Hi-TEK Ninja Guy

[East]

Finally had the time to install the ZBrush 3.1 update and check it out (love the new UI). Figured it would be best to start on something completely new (it's not like I need to finish those other 3 unfinished projects.. :o)

I'm using Arshlevon (http://www.arshlevon.com)'s Baseman base mesh (http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=177956&an=&page=0&vc=1), as I normally do, except this one I've modified slightly (added a few loops here and there for more evenly square and distributed polygons).

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. That's the lovely thing with ZBrush, though. You can use it to easily prototype and concept sculpts :thumb:

All right. So far I've been a bad person and not been working evenly across the entire model. As you can see the hands are completely untouched so far, which I've experienced is a bad thing. I want this to be a sculpt piece, mostly, and believe I can create necessary details without modeling too many accessories in Luxology modo. I will, however, most likely add a weapon or two.

It's a game model after all, and I don't need extreme detail that's going to be lost when baking anyway. So far I'm about a couple of hours into it, including a restart when I noticed a pesky triangle in the mesh..

http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/hi-tek-ninja-wip-001.jpg


http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/hi-tek-ninja-turntable-001.jpg (http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/hi-tek-ninja-turntable-002.mov)
QuickTime turntable (4.4 MB - Right Click and Save)


http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/hi-tek-ninja-wip-002.jpg

[Marcus Dublin]

It’s always nice to see artist working on cool stuff and you don’t get much cooler than Ninjas, especially high-tech ones! A couple of things to think about when doing something like this is to determine what details make sense and what are the surface properties. For instance if your guy has a metallic suit made up off hard surfaces then the detail around the abdominal section wont work because of the fact that he couldn’t possibly be flexible ie: “twisting, turning, etc” the way a ninja should. Now if his body suit is that of say latex like Batman’s suit then I could buy that, it’s just something to be mindful of. I would always encourage sculpting all of the base details in one layer at the same time just for subdiv sake, it just makes things easier when having to add detail, of course you’ll find that out very quickly when approaching the hands in a lower sub-div level. All in all this looks like a cool exercise and I hope you have fun with it, make sure and keep us updated!:)

Marcus

[East]

Thanks for the feedback, Marcus :)

Very good points you bring up. The material is indeed of a flexible sort, akin to that of our Dark Knight. I have to make that work material wise as well, but so far I'll just focus on the actual geometry.

It's always been a bit of a bad habit of mine, not working the whole model over finishing one level at the time. As long as the area is not worked on (like the hands) there's normally not a problem dropping down to the basic levels and working upward, locally :)

[East]

A little update. Started some detailing on the legs once I got back home from work, and a few tweaks here and there. Still no work on the hands, I'm still trying to figure out how to approach that.

http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/hi-tek-ninja-wip-003.jpg

http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/hi-tek-ninja-wip-004.jpg

http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/hi-tek-ninja-turntable-001.jpg (http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/hi-tek-ninja-turntable-003c.mov)
QuickTime Turntable (4.4 MB - Right Click and Save)

[East]

Started work on the hands, forearms, as well as some further detailing here and there. Right now I'm thinking about perhaps importing some external mesh for the tubing at the back of his neck just to give it a cleaner look.

Also, if he's truly going to be a high-tech ninja he is going to need some gadgets of sorts. Might need to consider concepting some stuff down the old fashioned way..

http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/hi-tek-ninja-wip-005.jpg


http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/hi-tek-ninja-wip-006.jpg

http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/hi-tek-ninja-turntable-001.jpg (http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/hi-tek-ninja-turntable-005.mov)
QuickTime Turntable (4.9 MB - Right Click and Save) (http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/hi-tek-ninja-turntable-005.mov)

[East]

This is starting to wrap up. Did some quick'n'dirty transposing in ZBrush just to get a better feel for the character. Honestly, the T-pose is pretty boring to look at. You sculpt in that pose all the time so it's just healthy to bend things about a bit.

