Durham Cathedral: Modelling Finished!!

Trust me there is a LOT of detail behind those shadows!

After what feels like 6 life times (in truth less than 1 1/2 weeks) I'm finally calling the modelling stage of the Durham Cathedral complex for my FXPHD class MOD302 done. I feel like I know this cathedral better than the people who bloody built it afer starring at it for a week and a half lol 18 hrs a day.

So many areas are detailed I can't get them all into a single still

Now this was not just a modelling 'challenge' for me (it being without doubt the most complex model I've ever done...especaily if you count the interior I did last year for MOD302), but also a software one. in the end I had to use 3d max 2012 for this for one simple reason...it was the only software with any chance of being able to have the ammount of polygons in the viewport at the sametime without crashing like a bitch all over the place.

Its gives me migraine just thinking about ever doing this again LOL

We're talking tens of thousands of seperate parts and a polycount that technically should 'break' 3d max, its viewport ....as 3d max has a theoretical poly limit of 10 million for a single scene (without proxies etc). This model breaks that by a fair old bit. In fact its between 12-15 million..with no instances or proxies used. There is detail thats not visible even in a 1080p frame lol. (in fact even trhe sanctuary knocker is modelled even though it takes up about 3 pixels.) So every part of the cathedral complex is capable of supporting a close up.

Now I MUST give props to Neil Hazzard and the nitrous team who handle the 3d max viewport progamming. Any other app would have not only crashed but certainly not have such a nice viewport as respresentative of the final render. In fact below at the bottom is the viewport grab of the scene to compare with the 1st image in this post. Not bloody far away I think you'll agree!

The model will stand up to a close up on any tiny part of the entire complex.

So lets remember that when 3d tech works well...god damn its impressive...and this does. So hats off to Neil and his crew. (I promise to buy him several drinks next time I see him.)


But....

Now comes the hard part...texturing the entire cathedral complex ,setting shaders up and getting it ready to create the entire 3d scene it will go in. But 1st I'm taking a damn day off as a week and a half 18 hours a day working on this has me on the verge of running round with an axe.

insane polycount in the viewport of 3d max....

Escapology....

Local news programme..complete with copper

You know I've been promissing those interested in my life before 3D some actual proof that I wasn't making up the fact I worked all over the world as an escape artist for a long time now over a decade in fact. (I only stopped due to a health problem that made it dangerous...well more dangerous.) So as I spent till 4am converting from old VHS one of the tapes of tv apearances I have to AVI here's a few screen grabs. I've lost count of how many people have asked about this over the years both in person and in interviews...so here yougo...better late than never..... Up till now not even close freinds in 3D knew much about this period of my life.

a thing with Tom o Connor

As this was long before the internet and back starting in 1987 for the 1st screen grab (I dont have a recording ofmy 1st time on TV aged 11), the only stuff about me as an escape artist online is what I have put there...ie next to nothing. Thus proving that things are infact still true even if you can't find out about them on the internet lol.

Last but one show Eammon Andrews ever did before he died.

Why am I converting them? Well the tapes are degrading fast and I want to have a record of all the things I achieved back then for my kids,and maybe one day decades for now... grandkids. Plus I'm also proud of what I managed to achieve back then. Maybe I'll stick one or two of the old tv spots up at some point..... but either way I'd sstill be embaressed to hell to see myself aged 14 onwards online lol.

Kids TV show called 'knock knock'

...Oh and here's a few of the hundreds of press clippings of mine I have from back in the day....many are missing though :(




So there you go...that should do you all for a while.

Additional:

Got to say the reaction to this has been off the scale lol. Now I realise its far more interesting to others than it is to me. So I'll answer the more common questions from today so I dont type them out a zillion times....

• In the photos shown I range from about 14 or so to about 18 (I think)..I do have one from press cutting aged 11 but not showing that yet...if ever lol
  
• Yes I still hold the world record, yes people have tried to break it and no its not in the guiness book anymore as they consider it 'unbreakable' (which is total and utter crap, as in practice I regulalry did 2.5 seconds lol).
• Yes I can pick locks,no I wont open your cupboard , car , safe etc..... that you've lost the key to for you PMSL.
• My talent was 1st spotted aged 2.....if you can call it that.
• I was asked to write and published books and articles from age 14 that are apparently considered standards in the field (no I dont get royalties for them anymore....)
• Yes I can 'still do that stuff' and part of my gear is in boxes in my office where it has been for long time. yes from time to time when no one is in the house I do get it out and have a go...no I will not show you.
• No I will not go back to doing that....... its far to risky a feild for a guy with a wife and two kids to be taking those sort so risks every day....plus at 40 I'm a wee bit old and fat these days.
  
• Yes I held a special explosives license from aged 17, which you have to have if your doing any escapes that are dicking around with high explosives...and yes I did do those. But I let that license lapse over 10 years ago.
• No this is not the only thing I haven't made known in 3D up till now that I have done.
  

