Severus Snape

[mastone]

Started modeling on Snape from Harry Potter, this is intended as a portfolio piece, tomorow I will start with the body.
I have used spotlight in Zbrush to put a testtexture on his face and apart from some minor stuff the face is looking reasonable well.
C&C is welcome of course

[Chirone]

that disturbingly looks like him....

[mastone]

Thanks, I wasn't to sure at first but when I slapped on the texture I saw it fitted pretty good ( there is still some minor stuff that needs fixing, but not bad for one day I think ;) )

[BabyDuck]

that does look nice. maybe you should make the nose a little more "hookier" so he looks closer to what he looks like in the book, and not like the actor in the movie.

[mastone]

hi babyduck

I think when it comes to "booklikeniss" I think Alan Rickman is one of the few actors that got his character spot on, I never doubted for one second that he was snape and I try to honor that achievement ;).
I did a previze of a more bookish version of Voldemort however ( see my avatar or website) since I think that character could be a lot scarier/menacing in the movie than he is portrait at the moment( but that should be expected since kids are going to watch it ;) )

[daverave]

Very nice...........dave

[Mayaniac]

That's a good likeness man!

[gster123]

Instantly recognisable.

Great work so far on the likeness.

Cheers

Steve

[mastone]

Thanks guys ;)

[Jay]

Yes your best one thus far in my opinion. Just to rub it in, a good friend and colleague of mine who I sat with at cinesite and who is now a texture lead with me at Windmill Lane VFX had the honor of zbrushing and texturing Voldemorts head.....

carry on...look forward to this

Jay

[mastone]

"Yes your best one thus far in my opinion."
-Thanks and I certainly hope I improve over time ;).

"Just to rub it in, a good friend and colleague of mine who I sat with at cinesite and who is now a texture lead with me at Windmill Lane VFX had the honor of zbrushing and texturing Voldemorts head....."
-His entire head? I thought they only did a CG nose...ah well sounds like fun, but I don't begrudge him doing it haha ;).
Maybe a stupid question but why trade Soho for Ireland ? ( I know some people who are working in or around the soho area and I do know that there is a lot of pressure, they don't pay overtime and depending on where you work you have to deal with rude/shitty colleaggues - especially when you are at a low position, they gradually get "nicer" when you rise in the ranks ;)- but they al kinda agree that when it comes at "being at the spot where it happens" one should be in Soho, but that's just hear say of course and Ireland is a beautiful country no doubt about it.
If I could pick a country/company as to where to work it would probably be WETA in New Zealand ( lets just hope they will do a remake of LOTR in a year or so hahahaha)


I didn't have a lot of time today ( got visitors grrr) I have started on the torso ( I have cut up the body in several parts and modify them in zbrush because I get the shapes I want more easily) and will try and finish up the body in the following week, maybe evn start on the clothes

[Jay]

Im here in Ireland because my contract ended as a modeler ended last july in soho - so you go where the work is.....but we have a few ex D-Neg guys here and Peerless Camera Company too, plus a coupe of us from Cinesite

hahaha well no overtime pay is quite common place in this industry. So be prepared

J

[honestdom]

i thought voldemort was an mpc character?
...i get paid for weekends but not for extra hours i do during the week.

i agree with everyone, the model looks great. your best so far :)
do you have a screenshot without the texture?

[mastone]

@Jay: didn't mean it like that there is no dishonor in going to Ireland I just wondered that's all, was it much hassle ( moving and all?)

@honestdom:
So you only work in the weekends ? hahah
Thanks for the complement and here is an untextured zbrush sculpt

[honestdom]

looks great, i imagine the texture is just a place holder. it was a bit yellow.

[leonlabyk]

Great stuff Mastone,
I moved away from texturing in zbrush due to the poor resolution quality with creating large texture maps due to polypainting. I find it great for sculpting and the new lightbox feature is killer, although I found even when subdiving a model to the highest level, with really high res pics the fine details would not show up.
Be good to know if you have found a way around this or do you clone the texture onto the model to then tweak in PS.

