HMC#20: Expressions - Tom the Friendly Troll

#1

Wicked idea for a challenge! I’ll try to finish this! I’ve had an old design laying around of an apelike troll, which I always wanted to use for something. So here we go!

                   The goal is to create a hero resolution model with 15 expressions in Maya. I will detail the model in Zbrush and extract various displacement maps to hook back up in Maya.
                   
                   I've decided to take this big baby through the entire progress, including a quick design maquette. Sculpted in Chavant NSP clay. It's not entirely done or exactly how I want him to look, but I've got good enough of an idea of his main features and form to move on to the digital realm.
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                   Here's what I've got done for Tom so far:
                   
                   Concept:
                   [img]http://www.jelmerboskma.com/challenge/profile_final_D5.jpg[/img]
                   
                   Maquette:
                   [img]http://www.jelmerboskma.com/challenge/Jelmer_troll_001.jpg[/img]
                   [img]http://www.jelmerboskma.com/challenge/Jelmer_troll_002.jpg[/img]
                   [img]http://www.jelmerboskma.com/challenge/Jelmer_troll_003.jpg[/img]
                   [img]http://www.jelmerboskma.com/challenge/Jelmer_troll_004.jpg[/img]
                   [img]http://www.jelmerboskma.com/challenge/Jelmer_troll_005.jpg[/img]
                   
                   3D Model:
                   [img]http://www.jelmerboskma.com/challenge/Jelmer_troll_006.jpg[/img]
#2

Looking good so far Jelmer, do you model in subd’s? I really liked the quick sculpt you made!!!

#3

Nice to see you enter. Cool creature you got there. Looking forward to seeing your process. Best of luck:thumbsup:

#4

wohoo Jelmer - welcome, welcome :slight_smile: This challenge’s promising to be rocking :smiley:

#5

hey jelmer!

looking forward to see a nice big friendly grin on this one… heheh
cool that you did the clay design maquette, too.

i’ll leave an eye here too…

-r

#6

Cool clay model! That troll doesn’t look so friendly though… :curious:

#7

looking cool so far, i like a lot your initial sketch man :thumbsup:

#8

Good concept and clay sculpt man! This looks very promising.

#9

Cheers lads!
Little update… was in a good mood and got lot’s done. Tom is looking fairly ackward right now, since he’s all symmetrical and everything is flexed and vissible… Just making sure I’ve got all the supporting topology in for the wrinkles, so I can dial them in later with certain expresions. Things will be desymmed and softened up soon. Inside of the mouth left, then going into Zbrush to refine the form and add some generic details as a base displacement.

#10

Looking awesome so far, seriously nice work

#11

to be sure that you have all the necessary loops ( especialy into the mouth area ) you could have model the head with the mouth wide open. just like Jeff Unay adviced it in the old hyper-realstic creature modeling dvd. It would also have been easier to work the inside of the mouth that way. Once done just put it all back in neutral pose before to sculpt the displacement information inside ZB But anyways your topology looks just perfect how it is.
was just my 2 cents :bounce:

#12

This is looking great, i’ll be following this. Can you expand a little about what you said about extracting various displacements from Zbrush? you mean different disp maps for tha main piece or just one map for each piece(resulting in various maps as well?).
Btw, i just saw your portfolio, your art is amazing.

#13

wah, its nice~

#14

Collings: Hee hee, Jeff Unay’s book and dvd has been one of my most sacred documents for years! :slight_smile: The mouth was open at a certain point earlier on, but I’ve modeled so many heads, by now that I pretty much know by heart what I need for things to work. Right now the model is still in two halves, so enough room for me to work the inside of the mouth a little, when beeing able to hide one half. I am planning to have the inside of the mouth in different 0-1 uv space so I can have it as a seperate group in Zbrush, when detailing.

JMart: I am planning to have a set ‘generic’ displacement maps for the model, which will cary surface details that will be visible at all times. For certain more extreme expresions, for instance when lips are pouting or extreme snarls, I would extract seperate displacement maps, build on top of those blendshapes. Those new blendshapes will contain small wrinkling and skin details that would happen when a face deforms like that. These displacement maps are called driven displacement maps, and within production would be driven by the motion and blendshapes that are dialed in during animation.

Thanks again, Update later today.

#15

Awesome work so far. I’ll be watching this with lots of interest. :slight_smile:

Salute!

#16

JBoskma, thanks A LOT for your detailed answer. I didn’t knew about driven displacement maps, and the workflow aroud it, very usefull information.

:beer:Cheers.

#17

Your troll is looking awesome! I’ll be watching this thread for sure. I like the detailed answer you gave to JMART about displacement maps. Never tried that before but I have seen it action in Hyper Realistic Modeling series.
Is there any tutorials online that you can point us to or tutorial DVDs you can recommend, to anyone interested in doing this? I would love to do this for this challenge if it’s possible. I might change my Jack Black entry and do a creature one as well so I can explore many different types of expressions.

#18

Vshen: The only printed source about driven displacement maps, that I know of, is in the Autodesk Hyper-Realistic Creature Creation book. It explains the principles and how to setup the shader network in Maya.

Update for today… Got the gums and inside of the mouth done. Cleaned up the mesh and altered a few areas. Next step will be to desymmetrize and detail the model in Zbrush.

#19

Working on the displacement details in Zbrush. Just worked on his right side, left side hasn’t been touched yet.

#20

Well hot damn.