thisroomthatikeep

sculpt_startup.blend

2012-08-22T18:58:00.000+02:00

Everything should happen in the 3D View

Following what I said in my UI proposal some time ago, and with Dyntopo having its options in the Tool Shelf, I've made some adjustments to my default Sculpt layout.
Only the 3D View with an open Tool Shelf is needed to start sculpting now, removing even more unnecessary choices and making access to Sculpt Mode in Blender easier.

Ctrl+UpArrow shows the full layout which contains the 3D View, an Outliner set to 'visible layers', and the Properties window.

With this layout you can sculpt various objects without having to leave Sculpt Mode, selecting them from the Outliner.

Here's a demo video of a few objects sculpted with Dyntopo and the current layout:

We could switch a few more things to the 3D View to make the two extra windows redundant.

Matcap or Material assignment.
In past GSOC projects, a Matcap selector was coded and added to the Properties panel of the 3D View. While I liked it, and it was quite handy for sculpting, it could have been a bit more flexible, allowing to assign a different matcap to each object for example, or even using materials instead of matcaps.

Selection.
Paweł Łyczkowski proposed in a recent mail to bf-funboard to use Ctrl+Shift+Click (or some other combination of keys) for switching between objects regardless of the mode you're in, that could be a good solution.

Changes from Blender default settings:

Default Cube with three levels of subdivision already applied.
Lamp and Camera moved to a hidden layer.
Display set to 'Only Render'.

New Sculpt layout selected by default.

Snake Hook as default brush.

Fast Sculpt Mat.

GLSL Sculpt Mat.

3D View default shading set to GLSL.

Default object set to Sculpt Mode.

Outliner set to 'visible layers'.

X-Symmetry active by default.

Added Draw Smooth brush with Smooth Stroke active.

Added Crease Carve and Crease Soft.

Added Scrape/Peaks Area Locked brush.

This is another short demo using Crease and Scrape:

And here's the download link:

Edit (linked to my new defaults instead):

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2105283/sculptstartup/defaults.7z

Dyntopo is not in trunk yet, though.

The most similar work flow with features currently in trunk involves using Remesh.

Under the same mantra of moving things to 3D View I started using Nicholas Bishop's Remesh Operator and assigned it to a key, then asked for some help to create another operator for Boolean Union.

Here's an example:

And these are the scripts for both operators:

Sculpt-Remesh
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2105283/sculptstartup/sculpt-remesh.py

Boolean Union
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2105283/sculptstartup/boolean-union.py

I don't know if there's enough interest in this, but I'm going to keep working on it and, hopefully, it might help making the sculpting experience more pleasant and accessible for someone else than myself.

Finally, a big thank you to Nicholas Bishop for the feedback on the startup.blend and all his amazing work on Sculpt mode. :)

EDIT: Updated files

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2105283/sculptstartup/lgm_kednar/config.7z

Noise

2012-05-13T07:44:00.000+02:00

Cave painting.

Shaman

Barcelona chair

Credits for the chair scene:

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/author/marcin_hrn/

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/author/pcraven/

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/author/lsmft/

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/author/jclevet-net/

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/author/nikitron/

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/author/metalix/

a few renders and stuff

2011-12-09T20:53:00.000+01:00

Blender Sculpt Mode UI proposal

2011-11-07T18:27:00.000+01:00

A couple of months ago I created that playlist with sculpting timelapses done with 2.5 releases. In most of them I go with basically the default UI and build upon that while working. But I can do that because I'm familiar with Blender, I know how its UI works.

Development of sculpting tools has been amazing the past two years, but the tools are not as accessible as they could.
There's been a growth in number of users that could be increased by making the sculpt mode more pleasant to use.

I can make the changes locally and live with that, but after going with the first-use-of-Blender exercise over all those versions of the interface, a sculpt layout in the defaults would be great to have.

William Reynish's article about Design & Open Source talks about establishing Core design principles to base the UI decissions.

I'm not a designer, so my opinion is most probably flawed and biased towards my main area of interest, but I think enforcing some already in place principles could make user experience better for sculptors.

I'll use the first three design principles from this article William linked to, as a way to structure the explanation. I haven't gone, in the text, into how to change panels distribution so we can improve experience, but I think Gianmichele Mariani UI proposal proves there's changes needed to be made in that regard too.

