ZkeleGnombi in a Pirate cove in a Bottle
Welcome to ZkeleGnombi in a Pirate Cove in a Bottle
The Zombie Gnome
Using the oportunity to create a halloween themed character, I knew it had to have a beard as a gnome, and a hat. The body I was undecided on until I combined a character creation blender lesson with an idea to model a skull that I had a few months prior, suddenly my concept was born.
I’m no professional writer, so let’s enjoy this journey as I unravel the creation of this piece while waiting for the first render to complete.
Now that I had the character, I had to figure out how to use blenders new hair system, without completing stalling out my 1050ti.
Intro ZkeleGnombi, the skeleton zombie gnome pirate
The Pirate Cove Diorama in a Bottle
As part of a drive to take my 3d skills to the next level, I found a little 2 hr speed modeling video by polygon runway of a pirate cove scene, now I love piratey things but this scene just struck me as one that would appropriately compliment my new Zombie(skeleton) Gnome character.
Was this a lesson in time management! What I expected to maybe take a few days, ended up taking weeks, as I refined every part of my creation, while picking up some new techniques. With my skill drive in mind, I have also started my library of procedural materials. My goal was to create substance3d like materials, like polygon runway uses in the video, although I do not have access to substance products. I took it on as inspiration to finally get a grip on creating beautiful materials for my creations.
A neat trick I picked up during the creation process, as the scene became more dense with triangles and procedural materials, I needed a way to optimize the framerate for animation playback and synchronisation. What worked well for me was isolating the individual objects being used in a particular part of animation and reducing all subdivsions in viewport, oh and disabling the hair from viewport but not from render. This allowed me to have an ok experience and somewhat sync up the animationsand audio.
The Scene
Stylized Pirate Cove in a Bottle & Stylized Pirate Cove not in a Bottle
Scene Stills
Title: 5550 Description: 5550 |
Title: 5555 Description: 5555 |
Title: 5556 Description: 5556 |
Title: 5558 Description: 5558 |
Title: 5559 Description: 5559 |
Title: 5560 Description: 5560 |
Title: 5566 Description: 5566 |
Title: 5567 Description: 5567 |
Title: 5569 Description: 5569 |
Title: 5579 Description: 5579 |
Title: 5580 Description: 5580 |
Title: 5581 Description: 5581 |
Title: 5582 Description: 5582 |
Title: 5590 Description: 5590 |
Title: 5591 Description: 5591 |
Title: 5594 Description: 5594 |
Title: 5595 Description: 5595 |
Title: 5597 Description: 5597 |
Title: 5598 Description: 5598 |
Title: 5599 Description: 5599 |
The Materials
Procedural Material Preview Image Gallery
| Terrain Materials | |
|---|---|
Title: BeachSand Description: Wavy beach sand with light pebbles. |
Title: Grass Description: Mossy grass |
Title: Concrete Description: Concrete for base. |
Title: Green Blue Edge Description: Green Blue Edge |
Title: Green Pink Edge Description: Green Pink Edge. |
Title: Green Yellow Description: Green Yellow |
Title: Green Yellow Edge Description: Green Yellow Edge. |
Title: Rock Description: Rock |
Title: Stone Description: Stone. |
Title: Water Description: Water |
| Character Materials | |
Title: Bone Description: Bone with damage marks |
Title: Hat Description: ZkeleGnombi's hat. |
Title: Beard Hair Description: A beautiful BeardHair. |
|
| Wood Materials | |
Title: Wood Stylized Description: The material used for tree trunks and architectural trim. |
Title: Wood Weird Description: A Woodward Wood Weird. |
Title: Wood Plank 1 Description: A wood plank unvarnished, sanded. |
Title: Wood Plank2 Description: A wood plank unvarnished, sanded, damaged. |
Title: Wood Plank 3 Description: A wood plank unvarnished, sanded, damaged. Darker bands |
Title: Wood Plank 4 Description: A wood plank unvarnished, sanded, damaged. Long grain. |
Title: Wood Plank 5 Description: A wood plank unvarnished, sanded, light damage. |
Title: Wood Plaster Conglomerate Description: A wood plaster conglomerate. |
Title: Wood 2 Description: A beautiful Wood2 captured in nature. |
Title: Wood 3 Description: A dark, wood. |
Title: Wood Plank Description: Boards on deck. |
Title: Wood Burned Description: A beautiful wood burned. |
Title: Wood Damaged Description: A beautiful damaged wood. |
Title: Wood Weathered Description: A weathered wood with stain. |
Title: Wood Weird 2 Description: A woodward weird wood. |
Title: Wood Wet Description: A wet wood wet. |
Title: Wood Painted Weathered Varnished Plank Description: Wood painted weathered varnished plank. |
Title: Wood WormEaten Description: A beautiful worm eaten wood. |
| Metal Materials | |
Title: Metal Red Description: An alternate pumpkin material. |
Title: Pewter Description: A outstanding Pewter used for the lamps. |
Title: Gold Treasure Description: Booty color |
|
| Others Materials | |
Title: Glass Bottle Description: Glass. |
Title: Plastic Stopper Description:Plastic Stopper/Cork. |
AI Generated Materials
The Jolly Roger chosen, is an AI generated image prompted by myself on streamer/game developer twitch channel. IrishJohnGames1
This image is one I have come to love and I feel makes an excellent Jolly Roger.
Animation
Stitching together quantum fabric, discovering teleportation mitigation tactics, engineering the coreography. All edits and keying by myself. Presets from Mixamo.
Project inception inspired through the character creation for AnthonyWheelerArt2 draw along Twitch Stream events during halloween.
Check out my devlog with some behind the scene previews
References