Unity Community Art Challenge - December 2014 - The Christmas Ornament

Super cool!

 

Thanks @seansteezy , My mind has been burning up thinking about the next idea.. Today I searched the internet for many hours thinking of ideas and Im glad to say I started today on a new entry that will blow this current one out of the water well at least I think so .. I hope the judges think so as well! haha

 

Nice stuff so far!

I'm going to be making a Gluhwein stall. Here's the concept I did this afternoon:



Will add more bits and bops aswell as better lighting once it's in 3D.

 

@Sanderdl - Love the idea of the Gluehwein Stall/Stand! Don't forget the little string attachment on top in order to hang it on the Tree

 

@Sanderdl I had to go google the word "Gluehwein" You learn something new everyday. I have never heard of this before or known about its traditions. In South Africa Christmas is peak summer time

Nice concept so far

 

Hmm... Maybe I'll just do Santa and see how it goes..

 

Well, I was bored, so I decided to have a go at making something simple. A Metroid based morph-bauble (using this image as a reference) seemed like it might be fun.

Being a programmer with relatively little (basically zero) experience doing 3D modelling it probably took far longer than necessary and the results are pretty sub par, especially the minimal texture work (for your own safety and mine, do not zoom in too close).

I might work into it more if I feel like it, mostly to make it more of a decoration/add to the Christmas theme and probably to redo the texturing, add normal maps etc.

Modelling done in Blender. Texturing done in GIMP. Thanks to Sketchfab for making it look far better than it actually is. xP

 

@Evil_Moo I like it a lot!!! =D Is pretty simple and would really love to use it in a game! Have you think on selling it or something?

 

@Evil_Moo - That's a pretty great morph ball.

Would be cool if you could play up the color shift on the edges and spread out the specular highlight and make it a bit more of a saturated yellow. Would sell it more as Samus armor, although I get maybe you are going for the shiny xmas ornament version.


Looking forward to seeing how you Xmas it up!

Not sure if he could legally sell the morph ball from Metroid on the asset store as his own.

 

Well here's a quick mock-up of my idea. A simple glass ball ornament, currently it's sitting near 1k verts, so probably need to cut it down a tad or get super creative with the actual scene for the inside!! I'm thinking of doing Mario for the inside. I hope to be able to do a few entries this time around seeing how it's higher stakes!!

 

I have similar idea what im working currently with the snow clobe thingy. Only the environment would be outdoors

Does this mean, that I cant use old photos what I took years ago to use to make my textures? Or how about Creative Common photos from internet?

I can make everything as handpainted from scratch but some phototexturing would help alot

Mixing two photos would be counted as a new (aka made from "scratch")?

Beginning of next week I finally get my interneeeeeet!! helps a alot do to this.. Currently I have downloaded from youtube like 20h of blender tutorials and being watching them and applying the skills to my xmas orniment object .

 

@Sazem - Photos/Textures previously taken or textures from various internet sources are not an issue. This rule is for the actual model. Meaning, you can't use anything you have previously modeled.

 

Hi, does it have to be one decoration only, or can it be(provided it remains within the total vert limit of 5k) a small collection of themed decorations, a set or three or five for example?

 

Nice to see some early activity in this thread

I made a start on my entry today and modelled the 'base' of my piece - Santa's Sleigh. Tried to keep the poly count fairly low, but splashed out a bit on some of the curves as I think the silhouette of the Sleigh is important to the final piece.


Of course this is just the start - there's no way I'd do just a traditional sleigh... but no spoilers yet!

 

@MrSoad - It can be as much objects as you want as long as your entry stays within the 5k vertices limit

 

That is great Thomas, thanks

 

@shaderbytes Oh right! I forgot not everyone knows what Glühwein is haha. I wonder if there are similar drinks in other countries thought.

Anyways, a day's worth of modeling:




I was also experimenting with the lighting a bit. I'm probably going to have to use unique UV's on everything if I want to pull this off though. Still need to add some extra details aswell. Luckily I'm not at the limit yet.

Some feedback for participants in general:

I think it's better to take it slow. You don't have to make a concept drawing or anything, but it is good plan out your idea. Then start blocking out shapes and finally move to adding more detail.

Also it's probably better to make 1 awesome piece than put your time into making several mediocre pieces. Just my 2 cents

 

@Sanderdl I love the look of this...can't wait to see the finished work!

 

Hey all, great stuff so far! Here's my entry for this Challenge: Zombie Santa.

Not quite done just yet. Still need to generally tune up the sculpt, and add his beard and the sack of brains over his shoulder. Going to be a fun one.

And good luck to everyone else! May the best decoration win!

 

@Sanderdl - That's looking nice right there! Good clean work. Keep moving mate

@BurnTheHorses - Not all that bad! Could use some more definition in the head/face area though and overall cleaning/refining.

 

Awesome sculpt! do you use ZBrush or 3D coat?

 

Hey thanks I appreciate it! I use Zbrush.

The latest changes to Zombie Santa. Now I just need to clean it up a bit, add the hat, sack of brains and a candycane sticking out of his back and it's ready to retopo and texture.

 

I still have a LOOOONNNGG way to go, but I've been walking through the process (Thanks for the guidance @Thomas Pasieka ), and decided to do a bake test, as well as learn the basics of SketchFab. Here is a quick test...

ANY feedback would be greatly appreciated...this is my first low res model/texture/etc. I am reasonably pleased with it so far, although the mesh could use some attention if it were to be animated.

