Over 1,500 photographs of over 100 sculptures in Prague from as many viewpoints as possible. Some photographs have been tone mapped to make it easier to see details in shadows against a beautiful blue summer sky.
Stay tuned for more info on a release date.
Its sunny outside. A thin wash of clouds across a light blue sky. A light breeze.
Five story buildings of muted and pale oranges and yellows line the boulevard. They are built with classical lines: tall, thin windows; crisp, defined angles broken up by evenly spaced incised lines; a ledge for accent here, an overhang there.
Lots of bicycles. Nearly every inhabitant of the city glides by me, their blond hair waving in the wind behind them. Women in short khaki pants, jeans or black tights under jean miniskirts. Men in jeans and white t-shirts.
Where do I find coffee & breakfast? I have managed to sleep most of Friday away so today, Saturday, I am hungry.
After some walking I find Cafe Moccador. Being of the visual, artistic type I see the letters “Mocc”, translate that into Morrocco and somehow think that I have found something familiar.
Morrocco in Denmark on a Saturday morning surrounded by Europeans whose skin tone is that of a deep pink lemonade! How I came to this conclusion is beyond me but I go in content with some connection no matter how far flung.
Once inside I find one familiar word, Omelete. Actually, I find 4: sandwich, dessert, omelete, and hamburger but only Omelete is talking to me this morning.
Everyone speaks English here so there is no real difficulty but I have forgotten about the resistance we can feel towards unfamiliar things. I have calcified into my English, my Starbucks, my cafe across the street.
I have forgotten that understanding is not necessarily a natural state, but no matter. After breakfast, I will walk out into a sky lit by the same sun as you, if not now, 9 hours from now, more or less.
Ever tried Camtasia automatic noise reduction? I had a difficult noise removal project recently. I tried Audacity, which didn’t cut it. I couldn’t get my hands on Audition or Soundbooth as I was traveling with my laptop. So, I looked into Camtasia and 30 seconds later was a happy man. Thanks Techsmith! I love little gems like this that just keep giving.
Here is the situation: your displacement map button is greyed-out in ZBrush.
You search ZBrushCentral, CGTalk, Google, under your bed, in your bible, at Barnes & Nobles, and Wikipedia. You can’t figure it out. Wikipedia leads you to Nietzche and a quote used in the Watchman, “Battle not with monsters, lest you become one.” You think, “I will kill this computer. I have decided. Tonight. When its power is off I will creep up to it and I will kill it.”
But wait! Go to the Tool: Texture tab and make sure you have uvs. If not, press Enable UVs and create new ones by pressing AUV.
I have developed a profound love for Quicktime Pro over the years. Probably the most useful piece of software I own. It plays videos, music and is the best and more reliable video compositor I have! I know its not pretty. I know it hides its beauty away. But get to know it. Its nice. Like me. :)
Sometimes .avi’s from Camtasia will behave very badly in Premiere. Don’t bring out the gimp. Simply save the file as a .mov reference movie. No need to flatten the whole movie. Then import the reference. mov file into Premiere. Problem fixed. Weird. I know.
Overview of Using Topology (Tutorial)
The biggest issue we face as a digital artist isn’t, as is often thought, topology. Instead, it is polygon count. Why do I say that?
Well, let’s imagine a world where there are no polygons. It’s easy if you try. No nurbs below us. Above us only sky. Imagine all the artists simply creating for today. Imagine there’s no topology. It isn’t hard to do. Nothing to divide or subdivide for. Imagine all you had to do was be the dreamer, would you really care about how a bunch of lines are spread over the surface of your model? (Thanks for the poetry John!)
To look at it another way, do we really care where the 1’s and 0’s of this internet browser store the text information we read or whether the images we look at on the web are gif’s or jpeg’s or png’s?
We would likely only care about those details if it meant that a web page took longer to view or looked less appealing.
Its the same for topology. Topology is like an image format. If you sculpt a head out of a sphere and you don’t care about the topology then its alot like working in a .PSD file format. The file size is big but it does the trick. However, when we start to share our sculpt we may need to cut down on the file size. Either because the animation program requires it or our sculpting program requires it.
To cut down on the file size we use Topology tools to put more geometry in some places and less geometry in other places. In other words, we optimize the file.
I like to think of this as the Polygon Economy where we are often trading tight topology control for independence and fast, on the fly, creative thinking.
The tools that help us navigate in the Polygon Economy are below:
Overview of Using Topology (Tutorial)
Happy ZBrushing!
Hello,
In this post I wanted to share the recent evolution of a ZBrush sketch. It all started out innocently enough with a cup of coffee, ZBrush and a PolySphere.
There was no real direction or idea. There was only a desire to push and pull the sphere around until it came to represent something or something clicked in my brain.
So, the sphere became the first of 3 wicked dudes, think Monty Python’s depiction of the Spanish Inquisition here. I would say that they are wicked clergymen except for the ruffles around their neck. Don’t ask me what they are for. I just work here. I let the subconscious do the thinking.
Then, last night, with another sphere I sculpted the first of their victims.
For more, I’ll have to wait to see what my subconscious does when I sculpt their bodies. Like I said, I just work here.
Here is the victim:
Here are recordings of the sculpting process for each head. Please note that I had little idea where I was going and was experimenting with ideas as I progressed.
One of the ways that I compare different ideas is to drop one of them to the canvas by pressing SHIFT+S and then moving the live on off to the side. Then I can press undo till the change has been undone and compare the two versions.
Editor’s note: The above content was created in the vein of a disney-eque fictional storyline that just popped into my head and is meant to be enjoyed from an artistic processes point of view not a historically accurate depiction of real-life events.
Francois Rimasson recently posted a thread at ZBrushCentral that I missed. It shows a really cool workflow that we have experimented with before and shows some really interesting potential.
In this video, Francois performs the following steps:
Thanks for sharing Francois!
Well, its not ZBrush, buts its a fascinating approach to sculpting a figure in clay. I love the music too.
Flickr Photos