This is our latest Persian Warrior character in a series of four. Ghobad is the leader of the group and what he lacks in strength and brute force compared to the other warriors he makes up for it using his cunning wits and his excellent marksmanship.

Ghobad model 01

The model is done by Reza Ramezani using Zbrush 3.1, based on a concept by Faraz Shanyar and it has taken about 36 hours so far for the model alone. We still haven’t moved to Zbrush 3.5 yet but with all the fabulous features it has, we won’t be resisting long. For those of you interested you can read more about some of its greatest features such as Zspheres II and Zsketch on the pixologic website.

Gobad model 02

We will post the shaded and rendered model in future posts on our blog as well as on our CG Portfolio page.

Following our last post concerning the modeling of our character called Armin, this is another character from the Persian Warrior series of four characters. Kaam is a ruthless giant who is at a head and neck taller than the other warriors and brandishes a huge sword with golden engravings. He is of royal descent but has become a soldier of fortune after years and years of war and fighting.

This character was modeled, shaded and rendered by Bahram Najand using 3DMax 2009 and ZBrush 3.1 based on concepts by Faraz Shanyar.

Kaam the Persian Warrior Closeup

Kaam the Persian Warrior

We decided to bring low-rez geometry from ZBrush into Max and use displacement maps since the mesh was rather heavy and some of the finer details of the clothing and armour would make the task of importing hi-rez geometry almost impossible.

We bumped into a lot of problems with exporting ZBrush displacements and fine-tuning them for render and we later had to use a hybrid approach where we used some meshes as hi-rez and others were rendered using displacement maps.

A few tests we did with ZBrush 3.5 proved that it was much more adept at exporting and making use of displacement maps but we decided against switching application in the middle of production in order to avoid any more problematic issues.

Call it a hunch or call it experience, but I would seriously advise against switching to a newer version of any application in the middle of production work since it has always caused me serious headaches.

Due to the heavy displacements in this model the rendering took much longer and each frame took 23 minutes on Quad core CPU with 4 Gigs of RAM. We rendered beauty, reflection, specular, ambient occlusion, depth and ObjectID (used to separate layers in composite) passes and composited them using Fusion 5.3.

The next step in the process is to model the two remaining models, Chinoka and Ghob, which you can see in the 3d models galleries and bring the four characters together in a final render.

We are also thinking of creating an environment in Vue 7 and placing the characters in it to test this workflow also.

Any comments and feedback would be highly appreciated.

This is another one of the characters in a series of 4 game characters we are currently working on and is named Armin. Armin is a powerful and fierce warrior but contrary to his looks has a heart of gold. His main weapon is a pair of huge flanged maces which he uses expertly to clobber his assailants and enemies.

The sketches and concepts were created by Faraz Shanyar.

The 3d model is being done by Reza Ramezani, one of our lead modelers and is done using ZBrush 3.1 and Max 2009.

Armin character sketches and concepts

Armin preliminary sketch 01	Armin preliminary sketch 02	Kam final sketch 01	Armin final sketch 02
Armin modelsheet

This is a preview of the final mesh with and without some accessories:

Armin 3d model 01	Armin 3d model 02
Armin 3d model 02

The model was done in 9 working days using ZBrush 3.1 and Max 2009 and is currently in the shading process. We will post updates on this model as they become available.

This is one of the characters in a series of 4 game characters we are currently working on. The sketches and concepts were created by Faraz Shanyar.

The 3d model is being done by Bahram Najand, one of our lead modelers and is done using ZBrush 3.1 and Max 2009.

Kam character sketches and concepts

Kam preliminary sketch 01	Kam preliminary sketch 02	Kam final sketch 01	Kam final sketch 02
Kam modelsheet

This is a preview of the final mesh with and without some accessories:

Kaam 3d model 01	Kaam 3d model 02
Kaam 3d model 02

The model was done in 8 days using ZBrush 3.1 and Max 2009 and is currently in the shading process. We will post updates on this model as they become available.

Zbrush 3.5 Release 2 is finally out and Pixologic has added lots of new functionalities and fixes to this version.

• ZSpheres 2 and ZSketch

• Surface noise
• Brush noise
• Improved LazyMouse with Backtrack and Snap to Track modes

• New brushes such as Trim, Planar, Noise, Move, Spherical, Slide, Form, Flakes, Crumple and more
• New Brush Depth Masking to give complete brush control on a surface
• New MatCap materials for ZSpheres 2/ZSketch mode
• Gradient PolyPaint
• Each Subtool can now have it’s own Texture, Displacement, and Normal Map
• Enhanced displacement and normal map options such as native export of 32-bit displacement maps, High-Definition Displacement, Normal, and Texture maps from HD geometry
• Improved perspective with a floor grid
• Reorganization of the Tool sub-palettes to coordinate with selected SubTools
• Ability to merge all visible SubTools and optionally weld the seams
• New PUVTiles mapping method, which represents the most efficient use of UV space yet
• PolyPainting accuracy has increased from 8 to 16 bit
• Mesh masking has increased from 8 to 16 bit
• New Gradient polypainting option to give a dynamic transition between colors
• New navigation to work with the virtually unlimited zooming
• Right-Click Navigation
• New sliders added to Project All, providing more control over your results
• Memory management enhancements give the capability to subdivide your models to higher polygon counts
• New ambient occlusion masking, which can create an AO texture for use in other applications
• Improved export/import options with the capability to import and export Maya .ma file format with automatic setup of shading network for Texture, Displacement and Normal mapping (This feature is a part of the GoZ system. The full GoZ implementation will be included in the next update )
• Fast local access to ZBrush files with the new LightBox browser (the full version of LightBox will be included in ZBrush 4)

…and many more enhancements and optimizations throughout ZBrush.

Hair 3d wolf

This is the first model that was worked on in our hairy animals production tests. The character was modeled in XSI and ZBrush by Reza Ramezani.

The hair was also worked by Reza Ramezani using XSI hair. Texturing was done using ZBrush and Photoshop.

You can see some more snapshots and renders in the galleries sections. The render is done in XSI 6.5 using Mental Ray and takes a LOT of time.

I even made a test render on a quad CPU with 4 Gigs of RAM and a 64 bit XSI but it still took very long. I’m not sure but it seemed as if hair in XSI 6.5 doesn’t use any of the 64 bit capabilities of the application. Most of the passes rendered very quickly on this system but the hair pass took almost as long as the tests on other 32 bit systems. This is one point I’m going to investigate further but if anyone has any suggestions they would be very welcome.

We are currently working on the rigging and animation and will post some updates soon.