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- 3D Modeling Techniques > Making of "The Hunter" (Posted By: Alessandro Baldasseroni)
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:: Post Date: 2008-02-18 13:28:13 [Post Comment] [Post Articles]
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Making of "The Hunter"
Author: Alessandro Baldasseroni
Software: 3dsmax
1. Modeling
The Hunter model was made for the Hellgate London cinematic, by Blur Studio. Later on I decided to make an illustration for my own fun, using some additional models I had done previously. Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studio.
I tried to stay as close as possible to the given reference…nothing orthographic, just a 3/4 sketch depicting the main proportions, some details here and there and the color scheme for texturing. Not having a hyper-detailed sketch works to my advantage, since it leaves some kind of room for personal touch and pushes me to figure out visual and mechanical detailing solutions while still keeping the overall feeling unaltered.
[Concept by Hugo Martin @ Blur Studio.]
I immediately recognized three kinds of elements I had to deal with a generic male body covered with a dark grey undersuit, a dark blue light-weight rubber armour and a metallic light blue heavy armour, so my modelling workflow was basically bound to these priorities. The body first sets the figure's proportions, and later the armour plates would wrap around the body shape.
Now due due to the tight deadlines (and also because the body doesn't have a very specific anatomic definition), I took a generic male model done previously and started changing his proportions with free form deformation box and soft selections. As you can see I left the facial features and most of muscle definition undefined, because those parts were supposed to be covered by the armour. Soft selection (see figure) is an extremely valuable tool for quickly tweaking proportions, just be sure to flag also "edge distance" with an appropriate value into its rollout to have a very localized control of the falloff.
As you can notice in the stack figure, I also made a big use of the symmetry modifier during the modeling process, and turbosmooth with 2 levels of subdivision was constantly put at the top of the stack. By assigning a short cut to the "show end result on/off" button, you can easily model at step zero and immediately see the overall smoothed result by pressing that shortcut button (in this case, I used the space bar).
Once I'm satisfied with the general proportions of the body under the armor, it's time to proceed covering it with the metal plaques. Naturally, the dark blue goes first, since they're the closest to the body, and then the light blue ones.
There are no special techniques here....once again the modeling is in subdivision with the very same stack as shown above. I usually start with a single quad, then I extrude edges all around, trying to stay close in volume and shape to the given reference ... lot of turning around the meshes, you need to observe the volumes from almost every possible point of view to be sure that the volumes and shapes are solid, and of course keeping an eye to not go too far from the underneath body.When I'm satisfied with the general volume a shell modifier helps me to give thickness to the piece. In this phase, I don't usually bother that much about every single rivet, hole or cut, I just try to develop a good quad topology of the main volumes. Of course the topology is done by taking count of the main cuts and holes, but the rest can be done easily with a normal or bump map. It’s up to you to decide how much a single detail is worth to be modeled or can it be put into a bump map. I usually adopt a "comfortable" criteria...it means that if something looks tricky to me to be carved or extruded into an existing geometry I usually put it into a normal map. When you make something for production, you don't usually have much time to model everything, so you need to set priorities.
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
As you can see in the picture a lot of cuts are not currently modeled, they are done with a bump map.
So basically all the modeling followed this workflow, most of the detailing as you can see has been left to my imagination, and it has been a lot of fun! After modeling all the armor, I modeled in subdivision some folds too in the underbody, just in those areas where they were more visible like the middle of the arms and the back of the knees.
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
These presentation renderings are done in mental ray...the material is a simple mental ray SSS fast skin material while the lighting is just a couple of photometric area lights and a back omni light with final gather on.
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
2. Texturing (materials)
Basically, texturing-wise, I divided the mesh by material .That means that every material share this unique texture sheet with very few exceptions. Every piece of mesh needs to be UV-edited to achieve this --I found a very convenient and fast use of pelt mapping, cause complex shapes like these ones are the best choice for it. After the UV-editing I usually render a template of the UV (after subdividing the mesh by at least step 1) so that I have a base to paint over the diffuse texture).