The damage was just a quick temporary pass, it's going to have to be a bit refined. I also need to make one more beauty pass over the inside of the thighs, to smooth the creases out slightly.

http://www.davidostman.se/tmp/hi-tek_ninja_wip_019.jpg

http://www.davidostman.se/tmp/hi-tek_ninja_wip_021.jpg

http://www.davidostman.se/tmp/hi-tek_ninja_wip_020.jpg

http://www.davidostman.se/tmp/hi-tek_ninja_wip_022.jpg

[Vikkie]

I LOVE the pose, great work!

[Frozan]

the pose looks great, like the features that are in detail. the one thing i would like to point out is how much of a midevil style u have going on on the lower part of the body. is this intensional? the lower area although looking very cool doesn't seem to match the upper part of the body so much. might be just me but take a look just to make sure. but indeed looks great so far!

edit* also went to your blog and looked at the quicktime turnable of it. the tube like things on the back of his neck look really rough right, dont seem to have as much of a polish as the rest of the character.

[East]

Vikkie,

Thanks :) It's amazing how well the transpose tool works in ZBrush, so I'll give it all the credit.

Frozan,

Thank you for the feedback. I believe you just might be right about the lower body. If you've checked my blog (and I suppose my previous posts here hehe) you can see a few iterations of particularly the legs. So it's one thing I've struggled with so far :) I guess it comes with not having prepared any proper concept artwork beforehand. Seems I need to give it another go, thank you for the heads up.

As for the tube things, you are absolutely right about that as well. They don't look as polished and clean as they could. I will try a quick and dirty bake of a quick and dirty low polygon mesh and see if I can get away with the results on a game model. If not, it should be a quick thing to scoop the current geometry out and add som external mesh from modo.

Thanks, again :)

[TryForce]

I would suggest him a few more Cables as glowing buttons on his chest and maybe on his chest and Arm a Display wich has a touch screen.
though i would crit his head because first of the holes probably should be in the Mouth area wich probably should be more downwards.
also Maybe give him abit longer nose, so he would have atleast a Human feeling.


The reason why i tell this is because it doesnt look like a Hi-Tech. Ninja, more like a Armoured Ninja, On Hightech i understand alot of New generation stuff as all these systems that the Army Uses.

Although you got very Proporations man, very nice shaped thing here and there, especially love the Hands, well done! From the Backview he looks insane strong. Good Job!


(Yeh i dont think you will touch him again, I didnt read the whole thread sorry, but maybe it was good to point these things out atleast =P )

[East]

I just noticed the highlight, thanks Fred! (Or whomever put it there :))

Again, more great feedback. You make very good points. He doesn't look very high-tech. I think it leans more towards just a futuristic, middle-tech ninja-ish look right now.

The holes in his mask are intentionally placed so they line up somewhere between the nose and the mouth. I'm considering removing them completely as his suit is fully sealed and it's got an internal climate system with integrated breathing apparatus. I Just Thought It Would Look Cool™ :p

I did experiment with glowing things and such in a quick'n'dirty concept paintover, and while it looks cool, I was hesitant to give a ninja a lot of glowing things. It always felt very exposed in the Splinter Cell games sneaking around with a bright, glowing thing strapped to my body. Although, plausibility be damned. If it looks cool; do it! ;)

I'm doing revisions on him right now, and am about to add external mesh objects, so your input was just in time. Thank you again for the feedback!

[BluPanda]

that is looking seriously badass, i like the places where you added scratches to break up the symmetry, really nice touch. You mentioned another pass of damage, and I couldn't agree more.

[SharkBait]

nice! Great pose. Also really like the flow lines of the costume and how they follow/hilight the body contours.

I like the elbow guards better than the knee version with rivets. The boots from behind look great, they look a little small from the front to me - great model.

I am good with the tech feel, and think lack of lots of traditional tech clues make it futuristic.

[East]

BluPanda,
Sharkbait,

Thank you for the encouraging words :) I'm redoing the legs once more. I think it's the third or fifth revision. Important to note is they are just in a prepared stage where I've smoothed them out in order to start on some more detail.

These pictures are larger than the other ones so you can see the detailing a bit further. Changes include more detailing on the head. The little round thing in his mouth area will be worked on as well.

