Cerbera

Well it looks OK, and as long as you're pleased that's the main thing, but I have to say: Ngons are not in the same class as triangles - any amount of them in a model can only be viewed as a modelling mistake. At the bare minimum you should solve any ngons to triangles if you don't have the skills to keep them 100% quads. Solving ngons doesn't necessarily mean adding loops all round the model, it just means thinking creatively about how you can upstep and downstep topology just in the areas you need it. Keep at it; these topology visualisation skills only develop over a very long time... CBR

That's a good point there, @spiralstair and I concur wholeheartedly. I think his back feet should be hard in against his body for the same reason. I may go back and fix that, but not sure I fancy all the UVing / sculpting again quite so soon :) And I went to insert him into my side pavilion builder scene yesterday only to discover I'd overwritten it with some ocean surface experiment , so have a little work to do again before I'm ready for further advancement !

We're all focused on R19 but there are still features in R18 that have not been fixed in what is rapidly approaching the entire life cycle of the product !! Open Subdivision, for example, released with R18, broken in that it won't work with UV maps, and then that hasn't been addressed in the entire year that product has been out, which means that feature has never worked !!! It's stuff like that that makes me cautious about handing over my £600 every year. Even 3DS Max managed to integrate that correctly the first time they tried, and they are famous for releasing stuff that doesn't work !!! Normally MAXON are much better, but the Open Subdiv fail, the chronic catalogue of knife tool problems on release (thankfully mostly addressed 6 months later), and the still remaining knife tool 'cut visible only' problem are new exceptions it seems... Indeed, I hope and perhaps rather need my faith in MAXON reassured by what's in R19, which hopefully will fix all that, and introduce new things that work straight away. CBR

So so shiny :)

I do archery, and no it doesn't, but good guess ;)

Finally had some time to sit down and get UVing / sculpting some stone lion fur. Had to unwrap it 3 times before I found the right seam combination, but then sculpting was excellent fun, and I did some quite detailed mane-work before going to town with the scrape, flatten and erase tools until it looked thoroughly worn down by time and weather. So here's my pretty much final on what will be the right side pavilion column lions. Physical sky, GI, and a photo I took earlier doing a pretty nice job between them I thought... (GI, AO, PR, DoF, Adaptive, Automatic, 12% Render Time: 3 mins). Next up - Right Side Pavilion Stairways and Side Gardens. CBR

More info required. What is the string made of, HOW do you want it to scale would be the crucial information we need ;) CBR

Bad news - I don't think Ivy Grower can do that, as it requires geometry to follow all the way, so can't do any hanging off anything as far as I remember. However, you can probably bypass that by growing it on cylinders or other structures that you can hang from your island, which you can then hide once it's grown. It's shame the developer doesn't support this any more, or you could ask him... CBR

Yeah and I suppose the hand has just come out of some sort of magic liquid.... but even with that considered, it still looks just a little 'speculary' to me. If it were toned down just a tiny bit, it would be perfect :)

Another hilarious (extended) episode of the much appreciated Rollin' Wild Series, notable for the humour AND the immaculate 3D work / dynamics... So enjoy that... CBR

Yeah, pretty damn good, but concur with Vector about skin too shiny, and phone and cables are suspiciously scratch-free... CBR

Yeah, I run out of enthusiasm sometimes long before finishing some stuff, but it's rare that I don't get back to things eventually. But it does happen. I started modelling Hogwarts a few years back, and got defeated by the sheer volume of work it was gonna take to complete. I still give myself gargantuan tasks, but have learned over time that I stand more chance of finishing them if they are slightly smaller scale - you know; build a Tie Fighter instead of an Executor class Star Destroyer... that seems to work for me. CBR

Your ear mesh is very nice, and the face is going the same way if you continue to be careful about where your loops run. Here's the ideal facial loops for reference. Drawing-wise, I don't think it matters if you can't properly draw, if a) you get your reference material / character proportions from somewhere else, or b) just do the most basic of sketches to give you a general guide for modelling or c) you can model new characters without any reference at all. So while there's no doubt that being able to draw is a definite advantage at the design stage, it's not necessary IMO... It's also worth thinking about using sculpting to rough out forms very quickly, which can act as a sort of 3D sketch pad with helpers like steady stroke and symmetry or using simple Doodle strokes to plan your edge loops when poly modelling... CBR

