Day 29..re-render

Well After a little advice form some polycount people, I decided to move the lamp in an effort to improve the overall composition. Also tweaked the lighting in the passageway to give it more depth. After that I had to re-render the scene in Max and then reapply the touch-ups and paint over elements. Still waiting for the AO pass to finsih rendering, but as soon as it is done the image should be complete.

Trying to maximize the depth of the passage and one down the lamp in the foreground.

Day 26 . Paint over 1

First stage of the paint over complete. Very nearly complete, Need a bit more refinement and it will be.

Day 25..Final render, time for paintover

All textures and final renders completed, time for post production work to start.

The top image is the final render that I will be painting over.
The next image is a render of the object IDs. By rendering out the object IDs like this I make it easier later in Photoshop because now I have premade selections that I can then use to make easy masking layers. Masking lyer will help alot later when I only want to paint in one section of the image without painting on the other.
The Final image is the Ambient Occlusion pass. This layer, once multiplied over the top of the final image, will give added realism to the shadows and shading in the image.

From here I put the images together and begin painting in the dust, debris and spider webs to everything behind the bookcase. I want to paint some of the spiderwebs to be blowing in a light breeze coming out of the doorway, so that they will be reaching out into the middle of the picture.

Day 22.. Textures almost complete

Well got a major block of textures done. The books took forever to actually apply all the different books, but fortunately I have a fairly decent home library so I had plenty of books around to use as photographic reference.
Next up I need to soften the chair a bit and make it so it doesn't appear so ridged, and still fine tuning the rest of the textures. After that its setting up and doing the final render. I will have to do the final render with some zdepth settings so that I will be able to paint at different depth levels within the picture.

Day 20..start of textures

Started adding textures and materials. Mostly just worked on the kid for the day. Still needs a good deal of work on his hair and jacket. The jacket I can fix with mental ray but the hair I might have to just paint in the fuzzyness later, but I am going to try and play around with max's hair system to see if I can't get a more realistic result.

Well, I got a good start on the lighting. A few more adjustments to make but I am pretty happy with it so far. Really tried to get some dramatic mood to the lighting without going overboard. Really want the foreground to be kind of dark but warm.

6 lights used in total to light the scene, 4 mr omni and 2 mr spot lights. Two of the spot lights and 1 of the omnis make up the light from the lamp. The 2 spot lights have volume added to them to get the cone effect. The volumes have some noise added to make them kind of grainy, which will be critical later when I get to painting in the spiderwebs and such in the doorway.

For mental ray settings I used a final gather solution set to low quality and I also used a basic GI solution. The two used together help give the nice shadows and the bounced light effects. I will use an AO map later in the process to further enhance the shadows.

Next up is to start heavily into the textures. I am going to start with the boy and go from there. Also need to work on the chair a bit to make it look a bit more comfortable. After textures and materials are done, its on to rendering a final image which I will then take into photoshop and add in the cobwebs and such. In the end it should appear as if a light breeze is blowing up through the door, sending dust and old air through the spiderwebs and into the library.

Well after re-doing the UVs for the character, which had somehow got lost in the transfer of files, I was able to use Zbrush's decimation master to get the character down to a poly count that max can deal with. The Zbrush sculpt was almost 3million polys. The final mesh in the image is less then 100k polys with none of the details lost.
Anyway after decimating the mesh I was able to import and place him within the scene. Now I am Working on the initial lighting setup. The lighting overall is not that hard. The hardest part of lighting is the waiting. Every time there are few changes made you have to render or preview your changes somehow, which means you end up waiting a few minutes. Currently render times aren't that long but it is still a major time consumer.

Day 16 - resculpt of body

Well the re-sculpt of the body is pretty much done. Had to re-do the pants entirely, since the previous version wasn't looking like jeans. Getting the folds and creases just right for jeans is pretty challenging. The jacket wasnt that hard, in fact I didnt have to do much except enhance what was already there, but the jeans were a totally different story. It took me several tries to get the pants to even resemble jeans, but I think in the end I got a pretty good result. I could spend many more hours on them I am sure, but at this point I need to move on or will not have a piece to turn in for the competition.
Still a little rough in my overall execution of the entire sculpt, but this is my most Zbrush involved piece to date. Still learning the tools as I go along, and still very far from mastering zbrush but I think I am well on my way.
Next up is to place the kid in the scene and then light the whole thing. Once I am happy with the light and shadows in the scene I will begin texturing and painting everything.

Day 14.. rigging and posing

Took several days to finally get this guy posed. Tried rigging and posing him in zbrush, but the zbrush rig just made a mess of the mesh. In the end I had to export out a low poly version of the mesh. rig it, and then pose it. After that I just imported back to zbrush. Found that after I had imported, that I needed to re-do the sculpt on the body, so that is what I am working on now.

