HARDCORE MODELING!: Stan Winston Tribute: Pumpkinhead

#121

Jay-Mo, Jedi-Juice,
thanks guys!

Deepam,
you’re very welcome my friend. Thanks again for asking and happy sculpting!

bradjames,
thanks a lot for your kind words. Great stuff on your portfolio.
About the render, yeah, it’s Maya MR with Final Gather. It’s not fancy at all. It’s pretty much a sphere for a little global light, 3 white planes for bottom, top, left fill lights and one single area back light for the strong specular effect. I’ll post the settings down the road. It’s a matter of setting the intensity of those white planes to get a studio kinda light. At the end, some PS work.

I did a little bit more work on Stan likeness and started messing with the render. Just now, with a real render I can see what’s wrong with the model. I have a lot of little tweaks that I want to add in order to improve the overall likeness. The hard part is that I’m trying to sculpt him based on a caricature that is overly distorted already. It’s like I’m trying to mimic a semi fish eye lens on a regular sculpture. What I noticed now, after the image rendered, is that I need to pretty much deform the eyes, cheeks, ears and nose, using the bridge of the nose as pivot point, almost like smearing everything outwards and down. I’ll do some tweaking once I get back from work tonight. Here it’s the very first preliminary render test, just to get the feel:

Texture, light and model are still very wip. More to come.

-Kris

#122

ahahahhaha ,amazing Kris !! it looks so real!! great!

Alex Oliver

#123

Kris thanks for replying so fast and for the info. I look forward to seeing the images to go along with what you explained. Stan is looking amazing and very real like alex said. Boy I should have jumped in this contest. Keep it up

#124

Wow it’s amazing how the pros can make these challenges so much better…
Love to join sometime. I don’t know if there’s enough hours in a day for me to work on improving my skills enough to start feeling good about stuff I try do lol

Antropus I don’t know what’s better, if it’s your modeling or you texturing hehe
I do notice the combination is just incredible though.
Muito legal :thumbsup:

#125

Great Render Kris! I can’t wait for the final!

#126

wow don’t know how i missed your thread ^^ I just checked all the pages and directly saved all the pics in my ref folder héhé :slight_smile: . that caricture of Stan looks spot on and i don’t even dare to talk about the other models , they look terrific:applause: . Looking forward to see them completed. I am now subscribed to the thread and will follow for sure the next progress !

By the way, how things are going on at ILM ? can you tell which project you’re working on …

#127

you know what, this is my first challenge I’ve ever competed in and it’s a pleasure to go against some one with this much talent in his blood. Outstanding work man. Can’t wait for your final renders =]

#128

:applause::applause::applause: Hahahaha, This is turning out in a class of how to do things right, and stop being a WIP Thread :applause::applause::applause: Keep Rocking Kris !!! inspiring stuff !!!

:beer:

-Gerardo

#129

I really like the progress on you Stan… I’m sure it will look eve more amazing when it is done. Also a fan on your Pumpkinhead.

#130

oliveira,
thanks man!

bradjames,
you should! It’s a lot of fun.

Spin99,
thanks! You should try next time man. I mean, I work full time and still have some energy left to work on it at home. It’s just for a month and then you are free again :slight_smile:

StevenEgan,
same here! I can’t wait to finish all of them.

collings,
hey! Thanks for stopping by. You know, I dreamed of working at ILM since I watched T-2. That movie was shocking! It’s hard to believe I’m here now. I mean, so much talent around. It’s really inspiring to come to work and I’m still like a kid at the Disneyland.
About the project, I cannot say just right now but soon, hopefully. I’m pretty sure most people here will watch it next year and will have a blast just like I am, building them :wink:

TimCallaway,
thanks man! But no no no. Those challenges are more like an opportunity to spend your time producing stuff for yourself and learning with the process. Not much of a competition in a sense. Unlike those CG Challenges, with prizes involved and all, where “the fight is fierce”, here it’s all good fun. I really don’t mind if my work is not the favorite at the end. It’s just the whole process and the chance to have some stuff in different styles in my portfolio that attracts me. So, enjoy the challenge, participate next time and more than everything, keep it fun! :slight_smile:

CHERNABOG,
thanks Gerardo! Nah, there’s no right way to do it. There are a bunch of ways to do it :wink:
This is just the way it works for me but maybe doesn’t work for someone else :slight_smile:
Thanks for stopping by my friend.

