Spork in the road

Story time…lol.

My brothers and I were on a journey to new lands. The accommodations were cramped, but we made due. Keeping each other’s spirits up by telling stories of the many joys that lay waiting for us.

I awoke to more darkness from the latest leg of this odyssey. One of my brothers had informed me that our compartment had been moved at some point and we could hear others nearby.

The oldest of our brothers, Mark, was chatting to a voice in the darkness. Though I was still groggy and paying more attention to the new story Jack was telling to Kevin and George (he’s amazing at coming up with new stuff at a moment’s notice by the way), I caught bits and pieces of what the voice was telling Mark. Celebration, Holiday, and tomorrow were some of the parts that I wanted to hear more about, but Jack’s story was currently much more interesting.

The day dragged on, but I forgot to ask Mark later on about the conversation he had earlier. We spent our time as usual playing word games and conjuring wild stories about our future life until sleep was inevitable for all of us.

While usually a very heavy sleeper, searing pain awoke me from my slumber. I was laying face down on bars of fire. The heat was too much. I couldn’t open my eyes because one of those bars was placed across them. I thought they would boil and burst from the inferno below me. Trying to scream only forced the fire into my throat.

When the pain became too much, I passed out. I awoke the second time to the fiery bars burning into my back. I had been turned over while I was unconscious. The torture was unbearable, but at least I could now scream. It was then that it dawned on me that the screams ringing in my ears were not just my own. At least two of my brothers must be nearby and experiencing the same agony as myself.

What had we done to insult this new land to warrant such a punishment? Why had we been given no warning, no insight into our transgressions?

I screamed to the heavens in my pain and confusion. As if in answer, the sky opened with a blinding light. It was so bright that I had to close my eyes. But even with my eyes shut, the sudden and intense light seemed to burn into the back of my skull.

I could feel myself being lifted up into the air, away from the torment of the fire below. Had my pleas been answered? Was our suffering finally enough to please whoever was in charge here? At least we weren’t dead. I could at least be thankful for that.

Being gently placed into what felt like a soft bed, I was sure that our ordeal was finally over. A coolness was suddenly being draped over parts my burned skin. It was a slight relief and somewhat calmed my nerves slightly from the intense and horrifying experience from just moments ago.

My eyes had adjusted a bit and seemed ready to peer into this new world. I barely had time to notice the ruby and gold chains that held me down before the realization hit that our recent past was only a warm up to our impending future.

The opening chasm was closing the distance rapidly. I would never see my 7 brothers again.

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Sooo sooo sooo good, dude. lol Both the story and sculpt. I’m sad that I can only like it once. :hotdog:

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hahaha :rofl:

Didn’t realize again how long it has been since I updated here. As usual, this is going to take a while to get them all in. So many little sketches.

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I love your works!!! I would love to see these animated in a game! They are too cool!

Wow! Not to take anything away from your incredible character design, but the way you sculpt eyes is crazy. They look so real. I’d love to know you do that.

@KimjPinkney Thanks. If only I had an extra day in the day, I’d go back and animate a bunch of them myself. I want to see some of them speak.

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It’s probably not the best method, but it’s what I’ve done for many years, so it works for me. I’ve explained it before, but not in super detail, so I’ll kind of do that now.

Start by making two new spheres. The first move up one post subdivision to 6 and the second to post subdivision 7. Then validate both of them.

Make the second one invisible for now as I just focus on the first for a while. Go to the Symmetry tab and turn off X. Turn on Z and increase the radial to whatever you think is going to fit your specific eye (I used 16 for this example). Use the Move tool to pull in a small bowl to create the iris. I smoothed mine out a bit after this move.

Next, turn on Dynamic Topology and Subdivision. Using the Brush tool, carve out a quick pupil. Doesn’t need to be super deep, just enough to see that it’s there.

Now it’s time to go a bit further than necessary here (you can just skip to paint if you don’t want the extra poly count, but with as much as Nomad can handle I add it in in this instance even knowing no one will ever see the details). If you haven’t studied eyes, it’s best to pull up a reference here. Using the Brush tool, I bring the radius down to about 20 and start adding in the iris. With radial symmetry, this goes in much faster than the image makes it look.

Open up the color palette and find an off white with the roughness at about .5. Fill it in.

Using the darkest color of the eye you’re making (still the same roughness), paint in the Iris.

To paint in the pupil, use a solid black, roughness goes all the way down to 0 and metalness goes all the way up. Just spray it in there up to the inside of the iris.

Still using the Paint brush, go to the Stroke tab and opening Filter, down at the bottom is Depth Masking. Turn it on and raise the height offset to 92-94. Now using the lighter colors of the iris, this will put those in at the peaks of the iris you sculpted while keeping the darker valleys. You can really go all out here with the colors, I just used a slightly lighter brown for this example.

If your eye is going to be turned and looking in a direction other than straight forward, you can add in some of the redness around the eyes (remember to turn off depth masking). Here, you can also add in the lighter veins as well. That’s pretty much it for the main eye.

Now select that second sphere you made. Change the color to a solid white with the roughness at 0 and fill it in.

The final part is to go to the Material tab for the second sphere. Turn on refraction, and bring the index down to 1.02-1.03 or so. That’s pretty much it. Here’s the example with a small bit of SSS and some Post Processing turned on.

The whole process usually only takes a few minutes.

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:green_heart:
Wow! Thank you so much for the step by step tutorial. Some 1st time things in this for me, radial, dynamic topology, depth masking, ohhh very cool stuff. I’ve only used radial in the repeaters function.

Screenshot_20241205_121127_Nomad Sculpt
Screenshot_20241205_121242_Nomad Sculpt

Seriously, I appreciate you taking the time to share your method. I’m so psyched to be able to do this. It looks sooo good. Thank you again.

:notes: I always feel like, somebody’s watchin’ meeeee :notes:

Great guide, thanks to share :ok_hand:

@MTK426 Looks like your eye came out quite well. I thought it was pretty simple, at least for me anyway. Another way is to use an alpha and just pull it out. I just like to do my own since it’s only a few minutes.

And figured I’d update here before it takes forever to do over 20 again.

The original hand gun

Inverse dental curvature

Made a few more than expected recently, so just adding them into this post.

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Few more.

Tried to make a Santa

My translation of a few of Kevin Keele’s illustrations.

And a quick one of my own

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Few more.

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Your characters are always good, I really like your way of making the hair

Thanks. Never know with sketches if it will turn out decent or not. But, Nomad makes the process fun. The hair is actually pretty easy to do once you make the textures for it. Just start a new project. Create a hair with a tube. Clone it without validating it. Curve it slightly different from the first. Repeat a few times and group them. Then clone the group until you have enough for that texture. Change to the Normal MatCap. Render (you can either set the ratio in Nomad or crop it in another program). Change to Unlit (so the hairs are completely white), and make sure the background is completely black. Render again (same as above). Now you can use those as the maps for any tube you make to create any style you want and change the color with a fill or brush.

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And a few more

Without hair and with hair

Using the new Layer Blend modes in the web app. Can’t wait for the next update.

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Looks amazing, good job :innocent:

Love it all!

Thanks guys.

And a new update.

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A few more new sculpts.

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