Creating a Steampunk Observatory Part 01: The Tower

(Base Mesh: MiaMaterial/Lambert Base Texture)

Here I will be talking about the making of the base mesh for my Steampunk Observatory tower, and going through step-by-step the different techniques I used to get to the basic block out of the building. It will be split into several parts: The Tower, The Dome Door Mechanism, The Houses and the Additional Detail (Telescope, cross beams, knuts and bolts etc).

Tutorial 01: How to build the Tower

Firstly, we're going to start with the dome. As an observatory, the dome has to be sturdy enough to be able to open and close to release the telescope, but not so heavy that it will crush the rest of the building. 

Having looked through the history books, I found many examples of copper domes throughout history, as it is light enough to stay on the top of the building, and is made of metal, can handle the added pressure of constant chafing from opening and closing the doors.

To get the basic shape of the dome create a sphere, select half of the faces (by right clicking over the object and selecting 'face') and delete them.

The left image is what the shape should look like all the way around. Then delete the top circle of polys. This serves two purposes: Getting rid of the edge heavy pole (The point all the edges meet) at the top of the sphere, and making room for the 'door opening' mechanism later on. 

Then we need to create the opening for the telescope. Select two columns of the sphere and use the 'Extrude' tool (marked with the red circle on the left hand image) to push those faces inwards. This creates an indented part of the sphere that will later be used to create the doors. The polys this extrude creates at the top and bottom can be deleted (as shown in the right hand picture).

Now we are going to create the top part of the door opening mechanism. Create a cylinder, and by going the polycylinder1 subheading of the Inputs folder (to the right of the screen, shown in left hand picture), you can find the 'Subdivisions Axis' tab. This tab allows you to increase or decrease the amount of edges you have around the cylinder. This is standard at 20, but 10 will do for this. Drop the subdivisions down to 10, and select the edge heavy poles at the top and bottom (holding right click on the object and selecting 'Edge' from the tab instead of 'Face'. 

The edges now have to be replaced. The object must always have quad (4-sided) shaped faces, though a tri (3-sided) can be used on the occasion. There are several ways to redraw the edges where you want them, but for this I used the 'Multicut' tool in the 'Modelling Toolkit'. The modelling toolkit is the first of a set of four buttons in the top right of the screen. Scoll down the tool palette that will pop up and find 'Multicut' (as shown in the picture). Then select the vertices you want to connect. I have drawn out a basic 'connect the dots' in the picture that will give you 6 quads. Do this for the top and the bottom and place it in the hole we made at the top of the dome earlier.

Next we're going to create the mechanism. By using the extrude tool, you can create a three tiered cylinder from the one we just created. To do this, select the top six faces of the shape. Using the extrude tool we used before, use the little cubes to scale inwards. By pressing the 'G' key on your keyboard you can redo this action. This means that now when you use the upwards arrow, you can pull up an entirely separate row of polys. Do this for every new direction you want the polys to go. For example, If you want to create the bottom tier of polys, you would scale inwards, press G, pull upwards, press G, pull inwards again etc. I will upload a video later to better show how this is done.

By using this extrude method again, you can make various ridges at the bottom of the dome, to show some form of 'fastening' to the rest of the tower. This will later be detailed with panels and large bolts.

Now we have our basic dome, we can go ahead and make the tower. Select the final edge loop at the base of the dome (double clicking one of the edges in question) and using the extrude tool again, you can pull out the entire tower down. 

Now, we don't want the tower actually attached to the dome, so we can do something to split it and make two separate objects. This is done using the extract tool. Select the faces you want to extract and go up to the 'Mesh' tab at the top. By clicking on the little square next to the extract button opens its settings. You want to make sure you have 'Separate faces' ticked. Then go ahead and click the Extract button. This will then have split your mesh into two parts as shown in the picture below.