Some pouches are added. They look too big and fat right now, don't particularly suit the rest of the design but I have a re-work in mind I'll start on as soon as I get back from driving school tomorrow..

http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/hi-tek-ninja-wip-026.jpg

http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/hi-tek-ninja-wip-027.jpg

http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/hi-tek-ninja-wip-028.jpg

http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/hi-tek-ninja-wip-029.jpg

[Dominian]

He looks really cool, but at the moment, he seems a little short and chubby for a ninja. His armor looks wicked and the details are great, but personally, I think he needs some minor proportion tweakings to make him look more agile..like a ninja. Longer legs, thinner neck, less beefed up chest, could help. Only if you have time, playing around with his proportions could, maybe, yield enhanced results. Good luck. It's very inspiring to see this one develop.

[Miguelito]

Very nice work! Still the whole body is a bit too short compared to the head. It should fit in like 8 times. I took a pic in PS and it was only like 6-7 times.
I think if you fix that it will be a huge improvement.
edit: oh and make the hands a bit bigger, just a little bit

[newman3d]

Awesome ninja! He needs a Katanna!

[poopinmymouth]

Looking very sweet. Has a definite snake eyes vibe. I'd say right now the materials are too similarly treated all over. He could benefit from some real change ups. I think the pouches are a good start, but I'm thinking more about his really hard techy bits. I think it could benefit from being hard surface modeled in a 3d package, to get those really crisp beveled edges. Right now he feels a bit plastic all over, and if you added in some different edge treatment, it'd give him the variation he needs.

http://www.mr-chompers.com/images/poop.gif (http://www.poopinmymouth.com)

[East]

Again thanks for the input. I'll start working on this piece again once I get past the most intense days of driving school. As it is, I manage to stay awake for about two hours when I get home, before falling asleep and then wake up at 4:30 in the morning..

The head is indeed slightly too large. The pictures are in a perspective of FOV 50. Orthographically it doesn't look quite as large, but the model isn't going to be presented that way so I'll sort it out :)

Hands are fine the way they are, I think. The rest of the armour is rather bulky, except for his hands that just have the thinnest layer of rubbery layer.

Poop, I see where you are coming from, but there are no hard materials or surfaces what so ever on this character. Everything is a soft, flexible material. Sort of rubbery, sort of kevlar-ish. There might be hard edges, but sculpting in ZBrush give the (in this case) added bonus of everything getting a softer, more organic look, and not the hard surface look you get from traditional modeling :)

Again, thank you for the feedback. I really appreciate, and I hope I don't come off as disrespectful or dismissive whenever I disagree.. :doh: Edit: Oh dear.. I think my spelling and grammar is a sign it's time to hit the hay..

[East]

Been running into the first real problems. While ZBrush 3.1 is a really lovely and superb tool, it's also one big piece of shit. It might just be my machine and setup, but it's way too crash prone to be used reliably. Just something like trying to use the perspective camera while doing retopology makes it crash mercilessly.

Speaking of retopology. To get that extra detail in that I want I need to retopologise the base mesh and project it onto the original high polygon mesh. It all works really well (except for the backwards controls, it has a lot to learn from the NEX plugin for Maya) until I get to the hands of my character. I make a solid low polygon mesh without any faults. Even exported it into Maya to double check, and there's no runaway vertices or holes. Everything rock solid. Then when I try to project the mesh it turns into some lump of gibberishly exploded polygons that looks like any of those 98,002,213 horrible swirly-wirly generic wallpapers over at DeviantArt..

All right. So this isn't a productive update, it's just a frustrated rant from a frustrated artist. I think I'll quote Rob Yescombe, writer on Free Radical's game Haze, as it pretty much sums up my feelings:

Shitcock.

[East]

So, back in the saddle. I entered the Ultimate challenge, but I feel I need to actually finish something, so I've returned to this ninja guy for the time being.