Now obviously I dont want this to take over from the art side as to be blunt I've been doing it far longer part of my life now. But I did promise rather a lot of people over the last decade or so to show some of this stuff.....just took me a decade to find the bloody time to actually do it thats all lol

So Wayne..how do you come up with all these sculpt ideas?

That's probably the question I've been asked most over the years. I've heard it said many times that doing monsters and concept sculpts is 'easy'. But people often find that if you sculpt enough you start to run out of ideas or repeat yourself a lot. I've sculpted thousands upon thousands of concept sculpts and speed sculpts ad very rarely repeated myself. So how do I keep coming up with the ideas? Well these ideas I'll be outlining in this and other blog posts aren't new for the most part an many have been done in 3D and 2D before. but it amazes me how many people don't know about them. I figured it was time to change that.

So here's a couple of videos that'll be far more helpful if I explain what the heck your seeing.

Pareidolia

Using a random picture of clouds

Pareidolia is something I've found very useful over the years and the best thing is I can tell you what it is and how and why it works but as each person is unique, chances are you'll always end up with something that looks different. The chances that you have exactly the same brain as me or any other person are very very slim. This makes it powerful.

The best way to explain Pareidolia is the way you can look at clouds or random shapes and 'see' shapes that make sense within them. Our brains are hard coded to recognise faces and patterns so if there is a often random arrangement it tries to make sense of it and often you see a face (for example the 'face on mars' is nothing more than pareidolia).

I use this either with 2D art or images (or sometimes even in real life) to 'see' shapes that I later sculpt. I also sometime use it on an existing sculpt of mine by turning it upside down and then seeing what shapes and forms pop out at me that I then develop into something. It also works well along side the next tip and I consider them 'twins' that work very well together.

Now the brain is like any muscle in your body if you keep exercising it you'll find you get better at seeing different shapes to other people see. In my opinion some of the best 2D concept artists work in exactly the same way. I can promise it'll always be a source of new ideas.

Using a Random Starting Shape

This is something I've developed over the years as making something truly random is actually harder than you think as the brains ability and need to have order in chaos and see 'patterns' can have you ending up with a not so random shape. I've recently added to this using the technique my son came up with that allows me to have a truly random starting shape. The trick is to have a shape you wouldn't normally use as your starting base shape but not so odd that it would be impossible to sculpt anything meaningful with. In the video shown here I start 'gently' by doing some random pulls on a sphere (which I find works best for me, but feel free to adapt that if you want). I then see if I can see a shape in it....

Sometimes you hit lucky as I did with the 1st sculpt of 5 I did in 70 mins and it looked to me like a sort of weird elephant guy. So that's the direction I headed in. Now my tip is not to go nuts on details like fine wrinkles and skin pores. Why? because to be blunt you could end up polishing a turd. If something looks good without the fine details it sure as hell will look just as good (if not better) once you do a proper sculpt of it with all the details and textures.

However...... if it's a weak idea then no amount of polishing is gonna make that turd smell sweet. So what you do then is to move onto the next sculpt. Never get too attached to your designs when concepting, they are disposable and treat them as such or you can paint yourself into a corner figuratively speaking.

The 2nd sculpt is a far more standard shape which I immediately saw as a sort of bird guy. As for the 3rd sculpt, well you remember above I mentioned sometimes you hit on with a nice shape straight away? well other times you don't as in this case. So this one I skipped through fairly quickly as I knew chances are it'd not end up as a design that I would ever be using. now this isn't to say that you or anyone else can't see a really fantastic idea in it..that's what makes the ways of concepting so powerful they work differently for everyone.

Number 4 & 5 work together as sort of a 'ideas set' as I think of them. I start with puling a shape and adding a neck and lower jaw to it, then once I am done with that sculpt I then remesh it to a low poly level (about 68 on Dynamesh in this case as I was using Zbrush for this..mainly as it makes it far easier to explain and how). Then I moved onto using random meshes added to it as explained in the workflow my son came up with a few blog posts back. in the case of this one I 'saw' initially a weird Japanese geisha, but didn't want to do another cartoony one after that damn star shaped thingy, so looked a little longer and saw a character from my daughters favourite TV show. (The TV show is 'ZingZillas and the character is 'Tod' by the way). So the damn show has nearly drove me nuts I took the 'tod ' character and did sort of a slightly evil twist on it.

Now I finished on this one (even though its technically a existing character), because it illustrates another problem you can come across from time to time, where you do a random shape and cannot get past seeing a well known character in it. in this case I saw another one after the geisha but before the 'Tod' character. As it was so well known a monster / creature it meant I had to have an 'exit strategy' so I could continue concepting and not simply get walled into a series of existing shapes from a character that's already around. IN my case all I could see was the damn predator lol. So a large comedy monkey janitor from a kids' TV show was preferable in my case as there was more 'wiggle room' for creating either something new or an acceptable alternate version.

Now what I haven't mentioned is the steps I take mentally (simplified a bit) but often it is just a matter of taking your shape, seeing something there and then wrapping /warping human or animal anatomy around that shape. It sounds simple and to be totally frank it is, it just takes a bit of practice.

