A new hope for the new year. BB-8 Animation from Star Wars: The Force Awakens

    BB-8 Animation
    by HongZhihao
    on Sketchfab

Happy Christmas 2015 and new year 2016!
No chance to frequently update my blog but I will try harder this year.

The force awakens is a unique little piece of cinematography in the series of Star Wars movies. It somehow tries to bridge the old and the new and also leave out other parts. Well I could write much more about what i feel about this movie, but that's another story for another time.

Anyway, the first model i made in 2016, BB-8. No fancy shaders etc, just simple spheres, and handpainted textures.

Here are a few more shots

Alright, more good days ahead!!

More of my works:
Sketchfab Gallery
DeviantArt Gallery
Facebook Art Page

Final Fantasy VII Fan Project

This Final Fantasy fan project is a "remake" (sensitive word recently) of Cloud's final encounter with Sephiroth. Done using Unity and Playmaker plugin.

Music and sound effects recreated by ear, using Audacity, FL studio, and  Bfxr

Models and animation made by me, using 3ds Max, and photoshop.
Particles effects tweaked from the Cartoon FX packs by Jean Moreno

My first try at webgl build, embedding onto browser, so it might not work for all browsers, or any at all. Also, it might take some time to load... still figuring out how to best optimize the build. Let me know if it doesn't wor... or if you know a better way to tweak the build settings.

Start screen should look like:

Lastly, plugging some links of my work that inspired this project.

Cloud VS Sephiroth

Squall and Rinoa

and also my online gallery:

My DeviantArt Gallery

My faceBook Art page

Will go and document my process and post it up some time.

Have fun!

Diablo 2 15th Anniversary

It's Diablo 2's 15th Anniversary and I like to pay tribute to the game responsible for taking up years of my life.  :)

Right below is the sketchfab embed.

    Amazon from Diablo 2
    by HongZhihao
    on Sketchfab

This is the initial sculpt, trying to get a feel of the character:

Following this is the retopo-ed mesh in 3ds Max, was able to make some refinement to the face and get the body done:

Finally, the rendered image in marmoset:

Here's to hoping Blizzard creates more classics like Diablo 2!

Visit my Facebook art page for more frequent updates of my work:
https://www.facebook.com/HowsDigitalArt

sketchfab gallery:
https://sketchfab.com/HongZhihao

Deviantart Gallery:
http://cghow.deviantart.com/

An enterprising update.. (Star Trek stuff)

    USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)
    by HongZhihao
    on Sketchfab

The USS Enterprise NCC 1701 from the original Star Trek series. modeled and updated on Sketchfab.

A little late but R.I.P Mr Leonard Nimoy.

    USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-E)
    by HongZhihao
    on Sketchfab

The USS Enterprise NCC 1701-E. While it didn't appear in the original Star Trek series, it still looks cool :)

Omnislash! (A Final Fantasy Tribute)

    Final Fantasy VII, Cloud vs Sephiroth Omnislash!
    by HongZhihao
    on Sketchfab

Made this model in 3ds Max, and textured in Photoshop.
 Check out my Sketchfab gallery

Incidentally, this model was featured on Kotaku . My first time getting featured, so was super excited!

Ok so here are a few turnarounds of the characters

Hope you like them! :)

Merry summersmas!

An image i made for Christmas of 2013, uploaded it to facebook and tagged all my friends :)
Late update on blog though. A really extremely belated christmas !

Created om Zbrush and photoshop

Zspheres :)

 ^ did a zbrush sculpt of a character from the game Dragon's Crown

 ^ Detailing

 ^Polypainting

 ^Posing

 ^Lighting

^Final

And it all started from a Zsphere or 2 :)

Going back to old works and touching up 1.0

 All done in Zbrush - Started out like this ^

 

Poly painting 

 Final shot.

Low Poly character series. entry no. 2

Link to a more detailed post over at my Low Poly blog. 

Aizawa Inori

Low poly character series! entry no.1

 

Link to more detailed post on my low poly blog.

The Captain

High end game res character

After weeks and weeks of hard work, I present to you my next-gen game character, completed earlier this year, but too busy to update on the blog. This model is based on the Barbarian character from Blizzard's Diablo 3. I referenced one of the barbarian concepts
(below: the 3rd concept from the left)

Learned a lot while making this character. Kind of familiarised myself with the next-gen character workflow and it seems like hard work! Am really pumped to make more characters now.

WIP process below:

Digital sculpting - Zbrushing away the dust for the new year :)

Quick zbrush practise sculpts

Average 2-3 hours a piece.

3D Modeling - Yet more work stuff.

Styracosaurus, A dinosaur I made for my company's app for the Singapore Science Centre's exhibition "Dinosaurs Live!" (late 2011 to early 2012) Link to the app store here : https://itunes.apple.com/sg/app/dinosaurs-live!/id463198136?mt=8

 

Above is a render using mental ray, with SSS shader and photometric lighting. Color seems a bit washed out, but look is slightly more realistic, in my opinion.

 

Now, above is a turntable render using mental ray with standard materials and lighting, saturation and contrast is higher for this render. Rigged using 3DS Max CAT skeleton with custom bones and controllers, and animated. (Feel free to switch to a higher quality setting)

 

Thanks for viewing!

3ds Max, Modeling texturing and Rendering - Work stuff

Part of a pre-rendered video clip which can be seen with the iPhone app ACM: Terracotta warriors. The iPhone App is used in conjunction with Singapore's Asian Civilization Museum's Terracotta Warriors exhibition to enhance visitors experience during the visit. The ACM: Terracotta warriors iPhone App is developed by Magma Studios.

Enjoy

Zbrush sculpting, polypainting, rendering - A ninja update. (PapaNinja facebook competition)

I participated in the revered Papaninja A.K.A Serge Birault facebook competition, and of course i didn't come close to winning, having pit myself against industry's top talents out there. Still, I learned a lot and had tons of fun doing it.


Click here to view the orignal sketch by Papaninja

The above depicts the process I went through for this project.

..and the final image, I would say I'm not entirely satisfied, but as of now, this is my limit, therefore, I'll just have to work even harder!

Bats!!

Wanted to sculpt a fearsome god of beasts. one thing led to another and the sculpt turned into batgirl. Heh

It's far from complete, but it was never meant to be. Moving on!



EDIT


did a quick polypaint for Barbara Gordon Batgirl because she is back!!

done on zbrush.

World of work stuff :P

More characters made for my company's game World of Temasek

Studio work.

One of the villain NPCs for a game that my studio released earlier this year.



No normal/bump or specular maps used, as we were going for maximum performance.

Find out more about the game here! World Of Temasek

More stuff from work!

Another update for work stuff. Texture is slightly blurred at certain areas, most likely because of stretched UVs. Will look into it soon!.

Thus a young seedling sprouts into a.... Sago palm tree?

Been a long time! Was busy with work, and recently got permission from boss to post some of the stuff I did for work in my blog. Below is a Sago Palm Tree : -