my monster, its allowed me to drop its base mesh back from 34K polys back down to around 8K. Obviously this is a good thing but it also looks even more detailed thanks to the normal map, i'm also experimenting with specularity maps at the moment to give the skin a slightly wet and fleshy look. Anyway thats enough talk heres a picture.

Oh and the tongue and mouth interior is still work in progress (the tongue is going into mudbox tommorow to make it look less blocky and more detailed).

What do you think of the skin at the moment with the current spec settings? Look realistic and fleshy or perhaps a little too reflective?

- Nutter

Here Be Monsters.

Hey everyone

Check out my monsters, this is the basic diffuse maps created (and by created I mean I made the red one messed with hue and saturation in photoshop to make the blue one).

I did another big HD render because I like showing off my 3D stuff when it works. Now I just need to get the normal maps working.

- Nutter

Mud Monster

Just a little taste of how the monster (which I still need to name) looks in Mudbox at the moment. Obviously right now i've only focused on detail around the face for now but its starting to come together.

- Nutter

More totems

Hey everyone

Remember the neat little totems I made (and my team mate textured) for our team project?

This one.

Well we're now making a (mad) dash to try and get all the assets modeled for the end of the week. I've now finished my destroyed version of the units so i'm onto turrets. The original turret design was a pretty simple makeshift affair made of a few sticks and crystals. It looked like the one below.

Hardly something you'd expect to stand up to an onslaught of robots. After how good the waypoint totem turned out, we decided to make the turrets into towers which a similar style to the turret which is what ive been working on today.

So here it is... let me know what you think.

Tower Turret & Waypoint totem

Obviously it'll look a lot better after its been textured.

- Nutter

PS - An update on the monster tomorrow (now that its in mudbox)

Unwrapping: The secret art of making 3d models 200% more difficult to make

Hey everyone

As you may know i've been working on my 3d monster for a while and its starting to look pretty good. But finally I decided it was complete enough to go into mudbox and start adding details. This was great, this is the bit im looking forward... Just one  problem. I imported it in about to get started and Bam! I realised I still needed to unwrap my model. This is the process of flattening down a 3d model into a set of 2d shapes which can then be textured or whatever.

This was not an easy job in the case of my monster. Luckily I had (a lot) help from a wonderful program called UV Layout. It did crash a few times and get stuck a few times but that was more down to my inexperience with it than a fault with the program. Anyway after a lot of blood, sweat and tears (mostly tears and sweat) I've finally unwrapped it and can FINALLY take it into mudbox and start having fun with it.

This monster unwrapped becomes...

...this mass of shapes

You can see now why I don't like unwrapping organic stuff.

- Nutter

Spot the difference

Hey everyone.

Check out the 2 images and spot the difference.

The left is the photoshop mock up of the horns.. and the right is the model with some horns added (and I darkened the mouth area a little in photoshop)

Anyway I reckon its starting to look pretty cool, what do you think?

- Nutter

Nom Nom

Hey Everyone

Quick post because I just wanna show off the eyes my monster now has.

Beginning to look a little scarier now it actually has eyes and teeth

- Nutter

Procrastination

Hey Everyone

If you're wondering why there haven't been posts for almost a week, its partly down to me doing a lot of work that isn't very visual (well except for the destroyed versions of units for my team project - see below)

The Destroyed Version of the "Quetzalcoatl" unit

But its mostly down to a game called Rise Of Immortals, a free to play MOBA on Steam. Fans of DOtA and LoL might wanna check it out. I recommend Ichorr as a good starter character if you do.

- Nutter

PS: Referral Link in case anyone feels generous and wants to sign up

Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Hey Everyone

This is a far from finished picture but I just wanted to show off this quick render of all the parts of my 3D project to date. The monsters are coming on well now, just need to add horns etc before I take them into MudBox and add all the little details.

Anyway check it out

- Nutter

PS - the fullsize version's colour is messed up.. just ignore it. FIXED IT

Skull Pt. 2

Hey everyone.

This would be the bit where I showed off the much prettier version of the skull from yesterday. And that was the plan. But apparently laptops aren't designed to run Photoshop and 3DS Max at the same time. Needless to say I haven't been able to get much done.

Grr. Stupid Max

- Nutter