Stay out of people's way

When someone is trying to get something done, they're on a mission. Don't interrupt them unnecessarily, don't set up obstacles for them to overcome, just pave the road for an easy ride. Your designs should have intentional and obvious paths, and should allow people to complete tasks quickly and freely.

Blender is very complex, and the reason for it's complexity comes from it's intent to encompass all parts of a production pipeline into one package. It's massive set of features is one of its strengths I value the most. But, a consequence of this is a busy-looking UI.

The image above is Blender's default screen layout after you switch to sculpt mode in the 3d View.
Below, is a screen layout I created which shows all the relevant information I need when sculpting. While the needs of the user may vary, and some other layout choices could be made, I thinks this shows that current UI philosophy can be streamlined to avoid clutter.

Sculpting is just a tiny part of the Blender whole, and the user experience could be enhanced greatly with options already available, just by enforcing one aspect of current UI principles. There's a list of layouts, and it's very easy to add new ones and switch between them.

Perhaps focusing on a dedicated app mindset when it comes to UX decisions for these layouts could help in keeping the UI out of users way.

Present few choices

The more choices a person is presented with, the harder it is for them to choose.
This is what Barry Schwartz calls The Paradox of Choice. Remove the "nice to haves" and focus instead of the necessary alternatives a person needs to make in order to greatly impact the outcome.

By presenting the user with a work environment completely adapted to its task after one choice we can reduce the amount of available options for him immediately, thus allowing the UI more clarity.

Continuing with the sculpting example, below there's a picture of a zoomed-in tool shelf to hide choices that could be removed/ignored if better defaults were available.

Other panels may remain accessible, but having them out of the visible area leaves more space for fewer options while gaining more accurate tools.

Symmetry tab could be hidden if there were shortcuts for enabling/disabling. Avoiding unnecessary clicking and repetitive hand travelling.

X,Y,Z keys could be used for this. The only conflicting key would be Z, but it does not make much sense to activate wire-frame mode while sculpting.

Limit distractions

It's a myth that people can multitask. Short of chewing gum while walking, people can't actually do two things simultaneously; they end up giving less attention to both tasks and the quality of the interaction suffers. An effective design allows people to focus on the task at hand without having their attention diverted to less critical tasks. Design for tasks to be carried out consecutively instead of concurrently in order to keep people in the moment.

Here are a couple of screenshots of Blender with Softblend theme:

The reason I've been using this theme for some time now is that I find blender's new default too distracting. Everything has a lot of contrast, screaming for attention all the time.

Since some changes to the UI are being discussed and applied, I'd like to point to Martin's theme and his use of contrast for defining hierarchy and leading users eyes. By relying on colour and type for recognition of areas and options instead of shapes like it's done in current default, the theme minimizes the amount of information available at a quick glance, avoiding clutter without changing the structure of current UI.
Using this approach, which is already used in a few cases now, and giving the highest preference to objects in the 3d View may solve distraction coming from the interface.

Softblend may be an extreme example, and the colour choice is just a personal one, but playing with a wider range of opacities for options representation might be a good path to explore. Greying-out of unselected options as seen in the display panel is a good example of this.

Additionally, one of the most central aspects of being a designer is the ability to say no, to keep focus on a few things and do them really well.

The above quote from William's post is what finally made me write all this.
There's been some people asking from time to time about turning Blender into a set of specific apps under a main framework, but all of these attempts have been approached from a technical side of things and usually rejected by coders. It seems like the idea is better not to be tackled from that side, but that doesn't mean it cannot be done through the UI.

Blender already has the infrastructure in place, it only needs better defaults.
A couple of possible solutions would be:

- create more niche layouts (maybe derived from BI Open Movies Usage?) that cater to individual pipeline needs. Sculpt, Bake, and Paint layouts come first to mind.

- adding a layout selector to splash screen like done with interaction presets.

Even though I tried to give a few solutions for my particular area of interest, those may not work for other areas or are already covered by existing design.

Regardless of the solutions exposed, the concept of breaking down Blender's feature set into defined areas is very valid, it should be expanded and given relevance in user experience. Working in that direction looks like a good way to avoid clutter in the UI.

Finally, I'd love to further discuss this, so feel free to comment.

Open Sourcing

2011-08-22T15:00:00.004+02:00

Some days ago, I caught myself ranting while doing a test recording for a tutorial.