Cheers,

Leon

[bullet1968]

Well man....I have to agree with everyone else mate...this is pretty damn good mastone! Incredible likeness indeed...I knew who it was straight away (despite the spoiler LOL)...hmmm I will be watching this one...

cheers bullet

[Jay]

Hey Dom

voldemort yeah he was, but Cinesite is doing him for the last two films....well a fair bit at least....I was there, he appeared right next to me, honest (Dom) lol

J

[mastone]

@honest: Yes it was a placeholder, but I do think I will use it as a base texture and refine it ( just to see how that works).
@Leonlabyk: Textures in Zbrush are ( imo) a bit funky yes, but there are ways around that, you have to do a couple of testrenders in maya to get a bit of a feel on how it will look and how changes made in Zbrush affect the endresult, I personally don't like lightbox ( if that's the funky browser thingy on the bottom of the screen) , I like spotlight, but that's really buggy ( it keeps crashing on me all the time), I personally prefer Zbrush over mudbox only and purely because of the " feel" of the brush and the way the sliders woprk ( in mudbox it snaps to absolute values way bigger than I want them which results in laying down the wacompen and manually putting in a value) it feels more natural in Zbrush

@Bullet: Thanks man
@Jay: As long as you don't see a green light and a high pitch voice I think you will be okay ;)

[leonlabyk]

Soz spotlight was what I meant, forgot the name as I have not used it for about a month as I am now texturing with mudbox. I find zbrush much better in many ways and have simply gone back to mudbox for texturing.

Keep up the great work and looking forward to seeing your progress.

Cheers,

Leon

[gubar]

This is cool, do you have a wireframe?


cheers

gubar

[mastone]

Sure here is a wire

[daverave]

I just do not get on with zbrush texturing with all the thing it has to offer you would think it was great. Mudbox for texturing, does it use layer like photoshop?...........dave

Edit: I do like photoshop but the 3D bit is not that good (could be my graphics card) end of grip

[BabyDuck]

I just do not get on with zbrush texturing with all the thing it has to offer you would think it was great. Mudbox for texturing, does it use layer like photoshop?...........dave

Edit: I do like photoshop but the 3D bit is not that good (could be my graphics card) end of grip
mudbox does have layers for painting as well as sculpting. the paint layers can be imported/exported as psd layers so i would say its exactly like photoshop - with one minor difference maybe: the layers only have a opacity setting - cannot be multiplied or anything fanzy as photoshop can.

[daverave]

Thanks Duckie, will have a look at mudbox.............dave

[TDW]

Good job, really could recognize that guy on first view. Not saying that I watch Harry Potter though! :p


TDW ;)

[mastone]

Good job, really could recognize that guy on first view. Not saying that I watch Harry Potter though! :p


TDW ;)
Thanks and you kinda admitted that you watch HP, with the whole recognizing part ;)

[Chirone]

i'm pretty sure he's been on posters and in ads and stuff though, so it's possible to know who he is without watching Harry Potter at all ;)

[mastone]

i'm pretty sure he's been on posters and in ads and stuff though, so it's possible to know who he is without watching Harry Potter at all ;)

Yes but if you watch a poster of harry potter ...in a way you watch harry potter and have a certain interest in it... there are a lot of ads with peoples faces I couldn't remember for the life of me , only the ones that take my interest stick :):playfull:

[bullet1968]

Galaxt Quest?? LOL everyone has seen that havent they...LOL

[Chirone]

Mastone: yeah, I guess we do have to either hate or like something to actually pay attention to it and then notice stuff about it. He did look the same in sweeny todd though

bullet: dunno what you're talking about :P

[mastone]

What about this one :
YouTube - Marvins Moments Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxp1AqWleT4)
Go to 3:56 when I first saw that part with that sarcastic voice I almost pissed myself ;)

[mastone]

Finally had time to build the rest of the body( read stopped delaying on the hands feet ;) ), if anyone is wondering why I build the entirebody, it's basically for practice

[mastone]

roughed in the clothes, will refine some more tomorrow, I have done some polyhair, but don't think I will go for that

[mastone]

Have been working on the clothes somemore ( finished the shoes)



Also made a little animation in PS
http://www.eyellem.nl/Snape_Cameramove_quick.gif

[BabyDuck]

that looks great - love the coat. did they change the coat throughout the movies? i remember it beeing almost floorlength. great progress :)

[elephantinc]

Galaxt Quest?? LOL everyone has seen that havent they...LOL

Never give up; never surrender!

