kopfstoff

congrats to all the winners and "runner up's", honor to whom honor is due :) awesome to actually read some feedback of the creators and finally have a result! and thanks to max3d.pl for starting this awesome contest! was a blast! "i dzięki max3d.pl rozpoczęcia ten wspaniały konkurs! było super!"

hey xmass! thank you man, glad you like it - i love that scar on the nose too, that's why i put a lot of effort into it ^^ i played around with the fill light and liked it more subtle at the end, with the focus is more on the left and the forms are more vague on the right side. it's hard sometimes to not care about showing every feature in the render image, but i think it is good to zero in on what's actually important for the image / the message you want to deliver. i hope you understand me correctly. :D anyway. new ones... b&w version one light, colour version two lights (sss, spec, diff, shadow passes composed in ps). hope you like.

wohaa, wwwoj - phantastic works! i just found out about this thread... did you also make the layers for the 2d animation in-game? the comic sequences? sorry if that question came up before, i hope you don't mind if i won't translate 4 pages. :D that there are so many artists from the gaming industry part of this forum is just incredible! thanks for sharing these, dude! :)

thanks sebazx6r! :)

great sculpts! i love the interpretation of the "fantasy shaman", i saved the image of that original bust a few weeks ago, since it is an awesome reference indeed! :) i really like the third bust (that vampire creature) and the old monk too. one question: is the sss in the ears of the first one real or a texture fake? (with small veins too) - eitherway, looks good! :)

thank you tr3buh! :> glad you like it that much! i must confess that i am very satisfied with this one too. ;)

hey sebazx6r, you're right i think. the darker one needs most of all more background integration. the dayshot works great because of that i think. maybe i should give him some white backlight from the window and paint some godrays in later on, thanks for the ideas! what a hustle to just render out - i thought the sculpting and texturing would be the hardest part... :) maybe i can enhance that one with some small edits then, but for now... a new render! :D wanted to play around with another perspective and mood. hope you like this one! (finally i know how to change the resolution in zbrush) i LOVE the red sss ears ;) i also like the b&w version of it, fits the original render artworks of the game imho:

thank you, sebazx6r! :D i edited the renderer in the dark room again... adjusted the focus areas again and now it looks more like sweat too i think. ;)

hey xmass, you're welcome and thank you too. :) for the last shot i wanted to have him a bit glossy / sweaty, but it's still hard for me to find the right settings for a realistic look. and yeah, you're right... it makes no sense that the specularity isn't effected by the dirt on his skin! since i dont use a specular map (i am using zbrush only for rendering, and there are only diffuse-, bump- and displacement maps i think), i have to edit it later on in photoshop... i edit the material shader to get specularity. another night, another renderer. ;) for the skin i am getting where i want i think. also the lighting, i kinda know now what to do here, but the hair is still a bit strange to render. it's fibermesh and material "hair 2" - why isn't the specularity of the hair effected by my lightsources? it's not a matcap (baked in light) i thought?! any good material tips for hair?

@ania: hey there, thanks! yeah, you're right about the specs and the "chromatic aberration"... i made the mistake and tryed to push the lightsource on his cheeks only with the specularity of it. after i changed the colours i felt like it's actually frosty wet and cold... that's why i sayed "winter". ;) for the "chromatic aberration": i just found out about how to do that, that's why i wanted to show it in this test :D i've seen it so often in artworks in the last months but never knew how its actually made, so yeah - totally true about that it's way to heavy here! i still have a lot to learn, but compared to the knowledge i've had two weeks ago i think i can improve here. :D @kamil.ochel: thank you too! i think i dont understand exactly what you mean.. do you think that the heavy specularity actually makes it look like a real human beeing or a photo of a real life sculpture? i think you mean real life sculpture, since i believe tr3buh is right about the missing sss and "dead look" here. ;) @tr3buh: hey dude, thanks for the links, man! appreciated! i use a good sss material with some shaders to play around with and i already tryed some sss settings, but didn't set the renderer for the "winter" image above. you're totally right about that it doesn't look like flesh because of the missing sss here... i just wanted to test lighting with this one and will go on with sss from now on. adds so much realism! wow, that second link! his alien render image looks so awesome! :O really great stuff, thanks for sharing! i did another bpr render tonight: sss, ao, shadow, spec, diffuse, ambient, depth, mask... i like the result, even if it's the basic light again. small steps, small steps. ;) painted some dirt on the skin (standard brush rgb in combination with masking brushm two browns and one red), since he looked way to "clean" and new, especially beside that apocalypse shirt he wears - much better now i think. :D

a bit more fooling around, i think i start to understand lighting in zbrush... this is just a fast test, rendered out 3 lights and composed them in photoshop. it's a long road. :/ winter joel ;) : ps: found out why my materials wasn't black when turning the lights out... ambience and diffuse has to be "0" in the material settings.

