CG Environments by Sascha Henrichs

Game art student bullfrog

2012-01-23T03:36:00.003+01:00

hey, i also submitted a game art student bullfrog quote, and they created it on their page hrhrhr ;)
ok never mind the typo

see it here on the original page

http://gameartstudentbullfrog.tumblr.com/post/15604159583/submitted-by-anonymous

Shotgun Concept for course Art_II_2010

2012-01-19T22:46:00.002+01:00

i made this concept of a sci fi shotgun during a gun modeling session at games academy with course Art_II_2010.

still i find the handle very clumsy as also some of the deco elements. i'm not that good at shading, so it was also a metal shading lesson for me.
anyway for some reason it has a flag in the background, which i stole from the net.

1st school4games workshop result

2012-01-15T22:47:00.000+01:00

it was a wonderful basic modeling workshop.
we modeled an assassins creed sword.
was not really enough time to go into texturing that deep. in fact a day was missing for covering this in more detail.
here is the result:

we used the concept from this site:
http://assassinscreed.wikia.com/wiki/File:Artwork_Yataghan_Sword.jpg

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the next workshop will be at 18.-20.May 2012! be there!

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tutorials gone

2012-01-11T04:30:00.000+01:00

hi mates, i know it's ages since i posted my last tutorial, but i had 2 nearly finished ones on my disk.
that disk, that crashed some days ago... all is gone.. the axe tut as also one on making a siege bow..
that's a couple of damn shits...

Yes, but how many polygons? (via Rick Stirlings "rsart"-Blog)

2012-01-02T01:12:00.001+01:00

Rick Stirling wrote an article about polycounts that are used for ingame assets.
it is an eyeopener for all beginners, but also professionals.
since some of us might work for ages on the same platform, it might bring you some insight for other platform polycounts.

check it out, click on the picture or the link!

http://www.rsart.co.uk/2007/08/27/yes-but-how-many-polygons/

Art_I_2010 lighting challenge

2011-12-23T04:13:00.002+01:00

we made some mental ray lighting exercise with a model we created in another course.
the blog post for the other course i will post later, when i finished the piece we started there

here are some pics from the students from the rendering course. see my approach as the last picture

(Svenja)

(Tom)

(Oliver)

(Benjamin)

(me)

art_II_2010. Lava landscape.

2011-11-26T20:52:00.001+01:00

in 2 days we made this lavalandscape in UDK. the first part of the lecture was about setting up shaders (the lava shader) in UDK and sculpting stones.

after that each student got a task to do some assets for the scene. one task was: understanding and setting up a sky and distance fog in udk, one task was to create textures, one was for creating stones and so on.
we also had a golem and sound and great looking particle effects in there.

particles and lavashader were animated. there was also heat flicker particles.
every student had to do his own research on how to solve his tasks in UDK.

we even had a student who managed to create and implement a great background sound that underlined the presence of the lavastream and the lava fountains.
anyway there was not enough time to tweak textures, lighting, environment colors and objektplacing

but after all a very fun lecture and a great effort for two days.

Art_I_2010 Medieval Axe lecture

2011-11-24T20:05:00.001+01:00

yeah..we only had one day. therefore we took the infamous axe..
sculpting and painting fun in mudbox

Art_I_2010 Leveldesign

2011-10-17T02:53:00.001+02:00

nothing fancy here. we had a leveldesign class and i forced the students to create some "fast" and rough assets to play with in the UDK. here are some examples.

sascha

we had only one day and a 3/4 for making assets and create some scene with them. the other quarter of the day was used to see how speedtree works.

sarah
the landscape and houses were also all done from scratch. we only used some few assets from UT

kevin

the task was to place objects in an urban area. there were some placing rules they had to follow and it worked out quite good.

also it can be seen, that weather and atmosphere effects are essential for a believable scene

tom

new tut coming ahead - medieval axe for ingame use

2011-08-23T02:10:00.000+02:00

[Update]

