I finally found enough free-time to pick up this project again! For this part, I focused only on environment assets. I decided the base that the seahorse and coral sit on was a little boring so I worked on pulling it ouut and adding a bit of character to it. I also began to work on the coral and bring ot some detail in them. So far, I have only sculpted three corals. I wanted to define three unique tube styles that I could use to populate the the rest of the tube corals around the seahorse. Here is the base, and environment without the seahorse. Here are three of the corals that I worked on in this part.

I Recently finished my scales generator. This is a fairly flexible generator that allows you to do quite a lot of things. The generator is availalbe on substance share here : Scale Generator . Check out the parameter list below.

After a long hiatus, I've decided to revisit the scale generator that I started.While I liked the concept of it, I decided that a lot of it could be improved upon, so I have decided to rebuild it.  This time around I will be using an FX map to help me build this. I hope that I can learn and share some things along the way.   So far, the new scale generator has a lot more parameters you can tweak . There are more scale profiles to choose from, there is more control over the ridges, and I have added a new height pass with parameters that  give the user some "sculpting" control to help build out some nice height maps from the generator.  Its all pretty basic right now, but I have begun to dive into more complex functions and parameters using the FX map , like random variation, among others. I hope that as I learn more about the fx node and all of its capabilities, I'll be able to share with an in depth guide.  For now, here's the current st...

Preface Some of my first blog posts focused around how to create a "scale " material from texture to render in Maya with V-ray. The Series " Making A Seamless Scale Material " took a more "traditional" approach to creating a tile-able scale pattern. I think this method still has its strengths as it also covers valuable tips and tricks that can be used in Illustrator and Zbrush, but I wanted to share another method for creating scales by using a program dedicated to creating scale-able, flexible, and tillable procedural textures in a node based- lossless editing environment. I have been using Substance Designer almost exclusively for texture generation for the last year now and the amount of flexibility and possibilities that can be created are virtually endless. In truth, Substance Designer is no walk in the park for traditional texture artists. Its node based editing system and use of procedurals require you to think in a different way- but in the ...

This tutorial goes over how you can connect your new tile-able texture into a vray mtl and play with the settings to create a material that acts like fish scales.  1.) Setting up your Material.  Scales are more complex than we think. They have a level of iridescence , subsurface scattering and micro- specular detail to them that is hard for our eyes to see. These three attributes make all the difference when trying to pull off an interesting and believable scale material. Lets call them cornerstone attributes.  Exploring cornerstone attributes of scales:  This section will go over the definitions of the cornerstone attributes of fish scales. It will brush a little on the biology of fish and how we can use this information when building our material, Feel free to skip this section if biology isn't you thing. :)  Iridescence :  Iridescence basically occurs when the hue shifts with the angle of observation (...

Today, I wanted to share my process for creating a seamless, scale-able material that can either be projected onto Zbrush models or applied as materials to UV'd models inside of programs like Maya and 3Ds Max. I used this when creating my unique stylized scale surfaces. You can find breakdowns for them here : Stylized Scale Materials This is a tutorial that will be split into four parts. Below is an outline on what we will cover.  This post will be addressing part 1.            Part 1:  Approaching Scales and Creating a Pattern.           Part 2:  Refining your pattern in Zbrush.           Part 3: Creating a compelling and believable scale Material inside of Maya I will be using the following programs to create my Scale material : Adobe Photoshop (optional) , Adobe Illustrator (optional), Zbrush , Vray and Maya.  Part 1: Approaching and Creating A Pattern ...

In part I of this tutorial, I went over my process for creating a tile- able texture mask using photoshop and illustrator. We ended with how different applied effects done in photoshop could alter the basic outcome a sculpted tile inside of Zbrush. In this lesson, I want to go over how to apply that texture in Zbrush and then further refine it using Zbrush's robust sculpting tools and a combination of masking techniques. While I will personally be working with a mask that I did indeed create in photoshop, this process can be easily applied and used without having a mask at all.  We will go over some helpful tips and hints that can help us keep our texture seamless and furthermore, expedite the sculpting process so that we can get great results with less effort.  For this tutorial, you will need the following programs : Zbrush. If you created a seamless pattern from the first part of this document, then be sure to have that file as well!  Setting up y...