This is triggered by Simon Blanc’s stuff. The post processing he does adds a huge amount to his work and I didn’t even realize how easy it was until I saw his ‘from ZB’ renders in his sketchbook. After I figured out how to do it I realized it’s a wonderful way to start to get yourself thinking about materials earlier in the process, and a friend asked how it was done — it’s just compositing, but ZB makes it easy:
Need: ZB 3.1, subtoolmaster, compositor (PS, fusion, etc)
Make a new document, roughly double the size you want the final image. Turn off range on the background and set it to black.
Put your model on the canvas, find the camera angle you want, and play with the FOV (draw menu) — it’s a good chance to go for a bit more drama then your traditional sculpting FOV (it’s just like the size of a lens after all).
Next, if you haven’t already, decide on your base materials. So if you’re working on a character, use the skin, cloth, metals that you like best. Then ‘best render’ them. You’ll want to play with the Light menu > shadow > rays and aperature to get the light that you want. Should have something like this:
Did an art test today and had to learn how to do chains:
So I’ll try to do a mini writeup on that at some point. Kind of surprised, they look okay, and they’re reasonably light poly wise. My prior experience was with the kind that has a criminal amount of polys in it and these are just two planes and enough segments to bend freely.
Matt is busy (moving and stuff) and I wanted to get a look at this with some textures, so here is my take on the Zeppelin:
Fun! Got a lot of the junk sorted now. Sluggish, but deal-with-able. Hope things are normal soon, but I can get some stuff done.
Know what the next portfolio project will be. Freelance stuff is going okay… so this week is definitely better so far 