The vids are done, and they are an amazing length of 7:45 hours. o_0
so i'm sorry. the editing will take a while. i don't want to go over 1 hour or so. maximum 2 hours.
but the most of the work is the voice narration. since i do this always afterwards.
cu l8er

[/Update]

a new tut will be born next month, this tut will be much longer than my other tuts.
and it will cover the complete creation of a medieval axe for ingame use within mudbox and 3dsmax and baked with xnormal. also using ptex inside mudbox.
unfortunately the preview video is very low quality. see the below mudbox render for a detailed look at the NOT finished axe. in the end there will also be some fabrics around and stuff. for sure the surface qualities cannot really be displayed in the still.

it will be the first tut i will sell for a dime. but it wont be much more than a donation of 5 bucks and it can be bought via paypal. so don't fear i'm going nuts on bucks ;)in exchange you will get valuable hints for sculpting ancient hammered metals, creating the speculars and blackened diffuses and also some additional tricks about sculpting wood. and also a complete workflow from basemesh to final ingame mesh, but that won't be something new to you.
so i hope i won't piss you off mates! see u in hell!

Art_II_2010 Floorpanel

2011-07-10T17:39:00.009+02:00

[UPDATE]
i smashed some geometry features into the floor panel. it works way better now
however, now it could even use some more geometry over the lights.
here's the pic..

[\UPDATE]

all courses have to go through it: floor panel creation.
and yes this panel would need some 3d features in it to be a cool panel.sorry for this fail.
all in all not a very satisfying result

anyway for the sake of completeness i will post a screen of it
here it is in the same environment like the last panel.

i planned to make a panel with tracks for vehicles, but those tracks should also have a 3d representation and not only some normalmap features.
also there's lack of dirt in the diffuse. especially in corners and cavities.
so when your 3d features in a floor panel are very prominent, then better use a unique 3d mesh for it instead of only a plane.

Yet another floorpanel .. Art_I_2010

2011-06-26T23:01:00.002+02:00

yeah a hardsurface modeled floorpanel that is in 3dsmax and in UDK
diffuse, spec, normal, selfillumination
UDK scene spiced up with some models from the udk package. only the floor panel was selfmade

painting was the fun stuff!
again we made the treadplate only in photoshop. the rest was baked. used plenty of floaters and baked their AO seperately

Bunker P-24 with Art_II_2010

2011-06-03T02:13:00.003+02:00

another one. now pimped with rebars, which i made afterwards. not enough time in the lecture again.
anyway. the rebars are now 5 sided but could easily made 4 sided without much loss of shading.

3 sided is difficult when you do not bake it..well i dont even know if you could bake a round cylinder flawless onto a 3 sided cylinder to fake its roundness. it should be no problem but i remember some difficulties when trying this ages ago.

also this prop screams for debris and broken concrete parts dangling on the rebars. the destruction comes not very believable without that.

Bunker-P23 made with Art_I_2010 Berlin

2011-05-15T01:07:00.001+02:00

jo here is another bunker. unfortunately no rebars and rubble..time slipped away.
was only a 2 day lesson.

I used the xoliul post shaders the first time, and overdone everything :D
oh and don't do that at home, that was a "sculpting and baking" lesson to show how to sculpt cool concrete features and use xnormal.
we sculpted a whole bunker and baked it to a 2048..
question: "who would do that in production?"
answer: "no one."

Saloon Room in Art_II_09

2011-05-02T01:10:00.000+02:00

this scene is made by the course ART_II_09 i made nearly nothing for it. the students made all the assets.
though many of the assets are fairly simple, it was a fun course and we can be proud for realising a nearly complete scene in 2 days of lecturing. started from zero.
we also brought all the assets into the UDK. but static lighting was too much for me. i got some really bad errors..so here only an UDK editor shot.

