Texturing the helmet

I began by colour id'ing my model, then taking it into DDO to give myself a nicely texture based, I then went back and forth from Photoshop and manually painting some details in, I used some quite reflective materials on certain parts to add nice glare in certain places, i'm using these video's to get a feel of the helmet moving, this isn't final render, and was only a real time screen grab.

GetBent' Script!

The GetBent Script by Shon Mitchel was really fun to play with, by building one blade, I was able to mirror and give myself a great starting point for where each blade could slide into the latter very cleanly, It gives you great flexibility over repeating geometry along different axis and much more!

for more about the script, check out his blog at

http://shonmitchell.blogspot.co.uk/

Helmet Development

Had alot of fun creating this helmet, Starting with an inital blob around my characters head to give me the rough size it needed to be, I worked into it cutting it up into manage sizes and using my reference to flatten certain parts to start to get the rough look, I then went through each piece and sculpted it, remeshed it and projected the orginal detail so I had a nicely remesh sculpt with a very similar amount of detail. I went back and forth from Zbrush to maya, becasue sometimes it was just quicker to hop into maya to scuplt some of the smaller parts.

Front render XGEN test

I decided to give a grey/white specular to his facial hair, This is really noticible on the chin and you can see a nice effect breaking up the jawline sillhouette with the XGEN, I really wish I had a little more time to play with the XGEN, but due to time constraints I've decided to work with it more in one of my next projects, I decided not to use the XGEN on the eyebrows, I quite liked the look of them as they were, and I knew it would take a little more work to get realistic eyebrows using XGEN which is time i cannot spare atm. Im defintely feeling I may keep this as a base model if I quickly want to have a play with XGEN in the future.

Tweaking the initial XGEN

A few quick renders just checking how the XGEN was responding to the lighting, 

The Arnold hair shader is very responsive to the lighting, and actually reflected abit to much blue, so I toned down the spectacularity initially, but there was a real flatness created with this method, so after a little tweak I got to a stage with I felt still gave the glossiness of the hair, but didnt distract the eyelashes.

REALTIME RISE Oculus Demo!!

This realtime oculus rift work is so inspiring, I originally checked out the link because of how cool the cyborg model looked, but after seeing this tech demo I couldn't believe the potential that the rift is opening up with gaming and virtual reality experiences, It's definitely making me think more about exploring the rift and its integration into pipelines, with its release meant to be later this year im excited to see if they retain the standard in alot of these tech demo's, and when they will be released onto the market!

 

Amazing realistic models

Saw this model on CGSociety and checked out the artists portfolio on ArtStation (a new and really cool way of viewing artists portfolio work!!

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/courir_cgworld

Some absoloutely amazing artwork from Teruyuki and Yuka, The work orginallyu caught my eye becasue of the cyborg influence, with my current project 'The Lonely Road' im been checking out alot of Sci-fi influences and you can feel that resonate through their portfolio, some brilliant life like models, go check it out!! Here a few more stills!

Lighted with XGEN

This is a soft blue light scene of my face, I tweak the lighting to try and bring out the blemishes in my characters face, I really like the cold, surface skin broken feel that the texture and lighting create, there is also a little XGEN on the beard and eyelashes and head, XGEN is really fun and intuitive, but I can see that it may be tricky when referencing and keeping responsive, Its still a little buggy, and often has 'write-locks' and permission problems when saving out files which caused a few problems, but I'm still planning on using and referencing it into my final collab piece and my character turnarounds! 

Setting up shaders in Maya

My first time trying to setup eye and SSS shaders, I can say I am happy as I can be with the time that I've given myself, I definitely see this as a stepping zone to being better on my next model. I struggled with the eye setup a little more than the SS shader, I found the SSS shader setup is fairly self explanatory, and through playing with various amounts I found a SSS that I was happy with. The eye shader I found a little more tricky, there were a few techniques on the internet that I read, but I couldnt find much on getting a strong setup using Arnold, Ive learnt more than I knew, and I know my eyes will be better next time roumd