Darkopolis Creative Studio

Posatex TV Commercial

admin — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:14:48 +0000

Posatex TV Commercial

Client: Intervet Product: Posatex

Agency: Zed Graphic Communication, Turbosquid (Talent on Demand)

Duration: 41″

Director/3D: Kostas Yiatilis MacFarlane

Project info:

This is a TVC we did on a very tight schedule (1 week).

The product, an anti-infection solution for dog’s ears, has three main “agents” portrayed by the ninjas. Each ninja specializes in one kind of infection and all together they are Posatex.

The TVC starts with a shot of the ninjas entering the dog’s ear, then each one attacks their assigned infection, we move fluidly from one to the next until finally they gather up for a “group” shot.

Technical info:

Kostas handled everything from pimping up the main model to sound editing (the model was purchased from Turbosquid by the client, since project was done through their Talenet on Demand service), but needed some additional details like fabric folds which were handled with ZBrush.The default Scanline renderer was used in order to get things done on time and biped was used for rigging.

The whole production lasted less than 10 days, including initial communication, storyboards and final delivery. Then a few more days were spent re-rendering in HD (720p) in order to deliver a higher quality file and fix any issues according to feedback from the client.

Final TVC was 41 seconds with more than half of that containing ninja character animation and some shots contained more than one characters.

Total Shots: 9 (less than a day per shot, closer to 2 shots per day)

Video will be available shortly

Casino in Hotel

admin — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:10:10 +0000

Casino in Hotel

A casino in a hotel we made as a demo for a real-time project. We are currently working on the real-time version using Unity 3.0

Project included a 3 minute walk-through starting from the Hotel Lobby, Restaurant, Shows and finally the Casino Area.

Based on a real casino in a real hotel.

Nikos Ganos – Poso akoma – Music Video

admin — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:07:28 +0000

Project: Nikos Ganos – Poso akoma – Music Video

Label: Heaven,

Director: Antonatos Giorgos

Services:

Modeling,
Texturing,
Animation,
Simulation,
Rendering

We worked on the video clip of and up and coming artist here in Greece called Nikos Ganos. We provided a total of 5 shots. The job was done on a pretty tight schedule (3 days).

Below you can see video.

The Quest for Gemstone Dragon – RPG

admin — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 11:21:09 +0000

The Quest for Gemstone Dragon

The Quest fro Gemstone Dragon is a flash based CRPG game we worked on a few months ago.

It was released for web a couple of months ago and now it is also available for Windows as a standalone app.

Finally a demo is also out.

Project Services:

The team here at Darkopolis CS started out doing some monsters and NPCs for the game and continued on with some neat backgrounds.

We also made quite a few inventory items, both their animated in-game and backpack versions.

From Orcs, wizards, blacksmiths to small villages, huge castles and dungeons and even spell animations – we did it all.

Konstantinos is the Greek developer, who funded the game on his own and although he is Greek we met online.

Working with him was fantastic and we know he liked our work, here are some quotes:

“Absolutely perfect results and communication. Very professional work.”

“Koyima provided excellent 3D design and rendering services once again. I am very satisfied with the final project deliverables and communication.”

“Excellent work and professionalism. The underground and outdoor scenes requested were delivered in time with perfect final results.”

“Koyima presented excellent communication and daily updates. His expertise on the subject and quality of his work have exceeded my expectations. I would recommend this provider without hesitation to anyone requiring 3D modeling and animation services.”

You can find all this at the game’s site: http://www.gemstonedragon.com/

Screenshots:

The Incredible Hulk – Extreme Make-Over

admin — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 11:16:46 +0000

The Incredible Hulk – Extreme Make-Over

Isidore from Art in sight contacted me because he wanted to take his Poser work to new levels using tools like 3dsmax and zbrush. The request was for a tutorial showing a Poser to 3dsmax to zbrush and back to 3dsmax again. I used his base hulk made in Poser with Michael 4 and recorded a video tutorial showing the whole process – exporting, uv-unwrap changes, sculpting, texturing, shading and rendering settings were all covered.

