Happy Trees (Pen and Ink Tree Sketches)

Pen And Ink Tree Sketches

Objectives: 

Create realistic looking trees in a pen and ink style, without using photorealistic / exacting detail. I wanted to utilize texture and form to create trees.

Background:

Pen and ink has been one of my favorite styles for years. Generally, I stuck to creating animal portraits and only occasionally delved into landscapes. My technique involved straight lines, cross hatching, and stippling, but I did not really do much in the realm of texture.

As such my trees always felt a little flat. While I was never particularly displeased with them, they lacked the oomph that I wanted. As well in order to get them to look really good, I would have to spend a lot of time with reference to get the detail just right.

Method:

This method is based off a YouTube video I came across. It used techniques I was already familiar with, just hadn't thought of combining. The key emphasis here is form, and texture. It also makes a point to avoid outlines, which can destroy the illusion of existing naturally.

I didn't want to get caught up reference for these images, so I chose a few general ideas in my head for what I knew about trees, but I let the rest just flow.

I began by sketching in pencil a general silhouette of the tree that I wanted to create. With the silhouette created, I then looked into the basic shapes I might see within the outline and roughly sketched the shapes in (lightly). I would use these basic shapes as guides for laying in my leaf bunches.

I placed my light source to the top left hand side of the paper and began drawing with pen. Most of my bunches of leaves were irregular spheres, so I shaded them as spheres. At the same time, I looked at the entire form, which was also an irregular sphere. The entire tree would steadily grow darker towards the bottom right, away from the light source.

The texture was also the key to getting the look right. The leave were made of little squiggly lines. I basically just bounced around the paper, not putting too much thought into each individual mark. I remained consistent however in the same and general design of the leaves. The trunk I constructed with long relatively straight lines to create the bark texture distinctly different.

Tree 1

My first tree came out alight. The general outcome was quite pleasing. However, I did not feel that I captured the idea of branches very well. As well, I realized that my form was much too uniform throughout. I overcame this by darkening in some areas to break up the overly symmetrical layout of leaf clusters. As well, the trunk felt a little boring too me. But I was pleased with the result.

Tree 2

For this tree, I really wanted to go in a different direction. I really like weeping willows, so I decided to go with that. I changed up my forms to be very oblong ovals. As well, I changed the texture to being long hook shaped marks. The final result is quite pleasing, but I feel that there is something lacking to it's interior form. I would use this result in the background of a drawing, but not a centerpiece. I do like how dark the trunk is though, as it really sells that it is inside the leaves.

Tree 3

My third tree I went towards a pine tree. It is a tree I am very familiar with drawing, so I felt comfortable coming into this piece. I varied up the texture, by using squigglies, but made sure they all ultimately would point up, just like the needles of a pine. As well, I kept clear space so the trunk could show through the branches throughout. I was quite happy with this piece, and felt I was beginning to come into stride with the style. I do think that I should probably darken the bottom leaf cluster more though.

Tree 4

For this tree, I went back to the methods I used for the first tree, but I really pushed the abstract form on it. I went with a more unique shape and varied up the sizes and shapes of the leaf clusters. As well, I gave the tree a splitting trunk for a bit more character. As I worked my way down, I made sure to leave spaces open for sky and branches to show through the leaf, to further sell the illusion of depth. For the trunk, I went more in depth, creating a twisting and more gnarled texture than I had before. Ultimately, this is my favorite piece.

Conclusion:

Success! This exercise was fun, and easy to do. It's a great tool to have for quick sketching, and while it does take a little bit of time and patience, it is still a very fast method for creating what looks to be realistic trees.

As I said earlier, I made these trees with absolutely no reference. So, in the future, I'd like to take these techniques and apply them to trees I see in real life. I look forward to capturing real trees, without struggling over the minute details.

New Logo

I have finally created a new logo for myself that I am actually happy with! I have never been particularly happy with any designs I have come up with for myself.

Generally, I have settled for something that I wasn't fully happy with - because I needed a logo of some kind. But I have always been on the lookout for the right inspiration.

