[Lars Magnusson]

Bought Maxwell Render this summer (the discount and free upgrade was impossible to resist ) and after lurking around this forum learning as much as possible from you guys I thought it was time to share a little.
( I only render for fun so this isn't a commersial job and will probably take awhile to finish during my rare free time )
Oh, and the name "Shatzia Ni Challum" doesn't have any real meaning as far as I know...it's just what I decided to call her.

Current status on my creature:

Higher resolution(up to 2500x1668pixel) can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/larsmagnusson/3816370095/
By pressing the "All Sizes" magnifying glass at top left over the image.

Software used:
Rendering was done in Maxwell Render (of course). Not sure exactly how long it took for the SSS noice to clear up...it takes >2hours.
The 2500pixel image was left cooking for 10 hours while I slept..and i forgot to take note of the SL it had reached.
Creature created and textured in ZBrush 3.1
The environment in the above image is only rough maxwell primitives to get a feeling for how the light and shadows will behave.


The creature in the image is 200'000 polygons with a 16bit displacement map to give it the same detail as the 14.5 million polygon model in ZBrush.
So far it's only a simple Sky-lighting, but I might test to have a night scene with moonlight and torches or lamps. (multilight perhaps?)
The creature material is using subsurface scattering (based on Mihai's settings in the gimme skin thread).
Color texture isn't finished yet and neither is the roughness map (currently it's only the inverted displacement map which isn't really good for that)

In the below image I've started to create the environment in trueSpace 7.6 (transfered to Maxwell as obj files.)

Larger image here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/larsmagnusson/3826461423/
This time I switched the creature material into the default grey to speed up rendering into just minutes.(teeth and gum still SSS)

As I make the building parts in trueSpace I also import them into ZBrush and will create textures and displacement maps.

[Bubbaloo]

Cool work, and scary creature. I'd love to see it in motion, would be creepy.

[Lars Magnusson]

Thanks!
I love creating strange creatures but they always have some evolutionary flaw that I don't think about when creating them.
To get away from this one...run out into the grass and it will get stuck in the ground

Started with some pillars yesterday for the winding stairs and the roof that hangs in the air, hope to finish them when I get home this evening.

[kami]

every creature has some evolutionary flaws
I love the creature and rendering. looking forward to see the image evolving

[Mattia Sullini]

Maybe it lives in a rocky desert where is necessary to have the smallest contact with ground...who knows!
Anyway good work, and not a kind of subject you see often on this forum! Waiting to see the environment completed

[RobMitchell]

Really liking this so far! Should be a fun topic to watch. Good work.

[Lars Magnusson]

Did some more building parts in trueSpace last evening and let the 2500x1668 render cook in Maxwell during the night.
This is where I stopped it at SL 12 , 8hours42min:


Higher resolution(up to 2500x1668pixel) can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/larsmagnusson/3835446631/

[Lars Magnusson]

Minor update, havn't had much time after work but at least I've redesigned the wall and doorway and started detail sculpting.



Larger image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/larsmagnusson/3861417176/

Had about 500 photos to go through after my visit to a nearby fortress, and should have enough texture material now

The rockwall uses a 8000x8000 16bit displacementmap, precision 30.

[Maximus3D]

First of all, welcome to the forum Lars! i see you also live in Gothenburg. Good to see another fellow Swede here.

That's looking good already Lars you should pose it in a type of battlepose or actionpose as if it were attacking somone else nearby. The face and arms look good but i would like it more if you would improve the chest, especially the upper part of the chest of your creature as it feels odd. I'm also having a bit of an issue seeing how your character could walk with legs and claws like that, it does not compute for me. I'm sorry!

Which nearby fortress did you visit ?

/ Max

[Hervé]

cool creature.... I can hear the noise of claws on floor....

ok, now we have Magnus.... & Magnusson.. both from Gothenburg... you guys should meet... If there was another Maxwell user in Lux. , I know I would..

[Lars Magnusson]

Thanks guys!

@Maximus3D:
I visited "Bohus Fästning", just north of Gothenburg. ( the only nearby one I could think of that didn't require a boat-ride )
Legs and claw walk, yeah it's "artistic liberties" here... I wanted it to look threatening, but didn't think about practicality
( it might be remotely related to the green six legged creature in the arena in StarWars epsiode 2 )
About the chest...yeah, I'm not perfectly happy with that either...it has already gone through a couple of iterations. The first ones actually had a lot softer skin and more female breasts....which just looked stupid for an aggressive creature.

[Lars Magnusson]

Larger render:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/larsmagnusson/3870698317/

Done with sculpting and texturing of the wall. Still some minor things that annoy me, but I think I'll fix that in photoshop for the final render.

In the material I used the texture as bump and with +30 brightness as 90deg color.
Belive I picked up that specularity trick either in this forum or in one of the THINK! tutorials...?

Don't know the history of the fortress I visited to get my reference photos, but I find it quite strange just how many differently colored types of rock there was in the walls. Makes me wonder where they got the material.

[Lars Magnusson]

Long time since last update but I've been working out of town and didn't have access to my render/sculpting software
Only had time to sculpt/texture floor (not sure I like how deep the gaps between the rocks became...) and started sculpting the right stairs.
Also wasted a lot of time this weekend with things that turned up bad:
Tried to reposition creature into a more "running batttle pose"...only to discover that it looked completely ridicolous! This creature can only move rather slowly by using the claw-arms as additional legs....as I've mentioned before: a complete dead-end evolution-wise

Also had to alter the ground and wall texure. Wasn't visible on the wall but the floor became too reflective (looked wet or metallic).
Now using an inverted greyscale version of the textures that have been level adjusted to give between 60-99% roughness.



3000x2002 image can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/larsmagnusson/3903236258/

[Maximus3D]

Hervé: Hehe, i haven't thought about the first and last names until you mentioned it are you really the only Maxwell user there Hervé ? wow

Lars: Ahh you went to Bohus Fästning, nice place! i haven't been there since i was a little kid and visited the place on vacation. Yea i know what you mean by long sharp claws and the similarities with the creature from Episode 2. Female boobs can never go wrong but maybe they will not fit your character here hehe
You have really nailed the look and feel of the wall and floor. They look great! nice work on them both Lars.
One thing i thought of is if you could shatter some of the rocks where your creature has walked and where he stands now and perhaps let the claws sink down a bit in the crushed rockfloor, that would give it a sense of motion and weight. Oh and also rework your lighting to something dark and moody, perhaps with a sort of lamp, torch with a burning flame or something fixed to the walls of your building.

/ Max

[Lars Magnusson]

@Maximus3D:
Your suggestion that the chest needed work was actually one of the things i lost this weekend. I was stupid enough to first do the weird "running pose"...and then starting to resculpt the chest (adding more plate/scale on chest top instead of the current skin-poncho) before doing testrenders and seeing how bad the pose was and returning to the original design/pose....so the resculpt work has to be redone later.
(I think there are some tricks in zbrush to transfer sculpting, but felt it would go faster to resculpt than learning that )

You can see in my early concept here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/larsmagnus ... 849181870/
that I'm thinking like you regarding moody light and torches
Currently I use daylight to make sure the materials look ok in strong light.
I've actually looked around the forum and MXM gallery to figure out what the light-settings for a torch and the moon would be. Still feel very uncertain about how lights work in Maxwell....I think in "intensity" as most render engines do.
It will probably be easier to make a good looking oil/gas-lamp (covered by dirty glass) then making torches but we'll see. Hopefully it will work with multilight so I can test what looks best.