What I've been up to
 

Here's what I've been up to for the last few months. Besides working full-time as a character TD, and pipeline TD, I've had some time to do a bit of freelance work. This is the result; The full model sits at 1.23 GB with full sculpted detail, as well as four 4k texture maps.

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c3...r_topo2012.png

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c3...topo2012_2.png

Very nice.....

Very nice indeed. Looks like Sarah Wayne Callies.

Close up of the ear: http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c3...Topo2012-2.png

The final ear was down-ressed a bit from this version, but I tried to maintain the same edge flow.

did u actually need that hi res of a model? Why not use the Subdiv Approx?

As I said in the topology thread, It's based on scan data, and I try to avoid sculpting as much as possible. I wanted to preserve as much detail as possible from the scan, and we would have smoothed the mesh anyways, so I built it at this resolution. This resolution is quite typical for scan-based models. The reason why you build models at low resolution normally, is so that you can tweak the model easily. Since we already have all the shapes from the scan data, we can simply use that. Plus, if I really needed to, I could go in and delete a few edge loops, and have a lower resolution mesh just like that.

Can I ask what your workflow was for retopologizing? I assume the scan data didn't give you this topology.

No it didn't. As Mudbox lacks any type of topology tool, and I don't own zBrush, this was done manually using make live, and a couple of scripts that I wrote.

I've seen make live used for that. How's that treating you, you know, along with the scripts?

Bearable, but just...

Good job John, I thought it was a scan from the very first image, the skull cap and tilt in the neck were an instant giveaway, still a nice job on the retopo....

You should of downloaded a 30day trial of 3dcoat, it works fine and saves and exports too even for the trial version, you could have the model done in a day from using that, including a very rough yet useable uv layout as it maps it accordingly as you model, I use 3d coat on all our scan data at work, its super fast

Jay

Hey Jay, thanks mate!

Regarding 3d-coat; yeah I gave it a go. The ear was actually based on an output of autopo. (Really cool btw) However by the time I started looking into it deeply, I was already 80% of the way through, and had already written custom scripts to help speed it up.

Eh, doing it the hard way makes you respect the easy way :)

Have you any shots of the mesh before you cleaned it up.....................dave

Here's the scan data. I had manipulated it so that it's in a more neutral pose. As you can see, the ear was unusable, and very little detail in the eyes. All that was added in later.

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c3...awScanData.png

Looks really good John.

I have been playing with retopo in 3D-Coat and Dynamesh in ZBrush. I am researching a Maya to ZBrush (dynamesh and Booleans) to 3D-Coat (retopo) workflow for creating highly detailed hard surface poly shapes.