My problem, I have always felt, stemmed from my name not lending itself to any pleasing forms. I have experimented with moving my name or it's initials around into various forms. But my name never seemed to hold any artistic quality to it. My initials, KMH, don't combine into any kind of cool shape, or naturally. The K in particular tends to stick out like a sore thumb. I could rearrange their order to MHK, which might create a more pleasing shape, but then it would just be confusing when I might have to explain how it's my name completely rearranged.

I've seen other people utilize their names in other languages, and it tends to look awesome. But I am not from another culture, so trying to write my name in Korean, Japanese, Arabic, Cyrillic, Thai, etc would be completely inappropriate.

My previous logo got the job done, but to me it felt forced, and not very strong. I would say that at best, it could be described as "Meh" at best, and to my eyes, rather ugly. It felt confused.

But finally, I came upon some inspiration. While en route to Budapest, Hungary from Belgrade, Serbia, I met a fellow Digital Nomad (semi-nomad) and we exchanged information and chatted a bit. When I viewed his website, I found his logo caught my eye, and that it was something I could attempt to implement successfully.

To quote Jim Jarmusch: "Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent."

So, I studied his logo, and applied to my own. The key to the logo was negative space. Before, I had focused far too heavily on my initials them self. But here, I was more interested in the seemingly abstract shapes created out of the negative space of my initials. Arranged in quadrants, I placed four black squares over a white background. I then used white letters to cover the black squares and produce my desired effect over three of the squares. I placed my name within the fourth square.

I then moved and adjusted the specific locations of the letters and black squares to create an even balance to the piece overall.

I really like this design, because it plays to simplicity. It's a single color, high contrast and feels abstract, while also conveying the information I want it to. 

Project Notes: Wine Pour

Project Notes: Wine Pour

Description:

After seeing a few demonstrations of the BiFrost particle system built into Maya, I decided I wanted to figure a few things out with it. It seems to be a pretty powerful and intuitive system that I could utilize in future projects.

I want to use this project to learn the basics of BiFrost and create a simple scene. I only plan on making this a still image, and I can work on animation later. My idea is to create a dynamic image of wine pouring into a glass.

Modeling / Scene Setup:

I really wanted to keep the scene simple, so I created a backdrop wall, a wine bottle, a wine glass, and a table with table cloth.

Both the wine bottle and glass were modeled to be accurate in a working sense, and thus retain the thickness they would in real life. To each of these, I created glass shaders utilizing mia_material_x shaders. To the the wine bottle, I added a green tint to the glass.

The table cloth I applied a red shader to. Although it does not appear in the image itself, it did provide reflective light and affect the ambient occlusion. It can be subtly seen in the reflection of the glass as well.

The wall is a simple plane. To it, I applied a diffuse tan shader. I chose the tan / beige color as it contrasts well, and compliments the red wine I intended to create. I also applied a bump map utilizing fractal noise to create spackled look that dry-wall typically has.

For the lighting, I went with a 3 point lighting set-up: key, fill, and rim. All three were spotlights with a warm yellow light. I set the cone angle to 90 and penumbra angle to -19 to create a soft falloff. 

The wine bottle cast a very weird shadow that detracted from the image, so I turned off shadows from my key light. This ultimately made the shot look better, and I didn’t lose anything by dropping it. 

Originally, I had the decay rate for the light set to quadratic, but this required me to up my light intensity drastically, and that resulted in a blown out liquid. So I returned to a setting of no decay, and the result appeared to be fine.

BiFrost:

To create the BiFrost liquid, I decided to go very simple, and not get to involved here. After all, I was going for simplicity with this particular project. I created a small cylinder and put it inside of my wine bottle towards the back. I made the cylinder be the BiFrost liquid emitter. I then set the bottle and the glass to be colliders for the liquid.

The voxel size was too large initially however, as the particles wound up getting stuck inside of the bottle. I then set the voxel size to .05 and this allowed for the particles to smoothly flow out. By placing the emitter at the back of the bottle, it also allowed for the particles to recover from the initial emitting process and act more like a flowing liquid than a splashing liquid.

To change the color of the liquid, I went into the hypershade editor and changed both the diffuse and reflected color to a deep red. 

Conclusion:

I think the final result looks pretty good. I believe I accomplished what I set out to with this particular project, and I have some directive on where I’d like to go with it, as well as where I need to look to improve. 