I've been asked several times to produce a sculpting tutorial, but, since I'm still learning and still trying to figure out a lot of things, always ended up with the feeling that everything I could say has already been said. So, the only point for it would be to talk about the Blender specific topics.

But there aren't many things about my work flow that are Blender only.

I think I covered all the needed settings and the brushes I use lately with the Onion branch in the following pdf. Click the image to download the file.

So, my rant was about how there is all this free knowledge online about sculpting, but, a lot of Blender users seem to neglect it because they only look for Blender tutorials.

And that gave me the idea. Publish a list of all the videos and tutorials I've been gathering, and let everyone compile their own build of 'Sculpting with Blender'.

Even though laziness is partly at fault for this, there's a couple of other reasons to do so.

First. These people are amazing. You should look for sculptors and research their work. And steal from them what you like. Try to figure out why their designs work and apply it to yours.

Second. You should look beyond your app of choice and search for all the knowledge available that fits your needs. Knowledge is transferable.

So, I'll try to just show the way and let more experienced and competent voices do the talking. Does that sound right?

The Work Flow

Smellybugs Maquette Tutorial
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=18287

I'll try to sum it up with Blender related terminology.

He starts with a concept image, then builds and armature.
Next step is to build a base mesh by adding clay over the armature. You see how he keeps adding clay while making sure proportions and form are right.
This step finishes when the model is complete and all primary shapes are drawn in.
Then he goes for secondary shapes, adding lots of wrinkles to the skin, but keeping the flow of the bigger shapes.
Once he's done with it, he smooths out all the model and proceeds to add tertiary shapes and surface detail.
At this point you just keep polishing and adding detail until the piece is finished.

Next thing is baking the maquette and painting.
The painting process follows the same mentality, going from a base paint to set the overall tone of the piece, then adds detail going for smaller details each time.
When the piece is done he does some post-processing to get some colours right.

Can you follow those steps in Blender?

Next we have a video for Autodesk Mudbox by Kenichi Nishida.

This video introduces a couple of concepts that work the same for Blender. Retopology planning and at what point you should retopo.

The following image by Cedric Seaut shows the steps very well.

Planning how your going to create your new mesh by painting over your sculpture is a great idea, Mudbox seems to have a mirror option for painting. Does Blender have that option in Texture paint mode?

And now, a series by Ryan Kingslien.
Sit back and learn.

Leaving aside all the bits that only apply to the specific tool, be it clay or software. I think there's a clear work flow that can be followed in Blender. Is it clear enough?

Learning

By now, if you haven't sculpted much, no matter how many tutorials you read or watch, you'll need practice.

Doodling in 3d

Jason Hill alien sculpt.

Some people on youtube asked about how to approach sculpting, Jason's videos are my best answer to that.
Just let your mind loose and draw, explore possibilities, and don't be afraid to erase/smooth things.

And, while we're talking about doodling...

Extracting shapes from chaos

David Revoy's work flow is a great help for idea generation. You can adapt it for sculpting. The process is always the same, go from big raw shapes that excite your imagination and build upon that with details.

Look for a subject you like and do iterations over that concept. In my case I found Wayne Robson's videos.(Wayne doesn't allow embed of the video I wanted to show, so it'll have to be a link)

http://vimeo.com/5171870

~~Copy!~~ A Study, Not a Copy

Quoting Scott Eaton's article at pixologic.com
http://www.pixologic.com/zclassroom/artistinaction/scotteaton/foundation/

For thousands of years, artists from the Romans to Michelangelo to 19th century academies have studied from master works in order to learn and improve.

Why should we be any different? So when I talk about studying from reference, I am not talking about slavishly copying a model from reference planes (something that is closer to tracing than studying). Rather we are practicing seeing shapes, forms and angles in our reference images and then modeling from these observations.

These exercises are our “piano scales,” not inherently creative, but meant to help us learn, and develop technique.

That's the best way to learn, find proportions that work for you, look at the silhouette of the character, think about where the artist draws the lines and try to figure out why.
Think about the different features and how they relate to each other.

This is a good time to point to John K's character construction posts, lots to learn there about how shapes relate to each other and how you should build features over your base, he talks about classic cartoons, but that shouldn't be a problem:
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/search/label/construction

When it comes to brushes you'll need at least one to grab your mesh around, one to push/pull the mesh surface, one to draw lines, and one to layer detail with alpha maps.

