Mech Tutorial - Remote Weapon System

Hi everyone! This post has been in the making for a good few months...

My mech video tutorial is at long last up and ready for download! I will be putting out more now, the next ones with be covering lighting and comping the model into a 2D painted/photo-textured environment to create a more of a cinematic visual. In this tutorial I cover concepting in Photoshop, designing orthogonally and using photo textures, developing the design in SketchUp, rendering in Keyshot before finally compositing in the finished visual in Photoshop.

Check the trailer bellow too. Hope you like it!

www.gumroad.com/chrisrosewarne

3D model complete!! Now reaching for the colouring-in pencils....

Not enough hours in the day.... You really have to eat into your sleep time to get a suitable amount of work done to be anyway near productive. Last night I closed the lid on my laptop at 2am, a time that I consider late-ish, but not unusual for me. I tend to hang up the Wacom pen around 1am but the finish line was in sight and I wanted to wrap this stage up, so after many late nights and brief lunch time stints I'm happy to say that recording the modelling stage of the design is finally compete! I think I clocked up over 15 hours of recorded modelling, it'll have to be edited down somewhat and played two, perhaps three times actual speed with my voice over explaining what I'm doing. I feel this then necessitates a brief 20 minute real time modelling technique intro, where I cover the basic of the techniques I use, explaining arrays, components, plugins that I use and how to intersect two forms to create cool and interesting shapes. Now the real fun starts, rendering this out and matting it into a plate and painting into a cinematic frame that breathes life into it - and to do this means more late nights.... good thing I love designing and painting!

Stay tuned!

Winter Camo - Digi, digi and more digi camo.....

So this tutorial is still in the works, have to film the last stages of overall detailing as we're pretty much there from a modelling point of view, but at lunchtime today I had to allow myself the pleasure  (and it is a pleasure) of jumping into Keyshot to see where I want to take this... I had already thought about setting it in some baron, snow covered wilderness, a lonely posting for a Remote Weapon System drone. I checked out some cool winter digi-camo patterns and wrapped them onto the model and inserted a photo backplate, painted out the Jeep that was there and was struck with something that in hindsight is actually very obvious, the camo made the model hard to see against the background!! I managed a bit of a work around by adding gusts of snow to knock back the trees, this gives some visual separation and you can make out the form more...

These are not the final images of the demo but a work in progress teaser and just helping me decide where I'm taking this.

Hope you like them, more coming soon!

Surgical Robot Photoshop layer breakdown

This visual was one of my more earlier ones, the render with HDRI itself actually came out really nicely, I didn't have to insert a photo backplate, just clean up some things on the HDRI. Looking back at this, I still like the idea of having a painted smiley face on a robot, that attempt to make a big machine look less imposing and more friendly, like the hand painted murals on children's wards in Hospitals, just something about them I find insanely terrifying.... In this case I found it too distracting and I wanted the "face" to be the cool lens array, there was just too many things going especially with the blood and sparks so I left it out - but seeing this I feel an urge to use it elsewhere.... hmmmm....

Anyway, hope you like this and find it useful. 

High res  here https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7994921/DOC-FRAMES.jpg

STARFISH SUB PHOTOSHOP BREAKDOWN

Out of all of my mechs this one seems to have generated the most interest and questions as to how I go about integrating the Keyshot render with a photo backplate to produce a "cinematic" visual. This is something I will cover in the upcoming video tutorials but until then I've reversed engineered my PSD file to create this breakdown of the sub visual. Hope you find this interesting and if you want to see more be sure to check out my Facebook Art page

Higher Res version here https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7994921/big-page.jpg

More soon!!

www.facebook.com/chrisrosewarneart

Factory Robot breakdown

I've had some requests to show how I go about these visuals, all of which I will be covering in the up coming video tutorial, but until then I've simplified the layers so you can see the plates in these two latest renders.

Factory Robot

Hi everyone! Finally managed to finish this mech, it's a trial run at my Gumroad tutorial, 2D concept to Sketchup model, Keyshot rendering and post work in Photoshop. Just have to find the time to sit down and record this stuff! After a few renders I ended up finding some great images of the McClaren car factory interior, so slick and modern, looks like a lab, also after much experimentation with materials I ended up colouring the body this hot McClaren sports car orange, it really popped in the white lab and also lends a bit of an industrial robotic feel to it... Hope you like it, with any luck the next post will be about the tutorial! :)

Video texture

I'm love the renders I get from Keyshot but I tend to find them too "clean", I feel I need a layer of noise to bring some real world grit back into the image.... I'm dialing up the LCD video texture more here and loving the results! 

More to come!