 

@BurnTheHorses - Looks like it's coming together!

@bsj - You're doing just fine there mate! Looking good so far!

 

@bsj - Awesome work, man! I'm assuming you used Zbrush to sculpt it but what did you use the paint it? Excellent work, dude.

 

@BurnTheHorses - Thanks, man! I did use Zbrush....picked it up a few weeks ago, and have been painstakingly learning how to use it. I also used Lightwave for a few adjustments to the low-res model. I used Zbrush for the textures as well.

I stumbled across this video late last night:

http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/zbrush/baking_texturemaps/baking_texture_maps.html

I had to slightly adjust the process by creating a UV on the plane, and then applied the texture, and displacement maps, but most of what is described in the tutorial worked for me.

 

Work in progress, wanted to explore sketchfab. Will be adding alternate colors and the hook.

 

@bsj - Very informative tut! Looks like I might be using Zbrush to paint my zombie santa after all. Looking great so far. Can't wait to see the finished product.

@GreenGaruda - Awesome work, man! Penguins just happen to be my favorite animal, heh. Keep it up!

 

Oh thank you. Your's looked epic!. Oh, its your favorite, have some more.

 

Penguin power !

 

Nice, it remainds me of angry birds

 

Alright, so here's what I've got so far. It's basically a snow globe, with four rooms representing different things about christmas.

[sketchfab]c5cfcf50eef34258826261bc5a4167a9[/sketchfab]
Little Pieces of Christmas - (W.I.P) by Puolygon on Sketchfab

For some reason trying to embed the iFrame of the model didn't work, so I put in a direct link instead.

 

@GreenGaruda - Those are looking very cute mate! Well done

@ThAlmightyPixel - Try this: [ MEDIA=sketchfab ]yourlinkhere[ /MEDIA ]

@everybody - Come on guys! Join in and show what you can come up!

 

@Thomas Pasieka
I'll try it when I'm uploading the textured model, thanks!

 

I will be doing A christmas story using (all free soft) Anim8tor(block work), sculptris(High poly work), blender(retop)
This was always one of my favorite shows growing up being from Indiana.(fuuudge) (now its on every year all the time lol)

first block work
I wish everyone the best of luck and remember don't shoot your eye out!

 

8 Bits of glory. This was meant to have many other elements but it would of got been too big. So for now FEAR THE GOOMBA!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Trying my model in Sketchfab:

So far the model is unwrapped and uses 3 1024 maps.

 

Happy to see folks progressing here! @Sanderdl that's coming together nicely

 

That looks great!

 

2 more to go and then i'll make a new ornament.

 

Great work everybody .. Here is the WIP of my proper entry :

A prehistoric story of love, want, absolute NEED I cant relate to. I hope you can all see how badly I want that Unity 5 Pro licence for Christmas

The backplate is not my own so I still need to still do that myself + whatever else need touching up changing as I go along.

 

I will be using gameobject particle emission for my entry or entries. Here is first WIP pics

The ball is created from emitted objects from a normal sphere (aligned across normals) and the decorative items have wind simulation as they are also emitted from the sphere with a mask to only cover the lower part.

I simulated the wind and then copied the objects from play mode to the scene.

Can we run scripts in the 3D scetchfab btw ? Would be cool to have the wind enabled in the demo. Otherwise i will release a webplayer to accompany it i guess.

The next step is to emit some of my splines and enable object emission there too. That would make the emitted windy items much cooler. Some nice shaders are also in the making.

 

@nasos_333 I don't think Sketchfab supports scripts or particles but I'm pretty sure I've seen people use animation in it. So that might be something to look into.

@Thomas Pasieka @TheAlmightyPixel Thanks for the comments!

@GreenGaruda Super cute entries, I can actually imagine having those in our Christmas tree.

@shaderbytes Funny entry! That squirrle never actually seem to get what he wants though.

 

Thanks, i will see if there is a way to bake the wind animation in. I use objects for emission, and i could also emit quads to emulate particles i guess, with an extra emitter layer.

 

That is one way to look at it. Another is that no matter what he is always ready to try again and does not give up

As a Christmas tree ornament I thought it could actually be a practical two piece item. I was thinking instead of the name of whatever you want being on the acorn wall, there could be a string with a crocodile clamp hanging from the bottom of the acorn and you could then write a wish list note for "Santa" ( aka your parents or wife/husband ) and clamp it there on the tree .. with scrat hanging not to far away looking at the objects of desire of coarse.

 

Nice work everyone doing so far

Here's a small update on my entry. Spent the morning adding more detail to the front of my Sleigh (high poly version), which shows more of the direction I'll be heading in:



The concept is a steampunk (esque) Santa Sleigh - I like the idea of taking a very old and traditional looking sleigh and giving it an industrial makeover. Looking forward to balancing these 2 visual styles when I eventually move onto texture.

Of course, there's much more detail to come, just hoping I can manage to get it in there and keep it under this months budget. (My entire last scene almost fits under the 5k limit, so i'm quietly confident... but with so many round/curvy things in this piece I may have issues!)

 

My idea was to make Elizabeth from Bioshock Inifinite in mother christmas clothing and a SkyHook with candycane details riding down some chirstmas tree glitter. going to do the bakes and textures tonight.

 

@pett-ber - Very nice model and idea there Looking forward to seeing the textured version!

 

some quick basecolors to see if the idea works, dunno if im going to go with the "dead eyes plastic doll" look or if im going to go for something more alive.

 

better pose, going to work more on it later. any feedback?