Since then we have worked on further projects intended to enhance his illustrations of superheroes and his work has been published on the front page of the Poser website and become Daily Deviations on DeviantArt bringing in a slew of commissions for custom art.

You can check out Isidore’s site at: http://www.artinsight.gr/ and

Please check out our Tutorial Section under Services for more info on Custom Tutorials.

Reaper Machines – Gaming Rigs Custom Art

admin — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 11:13:44 +0000

Reaper Machines – Gaming Rigs Custom Art

This is a project completed about a month ago concerning art to be used on PC cases, laptops, related accessories and merchandise with the Reaper as a theme.

I was asked to create 4 images: Reaper, Reaper Woman, Reaper Infant and the Reaper Castle for a site related to reapers – use of the images was not mentioned, nor clarified. As our studio has previous experience with reapers and related “dark” content we were selected. After some initial concepts done to determine the style of the series work begun on the final images.

The images were completed within 2 weeks including tweaks, changes and the brainstorming/discussions we had. After the completion of the first two images the idea that these images would also be printed was introduced, so the next images were made at higher resolutions and the decision to make the previous 2 images meet the same requirements was made.

You can find more info about the Reaper Gaming Machines on their site: www.reapermachines.com

Just check out this quote:

“Highly recommend! Excellent and very professional job. Great creativity. Well worth the higher cost. All our entire professional staff can say is “WOW, What an artist!”

—dpeckham

NOTE: We didn’t design the website, front page or the application of the images on the products.

Prodigy Knights Cinematic Intro

admin — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 11:07:56 +0000

Prodigy Knights Cinematic Intro

This is a project we completed about a month ago through Turbosquid – Talent on Demand. The initial idea was to have a knight with a dark forest behind him and lightning flashing. After talking to the client a horse was added and new concept art was done. The project took over a month to complete (including final tweaks, mokup website, flash intergration). The project was initially planned using VRay, but in the end we used 3dsmax’s default Scanline renderer.

Except from the knight and his horse we had to tackle animated trees, fire, rain, water drops, lightning and we also had initial renders with fog on the ground and water trails on the knight and horse. After test rendering we had to remove some effects to achieve our goal in time.

Matchlings – iPhone/iPod/iPad Game

admin — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 11:04:41 +0000

Matchlings – iPhone/iPod/iPad Game

Taking the classic match 3 game and adding a twist, no more lifeless objects, now you have to match up animated characters with real characters of their own. Special moves, weird tastes and a magic stars to complete the mix.

In the spring of 2010 we finished work on the graphics for the iPad version of the game Matchlings. Last year we worked and completed the graphics for the iPhone/iPod version.

The lovable fury critters got a revamp, re-render and some real 3D fur this time in order to take advantage of the iPad’ s superior screen and obviously the enhanced resolution found in the newly available iPhone 4G.

We made 8 Characters and their animations. Initial concept art was provided as ideas for the faces and expressions these were then transferred to full body characters. Variations were made and 2 characters were replaced and thrown out – poor little things. So 10 characters in total, over 80 animations and special moves reaching from one edge of the screen to the other.

Turn around for the first version was pretty fast with work completed within 2-3 weeks, although some additional moves, tweaks and the addition of 2 new characters extended this deadline. Second pass for the iPad version although pretty much the same had an important new addition: Fur. This fur really had problems rendering at resolutions of 100×100.Promotional images, logos etc were also made using the in0game assets for both the iPhone/iPod and iPad versions of the game.

The game has been released on all iOS platforms.

Check out the Matchlings website here: http://www.matchlings.com

Tutorial – How to make a conforming Net in 3dsmax

admin — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 13:03:58 +0000

Tutorial – How to make a conforming Net in 3dsmax

This works with any type of object you might want to conform onto
something. For instance I have also used it to make chainmail and you
can also use it to conform any complex form using a simpler Guide form.

The idea is that that we will make two objects: one is the final
object and the other is the guide object. We do all our deformations,
simulations etc on the Guide object and use SkinWrap to transfer them to
the final – high resolution- object.