I think that while the liquid looks good, there is something off that it makes it look more like red water, than it does like wine. I believe this has something to do with the refractive qualities between water and alcohol - I intend to look into this. 

The render times were much to high, and I had to sacrifice certain rendering qualities to keep render times to a somewhat reasonable level. But at 20 minutes to render a frame, without shadows, and low settings in ambient occlusion and final gather, I will need to work on the efficiency if I intend to create an animation or anything more complex than this piece.

Project Notes: Trapcode Form

Project Notes: Trapcode Form

description:

This was yet another impromptu "project." I saw a project with a galaxy utilizing Trapcode Form, and I decided to explore the plug-in. I ended up creating four different projects using it, and each provided me a little insight to the tool. 

Black Hole:

This particular design was modeled after the Red Giant logo. Red Giant created the plug-in so I just went with it for basic practice.

I established the Base to Form a Box - Grid, to the size of my composition at 1920 x 1080. I set my particles to 300 x 300 x 1st 

I utilized a Fractal field, XYZ which was linked with a displacement of 150 to create waviness to the design. I then added a flow of 50 evolution to create a billowing effect type. I set the complexity to 4, and the F scale to fifth

To create the bubble in the center, I applied a Spherical Field with a strength of 100, a radius of 480 and a feather of the 55th

To add a little bit more dynamics to the animation, I added a twist of 2 to the overall effect, and then I rotated the x-axis on a loop.

I then applied a color map in the quick maps section to give it the color gradient it has.

The text was made utilizing a repeater node, to create a spacey kind of title.

Synapse:

This design essentially follows the exact same layout as the Black Hold above. The only differences are really the specific number parameters, the direction of the rotation, and the color map.

This began to take on a look to me of a synapse one might see in a medical animation, so I decided to try and push that idea further here.

elephant:

This was a simple idea I took as an idea of ​​creating a hologram style projections on a flat surface. I took a picture taken at Borobudur, in Indonesia and used it as the displacement map for the particles. I applied a fractal field to it to create the wavy look. I like the idea, but I do not think the image I chose was the best image for this idea.

Earth:

The particle earth took it's inspiration from the numerous holograms and such similar designs one usually sees in sci-fi movies such as Star Wars. For this, I decided to go in a cinematic direction rather than just display the particles as a title or such.

I began by creating a black solid to which I applied Form. The Base Form I changed to a layered sphere, and set the size to 600 x 600 x 600, 200 while keeping particles in the x and y, and only 1 sphere layer.

In the Layer Maps node, I applied an image of Earth in Black and White, utilizing the alpha and the size layer to project particles only on the landmasses. I then applied a color map under the Quick Map node, with a gradient from dark gold to light gold.

I duplicated this layer twice. On the first duplicate, I exchanged the Earth image with an image of the outline of the Earth and then increased the number of particles and size of these. The second duplicate, and animated to get larger over time. Both of these layers and their rotational axis linked to the first layer, so that all would rotate together.

I then duplicated the original layer again, but removed the mapping. I then expanded the layer to 650 x 650 x 650 and changed the number of particles in Y to 5. This created my latitudinal lines.

I duplicated the latitudinal layer, and then changed the Y to 200 and the X particles to 24 to create longitudinal lines. The longitude I then linked to the rotational axis of the original layer, while telling the latitude to rotate at x * (- 15) to create a varying some movement from the rest. 

For the interior sparks, I utilized Trapcode particular with it's Aux function to create the center slowly emitting particles. These too, I linked to the original layer's rotation.

The background I made a very dark purple. I then created a lens flare, to which I applied a tint and a gold gradient. I set a wiggle script to control the flare intensity. Opposite the flare, I created a lighter purple shape layer, and masked it with a heavy feather to give a nice complimentary color to the gold.

I then experimented with three different cameras, each of which I heavily changed the focus, zoom, and aperture to create the bluring effects.

Future Ideas:

I really like what I got out of this project and I can really see that it offers a lot of potential. Aside from creating a lot of space inspired imagery, it has opened up to me the possible methods of effects I've seen in other movies. 

One such effect, that I would like to try and create, is from the movie I, Robot. The AI ​​Viki in the movie is what I would like to create. I want to try and use a video of someone talking to create a heavy 3D displacement of a face. The particles would be made up the video itself, as it would reinforce the effect. It creates a very unique and strong impression, however in order to create the effect, I would need possible green screens, and high contrast lighting - which is not available to me at this time. So I'll have to shelve that project for later.

Project Notes: Flat Design Clock

Description:

This project initially started off a real quick look at a technique I saw featured during the past week's Adobe Creative Cloud Live demonstration; and it quickly turned into a full blown project / tutorial in flat design. The animation itself is quite simple, but covers a bunch of really important design concepts and techniques that I can apply to future projects.

A key focus in this project was simplicity. Many of my projects in the past could get bogged down with many layers, keyframes, and effects. This would mean that if a client wanted something changed, I might have to go back and edit everything. The project as it is set up had a minimal number of layers and keyframes, which would allow for easy manipulation.

Ultimately, this was about setting the project up for success later on.

Clock Face:

The first piece created here was the clock face. Immediately, I changed up my normal method of creating a circle. I double clicked the ellipse tool to draw an ellipse, then went and changed the size of the path to 500 px X 500 px. I then duplicated the ellipse within the layer and edited the second path size to 420 px X 420 px. With the two paths created, I then merged the paths together, and changed the mode to Subtract.

The result here was that I had the white ring of the clock, in one layers as opposed to two. As well, I avoided using any masks which can present problems down the way. As well, because these were paths, I could animate the size of the paths. And with the way they were created (manipulating the path size), all attributes to the shape layer were still at 0. This would be important for later animating.

I then created a quick animation in each path's respective size to 0 - max. I set the keyframes to easy-ease and then entered the graph editor. Here I edited the value graphs, so that I could add an overshoot, to add a little bounce.

To create the clock face itself, I duplicated the circle layer (aptly named "Good Circle), and deleted the second path within it. I then turned off the animation on this new layer. I instead alt-clicked the stop watch on the path's size icon to create an expression and pick-whip linked it's size to the size of the first path (500px) of the Good Circle. This ensured that the size would always match the Good Circle, and required no keyframes. If I was to need to edit anything about the animation of the clock face, it would all be able to controlled from that one keyframe in Good Circle, as opposed to multiple keyframes on multiple layers. Very simple, and I wish I knew about this before.

Outside Shadow:

Creating the shadow was quite interesting and eye-opening as well. I began by duplicating the Good Circle layer, and renaming it Outside Shadow. Within the contents, I deleted the paths, expect the 500px path. I then duplicated that path so that I would have two circles. I used the >add function within the shape layer to add a rectangular path.

So I now had underneath the contents tab: Shadow group, which contained: "Outside" circle 1, "Outside 2" circle 2, and rectangle 1 paths.

I pick-whip linked the size of "Outside" circle 1 to "Good Circle"'s ellipse path 1 size. This would keep the first part of the shadow linked to the current size of the the clock face. I did the same for "Outside 2" circle 2.

Within the content box of "Outside 2", I keyed the position transform in two places. At frame 24, it was set to [0,0], and twenty frames later I set it to [0,600]. Here I then set the keys to easy-ease, and entered the graph editor and edited the speed graph this time. Because I did not want any overshoots here, I wanted to use the speed graph and have the shadow shoot out and then ease to a stop.

This left the rectangle to deal with, which would bridge the gap between the two circles, and fill in that space. For the size, I pointed the x value to  "Outside 2" size [0] and the y value to "Outside 2" position [1].

x=content("Shadow").content("Outside 2").size[0];
y=content("Shadow").content("Outside 2").position[1];
[x,y];

This would keep the width of the rectangle equal to the Good Circle size, but would automatically change the length to match the second circle. This allowed me to avoid adding any keyframes to create the effect.

For the position I applied another script which would adjust the location of the rectangle to ensure it properly matched with the second circle:

x=0;
y=content("Shadow").content("Rectangle Path 1").size[1]/2;
[x,y];

On this layer, I then applied a rectangular mask towards the bottom of the shadow and feathered it to create a gradient. Because all transformations were done within the paths, the layer had no transformations or input, and I was able to easy rotate the shadow to -45 degrees, with all shapes following accordingly (no compounding effects).