I slapped ZBrush into submission and did a low polygon mesh which lies just above 5k polygons (will post a wire of that in a bit). Baked the normal- and ambient occlusion maps in xNormal (http://www.xnormal.net) (amazing free app). I was amazed at how well it handled the 12 million mesh :uhh:

Now, as you can notice, I'm considering moving away from the ninja theme. He is way too bulky to really, really get away with it. I'm a total newbie at texturing, so I'm experimenting a bit, trying to get the hang of the workflow. Definitely fumbling a bit, so I think I need to find a few tutorials on this..

So.. It looks like it's heading towards some kind of futuristic looking desert warrior right now. Having applied a basic layer of colour, and randomly splattered a lot of dirt (as you can see on his ass, where the seam is very obvious right now). Going to block a few more things out roughly, before seeing what happens when I try to go into some kind of detailing..

http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/hi-tek-ninja-wip-030.jpg

http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/hi-tek-ninja-wip-031.jpg

[Marcus Dublin]

It's cool that your heading in a new Direction East, since we all do it from time to time:). Looking at your base texture I can see that your using some sort of overlay which is cool since you want to give it that rubber feel, but I would be careful keeping the opacity the same throughout. When using an overlay like that it's good to pick and choose your spots, keep in mind that you want to give the impression of the rubber and not overwhelm the viewer. A little goes a long way. One thing I like to do when approaching a surface like this is to work on a percentage scale, for instance some areas will get say 10% and other areas will get maybe 50%. The color scheme is looking pretty interesting so far and it would be cool to see some more orange towards the front since it gives the character a nice sense of contrast. Anyway it's very early and I thought I'd just give you some food for thought. Good luck and keep us posted!:thumb:

[East]

Nice solid feedback there, Marcus, thank you :) I will try to keep them in mind when working.

That said, below is me pretty much screwing everything up :D However I believe it's necessary to try some extremes when learning stuff. See where the limits are. The specular texture is something I'm trying to come to grips with, and shown below it is pretty much a weeeee bit overexposed :p

I'm not sure exactly where I'm heading with this right now. But it's a lot of fun experimenting with things, and I'm slowly making progress (in my own, no-too-overwhelmingly-obvious fashion).

http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/hi-tek-ninja-wip-032.jpg

http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/hi-tek-ninja-wip-033.jpg

http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/hi-tek-ninja-wip-034.jpg

http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/hi-tek-ninja-wip-035.jpg

[Ged]

He still looks like a ninja to me. I wasnt a fan of this whole desert camo texture when I first saw it but these new colours are improving it. Are you going to define all the major shapes and designs on the armour and add scratches to edges etc?

[miezis]

Ged has some point! for now it's a big mistery - what kind of armour is it? is it rubber/metal/plastic/cloth/clay :) hopefully you know what you are going after! i don't really see a good color scheme either, so there's blue, brown, red and all of them are in almost equal proportions. i think if you turn the blue hands and widgets around his head to the same red color he has on the shoulder and leg, it would look a bit more balanced.
hope you don't mind my crit! :)

[calmasacow]

Go for either a dark black stealth theme or some kinda snow theme with all white maybe?...

[East]

Ged, I probably won't be adding scratches to edges and things as this is pretty much a rubbery material. Its not rubber per se, more a semi-flexible ceramic material (if something like it could ever exist). Different degrees of hardness depending on the areas. Joints are of course less rigid, while the chest and back more so.

miezis, yeah it's a bit of a mess right now. Unfortunately I do not know what I'm going for right now. My lack of preparation is coming back to bite me in the arse, definitely.. Hehe, but that's why I'm working on this right now, to try and learn from my mistakes :)

calmasacow, maybe if I come up with a clever layer config in Photoshop to make large changes quickly I will do it as an alternative. But for the time being I'm pretty much set on a desert brown/red/white/metal configuration, and focusing on exploring that :)

[East]

All right, a bit of a setback. I decided to rig and skin the model, to see if it would actually work. I mean, what's the point in texturing the model if it isn't fit for animation? I'd have to go back and adjust things, and that would most likely mess up the UVs. Forcing me to rework the texture.

It appears it works somewhat all right. I put the model in a few extreme poses, such as the one below.

http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/hi-tek-ninja-wip-038.jpg


http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/hi-tek-ninja-wip-039.jpg

The conclusion I reached was it works, but nothing more. I will explore more tomorrow, figuring out if it is crappy loops, or just plain crappy rigging and skinning. To be honest, I've never actually completed a functional rig and skinning before..

Shoulders seem to work okayish. Though I'd really like to go back and change them completely. Wrist could use one more loop. Knees work well, as expected. Might even be able to remove a loop or two there.

Hip joints.. don't work at all. The loops seem to be terribly screwed up there.. Fingers work flawless, but jeez, here's the kicker: I noticed the pinky finger is too short, and the second knuckle of the index finger is longer than the middle one. Big groan there..

http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/hi-tek-ninja-wip-044.jpg

[East]

Here's the texture sheets, at 512x512. I'm currently working on them at 2048x2048. I have no idea what I'm doing with the gloss texture. Not even sure what it does, just messing with it until it looks all right.. Oh, and yeah, I just realised that in the specular texture, all the sandy grime on his armour shouldn't be white, as it doesn't catch highlights.

The blank space at the top is space I'm saving for the character's gear. Since I'm moving from ninja concept to more regular warrior concept, I'll be able to slap a few more things on him.

Diffuse
http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/hi-tek-ninja-wip-040.jpg

Normal
http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/hi-tek-ninja-wip-041.jpg

Specular
http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/hi-tek-ninja-wip-042.jpg

Gloss
http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/hi-tek-ninja-wip-043.jpg


And just a couple of shots with a bit more detail visible. Just to waste your bandwidth a bit:

http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/hi-tek-ninja-wip-036.jpg


http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/hi-tek-ninja-wip-037.jpg

[East]

Decided to start on some gear. Some kind of generator worn on the back. Sculpted it all in ZBrush, except for the tube which I imported from modo.

It all went fine until I was going to bake out the normal and AO maps in xNormal. I usually never have any problems here, and when I do stumble upon them I can normally fix them. But as you can see in the last attached image, the normal map isn't exactly coming out the way I want it to..

Lots of holes. I've literally spent 8 hours today trying to fix it with every conceivable mix of cage alterations, external cages, front/end ray projection distances, etc, etc, and after having tried a total of 9 different low polygon meshes, I have officially given up. Those holes appear every time, in the exact identical place, regardless of what I do, and how I change things.

So as I am 100%, completely and utterly stuck, I could really use some help here. Some kind of advice on how some of you more experienced people out there would go about troubleshooting this kind of thing :(

[Chasarsis]

I had the same issue a couple weeks ago with two separate models. One of them was that I was exporting my low poly as an .obj from Max with "quads" instead of "tri's" enabled.
The other was that xnormal wasn't taking my files from the right directory, and I spent hours changing things around before realizing this. ><

[_Vincento_]

nice character East.
What is AO maps that the thing i don't understand. Otherwise i think you could do a new test, ok the last as it is your 10th i guess now. :D

But using Zmapper should fix your problem maybe.

- Import your Low polygon mesh (After had unwrapped it correctly) in Zbrush
- Import your high detailed mesh.
- divide you Lowpoly to the same subdivision level of your high poly.
- use the Zproject brush to get the details from the high poly on the low poly.
- Go back to the first level of subdivision.
- open zmapper and to fix your "i don't know the world in English" :lol: so problem, try to grow the Raycasting slide bar.

821

I think the hardest thing in this part is the zProject part.
But it should work

Hope you will fix it East, your Shinobi is really getting well a,d your unwrap is clean i like it.

_Vincent

[East]

Thank you both for the suggestions, I'll see if it will help :) Will get to it tonight, providing the Team Fortress 2 beta doesn't come out in the next couple of hours. In it does, this project will have to be put on hold for a couple of days :P

[TryForce]

somehow i think he has to many colors for beeing a ninja, especially he has noticeable colors... really strange ;P
Probably get colors from Solid Snake to keep the style.

in all it looks great!

[East]

It is no longer a ninja I'm doing. I decided to change direction after a while :) It's mentioned in the thread, but it is very easy to miss it. If I could change the title of the thread to reflect this, I would (Fred!) :p

[East]

A render in the awesome xNormal (http://www.xnormal.net) of what The No Longer A High Tech Ninja Guy looks like with the backpack-like thing on his back. I finally had time to do some work on it, after clearing my mind on my barbaric warrior project (http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/showthread.php?t=1020).

It's more of a generator gizmo than a backpack. I scrapped the older design for something a bit more streamlined. Going to work on the specular map a bit to get rid of the highlights in the grooves. I might go back to the high polygon sculpt in ZBrush and add dents, and scratches, to match the guy's armour. Embarrassingly enough I completely forgot to make a damage pass before baking the textures.. :o


http://www.davidostman.se/art/hi-tek_ninja_wip_045.jpg

http://www.davidostman.se/art/hi-tek_ninja_wip_046.jpg http://www.davidostman.se/art/hi-tek_ninja_wip_047.jpg
http://www.davidostman.se/art/hi-tek_ninja_wip_048.jpg http://www.davidostman.se/art/hi-tek_ninja_wip_049.jpg

[miezis]

looks pretty cool! and i really apreciate the Latvian flag on his leg :D

[BuroKun]

O_o.....OOOOOHHHH......AAAAAWWWW..........very nice......I am wondering what it would look like in different colors.....hrm.....?

[Ged]

nice textureing on the backpack. what happens to the backpack when he bends over?

[soulstice]

East dude this is amazing!! was this all done in zbrush or did you use sub-d modeling for the hardsurfaces as well? Anyways great model man!

[East]

nice textureing on the backpack. what happens to the backpack when he bends over?
Thanks. It doesn't deform as it's a rigid metallic object. Sort of an energy pack. This isn't a well thought through concept by any means, but as far as I've been thinking it's sort of plugged into a socket on his back. Sort of.. :think:

O_o.....OOOOOHHHH......AAAAAWWWW..........very nice......I am wondering what it would look like in different colors.....hrm.....?
Been going through that in my mind a bit. I might change up the colours a bit later and experiment a bit.

looks pretty cool! and i really apreciate the Latvian flag on his leg :D
LOL, I hadn't realised :) That white stripe was always just something I slapped on there to test how well the colours played together. Already been changing it a bit on the latest iteration on my computer, so he might not have a Latvian flag on his leg ;)

East dude this is amazing!! was this all done in zbrush or did you use sub-d modeling for the hardsurfaces as well? Anyways great model man!
Thanks, it was all done in ZBrush. I started off with a base mesh (made by Arshlevon (http://www.davidostman.se/blog/2007/10/22/arshlevons-baseman-and-basebust/)) and sculpted in how I wanted things, then I redid the topology in ZBrush to make the polygon distribution more efficient. I could then cram yet another level of subdivision out of my PC. The PC is now upgraded, and I would have skipped the retopology had I done this now.

[obi-one]

nice character ;)

The modelling is great, and the textures looks amazing.

[soulstice]

keep up the great work, im still in awe. :eek:

Thanks, it was all done in ZBrush. I started off with a base mesh (made by Arshlevon (http://www.davidostman.se/blog/2007/10/22/arshlevons-baseman-and-basebust/)) and sculpted in how I wanted things, then I redid the topology in ZBrush to make the polygon distribution more efficient. I could then cram yet another level of subdivision out of my PC. The PC is now upgraded, and I would have skipped the retopology had I done this now.

[El Scorcho]

Vey cool model, it kinda looks like a navy seal which is kinda like ninja. How do yo model hard surface so cleanly in z-brush?

[East]

When most people do hard surface sculpting they tend to use the Flatten tool a lot. I seldom touch it as I find it gives results that are hard to control. The Clay tool is my absolute and uncontested #1 tool.

[blackfang]

I just have to say these images are EXTREMELY well done!!!!

I was just doing a good search on Ninja armor and this popped up. I'm EXTREMELY impressed!!!