Term 2: Photoshop Session 2: Mudbox

In today's session Tony from UCA Epsom began to teach us the tools and techniques of Autodesk Mudbox.

In this I began to make a concept of a ravine, by using the freeze sculpt tool I could prevent myself from altering the landscape where I wanted the walls and I could inverse sculpt out the ravine inside.

The main body of this ravine was molded using the Sculpt tool with the inverse setting to create this concave shape rather than a convex one. After that the floor was a mess so I used the Flatten tool to smooth it out into a smooth but organic floor. The 2 plateau like objects in the photo were made using the Wax tool which built up these nice uneven circular objects on the spot. Whereas the pillar which spreads from side to the other was made using the Grab tool.

We then started to paint our own objects, but before that I finished off modeling some mountain ranges above the ravine. I then used stencils along with colour on a Diffuse layer to paint the ravine bed a mouldy, decaying brown/green colour. I topped off the mountain ranges with some white as ice caps.

Next we played around with the material attributes to showcase how we could turn our block of "clay" into something else, in my case a glass ball.

With some basic knowledge in place, and with some time to play around with the tools, we were tasked with creating a T-Rex like model in Mudbox using Mudbox's own template model as a basis. I went online to find an example picture to work from. I kept the initial subdivision level down at level 2.

I had fun applying the Grab, Sculpt and Foamy tools to the model to achieve the 2 reverse curved horns on the skull and I also think I made them rather well, the mouth however could be improved. I also played with the stamps and stencils whilst sculpting to create the ridged spine and general texture on the skin.

Here I added detail to the feet through the various sculpt tools which I think came out well for this almost mythical design.

And finally I began to paint the model through a bump map, this allowed me to paint onto the model small textures to showcase the rough scaly skin. It's an unfinished product but there wasn't much more to add at the end; I like also like the idea of this being one really well preserved fossil hence the missing eyes and muddy aesthetic.