Inner Shadow:

The inner shadow of the clock was made quite simply. I duplicated the Outside Shadow layer, then I opened up the contents and deleted the second ellipse and rectangle paths. I then created a new ellipse with a size of 420 px. I then merged the paths of the two paths and set the 420 px path mode to subtract. I then offset the position by 25. Because of duplicating the Outside Shadow, it inherited all the scripts and transformations.

Dial:

To create the center dial, I created a new shape layer, starting with an ellipse. I set the ellipse path size to 50 px. I then created two rectangle paths within the shape layer, one for a second hand, and another for the hour hand. I then set the position so that the center lined up with the center of the dial. I then grouped these paths together to create an extra to allow me to animate rotations of the objects separate from anything else going on.

To animate the hands, I first selected the minute hand as the driver and scripted the rotation to (time*100). I then pick-whip connected the rotation of the hour hand to the rotation of the minute hand / 12 to create an accurate clock animation.

content("Dial").content("Big_Hand").transform.rotation/12;

If I wanted, I would be able to manually key the minute hand, and the hour hand would follow accordingly.

I then applied a script to the size of the layer so that it would match the growth of the interior path of Good Circle.

thisComp.layer("Good_Circle").content("Ellipse 1").content("Ellipse Path 1").size/4

To create the shadow for the Dial, I utilized a different technique. I duplicated the Dial layer and then put it underneath that layer. I then went into the >add node within the contents of the layer and added a repeater function that I placed underneath the shape paths. I set the repeater to offset at [1,1] and duplicate 10 times. I then offset the total position by 25 to create a clean and continuous shadow.

Text:

The text I decided to add on my own and experiment with a few of the things I'd already picked up in this project. I decided I wanted to create a shadow for my text much like how I had for the clock. The Adobe Live went through a method where I would hand draw the shadow for the letter. Because I had an entire line of text, I said "No. That is way to much work." So I found a much better and more efficient way. Work smarter, not harder.

So I first set up the animate in of the letters. I enabled per-character 3D. I set the mode to ramp up and set the scale to 0. I then animated the start from 0 to 100% and pick-whip influenced the offset to the start. Then I set the keys to Easy Ease and manipulated the speed graphs to have the characters zoom in and then settle slow.

To create the shadow, I duplicated my text layer, and then converted text to shape layers. This was needed to be done so that I could then add a repeater later on. I added a drop shadow effect and animated the distance to go from 0 to 1. I then added in a repeater, and animated the repeater from 0 to 20 over the same time frame to create the growing shadow effect.

Color:

I decided to follow the guides that Adobe Live advised. Flat design (and design in general) should stick to a simple color palate, and should exhibit no more than 5 colors. 5 colors is what I stuck to. The background is blue color, and the shadows are a darker blue. The tan is complimentary to the blue. The white and black then add the extreme contrast that helps tie the composition together.

Conclusions:

For such an admittedly simple piece, I am really quite pleased with the result. I feel that it looks more professional than some of my other pieces, and the techniques I picked up from this I can put to great use further on down the road. I am also very pleased how I was able to simplify the project file and animation to be easier to work with. I'm excited to see how I can apply these ideas to bigger projects.

Project Notes: Bonsai Tree

Project Notes: Bonsai Tree

Objective:

I had two key objectives with this project. The first of which, was to create a complex object utilizing ZBrush. The second objective is to create an organic model.

I have been meaning to dive into ZBrush for a while now, and my previous attempts showed that I had a lot to learn. But the other projects had a lot more going on, and trying to add learning ZBrush into the mix was just distracting from my other objectives. So now, the whole focus of this project is ZBrush.

As well, I have plenty of models now that I’m happy with, but they’re all hard objects: props and buildings. So I want something organic to work with and display. I don’t want to deal with character creation right now, but I have always found bonsai trees to be interesting, and they offer a lot of variation and creativity.

Look Dev:

To begin the project, I first delved into pictures of bonsai trees. To Google and Pinterest I went, and I searched through dozens of images and picked trees that appealed to me, but also all offered something for me to reference down the line.

Then I did some research into the art of bonsai, which is not surprisingly, quite complicated. I found that the most popular tree species are Fig and Juniper. While almost any tree can be made into a bonsai, there are certain species that are chosen more often for their ease of growth and manipulation. 