vshen,
thanks! Yeah, those ones you like are the top priority for the challenge. Even though, I’ll try to finish all of them, if I can keep my energy high enough after a whole day of work…

Yesterday I went back to Predator. I realized I didn’t have much references for him. Most of the references that I had are from that Sideshow sculpture that, again, just like with Pumpkinhead, are amazing sculpts BUT they are also some artist’s interpretation, that can be slightly different from the real thing. I picked up the DVD and capture a lot of snapshots, to know exactly what is going on. The sideshow is helping a lot too but I’ll try to follow the movie reference, together with the pictures from the actual suit at Stan’s studio. I also finished adding the spikes and did some more paint work but it’s not quite ready to show. I’ll work more on it tonight.

Cheers,
-Kris

#131

I was wondering:

When you retopologize in Maya, do you alter the Green/Xray default “make live” display to make it easier to view. Its difficult to follow the mesh with the default. What do you do? (The only thing I’ve thought of is to make a duplicate and put it as a reference layer, but then you have two high poly objects for the computer to deal with.)

Also, any advice for getting likeness? (I know, broad question but bear with me :D) I’ve read your posts in WyattHarris’ thread saying you “have to eyeball some stuff” in addition to following ref and about reimporting the mesh into Maya for a proper persepective camera view vs ZB. Do you view the ref separately or use imageplanes? do you bounce back and forth between Maya and ZB to check? I know its subjective and personal, just wondering what you do and what you recommend.

#132

very inspiring work! congratulation on the ILM job.

#133

I don’t know if you have this image, hope it helps.

#134

its amazing,very inspiring ,waiting for more updates;)

it’s nice if we see some more screen shot about shading ,rendering of stan winston Caricature when finished the piece…:rolleyes:

#135

Sirhcnait,
yep, back and forth Zbrush and Maya. About eyeballing stuff, it’s that old thing that most people do: use a blue print for the front and side views. Normally the picture is not prepared for this. So, you have some perspective going on the picture but when you try to match it in orthographic mode, at the end, your mesh will be all distorted because you’re trying to follow the reference blindly. So, at the end, if you really want to work the likeness, you have to use some artistic skill and forget a little about matching the pictures by moving points, which is purely technical and anyone can do. Practice your observation by doing a lot of “copies”. You will become good if you dedicate your time to it, just like almost everything in life :slight_smile:

fx81,
thanks a lot man.

DogBreath,
dude! That’s a sweet reference right there! Thanks for that. More references are never enough :slight_smile:

3mm,
sure, I can post that once I finish that one.

Here’s some progress on the Predator. The skin sculpt detail is very rough right now and will get some more passes to add more variation. Also, the symmetry will come at the end. The spikes don’t match the holes and the “hair” is coming next. I’m planning to model the hard surface stuff over the weekend. No Zbrush for this, just regular hard surface poly modeling.
The whole texture progress was hand painted using polypaint in Zbrush. I’m using just the default alphas for now but I’m about to design some custom ones to get more variation on the patterns. Here are also some preliminary renders. I just imported a midres mesh, no normal maps, no displacement. That’s why you can see some faceted areas.

Cheers,
-Kris

#136

My goodness, it never ceases to amaze me when I see work that is already a point where anyone would call it finished except for the artist who created it. :applause: Good stuff, and you say there’s still more to do.:smiley: Very motivating. The renders of the Predator are looking very realistic. Are you using a 4k map for that and about how many poly’s is the Predator bust at right now in the ZB pic? Also are you using ZB exclusively for your texturing or do you bounce back into ps or anything else as well? I haven’t messed with polypaint, but it seems like it’s working out great for the texture process. Keep it coming :bounce:

#137

…I just fell from my chair…MAN!!! Stunning and awsome! Cheeees…you got the polypaint to perfection. Love that Predator!

Respect and thumbs up!

Markus

#138

:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

great work. great great work.

#139

WOW! This is amazing Kris!

I have a folder on my computer called ‘Great Art’ I save all the images of great art that give me inspiration… 75% of that folder is full with your art… Thank you.

All you need to do now is make a DVD on poly painting :bowdown:

Great work!

#140

I’m speechless. :bowdown: