Human Male Athletic Final Model (Free Download!!!)

Here is a new time-lapse video recorded in ZBrush, main tools used were standard brush, dam standard, claytubes, move brush and various custom brushes with alpha shapes. Music by Xerxes - "Let It Go." I also used some of these brushes as well http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?75050-Zskiff-a-licious!/page14

3D Printed Character Update 02

Printing and Cleaning/Painting The Parts

So this was a process, printing for all the parts was done on a PLA Extrusion 3D Printer. The head had some problems under the chin area, so I had to re-sculpt that area using Super Sculpey. All the other parts had some support structures on them that I used a demel tool to cut away and excess material and then used a fin grit sand paper to sand away any problem areas.

For the Chest I used a SLA 3D Printer, there were quite a few print failures due to machine problems, in the end I ended up using the best print out of the bunch and ended up re-sculpting the areas that did not print correctly.

After all the parts were re-sculpted, I used a heat gun to spot heat the new areas of clay, I had to be careful not to overheat areas because the heat could start to melt the plastic from the PLA printed parts.

Once all part were prepared, I used an airbrush with grey acrylic paint to paint all the parts a flay grey color with a nice gloss on the paint to pick up some highlights. I then put the character onto a small base and took photographs of the piece.

Click On Images To See Larger Views

All and all I am fairly happy with the results, I do feel like this has given me a good base to work with, there are still some areas that I would like to re-sculpt, but in all honesty, I would really like for all the parts to be printed on the SLA printer (Formlabs) This printed gives you the highest fidelity. The only problem is that we have had so many print failures with the Form 1 and Form 1 +. I am hopeful that most of the printing problems have been fixed with the new FormLabs 2 printer.

3D Printed Character Update 01

I created this little guy to teach some of my students how to model in Maya, then push those meshes into ZBrush and finish detailing. I created a special version of the model that is 3D print ready and hollowed out the model to get it ready for print.

All parts are prepared and ready to go. I had to use a special feature in dynamesh and negative insert meshes in order to get the shell thickness for the model. In order to do this process just go to a part of the model that you want to punch the hole out of and use B (Brush Menu)>J (Insert Cube) and then hold down the alt key as you draw the cube out. You might want to use transpose master to readjust the cube slightly. Once the negative cube is in place it is time for your to add your shell thickness. Go to the tool menu Tool>Geometry>Dynamesh>Create Shell (You will need to adjust the thickness of the shell using the Thickness slider. I was using a value of 32 for my thickness.) No the only thing left is to decimate the models and scale the appropriately. I was going for a target of around 1 - 1.5 million polys for each printed part. At the size I was printing anything else would be overkill.

Here is a creature that I designed for one of my VR experience. It started off as a space based theme, but not I am shifting it to an underwater environment.



For this piece I was once again using Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter and then pushing to Sketchfab. I also wanted to try out animating within Sketchfab, it works really nice, only problem is there is very low bone limit when viewing on a mobile device. On my IPhone, Apple has set a very low bone limit (about 20 animating bones) if the count is too high then it just renders the characters bones and you will no longer see the skinned mesh. Kinda a bummer, but at least I know the rules now! :)

Baby Alien V002 Sketchfab

I recently went back and re-designed one of my alien creatures that I was making for a VR experience. I wanted to try out Substance Designer and Sketchfab integration. I have to say that I am very impressed with the final results.



Here is a direct link to the Sketchfab page if you are interested:

Click Here

ZBrush Cyborganic Project Now For Sale

You can now purchase my Cyborganic ZBrush Project at Digital3DModels.Com. There are two files that come with the project, the organic only and a decimated organic with all the high res hardsurface work.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE CYBORGANIC ZBRUSH PAGE

Click on the title of this post to see the rest of the images!

Human Male Topology 3.0

I have a new 3D model that you can download for free. I've been working with another talented artist, Russell Barton, to try and work out the topology from my previous model in order to build a base mesh that can not only be used to generated a male model but a female model as well.

This model comes with pre-defined polygroups, UV's and some extra subtools that should easily help you realize your own character without having to worry about the technical details to get up and sculpting as fast as possible.