Various coniferous trees are particularly popular due to their evergreen nature and hardiness. Broadleaf, deciduous trees are also popular. Thinking ahead, I am thinking that I will pursue a coniferous tree of some sort. I most likely will attempt to use a Fur Shader to create the needles later on. But I will get to that later.

Trunk and Bark surface are important in the style, whether the trunk is twisted or straight, contain dead branches are all living. As well, trunk orientation is an important consideration, taking into account where the apex of the tree is in relation to it’s base. There multiple variations here including upright, informal upright, cascade, and semi-cascade.

I must also take into account the Root Status. While most roots are planted directly into soil, other variations also will plant the roots atop stone, or sometimes inside of old trunks of other trees. As well, grass or moss may be planted alongside the tree.

Yet another important variant to consider is the number of trunks the tree will have. Some trees will be a single trunk, and very much resemble a miniature tree, while other trees are sometimes created with numerous trunks to invoke a forested feel.

After searching through various tree species, I decided upon a Juniper tree. The bark pattern looked like it would be fun to sculpt, as well it would offer me a fair challenge, rather than a smooth barked tree. I really liked the look of Cyprus and Cedar, but Juniper ultimately won out. 

I have also found that I like the look and style of the informal upright with twisting bark. I intend to add some dead branches as well to give some variation to my design. I also really like the look of the tree growing on top of stone. So if I’m correct in my research, my bonsai will be a: Nebikan Deshojo Deadwood Juniper.

Before I began modeling, I started out by sketching what I wanted my tree to look like. The key focus here was to get a pleasing silhouette and form that I could later turn into a sculpt. This also allowed me to explore various shapes before I became too invested in the model.

Modeling / Sculpting:

Once I selected the design I wanted to go with, I started off by creating a very basic model in Maya. The model was mostly worthless, but it provided me with the basic geometry that I would use to bring into ZBrush to begin sculpting. It covered the basic shape and slight twist.

I then took my object and exported it as an .obj. I then took the .obj and imported the object into ZBrush. 

Once inside ZBrush, I Dynameshed the .obj model I brought in from Maya. This produced a large number of polygons for me to work with and begin sculpting. I used the “build-up clay” brush and began to create the twisting bark texture that I desired.

I eventually got to a point where I could not get the detail I wanted with the amount of polygons that I had, so I divided the Dynamesh to get further refinement. I went through this process a total of 2 times until I achieved the desired result.

Once I had the the mesh where I wanted it, I then created a sublayer. On this sublayer, I then decimated the mesh and brought the polygon count from ~2 million, to 200,000 polygons. This way, Maya would be able to read the file without crashing or chugging. I then exported the sculpt as an .obj and brought it back into Maya.

With the model now in Maya, I had the sculpt, but the mesh was an utter mess and completely unusable. So I created a new texture, that I then animated the transparency on a scale from 0 to 1. This way, I could adjust the transparency of my sculpted object by using the time slider. I then created a new object, to generate geometry. I selected the sculpt and selected the “make live” button, and then selected the quad draw tool on my new object.

From there I began to manually draw the polygons for the object. I was pretty thorough on this step, as I intended to create a very high resolution model. What I did not anticipate was how long this step would take. Nonetheless, I eventually finished the retopology with a pretty decent edgeflow and minimal triangles. The triangles would disappear anyways once I added subdiv layers.

After retopping, I brought the model back into ZBrush to create the displacement map. I discovered that I did something wrong when I created the sublayers. As such, I would not be able to create the displacement map. But no worries, I could create that with little trouble manually in Photoshop.

I utilized a box modeling method to create the stone and the terra cotta pot. As well, I created small pebble like stones to populate the pot.

For the branches and the leaves I took a different approach. While initially, I intended to create the leaves with a fur shader, I quickly realized I really didn’t know where to begin with that, considering the leaves were different than I had originally thought. 

While I’ve certainly seen the varieties before, I had for some reason always assumed that there were only two types of leaves: broad leaf and needle. It turns out, there is a third (probably even more, but I digress), scale-like. Juniper leaves happen to have scale like leaves. 

So because of the leaf type, I instead hand modeled the leaves, and then used lattice deformers to give them further individuality. I duplicated the leaves and populated them on the branches, which I created by extruding cylinders along CV curves. This method created a huge poly-count though and severely slowed my computer.