The steps are shown here:

The modeling of Chaos – 20Hours VTM – Free Download

admin — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 12:56:18 +0000

The modeling of Chaos by K.Y. MacFarlane is a 20 hour real-time video tutorial made primarily to show the process without skipping parts.

Hi guys,

I decided to give this to the community for free, since the original publisher vanished without trace and it can’t be bought I think it should at least be available in some sort of formal release.

UPDATE: Lesson 10 Updated, small issue with the file resolved.

Although this tutorial is 2 years old now, the issues and work-flow have stayed mostly the same. Some nice tips on modeling, sculpting and texturing as well as rendering settings and material setups. A must have for any 3dsmax modeler since it covers the whole process from start to finish.

Telling me what you think with a comment would be much appreciated, since I spent over a week uploading. Now I contemplated uploading to my own server, but the speed there isn’t good for downloading huge chunks of data so I decided on Rapidshare. If people ask for it though I will upload to HotFile and my own server (ask for it in the comments here).

Next up my “Make Santa in 3 hours” Video showing: modeling, rigging and materials in 3 hours, made for an illustration I had to make.

Images:

Links:

NOTE: You have to download all parts (for each lesson) since they are part of the same archive, once downloaded you can use WinRAR to unzip them

THE MODELING OF CHAOS:

Lesson 00 – Concept Art:

Since no concept sketch was provided and a promotional video was required I did this quick sketch, showing the process in Photoshop.

RapidShare Link:

DOWNLOAD LESSON 00

HotFile Link:

DOWNLOAD LESSON 00

Lesson 01 – Base Mesh Modeling 01 – 2 Hours:

Starting with making our reference plates using a real human and then going into making the base mesh in 3dsmax, this lesson shows my way of making the base mesh. Through my modeling experience I have deduced the face topology to a box with a certain amount of segments that allow efficient and fast modeling of the face and it’s proportions as well as the edge loops required for animation. Having the front view and side view in one full view-port and the use of SubD to do all the work for us.

RapidShare Links:

HotFile Links:

Lesson 02 – Base Mesh Modeling 02, UVW Unwapping and Sculpting 01 – 2 Hours:

Adding the ear and a few more things. Unwrap using pelt and import into ZBrush for Sculpting pass 01.

RapidShare Links:

HotFile Links:

Lesson 03 – Sculpting 02 – 2 Hours:

In this lesson we do the main sculpting and finish it up, in hind-sight I would go wild here. We explore some sculpting ideas and workflows.

RapidShare Links:

HotFile Links:

Lesson 04 – Texturing 01 – 2 Hours 2 Mins:

Here we make changes to the unwrap (relax) in order to take care of the changes done during sculpting and start texturing. Skin is the first pass.

RapidShare Links:

Lesson 05 – Texturing 02 – 2 Hours 6 Mins:

Here we finish up the skin and start on the lava part of the character. We follow the sculpt and create the unique feature of our character.

RapidShare Links:

Lesson 06 – Texturing 03 – 2 Hours 38 Mins:

Fixing seams and finailizing the texture in photoshop.

RapidShare Links:

DOWNLOAD LESSON 06

RapdidShare Links in Parts:

Lesson 07 – Back into 3dsmax – 2 Hours 9 Mins:

Going back into 3dsmax, but first a trip to zbrush to use the final texture in order to get some fine detail sculpted using the texture. Basic render setup in 3dsmax.

RapidShare Links:

Lesson 08 – Mouth Interior, Eyes – Modeling – 2 Hours:

Some things we have to build in order to complete the head are modeled. Some rendering.

RapidShare Links:

Lesson 09 – Mouth Interior, Eyes, Chaos Star – Texturing 2 Hours:
Some things we have to build in order to complete the head are now UV-Unwrapped and Textured. Some rendering.

RapidShare Links:

Lesson 10 – Transition to 3dsmax 2009, Final Tweaks, Gamma Correction:
So we transfer the scene to the latest 3dsmax and make a few changes. We render some shots and go into Photoshop to play with Gamma, Exposure and such, finally doing some bold color grading closing the tutorial.

RapidShare Links:

DOWNLOAD LESSON 10

Thanks

Kostas Yiatilis MacFarlane