The model also comes with 3 3D layers, armsUp, armsToSide and mouthOpen.

I'm creating a new website to house all the models that I have created with this topology at digital3dmodels.com

CLICK HERE TO GO TO DOWNLOAD PAGE

I hope you enjoy using this model. Please post back and let me know what you are using the model for, I always get a kick out of seeing someone take my meshes and turn them into their own creations!

Peace,

NickZ. :)

addJointsMarkersToVerts.mel

addMarkersJointsToVerts.mel - Here is a little script that I hacked together, it will allow you to take a selection of verts from a model and build a marker and joint that will follow that vert where ever it goes on the surface of the source mesh. So you could make blendshapes with a mesh and attach buttons, eyelashes or whatever you like. (It is basically a rivet system) It uses Maya particle emitters as the follow point. You could also use this with a simple ncloth mesh and bake out the animation onto the provided joints that you are using. Or you could do something like dynamically driven rope. So I will provide the script below, please don't laugh at my scripting abilities...I hacked this together...My hope is that one of you smart maya mel/python people could clean this up and make it into something even cooler. (Thanks for those who tried to help me with the string renaming process...still don't fully have that figured out. So the script isn't as smart as I would like it to be.)

I will add the scripts in the comments section of this post. Let me know if this helps you in anyway! :)

Human Male Athletic Version 2

A New Year (2011) and a New Mesh.

After making the last Human Male Athletic model that I provided here, I used it in a project of mine (Heavy Demon Character)

Through ought this project I discovered some things that I would like to change on the mesh. Here is the updated new mesh and a video that explains some of the changes that have been made.



If you would like to download the model visit one of these links:

ShareCG.com

Acrobat.com

Here is a video that describes some of the changes that have been made:

Display 3D Models Directly In Your Web Browser (p3d.in)

My first embeded 3D models using P3D.in Go here to set up your own account to start sharing your models.

Playing in the Mud Again!

I have been trying out the new Mudbox the last few days. I was really interested in the ability to paint in layers.

I had a lot of fun making this alien head. i just started out with the package bases head and used the "send to Maya" feature to make new UVs and add geometry to the bottom of the mesh.

I really like the real-time screen space filters that Mudbox has. It took me some time to get used to the brushes and where everything is but over all there are some really nice improvements in the program compared to the last time I used it. Painting specular on your model in real time was a real treat. I baked out and Ambient Occlusion pass using their extract maps tool and the quality was really good, the speed was fast. Way easier to do than Maya.

Peace-NickZ. :)

KillKat Male With Gear WIP

Here is something I have been working on for a little bit here and there. I would say more it has been more there than here. Anyway, I'm having fun modeling and sculpting. :)

3RD Eye Blind (FREE ZTool Download)

I finished a little mini project for myself and I thought I would share my work with everyone.

First I was snooping around on the Freedom Of Teach website and I saw there was a “CG Practice Model Download”. I thought it might have been the hi res model that they used to generate their 3D print, but it was just an base mesh with no detail. I’m not sure why but I just stared sculpting on it. ( really didn't need to start anything new at this point.)

At first I was going to do just another organic model but I was rather impressed and inspired by the hard surface modeling that FoOD and Sebcesoir have been generating inside of Zbrush lately. So I gave it a try and here are the results.







I used masks quite a bit. The clay tubes brush worked rather nicely for building up flat surfaces along with the flatten brush and of course the smooth brush to clean up some of my mistakes. I also used the lazy mouse with the standard brush and a custom alpha for generating strait lines.

I found that using some of these custom alphas that I made with the standard brush, with lazy mouse turned on and a lazy step of .01 gave me rather nice results for long smooth thin lines.





I also created a few custom Material Capture shaders for sculpting.



I built a Photoshop file that makes it kinda easy to generate new MatCap shaders. I things on layers to control the over all shading of the material, you can get custom control of a shader if you want to build a MatCapwith this file.



After the model was complete I used Zapplink and Photoshop to build a base color texture. I also wanted to learn more about lighting and baking that to a texture in Maya. So for the color and lit version of the texture I created several passes that separated out the lights, the shadows, Ambient Occlusion (created in XNormal) and then cavity mapping created with ZMapper.



If you would like to download a package with all of this material

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

This Zipp file contains:

Hi Res Zbrush Model
Color Texture (4096 X 4096)
Color and Lighting Texture (4096 X 4096)
5 Custom MatCap Materials
4 Custom Alphas
Layered Photoshop file with all the lighting and color passes (1024 X 1024)
Layered Photoshop file to help build your own custom MatCap Shader.
Maya 2008 Light Rig Scene


When you load the .ZTL file it will be filled with the color white and have the MatCap Grey material already applied to it. If you would like to apply a different material to the object turn on MRGB, choose the Flat Color shader and go Color>Fill Color. You can now pick any shader you wish to view the model with.




If you load the color texture I provided I suggest using the MatCap Pearl Cavity shader to look at the model.

If you use the color and lit texture that I provided then you will need to apply the Flat Color material with the texture applied to view the model correctly.

You will also need to flip the texture vertically.

I hope you enjoy! :)

Peace-NickZ. :)

I just wanted to post one last pic. I got my 3D print in the mail and I just wanted to say a big thanks to Gabriel from CRYSTALLINE MODELS for making this print possible!

Here is a shot to show off the scale of the final print.

Spartan Soldier

Here is something that I am working on for a new side project. Using my Human Male Model as a base.

I need to make an attachment holder for the sword to tie it to the body. Need to set up UV's and pull everything into ZBrush to start sculpting.

This is in Maya's viewport rendered in real-time with "high quality" rendering.



Update as of 3/13/09 (ZBrush Sculpt Update)



Update as of 3/18/09 (Maya Mental Ray Render)



Update as of 4/15/09 (ZBrush Body Changes)




Update as of 4/15/09 (ZBrush head for Body Changes)

Human Male Athletic Skinning WIP

I am currently taking my Human Male Athletic Model and adding skinning inside of Maya. Here is a first pass at some of the weighting (makes the character move) on the model.

I think I am going to try to build something special for the neck muscles to work correctly, he has a real rubber neck right now.



Here is an update to the neck weighting.



Here I updated with the addition of a normal map.



Here is an new update to over all weighting.Still very WIP! I added a normal map and rendered in Mentalray




Peace-NickZ.

NickZ ZMaterial Pack 001 (Free)

Here is a material pack that I put together. These materials only work inside of Zbrush 3.01. Feel free to send me some feed back on these, I would love to see what people create with them.



CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE MATERIALS.

Peace-NickZ :).

3Dtotal.com Manimal Sculpting Challenge

Here is something that I made for the 3Dtotal.com Sculpting Challenge II.

It is a half man half cat creature. For the challenge you had to sculpt your creation in under 4 hours and you had to start with a base mesh that was provided for the challenge.



Here is a 360 turn table of the creature.




Hope you enjoy! Peace-NickZ..

XBOX 360 controllerServer (test)

I have been looking into using an XBOX360 controller as a real-time input divide inside of Maya. I had my Alien Shark character laying around collecting dust so I thought I would use it as a test to see if I could do some real-time motion capture like animation in Maya.

I'm pretty pleased with this first test. The feedback is slooooow when I have high quality rendering on with all the bells and whistles. I think if I was going to do this for real I would need a very simple representation of my character to animate with, capture the performance and then render with a higher quality model. (Or I would need a much faster computer.)

Here are the controls that I made for this creature.

Here is a real-time screen capture of my Maya viewport, edited this in Camtasia.



Here is the second test that I created. In this test I captured the motion using just simple shading, this way I could capture the motion in real-time. Once I had the performance captured I put the quality to hi quality rendering with textures,normal maps, lights with shadows. I then playblasted that into this little movie.



Peace-NickZ.

New Head Topology

Here is an update to my Male generic model. I have been wanting to rebuild the topology for quite some time now. Here are the results.

Here are some examples of taking this topology and sculpting it into a new target.

In this example I extracted a shape (geo) for some hair.



Peace - NickZ.