Day 11 - Facial and Hair sculpting

Got a lot of the face and hair finished. The hair was kind of tricky and took me a couple tries to get a look I was happy with. The eyes have also been another trouble area but I think they are much better then before. Thought About giving him lashes but since he is mostly only going to be seen from behind it would be a frivolous detail, but I still might anyway.

Day 10 -Facial Sculpting

Started into sculpting the face. I am finding that the kid face is fairly hard to do since it requires a much finer level of smoothness as compared to an adult. Its very easy to make him look older, but keeping the soft and subtle lines of a child's face is rather difficult.
The hair is also going to be an interesting challenge. Might need to augment the sculpted hair with some planes with transparencies. That way I can give him a more fuzzy look, especially for the back of his head.

Day9 - Sculpting cloth

Well started in to the sculpt of the kid. Got quite a ways to go yet, but most of the major forms are in place. Having troubles getting the lips and eyes to look right, so going to have to spend some extra time there getting those just right. Next I will be working on the rest of the facial features and the hair. Since this character is going to be mostly seen from behind, I have to be sure to get that part of the model as detailed as possible.

Day 7

Well, time to start the hardest part of the image. This is just a base mesh that I will begin sculpting on to get the final form. Got to layout uvs first, so I don't have to come back and do it later. For those that don't know UVs are how the program tells the textures where it goes and how it is oriented. This can be a pretty tedious job for characters and such because you have to unfold and flatten every polygon face and then stitch them all back together. Doing this will allow me to paint directly on the mesh once I am done sculpting in all the details.

After sculpting, and painting I will have to pose him. This is new territory for me. Hoping I can pose him in zbrush using the transpose options. Have seen plenty of models posed in zbrush, but the controls are a bit odd., but should be lots easier then building a full rig for him in max.

Day6

Well decided I didn't like the gargoyle and skulls. To cliche and wouldn't show up well in the renders. So I simplified the entry a bit and focusing more on the skeleton and boy. Yesterday I finished the modeling and sculpting of the leg bones. I had never modeled bones to this level of detail and accuracy before, so these were quite challenging to model since they have very uneven surfaces.
Will be modeling the boy next, and then have to rig and pose him into the scene.

Day 4

Modeling almost done. will be doing a full skeleton today and then the little boy opening the case. Did some color blocking to get a general feel of colors and composition, working to find the ultimate balance.
After modeling is done its on to lighting. Background lighting should be dramatic and scary while the foreground should be warm.
After lighting begins the heavy task of painting and textureing all this. Still haven't fully decided what style I want. Thinking of going all hand painted textures or full photo real, I will need to decide before I finish the lighting.

Day3

Got a bit more of the modeling done. Mainly got the big gargoyle done. It was partially built in max and then zbrush to give it shape.

More to come

Day2

First major block of the modeling done. Scrutinizing composition.

Modeling to be done yet

- Skeleton foot, leg, hip
- Skull
- little boy
- Back pack
- Glasses
- Books

More to come...

Day 1

So found a competition I think is worth doing. Its called Unknown places being held by It's Art.
http://www.itsartmag.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=102&t=3418
When I saw this challenge, it got me thinking about being a kid, since as a kid almost everything is an unknown place.
One particular unknown place that always fascinated me as a kid was secret passages. The idea that there could be hidden rooms and hallways behind the walls was so alluring. I remember dreaming of all the things that you could find in these secret rooms, good and bad.
One particular dream, I still remember rather vividly, I found, in my attic, a cryptic tunnel that lead to a massive chamber where the vampires lived and ate. I watched from high up in the the arches of the chamber, in awe and horror, as they brought their victims, one by one, to the altar and bled them dry.

So for my image I really wanted to do something that the major elements are in complete contrast of each other.
Very modern, warm, clean, alive and safe library with a very old, dirty, cold, dead and scary passage way.

Going to try for photo real, but with only a month to complete it, its going to be tight.

Story-

-One day 8 year old Adam was in the library, as he sometimes was, and he saw a book up on the high shelf that looked intriguing. So he looked around cautiously and seeing that no one was around he climbed up the shelf to get the book. As he stepped in the first shelf , he stumbled a bit and knocked a book out, but he kept climbing.

He reached the book he was after and tried to pull it out but it only came half way out and wouldn't come any further. Yanking on it, in an effort to free it, Adam lost his footing and fell dislodging several other books on the way down.

One of those book was the final trigger that released a latch on the passage way. Several screeching clanks are heard and then the whole book case moves outward slightly.
Seeing the book case and hearing the noise certainly peaked Adam's interest. Looking around one last time to see no one around, he began to pull the book case open...