More Lancia Texture Work

I think I'm finally happy with the textures on this model now. After hours of experimenting, re-baking, re-texturing, re-sizing and more I can call this a finished piece. I'll need to render a video turntable to show the car off properly.

Lancia Texture Polishing

I have spent the last few days remapping and retexturing the Lancia rally car. It's now covered in a nice layer of dust, I've added decals which really add to the depth and detail. Areas like the front grills have been reworked. The textures are more efficient and look better than ever. I also cleaned up some geometry and added a few minor details like a steering wheel, rear view mirror and dashboard just to give the window silhouettes some nice shapes.

Head Bust Sculpture

I've just finished the second chapter of my Zbrush tutorial book. This chapter focused on building a head from an underlying skull, adding the main muscle forms and finally adding the skin and details on top. It was a great learning process and I'm relatively happy with my final outcome. Some areas like the eyes and ears are not quite right but I learned all the skills needed from this piece to move on. I will definitely benefit from producing another head in the future. Perhaps using a model for reference.

Lion Head

I've spent the day working in Zbrush. I'm new to the software but it is something I want to master. Above shows my first work following a tutorial. I wasn't intending to share this as tutorial pieces normally lack anything original however the tutorial was merely teaching the basics of how to use brushes etc. I actually spent some time drawing lion's before I went into this piece. Reference is vital to understanding form and proportion. I'm really pleased with the result. My lion is very stylised. I tried to give him angular features and powerful eyes.

Carriage Textures

I've spent the past few days pulling this model apart and building high poly parts. I'm getting very efficient UV mapping each model but as always each model throws up different problems to solve. I tried to use fewer texture maps with this piece even though that meant re-baking several times after working out better ways of mirroring and reusing parts. I changed the rear suspension to be the same as the front. I have found some versions of this carriage use this system and others have a more complicated different rear suspension method. I decided it would be more efficient to re-use the front suspension. This is the more likely solution if I were building this model for a game engine.

I'm not sure if I took the mud layers too far but I like the grimey used look. This carriage has been places!

Next I will be building a horse, reigns, and driver. I think I'll start on the driver tomorrow. It's been a while since I have done any organic modelling so that will bring some new challenges.

Brougham Carriage Model

This is the project I have been working on for the past week. I wanted to wait till I had it UV mapped and applied basic textures before I shared it. I found the undercarriage suspension tricky areas to get my head around. It has a lot of complex parts and finding good reference was tricky. Luckily I came across a blog in America who specialised in restoring carriages and wagons. I was even luckier to find they were also working on the same model of carriage. Good quality reference is always invaluable. I could make parts up and most people would be none the wiser but I can be a perfectionist with a strong desire to capture everything I create in a realistic manner. That meant getting my head around leaf spring engineering. I think I know how leaf spring suspension works now!

The next stage is to go back in and start building high poly models of the pieces. Then bake on some nice normal maps. After that I can apply proper textures. I like the idea of having a shiny carriage but I know it would push my skills further to add dirt scratches.

Sketching Vehicles

Two recent pages from sketchbook. First shows some sketches of the vehicles I want in my Goldeneye poster. The Aston Martin came out really clean and correctly proportioned. The second image is my some images getting used to the proportions of my current 3D project, a Brougham Carriage.

Goldeneye Ourumov Portrait

I came across some beautifully painted comic covers this evening that had a hand painted quality to them. After a quick search I found the artist actually created them using photoshop. This inspired me to have a go myself and create another portrait for the Goldeneye poster. This is by far my best piece using the graphic tablet yet. I'm still experimenting with it and finding my style so this portrait doesn't really fit together well with the otehrs. I'm running out of people to paint, I think Natalya is the last person I want to feature. After that I'll have to attempt the vehicles which I'm quite weak with. It will be good to get some practice in and develop my drawing in other areas.