P3nT's Sketchbook


By way of introduction here’s some scribbles that I’ll probably work on for a bit and then dump, by way of learning to Blender and Unreal Engine 4 in order to create places to be in virtual reality. My name’s Ross, I’m from Scotland, I’m as old as hell and I’ve been digitally creating things, on and off, in my spare time, as a hobby for longer than I can really remember.

I’m currently the proud owner of an Oculus Rift and, while it’s not the metaverse that I’m looking forward to eventually inhabiting, it’s a pretty solid first stab from where I’m sitting. Something to get my teeth stuck into creating content for. After a long break from game engine creation, back in the Source/UE3 days, I’m back trying to get to grips with a creation pipeline that I was never very good at to begin with. :o

Since I was last in the game, it seems static mesh geometry has almost completely replaced bsp now so it’s a basic requirement I need to get to grips with a 3-d package. Spent a week and change banging my head against wall after wall, googling like crazy and finally getting to a place in blender where I’m comfortable enough doing most of the basic stuff and figuring out some workflows that ping back and forth between UE4 and Blender and a dash of Photoshop in between.

First scribble I did was the set of the movie Cube, roughing it out in UE4 then exporting the geometry to blender. It’s pretty basic but I learned a good few fundamentals doing it and I can tell you from experience, it’s a total trip putting on an HMD and standing there!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]454933[/ATTACH]

Still wasn’t comfortable with the interface on blender (or UE4, tbh) at this time so very little additional work other than a couple of details like the rivets (which aren’t even baked, btw - those are about 200 polys apiece) and the handles that unlock the doors.

So my next mission was to delve a bit deeper into blender and, at the same time, start getting to grips with this PBR materials simulation malarkey. What happened to needing a couple of jpgs, twiddling some shiny and tranny sliders and maybe knocking up a normal map in photoshop? Now I’m required to learn some insanely complex visual scripting language. :eek:

The benches and the floor texture are stock UE4 content but the rest is the result of me banging my head against a bunch more walls for another week or so. Ah, life at the bottom of the learning curve.

One thing I did find out, tho was that modern day blender has a sculpting mode! I used to use a package called sculptris, back when I was heavily into Photoshop and it’s the only time I ever felt in control of 3-d modelling. It actually felt like sculpting . So I’ve been having a scribble about with that. Starting with a ball and trying to remember how humanoid facial anatomy works.

Mickey mouse ears are sockets for huge horns which I haven’t got right yet. Needs more twist, I think.

I think I’ll keep going with this devil for a while. I used dynatopo for the modelling but I really want to go into fine detail with it. I had a go in dyno mode but alphas don’t seem to work as well as they do in a multiresolution situation and I’m guessing that’ll need retopo, on account of I have a mixture of low and hipoly geometry in there already and if I start subdividing that some smoke is going to start coming out the back of my PC, right?. I’ve had a look at retopo and it seems like a logical next brick wall for me to bang my head against for a week or so. :frowning:

So, yeah, that’s me. I’m the dumb noob with a pocket full of dumb questions that I’ll try to google the answer to before bothering you nice people with. Been browsing this place all day when I ought to have been working. Lot of talented people here. Inspirational! I’ll use this thread to document my progress from the pits of ineptitude to maybe, eventually, the dizzying heights of mediocrity.

So I spent most of yesterday and all last night trying to get to grips with retopo. So it aint pretty but the good news is I know where I’ve gone wrong and can work on that in the future. Weird process this retopo. Very zen. Relaxing almost. Thought I was going to hate it but ended up quite enjoying myself.

Took me ages to work out why blender was insisting on giving him a batman cowl.

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/Devil_Hi_6_zpsgx6afknu.jpg

Thought it had to be something to do with normals (and I was very careful only selecting anticockwise) didn’t notice I was occasionally working through from the other side tho :smiley:

Easy enough fix, and now I’m in multires mode and it’s so much easier to control scultping. I’m loving this!