Diffusion Channel... CBR

No, we can't criticize the triangles because it's a game asset ;) Except if those triangles are not helping reduce the polycount ! So what started off as a nice almost all-quad mesh seems to have been unnecessarily triangulated for no reason I can immediately see - surely this has just doubled the amount of polygons hasn't it, which is very much not the point of using triangles in game assets, surely ?! But despite all the tri's, the render seems good, although the damage looks weird because of its unevenness (none on some parts, loads on others), and because of where it appears, which is not necessarily where it would do so in real life. Exposed edge damage is good for example, but don't also have it in the deep grooves, because those grooves actually protect their inner surfaces from external damage, so should remain largely clean and scratch-free, although they will still contain some buildup of a different kind of 'gunk' of the sort that usually collects in crevices and corners of devices that are in regular human contact :) CBR

I have a feeling you won't like my answers, but honest is always better, so here they are... 1. Yes, 4K is generally enough, except for 360 degree HDRI's which could do with being 8 or even 16K, if they are to be used as backdrops. Blurrier versions used for GI can be smaller. 2. Almost never. Most of my textures come from original photos, or downloaded photos online, or noise based stuff I tend to just make myself. When I do buy textures, I tend to buy very high quality photo-based images from a company like Arroway if I haven't got the time or the locations to go get them myself. As an example of just how often that is, I have bought 2 texture packs in the last 7 years, both of those for specific projects, and only then because I was really struggling to find the quite specific type of images I needed in an online search. But 90% of the time I can find everything I need with a just a quick look on Google. The sheer amount of free reasonable res textures online means that if you are selling a texture pack your textures need to be pretty damn special and quite reasonably priced. Your samples do look good, but are they better than what I could make given a 5 minute web search, and 3 minutes with crazybump for example, which would make all my maps for me from one original photo ? 3. Displacement, every time, because it holds up from all angles in a way that parallax doesn't. Also, you'd be mad to make textures that only worked with R18. To be honest, Bump I would be expecting to be dealing with smaller details only, so no parallax required. 4. I'd want scale variation only - ie a patch of grass 1m x 1m, then 5m x 5m, then 50m x 50m for example... 5. Depends entirely on the project. In general I would say I have more call for 'distant' textures than close-up ones. 6. I would like to see more textures that have their dimensions in the title, so that users know what physical area the texture is designed for. Lastly I would emphasise the importance of tiling and seamlessness - that is perhaps the mostly useful thing about any texture. Hope that's more helpful than it is discouraging... CBR

Thanks Sprial, it's getting there :) Yep, that was only first rough texture pass, and grass is a long way from finished - eventually I'll get those stripes into the front lawn by alternately brushing the mow lines... I think you'd be struggling unless you brought your own trebuchet. And the caretaker will be furious. CBR

If you want best results at the cost of some manual work, then HB modelling bundle has an excellent retopo setup, but I am not aware of any plugin that can just fix this stuff automatically. CBR

***Gold Star*** :) Great work from both of you... CBR

Refined my base mesh for some facial detail, and before I head in to sculpt, couldn't resist a little GI test render (IC/QMC, PR, Adaptive / Automatic / 12%). For a 2 minute render time I'm quite pleased with that...

Oh I really like that. If your area of expertise is modelling then I reckon it's fair and reasonable to have modelled every damn thing in your showreel, but if you're more of a generalist, or specialise in some other area altogether I guess it's not so important. And it's not like you haven't a put a whole ton of work into the scene... And you had fun while you were doing it, and that's the important thing, hey ? CBR

Yeah, you're spot-on there. I'm very conscious that I can't add too much detail without making it look newer, but stonemasons of the time would have done a better job on face and mane details, so will improve those, but not too much, as weathering will undoubtedly have damaged / worn away a lot of it. We're also dealing with what people in the 18th century thought lions looked like when they were mainly working from hand drawn pictures, and hadn't necessarily ever seen one; hence the slightly romanticised proportions and incorrect number of paw pads / toes, a surprisingly common mistake at the time ! :)

PM sent... CBR

...and now with better textures... definitely needs some sculpt detail though, so that's what I'm doing next... CBR