Texturing:

The majority of my texturing for the bonsai was already done with the sculpt. But as I mentioned above, something went wrong at the back-end of the export, so I had to rely on my own displacement map in Photoshop. This turned out quite well, and I was pretty pleased with final result. 

Creating the UVs were a challenge though. Because of the complexity of the sculpt, there was no real clear way to begin the process. I started by just pulling large chunks that seemed to flow together, flattened them and smoothed out the UVs. Once I had all the pieces, flattened, I then stitched them back together to try to get one big cohesive piece so I could avoid seams. This was not possible, unfortunately, but I did manage to get it into two primary pieces, and then a few smaller pieces for the branches.

The leaves were shaded using a subsurface skin shader, very similar to what I used in my Raspberry project previously. I think it resulted in a nice color and translucency. 

Rendering:

When It came time to render, I had originally set up a very basic scene to render, but due to the high poly count, and the numerous displacement maps I had running, it was causing my render to not work very. So I deleted everything but the essentials model and set a Physical Sun and Sky to render.

Once I had my initial renders, I then brought them into Photoshop to make a few color corrections.

Conclusion:

All and all, I am quite pleased with how the project turned out. I think I accomplished my goal of creating an acceptable sculpt in ZBrush, and I know feel comfortable with the software to begin exploring it’s wide variety of uses. I would like to figure out what went wrong when I attempted to create the displacement map, but I at least know where to look when I approach that on my next sculpt.

I am not very happy with how my leaves turned out, but I will have to look at better methods of producing leaves. I will perhaps look into instancing in the future, or really exploring the fur and hair shaders, as well as any foliage type brushes that may be available. But, the leaves were not the primary focus of my project. 

Project Notes: Dhoros Greek Orthodox Church

objective:

So while my last few projects have been heavily focused on materials, texturing, and lighting, what I really want to accomplish with this is a nice exterior model. Aside massive exterior sets I created back in college, I have not produced many high quality exterior models. Nearly everything I create is a prop, whether it be a small object like my teapot or a vehicle. So with this project, I want to create a high-quality model of a building. Specifically, the Dhoros Church just down the road from where I've been house sitting.

Look Dev:

The church is (obviously) not small enough for me to take the standard reference shots that I would with a small object. No photograph can I take really encompass the entirety of the building. So my first approach was to figure out the perimeter. My foot is almost exactly one foot in length, which makes for a nice measurement tool. I walked the perimeter and counted my steps, which I then recorded onto a piece of paper and drew a rough outline. it's not perfect, but it will allow me a good enough approximation. I tried to use google maps, but the resolution was so bad, I had to resort to this.

After getting my perimeter scoped out, I then took as many pictures as I could to document the many sides, and angles. So with all these photos, I should be able to reproduce the church.

For the tile roof, every home around here as the same, so I was able to pick one up in the yard and use it as my reference.

modeling:

I began the first model by creating a rough and basic shape. I was not going for real accuracy with this, but rather was trying to get the form and key shapes and blocked. Because I did not have the greatest reference photos nor an accurate measurement perimeter, I knew there was going to be some tweaking that would need to be done. As well, this allowed me to better plan for my objects I would be modeling later.

With my reference model created, I set the transparency to about 30% and then began my modeling shapes on top of the reference. I decided to opt for multiple objects, as opposed to one single mesh. I chose this to simplify the geometry as well as to give me more control in my UV and texture process later one.

I had three key objects: the main body of the church, the bell tower, and the central dome. After these three keys pieces, then I modeled pieces that were duplicated throughout such window frames, window inserts, door frames, doors, and various other decorative pieces.

Because the church is Greek Orthodox, there were two distinct features present across the whole model. The first is that of hard edges and octagonal geometry. This is most notable in the central dome, which is an octagon. The second is the heavy use of arches. There are both decorative and supporting arches across the entire structure. 

The arches to get the look right, I used the bridge tool, setting the angle of curve to either 15 degrees or 30 degrees depending upon the specific spot. I found that these settings provided a nice arch when I added in subdivisions and was quite easy to work with. When needing to make a keystone at the top, as some required, I simply extruded the top face and then scaled up the specific spot.

