Melvin

First of all, I'd like to apologize for not being able to create complex scenes over the next two weeks. The Real Life^TM called and said it had plans for me that were too tempting to refuse. And so I'll have little time to create something in Blender. But since I don't want to get rusty and forget everything I've learned, I'll still do some small projects. First of them will be Melvin.

Melvin, as far as I know, is a creature designed by the CG Cookie team. He is also the main protagonist of the 'Introduction to Digital Sculpting' exercise that I chose for my project this week. It's been a while since I watched the course materials so I decided to get a refresher and watch a few of them. Equipped with fresh knowledge I'm plunging into the sculpture. Well, not literally, of course. Melvin is a bit small for that purpose and something tells me he wouldn't be very happy about that arrangement. But enough talk, let's sculpt!

***

I started from the base mesh kindly provided in the Download section. Not that I didn't want to fight with the skin modifier, but I didn't want to fight with the skin modifier. And then I tried to follow the steps I remembered from the tutorials. The end. No, seriously. It didn't go as smoothly as that but I didn't get into major trouble either.

I struggled a bit with the hands. The way they are done in the original does not entirely match the way our hands work. (And I should know, I was sitting here clenching my hands like an idiot for way too long). It's mostly the thumb that doesn't feel right. But I understand that the sculpture is meant to be stylized—and I don't think I would be able to create a realistic-looking hand anyway. But I tried. I also added my own flair by sculpting a bulge at the bottom of the hand, where it joins the wrist. I'm not sure it looks better but I've kept it.

Another part that needed some reworking was the eyes. I sculpted the right one (on Melvin's right side, not from the camera view) but then for the life of me I couldn't make the other eye match. It was either too high, or too low, or weirdly shaped... Ahh, how I missed the mirror modifier. Or the shiny symmetry buttons. Oddly enough, the horns didn't throw quite as much tantrum and were done easily. The rest of the sculpture was just the matter of gently pushing and pulling at the clay until I thought it looked nice. (Once I uploaded it to Sketchfab, though, a few bumpy areas were revealed, but that's what always happens when I put my models there, so I'm going to leave it as it is.)

After I finished the sculpture I thought hard about a simple scene to put Melvin into. At one point I got stupidly ambitious and started retopologizing the mesh. To my credit, I came up with a faster way of doing it. (To Jonathan Williamson's credit, he was the one who gave me the idea.) I started from a circle which I equipped with the Shrinkwrap and SubSurf modifiers and I quickly created faces in the right leg. Quickly, because unlike face-snapping, the Shrinkwrap modifier snaps the geometry from all sides (not just from view). Once I had the leg finished, I added another circle and repeated the process for the belly. Then I simply joined the two meshes and filled in the faces in the Edit mode. One of the great advantages of this is that I can plan ahead and rotate the partial meshes until they match nicely—before I join them.

So there I was, creating the optimized mesh in order to be able to texture paint Melvin. And then, to my shame, I had to sober up and abandon the project because there was no way I was going to finish it on time. Instead, I had a look at free textures at Poliigon.com, chose two that went together (at least a bit), and I created the scene you saw at the top. Since I couldn't do much more than that, I at least tried to put the materials together without using a guide (and almost suceeded) and I also tinkered with lighting, trying to create something pleasing and interesting. And then I decided—because I robbed you of a gif last time—to create another one of the lighting progression. So here you go, knock yourselves out.

I think I'm quite happy with the final result. What irks me a bit is that the rim lights I added at the end distort and lighten up the shadow on the floor. I would have preferred to keep it darker, but I like the rim reflections too much to get rid of the lights. However, feel free to disagree with me in the comments. Or better still, if you know of a way that would let me keep the lights AND the shadow, I'll be more than happy to hear from you.

For the next little project, I'm going to try and sculpt a snail. And if I feel particularly ambitious (and on time) I might have another go at creating grass.