hey there guys, i took part in the "the last of us fan art contest" hosted by max3d.pl and my entry was a sculpt of joel. since i did not manage to finish the textures and some detail, i decided to continue with the bust and keep on learning 3d (i am kinda new to all of this stuff). i don't want to repeat myself, that's why i post a link to the old contest WIP thread beneath this text, so that you can dive into the past and see how everything has started. ;) please feel free to give feedback, i would love to read some comments! old thread: http://max3d.pl/forum/showthread.php?t=90179 last step was my first try composing in photoshop... bald head, no hair, since the material behaves kinda strange sometimes ;) -> new wip steps: current status (straight bpr, no edits or composing!): if you guys have any good lighting tutorials or tips for setting up light for portraits in zbrush, PLEASE share them! i only own zbrush, so i can just work with that. i could go with the simple light setup shown above in the composition and the unedited bpr shots above, but i wanted to have something like that maybe: 1) http://www.thesoftboxstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/JCW_1526-COLOR-1000x1250.jpg 2) http://th05.deviantart.net/fs71/200H/i/2013/208/0/b/dramatic_portrait_number_12_by_cable9tuba-d6fhcdc.jpg 3) http://www.edwardshaw.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/dramatic-photo-birmingham-studio-portrait-14365sm.jpg i think it's kinda hard to adjust lights in zbrush, since you have no light in a 3 dimensional space, but that mat-ball and a dot to move... plus: does any one know why i still can see details if i turn off all lights inside zbrush? shouldn't it be black then? :/

@Rotcore: thanks for the info! yeah, i think i will start a new thread in the 3d subforum then and link to this one. @Adek: hey adek, of course i know that the deadline is over, i just thought i'll use this wip thread to show how i continue with the sculpt. but you are right! i should start a new thread in the 3d forum - it would be kind if you could keep this thread as it is, since it's the wip thread for the contest entry and should be listed here too i think. i will stop posting progress in here and post a link to the 3d thread, so that people from the 2d corner who are interested could go on follow the progress. thanks for the reminder and information guys, i will update this posting with the link once i've started the new thread! :) there you go (new thread): http://max3d.pl/forum/showthread.php?t=90369 from now on i'll post updates in this thread.

thank you rotcore! i really appreciate your comment, especially that you think that i am experienced in 3d! i am learning so much new stuff in the last few weeks, my head feels like it's going to blow in a few minutes. :D so, heres some very early bpr render test, composed in photoshop (no overpaints!) -> the skin texture is polypainted inside zbrush without using any photos or other textures. the render is without hair and dramatic lighting, just so that it's not too much to handle for me for the first time. tomorrow i am going to texture the cloth and hope that i can finish it and render it again... everything this time. ;) hope you like! (ps: i am going to post some steps then too. i am just too tired right now! just wanted to share that outcome immediately ;))

some small updates again. did the eyes yesterday night... no spotlight, projection or textures used - only polypaint. a bit of decomposing ;)... current status (at least some colour ;)):

as i've promised i am going to finish joel... :) haven't got the time to go on with the sculpt until today, so here are some new wip shots and and also some old ones i forgot to share (adding first details to the shirt, just before the deadline)... today i created my first insert-brush (did a lowpoly stick for that in zbrush) to build up the seams. this acutally took me a while, since my computer isn't that strong with only 4 gig ram and the polycount is getting really high now. because of this bust my pc is taking a lot of punishment lately - crashes and freezes inclusive. :/ well, adding colours shouldn't be that more exprensive performance wise... so i'll hope the next updates will be colourful. ;) curent status: i like the small hole inside the shirt... :D

so here are the last wip steps i saved... time was running out so quickly today, i am really dissatisfied with the fact that i couldn't finish the sculpt how i intended it to look like. i did not have the time to add seams and buttons for the shirt, and i really underestimated how time consuming the shirt would be... there is no textur at all now and most of all i am sad about not getting the light setup i planed to have for him. i just had no time to get into the render settings of zbrush today :/ anyways, i really hope my entry still counts since i make it before 23:59:59 with saving, uploading and posting in the "finals" thread, but i had to post it the way it is... i am really crossing fingers now! i spent most of the time today with finishing the main shape of the face, since just adjusting the eyes left the other parts too long/big, i only noticed this fact after i changed the eyes and reopned the project this morning. i just realized that it is still a big construction area and that the likeness could be pushed more by going back into the basic shape. after i was pleased with that, i added really small details above the first "skin" i already created with the help of textures some days ago. i added wrinkles, scars, pores and spots to the face all by hand (no textures used here). i dont think that you can see all those small things in the final image, so i post a zoom pic of it beneath too (second image: i love that scar on the nose :o). i hope that i can finish him tomorrow the way i wanted him to look like and i will post him again in this wip thread, even if it's not my entry for the contest - i OWE it to joel! :p contest entry:

LAAAAAATE... had no time to add colour and learn the ropes of proper rendering :/ i'll update the WIP thread later on and show what i've changed since last time. hope i am not too late! GREAT ARTWORK IN THIS THREAD!!! edit: background, signature and logo font added in photoshop, joel RAW zbrush bpr renderer.

haha, yeah true, very close! but don't worry, in germany we have a phrase which is: "deutsche sprache schwere sprache." - that means that the grammar of the german language is really hard to understand... even for german folks. ;) another wip... reworked the eyes again, mainly the size and angle. a friend told me yesterday that they are to big. in my opinion the big eyes suits him (small children pattern = cutness :D), but it missed that cunning feature there i think. now its closer again. :P oh man, this evening is a party where i have to go to... only tomorrow left. i think i'll keep it like this now, until i see major problems when i come back and start texturing tomorrow...

thanks mats! glad you like it so far. :) hey pumax, thank you too! haha, almost correct... in german it would be "sein haar sieht brilliant aus" or "sein haar ist brilliant", but it should be hard to misread your kind comment! :D sooooo... today i redid the whole hair, since i actually liked that "shockheaded" look, but honestly it's not really close to the hair of joel. even if i do not want to copy his looks exactly, i think it's necessary to get the hair very similar to the original design since likeness stands and falls with the hairstyle. besides, the hair i did earlier wasn't really good arranged - unfortunately. i masked out different spaces on the head but with that, i had to adjust the hair amount everytime, since the masked spots i created did not have the exact same size. plus some of the tools i created this way wasn't editable anymore - i somehow destroyed the possibility to pose the hair with the fibermesh brushes :/. aaanyways, long story short it HAD to be redone in order to go on and is much more organized now, since i used "polygroups" for the first time. it's a great way to pose the hair. cost me a lot of time again, but i think now i am ready to go on. :) wip's -> and the curent status again: edit: changed some minor details at the frontal hairs directly above his forehead. i replaced the images above but so that you can see the difference i made a little gif. i wanted to achieve more of that "strains of hair" look joel has. thats closer again i think. :)

update time... here are some new wip shots. beard and hair took me sooo long, fibermesh is a BIT$%. :D ...and here's the curent status. still wip and a lot to do, but i think i can make it - well, i hope :)

no problem, mats. you're welcome. i can understand that the deadline is too close now, i just wanted to point that hand-thing out... would have irked me if i did not. :P and you're right about the patrol. :)

you are very welcome! :) the new version looks very polished compared to the last wip i've seen, also that blue rim light is exactly what i ment.. looks much better this way. for the destroyed bridge: you did a great job here, helps so much more to understand that part and to read the distance correctly. it also gives some nice depth to the image too. i also like the new water, and that the flahlight reflections isn't totally bright, like there's fog eating it up before hitting the water surface. for the hand... i think it's still a bit to small, and the perspective doesn't seem right (gun compared to hand). also the forefinger/triggerfinger needs to be slightly more visible then the other fingers, while holding a gun. i did a fast overpaint to show you what i mean -> if you want the gun facing the viewer more, so that you can see the hole of the gun barrel more, you have to turn the hand too. if you see the full back of the hand like in your painting, it should be also the sideview of the gun.. unless joel is reloading with his thumb and therefore he's not holding it tight, but i dont think that's the case here. ;) for the soldiers: it really looks like a patrol having a look out there, but i think i liked it more without people on the other side.. that way it was much more threatening i think, because i couldn't tell as a viewer if there are still soldiers/bandits/fireflys or only infected left. you did not know what to expect! now its clearly a outpost of humans. both work well, and it's completely fine this way, don't get me wrong its just a matter of taste i think. :) and btw: i think you can compete! there are a lot of talented people here, lots of great art but either way it's a great piece you did here dude. :) edit: oh and your english is fine!

hey tr3buh! thank you, glad you like it so far - really appreciate your comment! yeah i totally agree on the drawing/scultping thing... but it's also because of the program structure and workflow of zbrush i think: i once tryed to model something in maya some years ago and it was a real struggle for me... all that math (i am very bad at maths!), logical, theoretical, charts with lots of numbers, all that boring grey of the software overlay itself... zbrush just gives you some digital clay to shape and that's about it. :D that's what i like mostly about it, its very intuitive and close to the real scultping thing i think. to answer your question: i just had a look when i saved the first file... it's about a month since i have started on him, i had to make a break for about one week since then, and one or two weekends where i did not have the time to touch the bust. as it is all done in my freetime it's hard to give you exact hours... but a lot of work went into it, especially since i am doing a lot of stuff for the first time with this project. long away from beeing finished and time is running out! :/ i am so happy when i finally save the last file and post it here, believe me. :D i think i'll post an update tomorrow or the day after, haven't got lot of time at the weekend to work on it. :)

@Bombadil: yeah right, i was looking for the correct translation to say "great" in polish. :eek: damn you, google translator! @pumax: i really like the detail that the clew of thread ("wątek"?) acutally looks like a smiling monster-face. thats so cool! :D