Storeroom

2011-04-17T12:31:00.001+02:00

this one was done during the last lecture by me while students worked on their assets.
i will push this scene a bit further. got some drive on this. perhaps i'll put it into UDK

currently only mr render. only final gather with some glare.
i made heavy use of supporting edges and used only tileable textures with bumpmaps,
ah and of course a dirtmap
ah this was the reference pic. it's taken from indecay.com

Art_I_09 Asylum Scene

2011-04-16T18:54:00.000+02:00

the purpose of this lecture was to give every student an asset to create and then smash all those objects into one scene (the room was also done by the students) and see how the textures and the colors behave and work together.
surpisingly most textures worked without much color correcting.
so nearly all assets were done by the students!

the main goal of this lecture was only a shorty, since i wanted to show how to color- and contrastcorrect textures after you get a bunch of them from different people.
unfortunately the screegrabs are quite dark.

i only created a cardboard box, a cupboard and some planks in a rush

Vray Lava Shader Animation

2011-03-23T16:37:00.002+01:00

here's the promised animation.
one electric noise in there is animating too fast, but i was too lazy, to chase him :)
so here it is

it has also a mesh displacement componentand is it's fully procedural.it uses also the blurs' "electric" map.
rendertime is long. a 640x380 frame is about ~5 minutes with medium quality rendersettings. because the procedural maps use much computing power.
there are still much flaws in there. but was best i could achive in that limited time back in the day.

Get the scene here

i do not claim that this material or scene and rendersettings are very rendertime efficient.
ther could be some major flaws in there. textures of the rocks not included.
however i put the blurplugins and the warp texture into the rar file.
these are made by Blur and John Burnett
you need to install them, and of course you need Vray

Lava Vray Shader - from the "Risen"-Outro

2011-03-23T00:10:00.000+01:00

yeah, i just found that in my backup folders. it's a shader i made for the "risen"-game outro.
its full animated and all. i will post an animation later and the shader later.

3dsmax Basics Tutorial - Solving the Preferences

2011-03-13T23:04:00.003+01:00

hi finally a new tutorial.
it is another shorty with 10 minutes.
check it out, if you want to learn about basic settings in the 3dsmax preferences.

target audience:
-3dsmax beginner
-game artists

coverage is:
- 3dsmax preferences
- 3dsmax Main UI and Navigation
- Units

preferences for high quality rendering are not discussed.
cheers

Modeling a "Beijing Stadium"-like structure - Birds Nest

2011-03-13T11:29:00.001+01:00

yesterday i wondered, how to model the beijing stadium

but after trying i didnt find the solution by myself :/ so thats what you get with 12 years industry experience..lol...then i found this brilliant tutorial by simon moire check this out!
http://simonmoir.blogspot.com/2010/12/design-by-many.html
i tried it and this is what came out..all a bit sloppy but the technique worked.

i hoped for a more accurate solution but you will learn something about nurbs, surface deform modifier and shapes. so interesting enough to give it a try!

Worn out metal surfaces in Mudbox

2011-03-09T14:23:00.001+01:00

An example of old metal surfaces, sculpted and painted in Mudbox. specular made with photoshop.

You see the main effect is achieved through the specular map which basically masked out the rusty areas on the metal. just take your diffuse and darken the red rusty areas so that they wont display any specular effects. then desaturate and lower its brightness. then save this as your new specular map.
I plan to create a short tutorial on creating forged old metal surfaces. sculpting and texturing.

just another cave session, Art_II_09

2011-01-30T01:19:00.003+01:00

cave entrance lecture flavoured with UDK import and speedtree. course Art_II_09
the cave entrance was modelled with support edges around the corners, for that one smoothgroup could work on it.
2 materials used with 1024 textures

this technique is a bit more poly heavy but allows good use of tilable textures with 1 smoothgroup and preservation of shape inside the modeling structure.
however it would do better with more deep mesh cracks in it and here and there more geometry to give shape to the main features, since they are really blocky.
this particular location wouldn't be finished until smaller rocks, grasses and trees were added.

wire

realtime viewport shader

the UDK part, however, is noobish again since i got no good looking outdoorlighting.
its not that easy. i really got to learn it...
speedtree editor was taught and speedtrees were also imported.

all in all i hope it was a relaxed and nice lecture not only for me :)

Changes

2011-01-09T15:28:00.004+01:00

WHOAA !!!! new colors, new shape and all new and all awesome..

and the best comes right now!!