Learn anatomy

Head anatomy by Rod Seffen

I'm guilty of not putting enough emphasis into this, but knowing how creatures are built gives you a base idea from which you can derive all the variations you can imagine. Learning anatomy is unavoidable.

If you made it this far you should have a clear understanding of what you need to do to achieve the results you want.

From now on is a never-ending process of filling your mental gallery of references, and practice applying them.

Time lapses

Watch them and focus on the similarities you find between them. You may also learn a few new things too.

Name dropping

Peter König
http://peterkonigart.com/

Kenichi Nishida
http://www.kenichinishida.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdz_gfGi0GI

Cedric Seaut
http://www.khalys.net/BOOK_2007/
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=136873

Ryan Kingslien
http://www.ryankingslien.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/rkingslien

Jason Hill
http://www.jasonhillcg.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyLwvmH1nLw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLlvLBD0J_8

David Revoy
http://www.davidrevoy.com/portfolio.html
http://vimeo.com/6143607

Wayne Robson
http://www.dashdotslash.net/
http://vimeo.com/5171870
http://vimeo.com/3508326
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlhGDqwp7II

Scott Eaton
http://www.scott-eaton.com/
http://www.pixologic.com/zclassroom/artistinaction/scotteaton/foundation/

Rod Seffen
http://silk.cghub.com/images/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4VyMLV7jGM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr9sS48lVrE

Jordu Schell
http://schellstudio.com/gallery/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI094xaa98o

James Van Den Bogart
http://vdb3d.com/
http://vimeo.com/user949809/videos

Daniel Williams
http://www.pointpusher.com/
http://vimeo.com/pointpusher/videos

Michael Defeo
http://www.michaeldefeo.com/
http://vimeo.com/user3444256/videos

Bryan Wynia
http://www.bryanwynia.blogspot.com/
http://vimeo.com/bryanwynia/videos

Tom Parker
http://tomparkersartdump.wordpress.com/gallery/
http://vimeo.com/user3216318/videos

David Chung
http://vimeo.com/user5238372
http://vimeo.com/user5238372/videos

Philippe Faraut
http://philippefaraut.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzBs3PM2W_4

I discovered most of these sculptors work at Lunchcrunch blog, make sure you check it!

And, a few more sculptors I like, but haven't used any videos from for this post.

Alex Oliver
http://www.alexoliver.com.br/engl.html

Aris Kolokontes
http://ariskolokontesart.blogspot.com/

Damien Canderle
http://www.maddamart.com/

David Munoz Velazquez
http://www.munozvelazquez.com/

Evan Campbell
http://evancampbell.deviantart.com/

Gio Nakpil
http://www.gionakpil.com/
http://artfolio-gio.blogspot.com/

Glauco Longhi
http://glaucolonghi.com/site/
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=72675

Jack Zhang
http://jackzhang.cgsociety.org/gallery/

Jelmer Boskma
http://www.jelmerboskma.com/
http://vimeo.com/27415855

Jonas Thornqvist
http://www.subdivme.com/

Krishnamurti M. Costa
http://www.antropus.com/artblog/
http://www.antropus.com/artblog/?page_id=825

Magdalena Dadela
http://mdadela.com/
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=72010

Majid Esmaeili
http://majid-smiley.cgsociety.org/gallery/

Mariano Steiner
http://marianosteiner.blogspot.com/
http://msteiner.cgsociety.org/gallery/

Tsvetomir Georgiev
http://ceco.cgsociety.org/gallery/

Rafael Grassetti
http://grassettiart.com/

Sebastian Schoellhammer
http://sschoellhammer.cghub.com/

Selwy
http://www.selwy.com/
http://selwy.cgsociety.org/gallery/

Yiannis Tyropolis
http://trungpad.cgsociety.org/gallery/

Please, leave any questions or important things I forgot to mention in the comments.

:)

Edit: fixing some missing names.

July 26th/August 20th: Videos

2011-08-22T09:03:00.002+02:00

July 26th/August 20th: Images

2011-08-20T17:39:00.008+02:00

Zbrush + Gimp

Blender + Gimp

Spread around

2011-07-14T02:45:00.006+02:00

Ok, so...this is the third entry this year in the blog, and it's July already.