[mastone]

that looks great - love the coat. did they change the coat throughout the movies? i remember it beeing almost floorlength. great progress :)

Thanks and no as far as I know they haven't changed it, he generally wears a ( strange) overcoat/cape over this , which does drape over the floor.
I will watch the movie again to see how that thing is pieced together, if someone knows what it is called( the strange overcoat thingy), please let me know :)

[stwert]

A robe? More specifically. A wizards robe :P

[Chirone]

I put on my robe and wizard hat

[BabyDuck]

mastone, you are right. the coat underneath is only knee length. the over long thingy that looks like a dress but not as bad as ron's dress in hp4 - is long enough to dust the floor. it appears to have a few slits for individual leaves (??) of fabric. looks complicated as hell.



you probably seen this:
http://static.zoovy.com/img/redford/W500-H500-Bffffff/1/1415_1.jpg
and this:
http://static.zoovy.com/img/redford/W500-H500-Bffffff/1/1413_1.jpg

or another one - does not look like it would fly as it does in the movie, maybe he got differnent over coats depending on the effect the scene has to have :giggle:
http://snapecast.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/main_character_banner_snape_502.jpg

[mastone]

Well have been fiddling with this one again ( redid the head -lost the file...yes I know-)
Let me know what you think

[ben hobden]

Hey Martin. Shame you lost the original. I dont think the new texture is doing you any favours. The untextured shot looks good though, and the lack of cloth detail, folds, creases etc, stands out for me in the last one. Are you using one specific image as reference for his face... or a combination?

I wonder also, going back to the start of this thread. Is it possible, to texture a simple generic head with spotlight, and then use the texture information as a guide to sculpting?

I think the hair makes such a difference to character models, once that goes on I reckon it might be easier to 'snape' him.

[mastone]

Hi Ben

Thanks for your comments
I just started with this and haven't sculpted much detail in it only the head is refined somewhat, the rest are rough colors not really textures ( the resolution is to low for any polypaint to stick properly).
I am moddeling from different pictures and you can load an image in spotight , line it up with your model and line it up to the picture using the move brush, it 's not something I would reccomend however ( only for very small tweaks)

[bullet1968]

well that must have sucked big time mate!! losing a file is always a pain...or when it corrupts...looking good man...I do agree with ben though...the untextured shots give it more justice. As you have said (I do it too)..its just sometimes nicer with a wee bit of colour...grey is so droll..

cheers bullet

[mastone]

Started with some detailing today and for the fans i have slapped the face texture on agan ;)

[mastone]

Small update
Have done some tweaking and detailing

[CGWolfgang]

Great Job Mastone!

[ben hobden]

yeah. Nice. I like the wrinkles of the material around his neck. And the alpha work's nice and subtle on his main top. Dont know if you're consciously keeping the wrinkles subtle too, to get a safer map transfer, maybe they could be exaggerated a little in places? get some darker shadows in there?

[mastone]

Thanks guys ;)

[mastone]

Got tired of sculpting, but also wanted to have a bit of a preview( to be sure textures work etc) and slapped a hairsystem on it .
And I have to say I kinda like it, still needs a lot of work to be really good, but not to shabby I would say ;)

[Jay]

Can I ask, why is the face texture so grey and muddy looking?

Sorry not really a positive question but its just really standing out mate.

Jay

[mastone]

No worries... :)

Regarding the grey stuff it's not in the individual textures, so my guess is that it's a lightmap which didn't update( renderman) or it could be underlying geometry which I used for the hair base geometry.
I will have a look tomorrow( I am done for today :P )

[mastone]

Instead of the couple of hours I wanted to devote to the grey spots problem I ended up spending 16+ hours to figure it out ..........grrr.
This render took 28 minutes to do ..again grrrr
It's definitely not the endresult, but the overall look and feel is very nice ( I think), oh and if anyone is using renderman around here...be very very hesitant to set the shadingrate to .1 ( If you know Renderman you"ll get what I mean)

[mastone]

Did a testrender again....tweaked the eyes a bit in PS

[bullet1968]

Looks the bloody biz mate....very life like!

[mastone]

Looks the bloody biz mate....very life like!

You think so?
It's not that I don't appreciate the kind words, but I myself still think it looks clunky( somewhere between cartoony and real), there is defintely a likeness, but it doesn't look like skin and the displacement is not really nice either, the sculpt itself looks fine in Zbrush ( although that is sometimes hard to see ) so my guess is that it is in the transition to Maya ( and subsequently Renderman).