Now we have the basic tower and dome, it's time to add some detail:

Using our good friend Extrude, you can create a foundation for the tower as shown above. Now, our tower looks quite basic, so to make it into a proper working observatory, we're going to add some little houses around the bottom and an upper walkway. I'll show you how to do these a little later.

This observatory is going to belong to my Pirate, so she can watch the sea and the skies before she goes flying in her flying Pirate Ship.

Archer Shoulder Pad Detail: Inflate Tool

I wanted to add some detail to the Archers top shoulder plate. From researching on forums and talking with friends I discovered a new trick: The inflate tool. 

Inflating is a quick fire way that the detail can be pulled out in one go using the masking tool and the inflate tool under the Deformation palette. On the shoulder plate, I masked out the area I wanted to sculpt and then inverted it. The inflate tool then will not push out the areas that are masked off. The inflate tool can be found in the Deformation palette. It is something to be used carefully because it can very easily expand too much and look wrong. 

This is the inflated shoulder plate. It is now ready for finer sculpting, to make it look neater and clean up the tip, which didn't quite work. The outside band will eventually be metal and the inside a thick scaled leather.

Archer Sculpt Work In Progress

I started the creation of my archer using zBrush. I used the zSheres to create the base mesh for the body, and then sculpted the basic muscle forms into it. A lot of the body wont actually be seen due to the clothes, so I kept the detail to a minimum for now.

I used the extraction method from the Pirate creation to pull out meshes for the clothes. Here I've given her a simple shirt, high rise trousers, a simple belt and some leather chaps. I will go into material detailing later on.

I continued extracting and sculpting until I had all the pieces laid out how I wanted them. I then went into more detail using the dam standard brush, among many custom brushes for cloth creases etc.

Here you can see I have focused a lot of detail on the torso, and the gloves. I used the custom 'Lace' brush in zBrush to create the lacing up the arm band and I cut the seams into the glove to give it a more lifelike look. The glove will be textured to look more leathery later on too, while the arm band will look like thick cloth.

The breastplate was particularly long winded and fiddly. I started to build up the scaled look across the main part by using a scale creation brush. I then used the Dynamesh tool to mesh them all together into one object. My main problem with this was finding a way to retopologise the breastplate without losing half of that detail again. In the end I used the original 'vest' without the scales to retopologise, then projected the detail down onto the clean mesh. This still lost some of the detail, but not so much that I couldn't resculpt the lost detail quite quickly.

I also used the extract tool to draw some Celtic knots around the base of the breastplate, to make her outfit look more 'Fantasy' and 'Elfin'. It was also a tricky process.

The armor pieces were the most fun for me, as they were something I'd never done before. I started by extracting the larger pieces out, then extracting the various straps that go with it, working out how they would attach to the armor pieces and how they would hold on the body. I tried to make the shoulder straps a part of the breastplate, yet still potentially be detachable so they could be removed should the archer get injured, or should the plates get damaged and stop her shooting.

Sculpt Turnround: 

Work In Progress 01

Steampunk Pirate Sculpt Work In Progress

I started my Steampunk Pirate by sculpting a basic body mesh out of zSpheres. I left the face unsculpted for now so I could focus on the clothes. I'll sculpt the face along with the visible body parts once the whole outfit is complete.

I created the clothing using the extract tool in zBrush. This is done by masking off the designated clothing area using the CTRL key, then going into the subtool palette and choosing the Extract function. I made sure to turn off the double sided extract function or there would be twice as many polygons than I need.

Once the mesh is created it will be really messy, so it needs to be retopologised before any sculpting can take place. This can be done using the zRemesher tool under the Geometry palette. This reduces the poly count substantially, so to get any detail into the shirt, it needs subdividing using CTRL+D, or finding the subdivision tool in the Geometry palette. It can now be sculpted as normal.

This is the basic layout of the base layer clothes. I also included a waistcoat, a corset, arm bands and a pair of gloves. The trousers and boots are also separate subtools.