Here in the example, the rendered texture sheet for the metal armour material and the rubber armour material.
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
The diffuse texture is a mix of photorealistic metal textures and painted rust/dirt . I used a free brush collection made by Andreas Bystrom:
>> Andreas Bystrom Brush Collection >>
These brushes are simply great to create variations of dirt and rust, and having the UV template in a underlying layer helps me to place the dirt, scratches, decals and everything else exactly where I want it.
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
Material-wise take in example of the light blue heavy armour, the other few materials are similar with few exceptions like the leather undersuit and some chromed parts.
Basically it's a max blend material, the idea behind it is to blend 2 different materials with the same diffuse map but with different specular properties. This gave the idea that the scratched areas of the armor has a different more shiny metal underneath.
You can also choose to have a totally different material sharing a different metal diffuse map as underlying metal, but in this case I just decided I was comfortable enough with the same diffuse texture. To blend the 2 different specular properties materials, I used a grey scale mask where the darkest parts would have shown the more shiny underneath material.
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
Here again to paint the mask, I used custom jagged brushes to get a natural feeling of random scratches.
Specular maps are derived from the diffuse map, I usually put a hue saturation regulation level on top of the diffuse map, bringing the saturation slide to zero so that the picture results in gray scale. At this point I put another brightness/contrast regulation level on top to regulate the intensity of the specular parts.
Having both regulation levels into a folder and saving the psd document allows me to quickly change paramethers for fine tuning of the specular and it's also interesting the possibility to drag/copy this specular folder on top of a different diffuse map, so as to maintain the same specular values.
The leather material is just a simple max material with a rather high specularity.
Cables are chromed material reflecting a hdri map and glows are just self-illuminated standard materials. Some sample materials:
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
The render is done in Brazil with a simple spot light and a very low intensity global illumination.
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
3. The illustration
Already having a monster model I did sometime back for the game itself, the intention was to put both the Hunter and the monster (Karnagor) into a nice composition showing both of them in a sort of relationship, moreover everything should offer some hint that the scene took place in London itself. The monster model was made in subdivision and most of his detail is by normal mapping (sculpting done in 3rd party app).
[Image courtesy of Massive Black; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
I asked an artist friend of mine Antonio Mossucca if he was interested in helping me with the composition, I briefly explained to him what I wanted to achieve and he came out with these nice sketches which are pretty close in terms of composition to the final picture:
[Image courtesy of Antonio Mossucca]
[Image courtesy of Antonio Mossucca]
The only element I was missing was the Big Bang tower model, so I decided to make a low poly version...not highly detailed because it was supposed to be a background element, most of the detail would have been given by a texture. I missed also a sort of weapon and a terrain. For the weapon I wanted something used by snipers...with a scope and something not really futuristic, but in the end I preferred something more roughly adapted to be used as a flamethrower.
So I collected some rifle references here and there and I came out with this thing:
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio, Massive Black, A. Baldasseroni; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
First thing I did was put the Hunter in pose, I honestly didn't make any skeleton, I just used soft selection and free form deformations to do it, and it worked pretty well. Same for the monster in the background. The terrain was relatively easy to model...a grid plane cut savagely to get some nice cracks, with some geometric rocks scattered here and there, no subdivision at all involved.
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio, Massive Black, A. Baldasseroni; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
So when all the desired elements were textured and put into scene it was time for lighting and rendering! Let's say I didn't want to achieve anything photorealistic, but giving istead a painterly feeling. To achieve this, particularly when dealing with 3D images, the post process done in a 2D application is crucial. So in this case (and for the things I like to do most) it's often a waste of mine to spend a lot of time in realistic and complicated shaders...most of their properties will be washed out during the post process work, so better is to be plain with materials and lighting.
The basic light setup consists of a main spot light (better if it's not much coloured) and a back omni light. Place a few omni lights for the glowing parts here and there. I didn't involve any global illumination, just a plain scanline render because another pass of ambient occlusion will be involved later.