The thing is, I started posting my stuff in a few other places and always made updating the blog the lowest priority. At first I meant to do some monthly updates with anything I had, but posting the same thing all over again at a later date made no sense actually, and that got me thinking about what to do with this blog.

For starters, there's been some sort of redesign. Blogger added new features and I played with them a bit. Happier with this design than I've ever been with the previous one.

Along with the new colours and blurry fuzziness came a widget link to my Twitter account. This is nice and all, but I don't see a way to subscribe to that other than joining their site. So there's the box to show what I post in there, that you will probably only see when you visit here, and, with no new posts, that'll be never. The important thing about this is:

Where's the content gone?

Most of it has gone now to MountainOfMinutes.
If you don't already know the site, it's a collaborative thing where some blenderheads post their stuff. And I happen to be one of them, so, whenever I sculpt something it goes there, same applies to timelapses.

Take this image as example:

If you click the image you will see my post there yesterday with this render, a time lapse of the process, and a render of another sculpture.

Going back to Twitter, I had an account for some time there, as well as a Facebook account. I also started a Tumblr blog about a year ago. This three places are where most probably my images first appear.
I think that most of what I posted there end up in this blog, but some things are lost, like this 2d doodle:
http://yfrog.com/h7mu26j

So with everything sculpt-related and the silly drawings out. What's left?

Well, there's this quicky-simple AR thing I did for a friend:
http://www.escolavalenciana.org/feslloch/codi/index.html

this video for the background visuals of a play:

And there's a couple of videos that I've already linked to on Twitter.

A video showing Softblend theme with a few different files:

a doodle with 2.57:

And there is another one that I don't even need to post, because Murat Egretli has been kind enough to do so already :)
http://foreverblender.blogspot.com/2011/07/news-onion-branch-testing-1.html

So, as you can see, almost everything I do gets linked somewhere else, spread everywhere and, most of the time, fed to the same audience. Should I add to the noise and repost everything here?

cycles test renders

2011-05-06T12:43:00.005+02:00

bottle collection from cgsociety's lighting challenge. 15m27s on a Q9550. 300 passes, max bounces 64, min bounces 3

lizard sculpt (multires 2.8 million polygons) 3minutes Q9550. 50passes, max bounces 64, min bounces 1

different film test

six months in a minute

2011-01-03T20:30:00.005+01:00

happy new year!

(yeah, I know I'm waaay too late T_T)

about time this got updated...

2010-11-22T18:59:00.005+01:00

More than a month since my last post here. I've been working on a few different things, and, now, instead of saving the pictures to create a few different posts, I'll chose the dumber option of dropping them all in this one.(so, beware! huge post ahead)

First:

Some time ago I drew some storyboard sketches from a friend's short story.
As a means to test how fast I could produce the sets to develop a small animation, I've decided to build this scene. I used a lot of assets from blendswap.com and managed to create this scene in a couple of days. Re-using already made objects left a lot of time for texturing and, even though the level of detail is not exactly where I'd like it to be, it somehow convinced me to further plan on doing this.
I'll have to do some more tests and plan things carefully if I end up deciding to do the animation. And that includes having to learn how to animate, which probably will tear my dreams apart.
Anyway, that's it for now.
Here's a list of links to the objects I used in this scene, everything else (which is just the creature and house structure) was done by me. Thanks to everyone who shared their work :)

http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/durian/georgie_trash_rippedcanvas2/
http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/misc-objects/industrial_lamp/
http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/durian/mtracer_sintelshelter_brokenwindow/
http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/architecture/wood-parts/
http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/scenes/room/
http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/durian/kettle/
http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/durian/cocoknight_trash_brokendishes-2/
http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/misc-objects/tincan1/
http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/misc-objects/little-bottle/
http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/misc-objects/book-page-flip/
http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/clothes/joeliusceasar_trash_rattyshoe/
http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/misc-objects/lumen/
http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/misc-objects/simple-wooden-bowl-with-nicks/
http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/characters/animals_roach/
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1393798/tutorials/lighting/interior/interior.html

Second:

I've decided to enter the pre-Dominance War event with the above character. Time is already running out, and I'm a bit behind what I expected, but, hopefully, I'll finish it on time.
Below, there's a rushed paint-over I did to get some ideas of how to paint the creature.

Third:

By now, you should be familiar with this head scan by Lee Perry-Smith.
I found about it in this thread over at blenderartists:http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=198835 and couldn't resist giving it a try.