NEW FANCY RATING BUTTONS!!!

i can see you going wild on this right now and you cannot wait for new cool stuff coming for you to rate..

but meanwhile waiting for my crazy updates, how about leaning back and taking a nice calm look at all the older posts and rate them! they will like you for that!

so guys and girls, see you in a while with more new and kewl blogposts!!!

i wish you all well!!! cu!

Speedtree and modeling lesson @ Art_I_09 Berlin

2011-01-08T19:28:00.002+01:00

hey jo, again NO eyecandy this time 0_0..oh no, how could that be?
well, we had some serious modeling going on...it was a cave entrance, that was very time consuming but also fun to model. and then we had several hours of exploring speedtree..

nervertheless we also did some highly interesting stuff! we imported our cave entrance into speedtree and then used it as a force to deform a speedtree that were actually liana!
what should i say, it worked like a charm.
i hope you students got some nice insights and the lecture was a success for u!

here's just a shot from speedtree to show you the liana that hang around in the cave...

ah in the end we imported all the stuff into the UDK, but we only had one hour to do so and therefore it was done in a hurry and with no nice lighting effects.
we placed the cave entrance into a landscape and cut some terrain away. placed all materials on the terrain and walked this stuff..but that was nothing remarkable..

Art_I_09_FRA, Unreal Dev Kit Nature Scene

2010-12-19T17:55:00.002+01:00

The next part of last lecture included landscape modeling and texturing in UDK but also again making trees in Speedtree, and importing and placing assets into the level. we also tried to make grass with speedtree, but with lighting probs.
we also made swimmable water and some kind of "prematured" underwatereffect.
all in all we had some trouble getting good lighting settings w/o GI. and last but not least, color tweakng was skipped...we could have easily had one more day on this..so basics were done and set up but no eyecandy this time......
here are some shots..

Frankfurt Nature Assets, course Art_I_09_FRA

2010-12-04T19:22:00.000+01:00

We created som nature assets and i also taught how to use speedtree.
we also had some time to put a tree into the UDK engine.
in 2 weeks we will finish a small landscape in the UDK with all those assets.
here are the small nature objects, rendered lowpoly in mudbox with normalmap and diffuse

Course Art_II_09, Industrial Scene

2010-10-25T04:08:00.000+02:00

here another course and another industrial scene...
yes its rendered with mental ray. but a lighting like this can also be achieved with unreal engine.
the scene is not optimized with ~50000 tris. but lots of instanced geometry. and the overall tricount can easily be reduced to 30000.
these are all tileable maps
for sure i pimped it after the lecture and i will still change some things in it for a final picture. there are lots of flaws in it

Course Art_I_09 a bunker room

2010-10-09T20:54:00.002+02:00

this time we created a room. its an industrial setting and you can see the reference below.

it not good lit at all..we only used one crappy light and the xoliulshader.
all mats have both normal and specular. the concrete was sculpted in mudbox. all other normalmaps were done with the cool photoshop scripts from Teddy Bergsman
we used terminating edges for the corners and hard edges, then we placed only one smoothgroup on the walls. that was a bit expensive for the polycount but it looked way better. i love this technique. and no, its no standard chamfer. 2 extra edges are applied close besides every corner. the moddle edge dont have to be moved in.
then place 1 smoothgroup over all. this way, the normalmap can work very well around the corner.

heres the reference..we didnt take it very far though. ... :/
its from http://indecay.com
a great ressource for references of industrial decay!

tileable stone tests..