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio, Massive Black, A. Baldasseroni; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio, Massive Black, A. Baldasseroni; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
Later on I made an ambient occlusion pass to be composited later , to obtain it in Brazil there's a very simple way using the render pass control and the white plaster materials.
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
Then it's time for heavy post processing!
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio, Massive Black, A. Baldasseroni; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
Let's open Photoshop …I usually start with fixing a mood … a color scheme. The base render did not have much of a dominant colour on purpose, I prefer to have much more control in post with this, I love flexibility. In this case I wanted some warm tones, so I started painting the background clouds with brown/red tones…nothing much extreme in saturation.
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio, Massive Black, A. Baldasseroni; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
Put the ambient occlusion layer in MULTIPLY mode…opacity of the level around 20 per cent…i also put a hue saturation level connected to this layer in order to shift the hue of the figures to brown/reddish tones to match the lighting of the background. As you can see the rendered Big Ben has been put in a layer behind the main figures and colour shifted too.
Painted some smoke in the foreground in a separated layer with a soft edged brush with low opacity.
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio, Massive Black, A. Baldasseroni; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
Time to add some fire here and there on another layer! I made an extensive use of some real footage fire pictures collected on a black background sometime back, when I bought a cd called Pyromania full of these pictures, they're pretty easy to composite in hard light mode (since the black goes away) and only the flames remains. I also painted a yellow highlight in soft light mode over the leg of the monster , because I expect some light of the fire over it.
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio, Massive Black, A. Baldasseroni; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
Time to add some smoke on a new layer -- I wanted the smoke to move in the direction of the composition, painting it is rather simple, a round hard edged brush first. For midtones and shadows, then it's a matter of blending the “blob” together with the smudge tool leaving the hard edges in the areas where the light source is supposed to hit.
The burn tool at this point helps to enhance the brightest parts of the smoke.
I introduced some painted sparks close to the fire and some debris floating around in the air too. They give a “chaotic” feeling to the picture and helps it look less static.
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio, Massive Black, A. Baldasseroni; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
Time for a colour balance, things were going to be a little monochromatic, so I introduced some blueish tones in the background and in the shadows through the colour balance tool (ctrl-b), I also noticed that at high resolutions some textures were going to loose definition. A quick trick to reduce this effect is to put a grayscale high resolution sample of a similar texture in overlay mode over the interested areas.
[Image courtesy of Blur Studio, Massive Black, A. Baldasseroni; Hellgate London is developed by Flagship Studios.]
The final picture…as you can see, I made the tones even warmer and saturated by adding a general orange soft light layer. Some fog has been added in the background to give the scene a little more depth. I added some blood painted blotches on the monster and brightened some areas of the Hunter to make him pop up more from the rest of the image. The lamp in the background is a paintover of a real London lamp.
Thank you for reading!
- Comments: (Currently there are 23 comments.)
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- [Anonymous]Adriano ( 2009-06-27 01:41:06 ) [Post Comments]
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MASTERPIECE! ART! - [Anonymous]gareth ( 2008-09-30 08:09:50 ) [Post Comments]
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wow now thats professional work can you teach me to do some thing in 3d modelling please
gazothegreat@hotmail.com - jey ( 2008-09-24 17:34:36 ) [Post Comments]
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master well done - [Anonymous]cristian-bass@hotmai ( 2008-08-28 09:22:45 ) [Post Comments]
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muy bueno blur studio es excelente!!!!
esta increible - [Anonymous]amyog ( 2008-08-25 12:44:15 ) [Post Comments]
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great job - [Anonymous]DesignerGr ( 2008-07-20 09:46:38 ) [Post Comments]
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Yeap great work and for all you guys if you havent noticed the man used 3ds max....
3ds max rules (i had years to say that)
Keep modeling rendering animating....
