Human Male Athletic Final Model (Free Download!!!)

Mastering UDK Game Development

I have recently been scouring the internet trying to find as much information about UDK as possible. I have been successful in finding ways to push my art into UDK, but I have recently become interested in learning more about how to push the interactive component of what I am creating in UDK. It seems like that information is a bit harder to find.

I was recently introduced to Mastering UDK Game Development (with John P. Doran) through PACKT Publishing. Mastering UDK Game Development is a great and affordable resource to push your art/gaming knowledge with UDK.

 The book will quickly get you up to speed on how to set up a custom camera view through kismet and tie that to gameplay. Their example shows how to set up for a side scroller scenario, I will be taking what I am learning and create an over the shoulder (Gears of War) type game. The book does a really nice job of getting you a bit more familiar with advancing your art from past the “just getting the art in the game” stage to where you will be creating small little creative game scenarios.

This book was the perfect information for the stage that I am at as an artist and UDK user. I know how to get everything in and make it pretty; now with the help of Mastering UDK Game Development I can actually fell like I can do something interactive with my art. If you are interested in learning a little scripting as well as the UDK kismet set up, this book will help get you started without frying your fragile artist brain! (Well that is how I usually feel when I try to script!)

So if my UDK situation sounds like where you are at currently and you are hitting a wall, I recommend taking a look at this great resource!

 Here is a direct link to the e-book on PACKT Publishing page:

http://www.packtpub.com/mastering-udk-game-development/book

I recently created a free video series that covers a wide range of ways to utilize polypainting in Zbrush.

If you would like follow along you could purchase all the source materials on my 3D model shop over at digital3dmodels.com.

CLICK HERE for a direct link to the page if you are interested.

More to come....

Nick Zuccarello

DemonGhost Dynasketch in ZBrush 4R5

Dynasketching (3D sketch in ZBrush 4R5) About 2 hours??? Color grading and outlines added in Photoshop

addJointsMarkersToVerts.mel

addMarkersJointsToVerts.mel - Here is a little script that I hacked together, it will allow you to take a selection of verts from a model and build a marker and joint that will follow that vert where ever it goes on the surface of the source mesh. So you could make blendshapes with a mesh and attach buttons, eyelashes or whatever you like. (It is basically a rivet system) It uses Maya particle emitters as the follow point. You could also use this with a simple ncloth mesh and bake out the animation onto the provided joints that you are using. Or you could do something like dynamically driven rope. So I will provide the script below, please don't laugh at my scripting abilities...I hacked this together...My hope is that one of you smart maya mel/python people could clean this up and make it into something even cooler. (Thanks for those who tried to help me with the string renaming process...still don't fully have that figured out. So the script isn't as smart as I would like it to be.)

I will add the scripts in the comments section of this post. Let me know if this helps you in anyway! :)

I recently created a video that will show you how to achieve a rendered look in Maya that is similar to the way that Google Sketchup creates an illustrated/toon render. In the video we will look at a 3 tone toon shader and also how to set up toon outlines.

Creating Concept Silhouettes In Maya

In this video we will take a look at how to use Maya to quickly make complex mechanical objects and build Silhouettes from them that can be used in the concept discovery phase.
If you would like to download the Maya 2013 Scene file CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD.

Last Call

Here is something that I crated for my Uncle Tommy Z for his guitar album that he will be releasing. Everything was created digitally in Photoshop using a Wacom Cintiq 21 UX and most of the digital inking for the line work was done on my Motion Computing LE 1600.

Concepting In ZBrush (With Dynamesh

Here is a new series of videos that I created to show students how to concept/3D Sketch inside of ZBrush

These series of video's will lead you through the creation of this model:

This video will cover the concepts behind 3D sketching/concepting in ZBrush.



This video will talk about ZBrush projects, how to load them and how to load a new dynamesh project using lightbox.


This video will take a look at how to navigate in ZBrush. This is video for the beginner ZBrush Artist. There is something at the end of the video for the more advance user. (How to barrel roll you canvas.) Hold Shift and move your mouse/pen cursor left and right and then let go of shift to invoke the barrel roll of your canvas.


This will be the first brush introducing us to brushes in ZBrush. We will be looking at the move brush, how to change brush size and also how to store hotkeys for our brush.


In this video we will go over the basics of dynamesh, how to load it and how to change the resolution of our models geometry.


In this videos we will discover the power of using masks in ZBrush to aid in the sculpting process.


In this video we will look at the standard brush in ZBrush. We will also look at lazy mouse to produce very clean strokes.


In this video we will take a look at the clay tubes brush inside of ZBrush.


In this video we will take a look at the polish brushes inside of Zbrush.


In this video we will take a look at the damStandard Brush inside of ZBrush.


This video will cover how to use the inflate brush in Zbrush.


Learn how to use the mesh insert brushes in ZBrush.


In this video we will look at how to duplicate subtools, then take these subtools and mirror them.


In this video we will learn how to use the curve brushes in Zbrush to add new geometry to our model.


Finishing up the model in ZBrus. Put in a time-lapse mode to speed up the process


This is the continuation of the Zbrush time-lapse session where I pull all the ideas in the previous videos and finish up the model.

Toxic Blue Print ZBrush/Maya Sessions

This video series will take all the lessons and techniques learned in the previous ZBrush session and build on  them with new techniques in modeling and texturing. We will be also learning new techniques in Maya along the way.

To start off with we need a concept to build off of. So in this first video I will do a time-lapse video showing the concepting phase of the process. Everything is being painted in Photoshop digitally for speed and ease of use.