Retopoing the Zergling... it's boring! But then I can animate it.
I also started texturing a head to go in my in-progress marine armor. Not planning on animating the face, maybe an eyebrow raise and a blink if I absolutely have to.
Still need to add wrinkles, maybe some chapped lips, a scar or some bad skin for asymmetry.
Dystopian futures are not a place to have a good time.
Ok, back to space for a minute. There is a small craft in SC1 that looks about halfway between shuttlepod and shipping container. The original model was very very simple, but I'm going to use it as an opportunity to do some proper greebling, so I can try out some procedural texture techniques.
I also revisited a lava planet matte painting that I will hopefully put the shippingpod / shuttle container in front of.
It seems like all planetary orbit shots always have the planet totally in focus. Why is that?
I think I might try adding a ring of fabric around the docking airlock area, since fabric ships are all the rage these days. But that might be straying a bit too far from the original StarCraft aesthetic, which is all rusty metal and no fabric.
No textures yet, but dropped the model so far into Blender 2.8 and tried to do a little light and post processing. Learning as I go- this is probably too much glare.
No textures yet, but dropped the model so far into Blender 2.8 and tried to do a little light and post processing. Learning as I go- this is probably too much glare.
Not too much if you're trying to do JJ Abrams style Trek. High contrast, over-saturation, and a heavy reliance on lens flares!
Making a little more progress! And added some ambient score in garageband.
I'd still like to add some more space dust or something to add more depth. This is also rendered in Eevee, not Cycles, for faster iteration. And there will be a few more details and higher res textures for the final.
Here is another update, with more detail and higher res textures for the pod, and some voice acting.
I could not be more pleased with substance painter for this- I was able to add rust, wear, and grime, and overlay those varied rectangular panels all procedurally. I was originally planning on modeling more detail but given how dark the clip is I think I'm pretty much set.
Only downside is for Painter I do still need to UV unwrap and bake maps of any ship, so while I could apply this same material to a giant capital ship, I still have to UV it. Or automatic UV and just use extremely high res textures...
Started texturing my zergling model this weekend. Retopoing it was a big pain. It's still unnecessarily high poly, ~26000 tris, but a lot more of that could have just come from the normal map.
Building off of the Substance Painter smart materials I've made above, I can now turnaround low-detail ship textures very fast. Here is an update of a very old 2700 tri model with PBR textures. It's a little quick and dirty, and some of those procedurally-placed stains or rust are a little bit of overkill, but if you're never seeing this ship up close it's pretty cool.
This workflow also lets me grab old models I did 5+ years ago before I knew what I was doing and bring them up to a passable state for distant viewing- or one of those 3d size comparisons, which I always love. Here is an early preview of one- I will add more stuff to it!
And a couple screencaps since you can't embed Gfycat gifvs here. Also a T-70 X-wing I made back before Last Jedi came out for some comparison with Star Wars scale.
Super happy that Blender Eevee exists as I'm able to render this on my laptop in minutes instead of days.
Ty! I have done a handful of Protoss in the past, but I am not as good at them. I have done a dragoon and phoenix that you can see in this video, and a few others either in progress or old and not up to my current standards. But, there is another very talented StarCraft fan artist, Nak Ma, you may be interested in. He is much better at fast hard surface modeling. Since he is focusing on terran and protoss ships, for the time being I agreed with him to focus on more Zerg, so that our work complements each other instead of competing.
The improvements come in short bursts. It's very easy for me to become complacent and churn out quantity over quality, because that keeps it a relaxing hobby. I've gotten feedback from peers though (especially to those terran units) that the lower quality ones are hurting their value as portfolio pieces.
Right now that Star Wars thread of mine is where I'm trying to push to a higher level of material realism, with better use of real-world references, but that's harder to make progress on. So, here is another SC1 Zerg unit, the queen. Definitely not photoreal, and up close it is very clear how indistinct / lacking the transitions between different surfaces and body parts are. But, it's another unit I'm happy to have rounding out the group.
A handful few more and I will have a model for every SC1 zerg unit. That is a fun milestone! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I am still occasionally chipping away at these, working on some animation stuff recently. Here are the beginnings of an idle animation for the Hydralisk, baked down to a realtime ready model along with updated textures.
Ideally planning to have these ready for Unreal so that there can be an interactive / navigable scale demo scene.
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https://gfycat.com/goldengiftedaldabratortoise
I also started texturing a head to go in my in-progress marine armor. Not planning on animating the face, maybe an eyebrow raise and a blink if I absolutely have to.
Still need to add wrinkles, maybe some chapped lips, a scar or some bad skin for asymmetry.
Dystopian futures are not a place to have a good time.
I also revisited a lava planet matte painting that I will hopefully put the shippingpod / shuttle container in front of.
It seems like all planetary orbit shots always have the planet totally in focus. Why is that?
Anyway, good start on the crate.
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More small progress:
I think I might try adding a ring of fabric around the docking airlock area, since fabric ships are all the rage these days. But that might be straying a bit too far from the original StarCraft aesthetic, which is all rusty metal and no fabric.
Not too much if you're trying to do JJ Abrams style Trek. High contrast, over-saturation, and a heavy reliance on lens flares!
I'd still like to add some more space dust or something to add more depth. This is also rendered in Eevee, not Cycles, for faster iteration. And there will be a few more details and higher res textures for the final.
I could not be more pleased with substance painter for this- I was able to add rust, wear, and grime, and overlay those varied rectangular panels all procedurally. I was originally planning on modeling more detail but given how dark the clip is I think I'm pretty much set.
Only downside is for Painter I do still need to UV unwrap and bake maps of any ship, so while I could apply this same material to a giant capital ship, I still have to UV it. Or automatic UV and just use extremely high res textures...
And some spooky lighting:
https://gfycat.com/enragedvelvetybellsnake
And a couple screencaps since you can't embed Gfycat gifvs here. Also a T-70 X-wing I made back before Last Jedi came out for some comparison with Star Wars scale.
Super happy that Blender Eevee exists as I'm able to render this on my laptop in minutes instead of days.
I hope everyone is doing well and staying healthy. Fortunately my company has encouraged working from home.
Here is his artstation, with lots of impressive Protoss work in there.
It's very cool to see the improvement in your technique over the years in this thread. Looking forward to more updates.
The improvements come in short bursts. It's very easy for me to become complacent and churn out quantity over quality, because that keeps it a relaxing hobby. I've gotten feedback from peers though (especially to those terran units) that the lower quality ones are hurting their value as portfolio pieces.
Right now that Star Wars thread of mine is where I'm trying to push to a higher level of material realism, with better use of real-world references, but that's harder to make progress on. So, here is another SC1 Zerg unit, the queen. Definitely not photoreal, and up close it is very clear how indistinct / lacking the transitions between different surfaces and body parts are. But, it's another unit I'm happy to have rounding out the group.
A handful few more and I will have a model for every SC1 zerg unit. That is a fun milestone! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Ideally planning to have these ready for Unreal so that there can be an interactive / navigable scale demo scene.