My tribute to GTA Vice City

January 21st, 2011

I’m a big fan of the Grand Theft Auto series, remember ?
Okay so, each fan of this series must know that chronologically, after Liberty City, it has to be Vice City in the next game…. So GTA V MUST take place in Vice City ! If not… I think it will be a disaster for the fans :p
Considering that, and the fact that I’m looking for a job (environment artist in video games !!!) and also the fact that I’m a huge GTA geek…. I told myself I could create a part of this “next-gen” (or current-gen if you prefer) Vice City. So for the next few weeks, it will be my main project.
Here is my first work in progress. I’ve made some basic props like a fire hydrant, street signs, traffic lights, trash bins, etc and also a lifeguard cabin for the beach šŸ˜‰
This picture is just a 3Ds Max viewport screenshot so there’s no normal map.
Stay tuned for more, I hope Vice City fans will like it !

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In : 3D, Environments, Props, Vice City Project
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3D presentations !

January 19th, 2011

Hello ! I’m proud to show you something very useful for 3D artist to showcase their work…. It’s a *.pdf file with 3D objects in it !
That’s really interesting to show exactly how is your modeling. The only problem is that it doesn’t support the normal map.
So here’s a little test of the Sword Cutlass I made a while ago (without its normal map unfortunately). Click the picture (the *.pdf file is about 5mb).

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In : 3D, Weapons
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(update) Fire Hydrant

January 10th, 2011

Hey, I’m back šŸ™‚
This time I wanted to make a good quality prop so it’s a little too hi-poly to be in a game, but I still like it !
I used 3Ds Max to model the low poly and high poly versions and the Mudbox/Photoshop combo to texture.
The picture is a realtime screenshot from 3Ds Max viewport using Xoliul’s Shader.

Update : I’ve used the hi-poly model to make a low-poly version, because nearly 3,000 tris were far too much. Now it’s only 1,006 tris and uses 1024px textures (diffuse, normal, specular).
Screenshot from 3Ds Max Viewport with Xoliul’s Shader.

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In : 3D, Props
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Bugatti EB110

December 3rd, 2010

My first car… That was really hard but fortunately I’ve got a small-scale model of the Bugatti EB110, it helped me a lot !
I’m not 100% satisfied with this modeling though, but for a first attempt, I’m still happy I did this ! There are some proportion problems and I didn’t managed to make a hi-poly version and I think I could have used more triangles to do it. The problem is that I don’t know the common polycount for a car in a game such as GTA IV or NFS Hot Pursuit (more recent).
For the police version… it’s because I played Need for Speed Hot Pursuit a lot šŸ˜›

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In : 3D, Vehicles
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Wheel

November 25th, 2010

Here’s a special part of what I’m modelling this week, as you can guess, it’s a car ^^ My first, and wow, that’s difficult !
For the moment, here’s the wheel (once again, my first wheel), which has its own UV.

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In : 3D, Props
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The Number 23

November 19th, 2010

I was very inspired by 100 Abandoned Houses and I decided to do this facade.
It uses several textures (diffuse, normal, specular, self-illu) and it’s 2,186 tris. 3Ds Max Default Scanline render.

Also a particular version of this facade :

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In : 3D, Environments
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Unfinished stuff

November 15th, 2010

Here is a page were you will find some little things I’m not satisfied with, abandoned stuff, etc.

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In : 3D, Environments, Props
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“They just messed with the wrong Mexican !”

November 14th, 2010

As you can guess, I’ve seen Robert Rodriguez’s “Machete”, that was fun ! So here’s Machete’s machete šŸ™‚
3Ds Max, Mudbox, Photoshop.

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In : 3D, Weapons
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Rock’n’Roll !

November 3rd, 2010

Here’s another famous object from Back to the Future (with the Hoverboard I already posted). Enjoy !

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In : 3D, Props
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“Those boards don’t work on water…

October 31st, 2010

… unless you’ve got power !”
The first of a series of BTTF props I will model.

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In : 3D, Props
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“Good news everyone !”

October 29th, 2010

This time, something completely different from what I usually do : a “cartoon-ish” scene from Futurama, a reproduction of the Planet Express building !
It’s 16,634 tris, it uses several textures from 256 to 1024 (only diffuses and one alpha -for the antenna) and is rendered with Mental Ray using the “contour” option to have a cel-shading effect.
Hope you’ll like it šŸ˜€


Open in new tab to view full size.

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In : 3D, Environments
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Kaboom !

October 22nd, 2010

To change from rocks, here’s a big old bomb !
Modeled in 3Ds Max and I painted the base texture in Mudbox to avoid apparent seams. And the rest of the texture is Photoshop as always.
2158 tris
1×2048 (diffuse, normal, specular)
Screenshots from 3Ds Max viewport with Hardware Lighting and Xoliul’s shader.

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In : 3D, Props, Weapons
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[Update] Mudbox and some rocks

October 15th, 2010

I was working on a little scene about Halloween, but I discovered Mudbox… so the scene is on standby for now.
So. Mudbox. Hmm, I already knew ZBrush but I’m not a very big fan of it. Not so user-friendly, very dark, not easy to handle for a beginner. So I tried Mudbox after having seen some good tutorials from Sascha Henrichs. First, I tried his tutorial about “procedural rocks” with 3Ds Max : the first part is about creating the rock with some modifiers, and the second part is about unwrapping and then texturing the hi-poly rock in Mudbox. Unfortunately, the third part is not yet available.
So here’s a preview of the rock in its current state (more than one million polygons…) :

I really like this technique because it’s more “random”, so more natural (because nature is totally random). It’s also very fast to get something looking good. The main drawback is the fact that you don’t entirely control the process. So if you want to create a specific stone (like for example the famous rock formation of “The Lion King” :p), you’ll have to sculpt it with ZBrush or… Mudbox !
I like Mudbox because it’s really user friendly, clearer than ZB and you can use it just by guessing how to do. So, here’s the second tutorial : this time we sculpt the stone directly in Mudbox, starting with a simple cube. When it’s done, we have to use a low level of polygons as the low-poly version because a major weakness of Mudbox is its lack of re-topology tool.
So, I unwrap this low-poly version of the stone, create the normal map in Mudbox, apply it on the low-poly model and then texture it once again directly in MB.
Eventually, I import the model into 3Ds Max, apply the textures, set-up a little lighting and use Xoliul’s Shader and here it is :

It’s not so “low-poly” (3072 tris) but I’m about to try a re-topology tool in order to get a 1000 tris or less stone.

The entire process :


Open in new tab for a better view.

UPDATE.
I have tried a software named 3D-Coat for my re-topology test. It’s very efficient and easy to use. So, now my 1 million tris stone (procedural) is only 420 tris !
I will now texture this low-poly model with Mudbox.

UPDATE 2.
Here it is, the low-poly stone is finally textured and ready to be used in a game !

UPDATE 3.
Another “procedural rock” I did this afternoon. Sharper than the first one, and more detailed (1066 tris).

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In : 3D, Props
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The sewer

October 6th, 2010

My latest scene. This is a render from 3Ds Max with default scanline.
I made several textures from 256 to 2048px, with diffuse, normals and sometimes self-illumination or alpha.
Smoke, fire and water are juste planes with alphas.
I’m not really satisfied with the appearance of the lights, but it’s always a problem for me (and with default scanline it’s hard to get something realistic).

24 900 tris.

Edit : I tried a little (a lot) retouching with Photoshop…

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In : 3D, Environments
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A heater

September 16th, 2010

A quick prop to change from all these guns.
2749 tris.
Heater : 1×2048 (diffuse, normal, specular)
Wall : same

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In : 3D, Props
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