Dino Statue and Lots of Heads

This past week I've struggled to keep to my 3D schedule; I think one 3D model a week is good enough progress and I'll speed up as I get better. I'll give myself longer for high poly assets like characters, maybe up to three weeks. I managed to keep up to date with my half hour daily speed paints though - here are this week's 'head a day' challenge paintings:

This is my favourite so far, and the most recent. It's awesome how a good expression can give a portrait so much more character!

The final two paintings took one and a half hours each. I allowed myself extra time due to the complexity of the facial expressions. My reference images this week were from 3D.sk and a photographer known as 'JoSchwab' on DeviantArt. I'm going to attempt some figurative speed paints this week, and maybe do some environment work.

Now on to 3D. There's no avoiding it, I'm no good at it and I need to be! I need to compare myself to industry and realise I only have one year to get to that standard. This week I created a model based on a statue concept in James Gurney's brilliant illustrated book, 'Dinotopia'.

I scanned in the concept and painted topology over using Photoshop.

Created a base mesh from the reference in 3DS Max.

Used Zbrush to create surface detail (this needs practice)



Created normal map using Xnormal and baked the map, then painted diffuse using Normal map information for the shadowed areas. The normal map was not as prominent as I wanted it to be, I need to watch some baking tutorials. I also created an AO map.

Final render using Marmoset for the first time, there are some problems with the seams and texture maps in this tool kit which were not present in 3DS max, so I'll watch some Marmoset tutorials.

What did I struggle most with?
Undoubtedly my biggest issue was with unwrapping. Next week I'll try using a new program like Headus UV or UV Layout to help speed up the process. Badly unwrapping my models means the texturing stage really suffers, so I need to get better at creating human readable UV layouts. I also need to practice my texturing - I tend to get distracted about 50% of the way through and don't put in as much time as I should. I also need to look at industry standard normal and specular maps to see what I'm doing wrong. I would like to do more work on this model, but the week is over and I failed my deadline by not completing it. At least lessons have been learned about time management :(

Next week:
I plan to model, texture and rig a low polygon lizard, it should be good practice as I've only rigged human characters before. I'll also try to keep up to date with my daily speed paints.

Thanks for reading and please feel free to leave any crits :)