Relighting free video (Xvid encoded)

What no ‘Waynecast’?  Not thing time folks, been a busy day putting the finishing touches to a new free video on a technique called ‘relighting’.  In the video I take a Zbrush render (in this case one made using render layers as outlined in a previous freebie) and totally relight it in Photoshop.  It’s a great technique and one used all the time along with motion tracking for both matte painting and in films.  Its standard practice to relight scenes sometimes (yes, even video ones) at grading time.  So why not learn to use it for your renders?

Hopefully I’ll get time to do the Next Waynecast in a day or two all going well.

Yep, he had a last minute title change. :)  Unless I wake up tomorro morning and suddenly see a million things that are wrong, then the sculpting stage is just about done on this one. As its for a total newbies written tutorial I have to keep the design to large forms and shapes.

I’m sort of drawn between 2 different render sof this one, the one shown and a one with the head more 3/4 way on ….so far I’m going with this one.

A little while back I was approached by 3D Creative magazine to do a ‘total newbie /never even heard of Zbrush’ tutorial series on Zbrush. This one is different to what I normally do, because as a rule I assume people have at least read ‘some’ of the documentation and help files to at least some degree. But for this I’m to assume they haven’t even heard of Zbrush, so have to write a total beginners guide for them.

So I had to have a long hard thing of a idea for a model that would not only be interesting for me to do, but also allow me to showcase a number of basic principles in Zbrush. Hence the ‘Birdman of Alcatraz’ was born. It’s a bit of a play on words, as its obviously not a portrait of the infamous real birdman of Alcatraz, Robert Stroud. Yeah it may not be funny, but it’s my sense of humour lol. I was a bit concerned going into it as I wasn’t in the ‘mood’ to sculpt today, but thankfully it appears to have turned out ok. I’m not sure at this stage whether I’ll be texturing it or just have it as part of the ‘basic modelling’ sections of the series. I thought I’d stick it on here as sort of a preview of it at its current stage.

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Enjoy…

There are two digital sculpts I’m working on at the moment, the first of Ming the Merciless from flash Gordon, is another one of my ‘famous movie character redesigns’. Whereas the 2^nd is a project trying to do a digital replica of Davros from the TV series Doctor Who. The Ming one I’m trying to make a little less ‘cartoon evil villain’ looking and more realistic for a planetary dictator. He’s without facial hair at the moment and I’m just trying to get the forms lifelike before I move onto any of the heavy detailing stuff. Now as I’m going to be giving it the old black and white film look of the original movie serial I don’t have to go too mad, as a lot of details will get washed out.

It is of course a great way to make sure that your main forms are correct as you have no uber wrinkles to help ‘sell it’ as realistic. But by far the more difficult of the two is the one of Davros.

The reason for this is many fold, part of it being due to there being about 4 different designs for him that I’m trying to fit together into a archetypal ‘Davros’, and partly due to having to replicate a bad 70’s latex mask. Getting that bad makeup job looking right is actually proving to be a bit of a challenge, as to be honest I’m not used to having to make something look ropey on purpose lol.

Will either of them make it to final? Well that really depends on how much work I have to do really. Paid work always comes before personal projects for me, so as I’m rather busy they may get mothballed if time is tight. But fingers crossed I’ll manage to get both done.

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YouTube veoh v1364918wQcS7MxaWaynecast #3 Part 1

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YouTube veoh v1364918wQcS7MxaWaynecast #3 Part 2

Here’s this weeks ‘Waynecast’ for those interested.  its more 3D related this time round and less random thoughts lol.

The last couple of days have been the usual round of busy chaotic stuff.  A lot of work, but stuff mainly on the business side of things, and are in preparation for some new things that are coming up over the coming months.  Some of which require a hell of a lot of planning on the business side.

I did another experiment with my son Kane and asked him to think of something he’d like me to make for him.  My brief from him this time was to make a monster with ‘no eyes, no ears, but with very big teeth’.  Also the head wasn’t allowed to be ‘big’.  He calls it the ‘teeth monster’ although I may well integrate it into a large scene that sort of popped into my head.  It was quite a challenge as there were very little ‘markers’ that you usually get as cues from human anatomy. 

At this stage it’s still sculpted from a sphere and I took about 2 hours on this one (maybe less). I find myself slowing down over the last few weeks as I’ve no need to be quite as fast as I used to be right now.  Plus I want to spend a bit longer on my sculptures these days. It’s strange that after all the time I spent speeding myself up, that now I want to slow back down.  The reason was that when your speed sculpting you very rarely get a ‘finished sculpt’, so things always look a bit ropey when you’re done.

So I’ve sort of proved to myself that I can work fast, and now it’s time to go back to normal speed for a bit.  Plus the speed sculpts were beginning to be seen as my ‘usual standard of work’ which of course isn’t the case. So it’s time to start putting the ‘record straight’ bit before people think all my work is of that quality lol.

I’m also getting ready to step thing s up a gear or two towards the end of the year.  I do want to do a ‘head count’ of how many sculpts I’ve done this year, though I’m pretty damn sure its well into 3 figures.  Next year will probably see fewer models but better quality as I have some big project’s coming up that are going to need my full attention.

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YouTube veoh v1364918wQcS7MxaWaynecast #2 part 1

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YouTube veoh v1364918wQcS7MxaWaynecast #2 part 2
Here’s the latest of the (hopefully weekly) video ‘Waynecasts’.  Lots of stuff covered in these ones…. both 3d relevant and not so relevant.

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YouTube veoh v1364918wQcS7MxaDoctor Who's TARDIS in ZBrush

Sometimes when I’m bored or having a ‘bad day’ I’ll try and do crazy stuff using ZBrush to lift my spirits. Last nght after a heavy day or two I had one of those crazy moments, and decided to do a version of the TARDIS from the english TV series ‘Doctor Who’ in ZBrush.

It turned out pretty damn ok for a 20 min sculpt from a very basic base mesh (base mesh was done in silo). I couldn’t resist adding some music and effects to it in after effects for a laugh. So how did I do it? Well after sculpting was done, I rendered out a turntable (at a slight angle) with a green background. This enabled me to use ‘Keylight’ in After Effects to pull a matte for it and then add the other stuff as needed. All in all maybe 2 hours work.

I can’t remember for the life of me the name of the guy who did the mix of the theme I’m using, if anyone knows drop me a line and I’ll credit him (as its a damn fine version). Enjoy, but remember its not a serious model or sculpt. But rather something I did as a mess around.

Yep here in England its November the 5^th ‘Guy Falkes night’. Which gives people an excuse to have very large fires and set off fireworks that would leave the British army shamed.  For those outside of the UK, basically it celebrates a guy that tried to blow up parliament. Whether this is celebrating the fact that he failed, or the fact that he nearly got away with it is a subject open to debate n many pubs lol.

Fireworks are nice to look at and all that, but if you have a fireworks display right above your house and a toddler trying to go to sleep while he’s scared out of his mind.  You find it isn’t quite as nice all of a sudden.  It’s been a day from hell work wise as I’ve only managed to get done about 10% of what I need to, so I have a whole world of long hours ahead the next two days to catch up a bit.  So trying to get Kane to not be scared of the loud bangs above our house wasn’t top of our ‘things to do’ list today lol.

So all in all I think I’d rather try and get a child off to sleep in downtown Bagdad lol. (Hopefully that last joke doesn’t offend anyone.)  But finally all is now quiet and I can try and relax before doing a little light work.

I decided to do a full mental ray render of the Black lagoon head Marquette last night using Final Gathering and subsurface skin shader and MR Sun and sky etc….  It turned out well although the fact that apart from the teeth that the eyes were sculpted from the head geometry limited me somewhat to my annoyance.

I just got the preview copy of the next 3dCreative magazine today with my article in it on speed sculpting in Zbrush.  I’ve got a shed load lined up to do for them over the coming months, and they are always a pleasure to work with.  Once it’s out I’ll be upping a PDF link to the main site with the article in it for those unable to buy the magazine.  (I’m allowed to do this by the way with kind permission of the 3DCreative people.)