I then went and focused on the armor plates. I chose to do leather armor as it is more form fitting and when running around on a flying pirate ship, ease of movement is key. This is also why there are more panels in the corset and waistcoat, and only metal armor where it is needed (protecting the front of the torso and the hips). There will also be more decorative metal on the long coat when it is done. 

Sculpting the face was challenging but fun. Though more work is needed on it I think I managed to get the base proportions right, and get a little character into her. The pointy ears are to further indicate that she is from another world, however I found a major issue when sculpting the mouth and ears in particular: I couldn't get enough detail into the features. To tackle this issue, I had to detach the head from the rest of the body in order to get a higher number of subdivisions in the face, without slowing down my machine by putting a high number of polygons throughout the rest of the body. This is known as controlling 'Mesh Density'.

To reattach the head again, I used the Dynamesh tool. The Dynamesh tool is used either when polygons become too stretched out and tricky to work with, or if you want to attach two parts of mesh together. For example, the head and the rest of the body. By taking the two subtools in question and merging them together using the 'merge' tool in the Subtool palette.

Dynamesh can be found in the Geometry palette. By ramping up the resolution, you can maintain the level of detail you previously had so if, like me, you had a high level of detail on the face, you can keep that high by using a high resolution. Then just click the Dynamesh button and the two objects are ready for smoothing. Once smoothed along the seam the two objects should then be combined and seamless (as above). You can then retopologise using the zRemesher or use Topogun to create a new mesh based on the high detail one, and project the detail down, though will talk more about that later.

CG Red Bull Sculpt

'Red Bull' Bull

In this post I will be explaining the making of one of the characters for our third year collaborative 'pipeline' project: The Red Bull bull. 

Our project was based around an advert. Our team chose to do a 'Drink Aware' advert, where the red bull and the Jagermeister stag get into a bar fight and things go horribly wrong. The idea was based off the 'Jagerbomb' and the effects it has on people, with a little exaggeration for creative purposes.

This is the final textured sculpt of the Red Bull. It was based off the Aurochs Bull, though I changed the proportions dramatically to fit the old Red Bull logo. His shoulders had to be much bulkier to give him more of a presence when charging the giant stag. In hindsight I probably wouldn't have made them quite so large and steroid enhanced, and I would have made the horns larger and more prominent.

I started in zBrush, a program I hadn't used before. I watched many online tutorials to ascertain the best way to go about sculpting a bull. Eventually I started with a zSphere. zSpheres are handy to create a quick manikin of the character or creature that you can sculpt on top of later on. 

I started by pulling the neck out and adjusting the sizes. I changed the proportions properly once all the spheres were in place.

   This is the basic sphere mesh I started with. I only added the basic joints needed to get the form. In hindsight, I would have put more spheres throughout the body so I would have more control over the overall shape (e.g. the tail need far more than one single sphere pulled out to resemble a tail. I should have done more joints, and added the hair tuft onto the bottom). zSpheres are useful when the character/creature is being sculpted into a pose, as they allow you to use them as a sort of skeleton for posing before the mesh is finalized.

I changed my basic sphere skeleton into mesh using the adaptive skin method. This meant I could now sculpt into it. I used the move tool to pull the form into a better shape, and then began sculpting.

This is the quick sculpt I came up with. The legs were too thick, he was a bit too fat and his head was too boxy. I went back and altered the proportions again.

This was the second attempt at the sculpt. I liked this one better, as he seemed more top heavy and ready for barging stags out of the way. The legs however were then too thin. I was happy with the amount of muscle definition i'd gotten in though, as I spent a long time looking through bull and cow muscle structures and trying to replicate them. 

This is the finalized bull sculpt before the textures went on. I went through the muscle structure again, and played with the proportions after a friend pointed out he needed to be larger at the front than I have previously made him, and that the curve of the spine needed to be more pronounced.

I then retopologised using zRemesher, unwrapped in Roadkill and then rigged him in Maya. I will go through these methods later, along with the alternatives, including 3D unwrap, Topogun and the different rigging/skinning methods.