Peace to all - [Anonymous]Falx ( 2008-07-17 18:25:07 ) [Post Comments]
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one word... holy shit... that's two.. can't help it this work is incredible man... great work.. makes me feel so small.. @@ - [Anonymous] ( 2008-06-02 11:33:30 ) [Post Comments]
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well obviously your a god everyone hear, if you can't tell by now lol. I would be interested in how you became soo good though?... did you go to any program in secondary school, or take any lessons somehow, or is it just a lot of pratice and time? I'm trying to be a game developer one day, and have been learning everything from Maya to C++ to even marketing and engineering. Anytips would be helpful, if you have the time. If you do my e-mail is (ian_mccabe101@hotmail.com), and if not then I wish you the best in your future.
- Respectfully, Ian - [Anonymous]arjun ( 2008-05-31 15:13:15 ) [Post Comments]
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i ripped my eyes out seeing that...unbelievable work...holy fucking bulls...this is crazy work...yaaaaaaaaa!! some one teach me make similar things as well :P - [Anonymous]CORNER OF AR ( 2008-05-21 21:13:52 ) [Post Comments]
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THIS IS A WORK.. THIS IS VERY VERY HIGH QUALITY..
I LIKE IT. - [Anonymous]manchuhnagar ( 2008-05-05 00:41:00 ) [Post Comments]
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absolutly fine - [Anonymous]Crazy felow ( 2008-04-21 19:26:47 ) [Post Comments]
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This is masterpiece dude... This woerk is incredible, i'm telling you!... I always wanted to make somthing nice in modeling, but comparing my models and yours... fuck mine :D... Dude, your da best ;)... Realy great job. Do some more tuts for lols like us :D... No ofence people! :)... We are not better than this guy here ;)... And by the way sorry for a lot of mistakes. I'm from Lithuania if someone knows where is it :D :) ;) O.K. see ya around :) Bye. And good luck with models! - [Anonymous]Toufik ( 2008-04-14 03:51:52 ) [Post Comments]
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hey hey !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! grat job
wow - [Anonymous]hitman47 ( 2008-04-02 22:09:14 ) [Post Comments]
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ha .. ok man u rule!! - [Anonymous]mnasiruddinelislamy ( 2008-04-01 13:05:40 ) [Post Comments]
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can you teach me more mnasiruddinelislamy@yahoo.com
please....
please.... - [Anonymous] ( 2008-03-20 02:51:25 ) [Post Comments]
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heres a question:
why do all of the cool suits have six packs does it make you feel better or something? - [Anonymous]j - fuego ( 2008-03-17 05:45:32 ) [Post Comments]
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damn man this work is off the hook i love it
lets collab i got tons of ideas for next gen games
your work is flawless perfect the level of details is insanely done to perfection werd up
in case even though i know you wont my email
j_fuego05@yahoo.com
this work rocks i would love to be part of any project if wanted im down 4 nething just holla sincerely j - fuego - [Anonymous]janx ( 2008-03-15 17:17:50 ) [Post Comments]
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man! you really inspire me! - [Anonymous]vasinwilson ( 2008-03-11 00:58:17 ) [Post Comments]
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hats off...incredible worrrkkkkkkkkkkk...!!!! man yu left me so gasping for air.... the work here is so powerful that one look at it and one can tell all the hard work been put while making this master piece ...well just like many other ppl i too have started with my animation classes ... would love to hear from you as to how should i go about my approach towards an animation career... if possible do mail me at vasinwilson@yahoo.com ... in anticipation...do guide and enlighten me .... - [Anonymous]Geco-deco12 ( 2008-03-06 05:24:12 ) [Post Comments]
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... dude... you have to have more tutorials!!! :D im about to start classes in 3D MAX ... i wana be a programmer AND a animator :) - [Anonymous] ( 2008-02-25 22:24:37 ) [Post Comments]
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You're amazing, how much do you get paid for this stuff, I take it youre a professional? - [Anonymous]FUCEK-CRO ( 2008-02-23 17:37:28 ) [Post Comments]
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WOWOWOWOWOOWOWO
do jaja :) - [Anonymous] ( 2008-02-23 02:15:56 ) [Post Comments]
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wow man that is really tight out come. im new to 3ds max and im taking the class in school right now. i want to go into the animation career field. any tips or suggestions to keep me going on his career path?