Now I have many more ways I've collected and came up with over the years and I'll share more of them as I have both the time and inclination to. But for the love of all that's holy don't get caught up on the 'how's of sculpting when learning these techniques, leave those for other sessions and simply enjoy coming up with designs you can later use. Technique and anatomical knowledge is important but its best kept for separate practice sessions, especially if your just starting out. I often twist and warp anatomy to see how far I can take it before it 'breaks' and cases to make sense. But to do that you have to have that knowledge as a starting point.

So there you go, I'm not in the habit of teaching people 'how to think' but in this case I feel it's a rewarding enough way for some of you to do lol. I'll cover another few ways as I have time etc....

Doodles

I love doodling stuff as most times I have no idea what's going to pop up until its nearly done. In fact anyone who has watched me sculpt knows that for 75% of any speed sculpts I do it looks ropey as hell until the last few mins. The exception is of course pre-planned pieces. But it's sort of a trademark of mine...




Anyways, here's a few doodles I've selected from the last few nights, non are serious and all done in my typical 'I have no idea what I'm going to sculpt' mode. I may be able to show a client pice done for a kids TV thing I did for Space Digital soonish..in fact I may be able to now, I've not checked yet lol. Not because I have some mega halloween thing planned, because it may suprise some of you to find out I actually hate halloween. (Mainly because like guy falkes night and carol singers it means people knocking on my sodding door when I'm trying to get shit done. lol)

Sort of lost my way on these ones when my son decided to come and 'help daddy' lol

Cathedral opening shot 99.9% final

Well for the establishing shot this is almost done (barring adding the pulpit and swapping out the other column designs that I forgot to do for the renders last night I noticed today). There's about 10 million poluygons in the viewport for this shot, which is one of about 6-8 I'll be doing (although probably only 1 or two will be used next term for fxphd courses on tracking etc...). The rest are for my reel. The polycount on absolute final version will double with the use or proxys, although to eb fair those wont all be visisble in any one single shot.

So where the wireframe wayne boy I hear you shout? So here it is, the wireframe from hell.... Enjoy

"nah son, thats not a wierframe....THIS is a wireframe" lol

Cathedral model and renders copywrite FXPHD

The end is close

Work in progress style guide (missing a few models and textures)

I'm putting the finishing touches to week 8's lesson for my fxphd class, but like all good tutors obviously I'm a bit further forward than that. The above is a quick render using only the normal map versions for Mike as a rough style guide for approval on the lighting and overall 'look'. Its often hard for non 3d types to 'see'in advance what you mean, especially when there are only minimal guides as to what is needed. So I produced 6 stills from the opening shot along with 2 video version of the complete shot (faked using just some not so clever camera transforms in after fx, quick, dirty and perfec tfor approvals). One video version (which I'm sorry i can't show yet) is half speed as I thought it mad the shot more emotional. Although this is technically steppping on Mikes toes a wee bit, I think he realised a while back I spit ideas out like a canon and he's free to dump any he dislikes, or all of them. Mikes a real pro and a very nice guy and understand I dont take any crits in a work enviroment to heart and storm off crying in my coffee.

The style was approved inside of an hour,so I'msafe to continue in this vein, although the half speed is still open to debate.

This of course is where the 'magic' of our creativity comes in along with always knowing what an assset will look like before you hit render. In a similar way that i alwasy know what effect a brush will give while sculpting. So I'm hoping to have the class version ready and final in 3dmx pretty soonish (this week) before staring on the entire maya /Renderman version. This of course assumes that I dont manage to screw up renderman as the scene is currently very heavy (10 million polys in the viewport) and funnily enough apps dont usualy like that sort of thing. The use of poxies wont save alot as things need to be lined up so precisly that I find the only reliable way is by eye. (Lining up by eye gets a bum rap sometimes but I find it often just as accurate , as welll as more versatile than other methods. Plus it also helps to add a nice human element to the art.)

The tombs are missing for the shot above, is the altar screen and the gargoyles (Those I probably will use as proxys before I blow up 3d max and maya with over work as those will double the polys in the viewport just about). Also a few bits at the back dont have their textures yet as the sharp eyed will have noticed...why? because I couldn't be arsed to redo those bits after being on at it for a few hours.

So its hopefuly got a quite stylistic almost old style matte painting look to it. Bright lighting while it would make the cathedral look nicee, would also not fit the shot or its content too well. As I've said many times, ad no doubt will many more. Its not about making our models looks as nice as possible, its about fitting the shot. There is no 'I' in team, but there is however a 'stop being an egotistical bastard only concerned with there own work' in it lol.

Anyways, I'm of to try and forget that I'm waiting like a kid at xmas for my rails set up (matte box arrrived on saturday) to arrive for my DSLR rig upgrade. Wife is starting to get a wee bit sick of a house full of camera equipment, chroma key rigs , massive reflectors and car camera rigs (which is ironic as I dont drive lol) and a shit load of other things. Just do me a favour and dont mentin tripods as they have taken over every cupboard and shelf.