In case you did not catch my Isengard WIP, you can check it out here. It may not be the most obvious thing to catch, but the camera is at treetop level. I want it to be down at eye level. For that, I will need more detailed trees than a bunch of alpha planes for the viewer to be looking through. I have tried at various times to develop a process to make trees that are more fitting for a fantasy scene than what I have been able to find on the various market places. This is the result of my latest attempt so far.

I wanted the process to be as procedural as possible. It's not there yet, but it looks kind of like this:

I created the basic shape of the tree by extruding vertexes, adding a skin modifier, sub-div, remesh, and adaptive sub-div. The trunk material is using actual displacement with bump mapping on top. I apply all of these, weight paint the branches, and use particles for the smaller branches with leaves.

Update

See the whole process here!

Just a little piece I put together this week. The idea was in my head for a little while. An insignificant pawn just playing the game.

A turntable animation showing a 360 of the Watch Tower scene recently featured on Blendernation.

A turntable animation of  my latest hobbit hole image. Check out the 2k still in my gallery. You'll need to view it straight from Youtube or on Instagram to get the full looping effect.

A time-lapse animation of progress on my latest finished work, Hobbit Hole. 

Part 1 has arrived!

Part one of the Blender tutorial Create a Scroll and Text Using Curves in Blender is available on YouTube! This video covers creating and modifying curves in Blender, as well as how to enable included add-ons. Please like and follow on YouTube if you found this helpful!

Up Next

The next video we will be covering the creation and manipulation of text in Blender and conforming it to the scroll.

A new Tutorial is Coming!

It has been some time since I have created any Blender tutorials. Creating a Sci-fi Resource Crystal was well received so I decided to do something similarly simple that may not be obvious to a beginner, or that could shed light on a new way of doing it to the intermediate Blender artist.

Stay Tuned

The tutorial drops here and on YouTube tomorrow!
  

Catching up

I started a new project in December that involves creating some armor pieces. I have been posting almost daily updates of the assets on Instagram and Facebook, but I am moving to Artstation blog as my primary place to post both WIP and final projects. Since this armor project is still a work in progress I will be catching you up on the progress so far with this post. Please like and comment! It is always great to hear input from other artists.

The Modeling Phase

Breast Plate

I modeled this breast plate after a type of Roman armor. It is mostly a bunch of planes bent the way I wanted the shape to look. Then I applied a solidify modifier and created the raised edges with a few added edge loops.

Helmet

I love the feather thing on this helmet. It's just a hair sim with fairly still and clumpy parameters.

Boots

The boots...sandals? Footwear is completely made up. I based these on a bunch of photos of modern sandals in an image search. Duckduckgo of course :)

Belt

The belt was a bit of a challenge. Since these are going to be part of a series of posters and I needed to make a belt that looks interesting. Hence the spiral curve and fur.

Shield

The shield is a close second to the belt on the challenge-o-meter. It's so simple that I was having trouble making anything but boring. Eventually banging it up and making some very worn textures were the ticket.

Sword

The sword is by far my favorite of the set. Not only the shape, but the way that the materials turned out. More on that in the next blog post. The tassel was something I just thought up. Again, for interest sake.