Despite having near heart failure as my hard drive corrupted whilst saving and I couldn't access my work for any projects the plane took a day longer than required as I tried to salvage the documents.
However the cause and a solution to life's problems Alcohol and You tube yielded a result where I recovered all my work and saved money in the process.
Needless to say I was close to breaking point when it happened but remained calm -ish.
I took elements form the base mesh such as the fuselage and engine and decided to work upon these in Z-brush. I wanted to add some form of surface details and some mechanical looking sections such as rivets and cut detail into the fuselage.
Also I needed to get used to Z-brush once again after and absence due to the OUTMODE project not requiring much Z-Brush work
Z-sculpts
I used a variety of masking and custom alphas to produce the details and played about with the the paint job trying to replicate a accurately as I could my concept designs. Each sculpt was fairy easy to produce and i quickly managed to get some effective maps out of them. The really lovely thing about Z-brush was being able to get metallic surface shaders instantly. Not only did it save me trying to replicate the material in Maya numerous times over but it also showed me how the paint work would be affected by the material pre-set.
I tried out a variety of shaders from chrome surfaces to toy plastic and oddly I found myself preferring the more plastic like surfaces as they created the desired effect better.
The only catch I found was trying to get the Z-Brush mat-caps out of Z-Brush into Maya and despite following a tutorial to the letter I was unable to get them working correctly. ( However with a bit more practice i'm sure i will be able to).
Once I had extracted the maps and desired surface textures I took theses into Photoshop and played and tweaked with details in order to get them slightly more accurate to liking.
I wanted to create a sort of worn and washed out paint effect as opposed a pristine new one surface, I played about with the diffuse and specular maps until I was satisfied.
Before taking the mesh into the MarmosetToolbag2 software, I played about in Maya to try and replicate surface details and materials. However the curse of using Marmoset is that you lack the patience to wait for renders when you can use MTB2 and get instant results. I wanted to try and get some glow effects off the engine to mimic the arc reactor from Iron Man. I though the cold blue light would make for a good contrast and also bounce light of the the reflective engine. In Maya I spent too long trying to tweak it and get it precise as unfortunately when applying a glow material you need to render the whole image as it will not show in the IPR render view. This took a while, and when sleep deprived patience is not your ally.
I played about and managed to get a relatively solid result. I then exported the mesh into MTB2 and then set up the lighting and materials. Low and behold what took ages in Maya took seconds in the software and the glow effect was completed within seconds. I REALLY love MSTB2.
Renders and Maps
I was really pleased with the materials settings in MTB2 and also found they had custom pre-sets for metals and plastics. I played around with these for a while but decided to stick with the default shader and custom settings. I posed the plane and decided it looked ok but needed a little bit more something to ground the image but not to the extend of modelling an hangar, or something too ostentatious.
I decided I should pose the plane and a plinth of some sort with a surface to break the plinth up and add some details to make it more credible.
I took a basic cylindrical object and played about in Z-Brush to create a rocky environment set upon a plinth.
Posed and Plinth
I angled the plane slightly and added bullet stream coming from the barrels as if the plane was doing a fly by.
I added some crates and applied a chrome texture to the outside of the plinth just to create the diorama sort of feel.
I think this grounded the image better and makes the piece feel finished s opposed to stuck on a background. With more time I would love to model a hangar and work further details into the plane wings. I finished the project on schedule and and this leaves me the remainder of Easter finish my Samurai and Locomotive sculpts.
I feel that the project came out well and I once gained learned valuable texturing skills and continued to improve my understanding of Z-Brush and third party software.
A quick Video to Finish
To quote Cage the Elephant ( a good band) " There ain't no rest for the wicked !!"
Time to crack on and start the Samurai Robot project. As always Crits and Comments are welcome and appreciated.
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