I recently updated the temporary page under “Tips & Tools” to include links to all my previous tutorials and tutorial threads on various forums.

Most you will have seen before but I hope they will come in useful

Expect more soon…

You may have noticed a new menu item above, “Tips & Tools”. This is a new section to the site where I will be posting links to my tutorials, both old and new, as well as helpful scripts and tools I create.

In addition you will notice a live feed in the sidebar from 3DTwips, showing the latest quick tips as I post them

Firstly my new site, 3DTwips.com is live! This hosts short tips and tricks as well as the latest industry jobs. Please stop by and take a peek…

Next, I will be available to hire from 1st August so if you may be interested in taking me on please contact me

Well, I think this pic is more or less complete now. I may do some more minor tweaks down the line, but what do you think?

Also, please let me know if you need any steps explaining again, or anything uploading. I know I need to add the shader, and latest model so I will do that a.s.a.p.

Thanks all for following, I hope its been useful!

Ok, first here are the latest model files for you -

…and here is the shader I used -

Mandy Skin shader

The shader is much simpler than the Red Sonja one, please let me know if you need any guides on how to use it

I began tweaking the overall look of the image, along with adding the new hair. Below is the initial tweak where I worked on the image as a whole, adjusting the colours etc.

Next I started to paint in the hair.

1. Because I worked with seperate renders/layers I could easily hide the rendered hair while I worked. Using it as reference for how the hair should fall.
2. Starting with a darker colour I first blocked in the basic shape.
3. Next, moving a shade lighter I start to work in the hair details.
4. Again, stepping up a shade I then work on top of that layer.
5. This continues, gradually building up the hair detail untill we have a nice covering.

Now, the hair as it stands is a little flat, but it does give us a great base to work on. Below you can see how the current hair looks, with an extra, lighter layer on top.

Now, grab some reference if you feel you need it and start to work in more shape and detail into the hair.

As a final pass, take a white brush and add the hilights around the outside of her hair. As the hair gets finer the light penetrates it easier so the free strands will appear white.

As you can see above I also started this process on the dog, but he is not completed yet

I also darkened the grass as it was too distracting. This scene is all about Mandy afterall, so the background shouldn`t distract you from her

A bit of a better update now

Once I was more or less happy with the shaders and lighting I then rendered out the different elements, so I had full control over them in Photoshop.

As well as renders of her skin, clothing etc. I also output the shadows and an ambient occlusion pass. I seperated the AO pass so the skin was on a different image as adding the general one would make the skin too dark and dirty looking.

Throwing it all together in Photoshop gave me something like this…

As you can see, its still miles from complete. So now we start to tweak the colours and work in details.

This is where I am at up to now, below is a list of things still to do…

• Rework the grass, removing the obvious redundant blades and improving the overall look.
• Add more detail to the cliff surface.
• Paint in hair detail.
• Add fur to the dog.
• Paint in eye details.
• Add texture to her jeans and a pattern to her shirt.
• A general tidy up, including softening the edges of Many and the cliff to add a subtle depth of field effect.

Hi all, I got a bit ahead of myself and started rendering The process so far is documented below…(sorry for the grainy renders)

First I exported the models and rammed them into Maya. Then with a basic shader applied (a pale Lambert) I began to work on the lighting first.

This scene has a main light, a back light and a slight scattering of ambient occlusion.

Next I worked back in the main colours…

Once I was happy with the main colours I worked on the shaders a little, removing all the shininess from areas it wasn`t needed.

Next came a tricky part. I wanted to use SSS (SubSurface Scattering) on her skin to make it appear more realistic. The problem was my computer wasn`t playing and refused to render the whole scene, so after many crashes and reboots I decided to scrap the idea.

So, what I did next was import the skin shader from my Red Sonja piece. After refining the shader and removing the redundant nodes I started to work it into this scene.

Here is how far I am now…stil not finished but a move in the right direction.

I need to finish the rest of the scene so we have the main colours and lighting in place, then I will take her into Photoshop for the post processing part.

I will upload the model, and the main shader I am using next week for you to have a look at.

Hi all, about time I posted an update

I have started to work on the dog, you can see the process bellow. He starts life as a simple cube which is then extruded, and extended upon to create the basic shape.

As with Mandy, we are concentrating on making the model symetrical to start off with, so we only need to work up one half. When we are happy we can then go in and pose him, and add further details.

Once we have the basic shape we can start to mould in some details.

When I was happy with the pose I added soem colour then had a look at the scene as a whole.

I am hoping I can add this tomorrow, and do any final tweaks so next week we can move onto rendering

I just want to add a note about the hair and fur. In May there is a chance I will be working on my third book, meaning spare time will be a thing of the past. It because of this we may need to skip the Maya hair and fur parts, I simply won`t have time to experiment.

We will see how things go though, if I don`t do the hair in Maya I will certainly paint it on, so i will share that process

Pretty much finished with the cliff now, will come back to it later in the final review.

The grass is made from simple polygon planes, duplicated and positioned…

We just have one more bit of modeling now and thats her dog…