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/Devil_Hi_8_zpspuz2bxm5.jpg

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/Devil_Hi_9_zpskoitlzy2.jpg

So now my issues are trying to get the normal map to smooth out the low poly edges. Subdivide UV’s or not subtivide UV’s? Am I barking up the wrong tree?

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/Devil_ingame_zps7ntf7sk1.jpg

Finally found the “Shade Smooth/Shade Flat” options, hidden away in the mesh menu. Been driving me mental all weekend, trying to get a nice smooth normal map and barking up pretty much every tree in the forest bar the one the squirrel was up. Still, I’ve now gotten to a stage where I can pretty confidently model something hi-poly, retopo, (my topology sucks but I have a foot on the ladder now at least) unwrap, bake and texture paint. The texture painting I was a bit disappointed with, being how it’s really basic but at least I can scribble in the cliff notes and then blast the diffuse map out to photoshop. Would have been nice if I didn’t need photoshop in the pipeline but, on the plus side, I know how to work photoshop so what am I whining about, right?

So I’m going to dump this guy now cos I’ve been swearing at his stupid face all weekend. He’s served his purpose now it’s time to take a new mesh to the next level.

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/HighresScreenshot00003_zpsxmluuhfv.png
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/HighresScreenshot00001_zpslupfw1yd.png

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/spider_wip3_zpsodqm67on.jpg

So it’s been a busy couple of days. Started with a hilarious attempt to model Spider Jerusalem from a pic, tracing over a bg image in blender. Made the mistake of using ortho mode to copy the reference but forgot that ortho is all weird and the work of the devil, really so although it looked okay from this angle, in perspective it looked like he’d been attacked by an angry housebrick. Several times! I’ve deleted him and started again.

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/spider_new_zpsfh524fgt.jpg

Not such a good likeness but I’m hoping I can retopo, rig him and bend him about to match the pic. Lesson leanred - Perspective for fleshy things and ortho for the mechanical stuff.

Speaking of which, back to the reason I came to Blender in the first place. Decided to knock up some tilable assets for a kinda spaceship interior. Yeah, it’s been done to death but not by me and it’s good practice. Starting with some tilable panels. 2m square, 3 material slots, about 1000 tris so they’re pretty pricey (I think?) for a tilable floor but I want to push UE4 until it breaks so I’m gonna go a bit mental with this first batch. Only finished one so far but I have a base template to work for with the jigsaw-cutout-thingmybobs and all the bevels and whatnot so I’ll hopefully get another few done over the weekend and maybe some walls and stairs and stuff too.

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/floor1_single_plain_zpsupylj4cz.jpg

slapped on a couple of bog standard UE4 textures to show the effect but I’ll knock up some textures, baked or faked normals and whatnot at some point.

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/floor1_single_textured_zpsltotwf4m.jpg

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/floor1_multi_zpslaovdmxc.jpg

I should prolly mention that these are all rendered in UE4 engine. I haven’t even looked at cycles render yet. Well, to tell the truth, I’ve looked but it freaked me out a bit so I’m leaving it alone for the moment.

Is it the end and we’ll never see him again in a new way?

I doubt it but you never know.

Spent this weekend banging away at tilable scifi assets. I now have three floor sections (After a less fussy remodel of the template), two wall sections and a stair. Went mental with material slots. I think I’m up to about 8 on the main wall section but it lets me keep my options open for texturing. The panel greebles was a texture I grabbed online and quickly turned into normal and spec maps but I’ll improve this with bespoke stuff when I get time and when I’ve built up some more assets. Looking to do some corner pieces and some ceiling stuff next.


Played about most of this morning with assembling a simple corridor scene and lighting it in UE. I will try cycles render at some point but there’s so much to learn and only so many hours in a day. Geometry wise, the second floor panel is a hideous nightmare of tangled mesh but by the time I got to the stairs I had a few techniques pretty well dialled in. I feel like I’m getting somewhere. Still a long way to go, tho.





Been banging away on all points of the blender to UE4 pipeline, kept going with the scifi corridor theme, adding sections that mess about with new blender features I’m trying to learn. Progress is slow sometimes but I feel like I’m getting somewhere.

Firstly I was exploring multires, topology and unwrapping uv’s and baking normals and the best ways (and a lot of the worst) to go about the whole thing.

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/HighresScreenshot00044_zpsoq44r9lq.png

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/HighresScreenshot00045_zpsdaxcczvi.png

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/HighresScreenshot00046_zpskxqkyjel.png

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/HighresScreenshot00048_zpss2seiqcv.png

Went a bit mad for a while scribbling out all sorts of texture paintjobs in blender and baking them out to UE4.

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/HighresScreenshot00049_zpstffluwg2.png

Then I gave up on the corridors for a while and decided to model a kind of viking great hall (which ended up looking more like a barn.

More hipoly/bakery experiments, this time with dyntopo. Didn’t retopo but just applied a remesh modifier. Didn’t go so well. Learned why not to let smart uv project near my meshes. single quad seams causing blackout. You can see them along the crossbars on the left. Lesson learned.

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/HighresScreenshot00058_zpspubpsf2i.png

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/HighresScreenshot00056_zps31ztmbyd.png

Marble within a spaceship. Very unusual concept.

that looks like the training room from the first matrix

Made a bit of progress on disembodied Spider Jerusalem head. Almost happy with the retopo on this one but still bits that need work. UV unwrap was a peach using my new toy - live unwrap. No more ungainly seams. Wooohoo!

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/HighresScreenshot00002_zpsatzf27zm.png

For my next trick, a butterfly with two meshes for each wing and over 70,000 tris all in. In my defence, I got a bit carried away when I discovered the spline editor and I am still trying to find out where Unreal Engine breaks.

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/Butterfly_zpsm8gsufnu.png

This is not Sparta - it’s the other thing

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i312/P3nT4gR4m/buttermesh_zpswyrfri5i.png

Dynatopo. Anatomy practice. Critiques welcome.




So I’m calling this one Troll Fail. I gave myself an hour to sculpt a trolly/orcy thing but I totally made the jaw too small so I never managed the whole - wraparound mouth - thing. Came out more - fat guy with weird ears - than Lord of the Rings :o

On the plus side I managed to turn out something I’m reasonably happy with in an hour. Yay!



Had another go at wrap around jaw in this speed sculpt. Ended up deviating from humanoid into kinda made-up-as I went anatomy. Not sure where I was going with the nose area but this is as much to do with getting the hang of the sculpt tools as having a plan.




Totally stoked! First attempt ever at rigging. Managed to make my mesh posable after a couple of complete disasters with trying to sculpt on the posed mesh. Symmetry doesn’t work - go figure :o Also I picked an octoped for a first attempt. Spiderman!




Having a go at a female head, using anatomy refs but trying to figure out what’s the differences to the way a man’s head is constructed. Need to do a bit of googling I think.



Been so wrapped up with trying to figure out bones and muscles and stuff that I forgot that proportions were even a thing. Quick hours head study tonight trying to address that with partial success. Went back and made a lot of huge adjustments once I had the detail done. I find it nerve wracking messing about with the mesh like that but I’m gradually getting more comfortable with it.

Still ended up with something that looks more like bleeding ET than a person but I feel like I’m making progess. Maybe more with blender than my grasp of anatomy. :o



Spent my hour’s sculpting practice tonight working to a reference for a change, on account of the Kevin Spacey thread inspired me. Reasonably pleased with results given a low bar of expectation. The anatomy practice made me work more methodically and I felt like I got a lot more done than I could have a couple of weeks back. Plus I’m getting more comfy with the tools as time progresses. I think I prefer Dynatopo to multires for sculpting. Was trying to make it look like Angelina Jolie, in case you were wondering :o



Another hour sculpting practice. Doing a head with no refs. Turned off symmetry half way through. Ended up with a goblin looking bloke. I feel like I’m making progress. No doubt there’ll be a plateau along soon.