Armageddon Sniper

[Ethan]

so far today...

Fur is almost done. Was trying to get a bit more depth of texture out of it but ended up loosing the muscular structure that I worked so hard on so I checked out some sculptures of tigers and fur is almost never there so I think I did a pretty dang good job lol! Next is to finish out the feet and fore-paws, tweak the head just a bit and then add saddle and straps. With the accessories added I should be able to get a bit more fur depth around those areas so I think I will be very satisfied.

 

[Helm]

Looks good to me Ethan the heads taking shape for sure, looking forward to the rider

Steve

 

[Ethan]

ugh! I feel like yesterday was a total waste of 12 hours of work. As you can see from the previous post, the hair just wasn't getting there. Trying to basically draw in every hair and build volume is a monumental task and one that I can't get a grasp of properly. So yesterday evening I decided to go a different route. What you see below is a particle system turned into a 3 dimensional mesh. I will be able to get a very realistic rendering of the finished product but the drawback is I have to figure out how to get rid of the millions of holes so that my 3D printer can print those types of details. I guess I've just decided to get as close to real as possible and worry about getting a sculpture out of it afterwards!

 

[mash3d]

That's the problem with all hair/fur systems. They may render ok but theres no way to get them out to a print. You may have to end up sclupting the fur in. Almost the same way you woud do hair on a regular figure.

 

[Ethan]

Yep! That's how it turns out. My brother and I worked really hard all last night to get a displacement map of the fur and place it on the tiger. Sadly it turned into some kind of blob every time.... The one good thing is now I have a really cleaned up and nicely topologized tiger to start over from! I have some ideas to get a nice gestural fur texture and I will attempt those while I am back in my first day of Spring College. Fun stuff! needless to say I don't think this will be done by contest deadline of Feb 1st since I haven't even gotten back to the female yet.

 

[Ethan]

So after a wonderful week back in college I have finally had a day to get back into the tiger. Almost done! Started blocking in the tiger stripes; hopefully it will be completed tomorrow and I can move on to the girl!

 

[Helm]

Coming along Ethan IMO there is something a little off about the eye maybe a tad big? I dunno you might not even have finished there yet anyway, been most interesting watching how this has developed mate,good luck in your race against time!

Steve

 

[Ethan]

Agreed, the eye is going to get some serious work here in a bit. Just a quick update. I finished all the basic necessities for the saber-tooth and set up the official base. There will be a lot of tweaks to do with these objects if I have the time but as it stands I am moving on to the girl to see if I can get something together before the friday deadline.

Quick Render

 

[Helm]

Looks pretty good to me Ethan the base looks great

 

[Ethan]

Long time since I have been able to post! School is a freakin bear... Anyways I have been steadily working on the actual Huntress. Ideas have changed a bit and I am still learning how to get all the pieces to work right but I am slowly moving forward. With this model I am focusing on a perfect wire mesh so that she could be placed in a game or movie and animate correctly. For printing this is not a concern but I would like all of my work to be in my portfolio so I have to make sure each piece is perfect.

The boots took an entire week by themselves!


the pants were and still are a labor of love but they are coming together. The version you will see is very dumbed down, kind of a place-holder. The sculpted version will be shown later.

Here is last nights work on her body armor. After research into what other 3D artists are doing and trying not to copy them I came up with a variation on the Roman, " lorica segmentata". This version is just the very basic planes and more will be added I am sure.





Finally the completed mockup. Much to do! Any suggestions welccome!

 

[Ethan]

I worked on the face all this week. Here is the simple mesh. No details added and no expression yet. Just the flesh and topology correct.

 

[Ethan]

I've been learning a lot working on this face! The past few weeks have been getting the final shape to the head right and getting a decent texture put on her. Today I began working on making the skin look real. This is the first run. I am sure much will be done to make it look better.

 

[Helm]

Doesn't look at all bad as a base Ethan

Steve

 

[Ethan]

Thanks Steve! Im currently tweaking the lips and ears and beginning to set up the expression. Being a warrior she has to look a bit mean you know! Then it's on to hair and then back to her body.

 

[Ethan]

It's been forever since I have posted!!! I can't believe it. So I had to get this digitally rendered for an internship opportunity so here is a 90% completed Huntress. Sorry no Tiger, I still don't know how to get that fur looking realistic but she looks pretty decent. the background was thrown in for realistic lighting and the clothing needs some real palette adjustments but here she is!

 

[Helm]

looks very nice

Steve

 

[Jamie Stokes]

Long time since I've checked in, nice to see your work Ethan.....
it has been informative and interesting to see this digital sculpt evolve.

The Sabertooth has been interesting, the fur looks to be a proper brain ache...

Like how you've adapted the idea of Roman armour to post apocalyptic conversion, plus the updated effort reminds me of 'Alice' from the movie versions of the Resident Evil.....

Cheers
Jamie

 

[Ethan]

Thanks Helm!

Jamie, it is always a pleasure you read your critiques! After you said it I can really see a resemblance to Res Evil as well. I hope to finish all of the work that had to get thrown in for the deadline and put a proper scene for her to be in over the next few weeks. I am seriously considering pulling some images from that movie to help finish this out. Thanks!

 

[Jamie Stokes]

Ethan,
no worries, always good to hear sometimes my critiques come across (via text on a page) as I had hoped

This has been an interesting thread, and digital sculpting has certainly advanced (although still a gap at cost effective 3-d printing, other threads are written at greater length by more experienced people than me)

I may have missed something, are you planning to print & sculpt these ones?

Movies are a good reference for this kind of thing, I have to leave the volume muted, or I'll start watching the movie rather than looking for ideas....

You still doing the old trick of looking at your work reversed/ mirrored to 're-see' it?

Cheers
Jamie

 

[Ethan]

Thanks Jamie, Yes, 3D printing is still not as cost effective but I am blessed to have one at the house so we can produce prints at a relatively low cost which helps a lot during the experimentation phase of working 3D printing into more of the industry. As soon as I can get a concise idea put together and figure out how to get the fur on the tiger to look right AND print I will get a solid piece together for production. So far the major issue I have found is in the actual quality of the printing and the overall time-consuming process to clean and prep a piece for production. At this time I see the only solution is to make a waste mold and cast the pieces in CX5 or another wax substance and then use traditional sculpting to bring back the heavy details that are lost. I can also use that opportunity to make perfect keys and joints for kits. This process adds a great deal of time to the overall production but after trying my had with the White Rabbit I can see it is imperative to get perfect details and make the proper adjustments to posing to add a great deal of drama.

In a perfect world I can sculpt for printing purposes only, a human in less than 40 hours on the computer. Given an entire product with all the trappings I think after I do another 2-5 projects I will have the speed to accurately create an entire character in this 40 hour window. Printing could take another week and I would say adding back the details I would hope would take at most another 40 hours. Given this time frame I think being able to get a piece created and ready for full scale production in less than a month is not too bad. However I don't know what time frame the pros work with so I don't know if this is actually beneficial. I hope that with time the printing process will get to the point where I can take the hyper details I can render on the computer and actually reproduce them in a print and be able to skip the extra time cleaning it up with traditional methods. I think once the industry gets to that point you will see sculpting take it's turn towards digital in a hurry.

I did not use the mirror method on this piece but you are right I should! Gotta catch up on all the college work I let by the way-side during this project now and then I will get back to her and see if I can't get something truly fantastic set up!

Cheers
Ethan