Ah well live and learn I suppose ;)

[Jay]

With regard to your comment of the transition between Maya and Zbrush - I think thats very very valid with this type of work. Its actually the reason I really opt for pushing the mesh as far as I can in Maya without relying on the sculpting as its not a dead cert once you start mucking around with the displacements. I dont think Ive ever read a post where someone has applied a dis map and been trully happy with the out come.

I think the nose is too broad in its width all the way down, it needs the variation to the tip (look at your references). I think thats what is giving the cartoony feel. The lids top and bottom need some attention lowering and raising. And perhaps a little adjustment to the brow muscle it needs a bit more meat and lowering a tad too.

another 10 cents.....

J

[bullet1968]

mate Im a forever noob...so I wont comment on what I know not. I did think the 'bridge' of the nose was a tad wide. The skin looks a little dark in areas maybe...kind talced or powder puffed (dont know how to say it in your terms). No shit poo though its pretty good to me..maybe a slightly brighter background..I know the HP movies are always dark etc but I think that may make a big difference...and I dont mean patel yellow either LOL Im not that much of a noob...

cheers bullet

[mastone]

Thanks Jay, I will put the 10 cents in the piggy bank ( I shall be a miljonaire soon :) )

I agree about pushing meshes in Maya, but I am really trying to train my eye a bit and in Zbrush it's quicker than in Maya ( more intuitive), but also to see what Renderman can do with regards to displacement

I do look at reference by the way, it's just that he looks different in every other picture (( I tend to match up the angle in zbruh on any given picture and try to visually match up the model, which works reasonably well)
I will have another go in Zbrush and try to get the head the way I want it , I am feeling that it's getting better with each back and forth :P

Thanks again

[mastone]

No worries Bullet I wasn't critisizing you ... I wouldn't dare offend offspring from an old British jail island LOL

[Jay]

excellent -keep at it.

J

[bullet1968]

Gaol my man...still British...in a good way. No offence taken mate.....I try to help...somewhat eronous in certain ways....butI try to learn from youall...knowledge is a defence....lets all learn... it looks shit hot to me......just some light inn the rear..peace man

cheers bullet

P.S all art is good, I like your art...its reaistic. I like that :) f**k yeah, when I am allowed...I will write ****.

[lilnik]

This is fantastic, Alan Rickman should be proud

[bullet1968]

Oh BTW...the better and bigger my skills...is up to the knowledge given baby....hit me. kcuf

[Jay]

Hey Bullet, be careful with the term 'realistic' verrrrrry dangerous word to use in the world of CG.

anyway Mastone: Heres a link I think will be of use to you, its a fairly close up shot of Rickman as Snape. I think youll be able to determine the necessary corrections. I just showed my daughter this piece of work as she is a huuuuuge Potter fan, the first thing she said was the groove in the forehead is toooo deep and long and the lines on the forehead either side of the groove are non existent. So you are being watched by hardcore fans!!! Better make it right. LOL She is my worst critic on my work, she absolutely has me on the rails, she is very eagle eyed!!

anyway your link sir....http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_E5XEEd0Hfuc/TNLjJApK5KI/AAAAAAAAAKQ/Bs4xy5hsSB0/s1600/Severus-Snape-severus-snape-812081_1280_1024.jpg

cheers
Jay

[mastone]

@lilnik: Thanks, don't know why Alan Rickman should be proud though, he's born with his face LOL
@Bullet: Thanks, but I have a long way to go ( or at least need to learn a trick or two ) before achieving something that's hitting believeablity, let alone reality ;)
@Jay: Thanks for the picture I will add it to the collection, oh and please tell your daugther that it's hard to get it looking right ( see the attached image as proof :P ).....

[bullet1968]

LOL Jay...I hear what you say...but in this case my 'realistic' did refer to the nature of the art...not the model itself...but I hear you (chuckle)

[Jay]

oh and please tell your daugther that it's hard to get it looking right ( see the attached image as proof ).....

LOL oh she knows how hard 3d is mate. She's been doing it from an early age, she knows a thing or two already....she knows what can and cant be achieved....she knows your Snape can be even better...

better get on with it then hadnt you lol

cheers dude
J

[mastone]

Well have been going back and forth between Zbrush and Maya, after watching a couple of tutorials on character modeling/texturing and what not .
The eyes are photoshopped just to get a bit of a feel.
It's slow progress, but at least I am getting somewhere :P

C&C is welcome ( as always)