Finally, some unfinished doodles:

sketches #16

2010-10-12T13:05:00.004+02:00

New doodles...now with textures!

...ok, except this crappy lizard...

more sculpting timelapses

2010-10-05T00:32:00.002+02:00

ape head

2010-09-20T13:53:00.003+02:00

Inspired by blender's monkey primitive, I did sculpt a chimpanzee head past week. Hope you all like it. :)

sketches #15

2010-09-06T16:15:00.004+02:00

Dumping what I've done lately...

sketches #14

2010-08-24T09:34:00.002+02:00

new

and a couple of videos...a timelapse of the dragon and a turntable of the alien head

sketches #13

2010-08-11T21:36:00.004+02:00

latest bunch of doodles

sculpting time lapses

2010-08-05T01:19:00.002+02:00

I've recorded most of the stuff I've been sculpting lately, thanks to the screencast feature that now blender has. It really is much easier to work with the resulting image sequences that blender creates, than trying to re-encode .ogv created by recordmydesktop, that I used to use before.
Here are the videos for the last 3 heads I've done.

sketches #12

2010-08-04T00:02:00.002+02:00

A few tests with the new blender2.5 beta.

I'm growing tired of the way I sculpt fine detail, tried something a little different with the last one.

All of them, except the first one, started form a sphere. Had to go up to 6 million polygons with the last one, because there wasn't enough resolution on the face for detailing.

Good thing is, I've been able to render the mesh with render25 branch :)

sketches #11

2010-07-21T23:31:00.002+02:00

more posemaniacs doodles

and a 15 min doodle in blender

trying GSOC sculpting improvements in trunk

2010-07-17T20:09:00.006+02:00

I haven't been able to build jwilkins' GSOC branch for a few days already, and, since some of the stuff he's been working on has been merged to trunk for the upcoming beta release, I've given trunk a go for the first time in a while.

I've reused the base mesh I've created for a doodle a couple of months ago, back then the sculpting tools weren't working all right. Now it feels great sculpting with blender 2.5. This is the first full body sculpture I've done that I was confident I could reach the level of detail I wanted. Also, as usual, I've recorded the process:

The anatomy makes no sense, but I guess, since it's not a human being, it doesn't matter that much :D

Finally, here are a few more test renders

sketches #10

2010-07-15T05:38:00.002+02:00

some posemaniacs 90 seconds doodles

random thing with alchemy

and a sculpted wall section.

vampire blend

2010-07-09T19:27:00.004+02:00

I don't know if anyone will care about this, but since there was a comment asking for the lighting/render setup in the previous post, I've decided to share the file of my latest doodle.

click here to download the file in a .zip package.(all textures should be packed, please tell me if there's anything missing)

The base mesh comes from the Sculpt feedback page at blender.org wiki:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Jwilkins/GSoC2010/SculptFeedback

Above are screenshots of world/lamp/material settings.

World texture from: http://blender-archi.tuxfamily.org/Textures

Material from: http://matrep.parastudios.de/

And, this is how the scene looks like.

As you can see, there's only one lamp in there, a couple of cameras with slightly different settings, an empty for controlling dof, the head and backdrop. This renders in 1.07 minutes with a Q9550 processor. Rendered with revision 29834 of the render25 branch, you can grab a build of it at graphicall.org.

Finally, you can get the alpha textures used to sculpt this from:

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showpost.php?p=1595500&postcount=49

http://www.antropus.com/freebies.htm

sketches #9

2010-07-03T16:31:00.003+02:00

another doodle with sculpting GSOC branch. I didn't realize until I was rendering, that the mesh only had about 300k faces...and,all along, I was wondering why I couldn't get sharp detail while sculpting ...I'm such a fool...

Also, I've recorded the process with blender 2.5 screencast feature, here's the video:

sketches #8

2010-07-01T03:11:00.005+02:00

A couple of doodles with mypaint and gimp.

Another head sculpted with jwilkins GSOC branch. The grab tool wasn't working all right when I sculpted it...and I've sort of destroyed the nose while trying to alter proportions with a newer build :(

Dabbling with a new toy, Sculptris, I've got to get the hang of it yet, but it's fun to play with. Unfortunately there's no linux version, so I had to use wine to run it. Most of the shortcuts don't work which makes working with it a bit clumsy, but it works anyway...