www.si-community.com

Howdy,

I've finally finished this piece I've been working for some time - for way too long, life and my short attention span kept interrupting me - and I thought I'd better share it here as well (posted it here) since it was almost completely made with Softimage. The model itself is obviously not finished, but for the illustration purpose it is. I'll try to come back to it and finish it, but chances are I won't, at least not in the near future.

It was mainly a Sub-D modeling exercise, no sculpting allowed, in order to master topology flow for creating animation friendly meshes. Whether I've reached that goal or not I'm not sure, but I'm certainly going to the "dark side" that is sculpting (Zbrush) for almost all purposes regarding modeling, since it offers such a tremendous advantage in the creation of a concept as well as detailing the model. Sub-D modeling still has its place - obviously for dealing with retopologized meshes but also I can't see myself using a sculpting package (as they currently are) for precisely positioning and placing certain parts when creating hard-surface models.

So I've used XSI for modeling and rigging (a simple skeleton really) and Photoshop for a few textures (bump and reflection roughness maps) and the creation of the "movie poster".
Rendered in Mentalray..............
I might take a whack at it in Mantra at some point.

Cheers!

Aha so this is the thing that removes one of your earplugs while you sleep!

Great design and attention to detail. Also it's refreshing to see a clean shading without the PBRwornEdge look for a change.

Bravo!!
Top row!!

Very impressive, especially considering that it's all sub-d modeling... ;)

@rray Heh, worn edges wouldn't make sense since these advanced aliens don't use paint in the normal sense as the puny humans do (which is very convenient for me 'cause I had to rush the texturing part and ship it)

@forton & Hirazi
Thanks guys, glad you like it.

Great work! When we are already around no-worn edges approach, how about ''directly out of the package'' look. In Earth
variance, tapes and stickers on sensitive places, wood wool all around, so on. Or, whatever else is equivalent when it comes to extraterrestrials.

Nice!
This should be included on top row.

@Mathaeus If I understand what you're saying, then "out of the box" look with wood wool, bubble wraps and whatnot would be a new and great idea which I might implement at some point, when applicable (obviously couldn't be applied in this case since this is not a product, but a character).

@Grubber I'm glad you like it mate. I'll probably post other works, although likely not as much XSI work as in this one

Very very good, top row indeed.

If you use any hard edges i want a screenshot if you dont mind, but maybe later when you upgrade
You did uv mapping inside xsi? How many uv sets is that and what size of maps. Impressive detail

For anyone interested I've added a few more images in the original post - shots which, I think, do a bit more justice to an area I've put a lot of work into.

@mc_axe Thanks for the praising dude.
I've used hard edges only where a bevel would add more polys without any value, that is inside holes and for the split between "stiches". For these cases I used to disconnect those edges, but when I've reached the "rigging" part, more precisely the skin editing, I realized that having them disconnected adds a bunch of unnecessary points which made my life a lot harder for editing weight values. Thus I've started a point/edge welding frenzy in the middle of the rigging process. As you'd expect not everything matched with their everything and some UV fixing was in order after that. And only then I went back to skin editing and posing.

UVs created inside XSI, yes - used Unfold and other "normal" tools inside the UV editor.
4 tiles horizontally (u_1,2,3,4; v_1) and 8k maps. 4k should've been enough probably, but I couldn't be bothered to downsize them since I've experienced no issue regarding their size.
OK, so let me know what print-screen you want exactly.

thnx for details! I always enjoying reading them.

For a screenshot i want one that you have selected the mesh so hard edges are visible, you choose where to point camera Or if it doesn't worth it, a random screenie from UV editor

Here's an image with hard lines and one with the UVs.
There's no secret or fancy technique involved here, just basic stuff really. And lots of patience.

fine job, thx for screenies, keep up!

Sure mc_axe.
Thank you for the thread plug, staff!

i guess light is to dark for this amount of details.

Bravlin Pechatnik wrote:i guess light is to dark for this amount of details.

Yes, but it's moar mysterious