The most complex geometry was created the decorative iron work above the doors and the single side door. In both cases, I utilized the bridge tool extensively to get arches and curves. I also meticulously extruded and individually modeled each sun ray.

The tiled roofs were pretty simple to create, I utilized the box model method that I've been using mostly throughout and ensured that the pieces would fit and overlap each other nicely. Here I broke from reference a little, because I did not want to create a crazy amount of geometry. I enlarged the tiles so that I could keep it down to around 800 tiles total. If I had gone by their actual size, I would have been far closer to 20,000 tiles. While it would have been more accurate, I do not think that my change detracts from the look, and is worth saving time for rendering and computation.

Overall, I was able to keep the geometry rather low and only added additional geometry sparingly. I instead utilized the Mental Ray Subdiv approximation throughout at a level of 4-N and also softened Normals. However, in order to get the Subdiv to work properly I still did have to go in and add a little more geometry. Most notably, I added small bevels at all sharp corners.

texturing:

UVing the objects were pretty straightforward. The approach I used for the main building and bell tower was to start with an automatic mapping. With the Automap created, I then sewed the pieces together to get my the UV sets. Because the models were pretty square, this worked out quite well, and I had a minimal amount of smoothing and unfolding to do. 

The central dome required a cylindrical projection, combined with a y-axis planar projection, but again, the object remained a rather simple one to map.

I did run into one issue however with a few of my window fillers. The problem is that I used booleans to cut circles and clean the mesh. What I did not realize until now, was that doing this prevents manipulation of the FOA. While it can still have a projection, I could not move the handles inside the UV editor. Luckily I remembered a tutorial I watched years ago, that went over the UV process before all these tools became available. I keyed the vertices of my object on 1 frame and then scrubbed the timeline a bit and manipulated to flatten the vertices and scale them how I would want them to appear as FOA. With this flattened version, I then projected a planar map. From there, I then scrubbed back to the original geometry shape, but with the new UV projection applied and then deleted the animation. While not a perfect project by any means, it was by far better than not having any projection at all.

With the FOA created, I then went into photoshop and created my texture maps. I wanted to keep them simple, but I really wanted to capture the appearance of sandstone that really was characteristic of the church as well. I opted to create three maps: a diffuse, specular, and displacement. I added a Normal map as well, which I used Perlin noise to give a random bumpy feel to the rock.

All of the materials were mia_material_x materials, to which I gave a roughness value of 1.0, and glossiness of 00:15. This gave the materials a sandy stone look, which was exactly what I was looking for.

For the objects I did not UV, I instead created shaders such as for the tiled roof. These were simple, but aside from having applied maps, still followed the same principle as the textures.

Applying displacement maps was an interesting, yet successful endeavor overall. Initially, I ran into the issue of having all of my hard edges and seams split open and leave ugly gaps throughout. I was able to fix this problem by using Subdiv approximation and Mental Ray. This resulted in fixed seams, but also resulted in rounding out of awkward geometry. Because of this, I was required to add more geometry, but I still managed to keep the poly count down.

Rendering / Lighting:

Cyprus is a pretty sunny country. Everything is under intense sun almost year round, so I figured that the best way to render this out was to apply a Physical Sun and Sky. I tweaked the Gamma filter to 1.1 and did a few of the basics such as adding ambient occlusion, bumping up the quality, and a few other such items.

I was really surprised that the final renders were so quick. Considering that most objects had a displacement map, and all had at least normal maps, I was expecting longer renders, but each image came out to around 5 minute render times.

conclusion:

I'm really happy with how this project ultimately came out. The model looks really good and captures the building as it stands in Dhoros. The texture is pretty close, and the church does justice.

From a learning point, I'm really happy with what I got out of it. I picked up a lot of knowledge on displacement maps, Subdiv approximations, and various workflows.

There are a few areas I'm not super happy about though. The textures, while acceptable, I do believe could be improved upon. They are okay, but all could use a little more finesse and adjustment. As well, due to the issues I ran into with the Subdiv approximations, I was forced to add geometry after the fact, which resulted in a not perfect edge flow. In the future, I'd like to plan for this in the beginning as opposed to force it work towards the end. But basically, this project has made me feel far more comfortable in attempting more complex geometry utilizing displacement maps and textures.

I'm also happy to finally put up a building model, considering most everything else I have is a prop.