https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/17900/uplift_greyshaded_RL.jpg
https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/17900/uplift_viewport_RL.jpg
Heres a couple screen grabs from the maya viewport of the finished models. And now I’ll give a small explination of my technical process for this image.
1. I made all the base meshes in 3dmsax and used the regular poly modeling tools. Everything was fit together and lined up properly in max. For this piece, I laid down my final topology before I went into Zbrush to sculpt. I had all the edge loops in that helped me define my characters and parts when I was sculpting. Doing it this way I didn't need to re-top my mesh since the topology was already good. I think doing it this way gave me less freedom while sculpting and required more planning when constructing my base mesh. When the base meshes were done I put one smooth level on the objects and exported each piece as an obj (belt, rope1, rope2, body1, skirt etc). At this point I haven't unwrapped anything yet, I do that later, after sculpting.
2. I took these base mesh objs into Zbrush one at a time and sculpted details onto them and posed them if necessary. After I finished sculpting I used the poly painting tools in Zbrush to paint my diffuse and spec maps directly onto the meshes at a high sub-d level. Once that was done, depending on the part, I would either export the lowest sub-d level back to max for unwrapping or use Zbrushes AUV tiles feature to generate UVs.
3. I created all my normal maps inside Zbrush using Zmapper. I exported my meshes at level 2 sub-d, sometimes level 3 (for the main characters). I took all these objs from Zbrush and imported them into Maya where I applied my shaders with all the textures that were created in zbrush. The rendering for this one was in Maya with mental ray. There are 3 slightly colored lights in the scene, one main light, a rim light and a fill light.
Final image incoming....
Thanks sooo much to everyone who has commented and gave me great critic to make this peice better! The challenge was a blast and good luck to you all!!
cheers!
-love
Cheers!! :beer;