2010-09-13T23:39:00.003+02:00

jo hi, i just tried out a modeling technique for tileable stone textures. i used supporting edges around the corners, and then gave everything the same smoothing group.the meshes are not optimized then, so quite many polys here. the result is not that cool how i hoped for.
there are 5 different materials all on the same mesh. 1 diffuse, 1 normal, one specular.
always 2 lights with realtimeshader in 3dsmax viewport. no shadows, only ambient occlusion was on.

most of the time you will need to create tileable stonemaps in games, at least, when you're into open world games.
because the unique mapped meshes have a limitation of size, since the pixels get very large, when the prop is scaled. therefore you need tiles, to keep a reasonable texelsize.
so the cons about tileables are: seams, not very defined and blotchy geometry, therfore not readable.

so here i tried a technique, which should give the model a more defined and readable look by using supporting edges around meshcorners and then apply only 1 smoothing group to all

conclusion: when the mesh is optimized, this modeling techique can work,you will get slighty rounded corners.which can be made more solid, the more near you place the supporting edges to your corner edge.
absolutely inevitable is ambient occlusion shadow, which will give your model the depth it needs to read it well. all bigger engines will give you realtime AO shadows ingame.
if not available, a workaround could be dirtmaps in mapchannel 2 to fake AO. but thats much work.

btw. if you want to test my maps, or use them, then down them here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6300026/Stone_Tests.rar
have phun, i share them for free. give credit to me, if you use them, although the specs are very crappy.

Art_I_09_FFM, Industrial conctruct, leveldesign

2010-09-13T06:05:00.003+02:00

jo this one is a late posting of a thing we made in frankfurt with the art_i_09_ffm at august, 26.-28., 2010
its an industry structure made with tileable maps.
the lecture was to make a leveldesign element with tileable maps.

the whole geometry is 18000 triangles.. which is reasonable for a showcase.
see the concept and reference below.

Schnupperkurs Sept. 2010

2010-09-12T03:37:00.000+02:00

hi there, here another "schnupperkurs" weapon..we only made a lowpoly model. no uv's, nor texture..
its the "district 9 - assault rifle"
see it here..

and here the real weapon, weta made

Stone altar - 3d concept sketch

2010-09-01T21:55:00.000+02:00

this one is a stone altar thingy in mudbox done for training purpose.
only highpoly with texture nothing baked.. ~2h
you wont see this one in any game.

Stone Altar - Concept 3d Sketch from Sascha Henrichs

Time managment

2010-09-01T19:23:00.001+02:00

hi there, heres an update concerning non graphic related stuff..
i searched for a good time managment software that fit my need and is all FREE!
now i found something, and i can only appreciate it and encourage you to use it!

this software will track right EVERYTHING you do on your computer and puts it in bar graphs.
The log-on time will be tracked, every software will be tracked, when and for how long you used it.
even the files you work on and the sites you visit will be tracked.
percentages will be computed. and week and monthly summaries can be reviewed.

its very powerful and easy to use and understand.

so visit http://www.manictime.com/ now and check out your computing behaviours!

Pimp My Gun - an online gun creation tool

2010-08-23T18:12:00.005+02:00

here's something i came across through my colleague Dietrich Magnus.
its an online tool, where you can build your own gun designs.

Pimp My Gun
http://pimpmygun.doctornoob.com/

(usage: press play on top of the site. if the application does not load,

use the google chrome browser. that worked for me)

see my gun here:

Schnupperkurs July 2010

2010-08-13T01:32:00.001+02:00

jo here is a small nade we made (<-rhyme) in the "schnupperkurs"..(a course to advertise for the games academy)
its a so called "flash bang"..i pimped it a bit, since there was not enough time to make it "nice" in the course itself. we just managed to make the model and some kind of diffuse. but no normalmap and spec..nor presentation or lighting...its with xoliulshader, captured from 3dsmax viewport

Tinker - P20 / highpoly painted

2010-07-06T05:21:00.000+02:00

jo here the painted version.
the sphere element in the middle has no striped spec painting yet

Tinker - P20 / highpoly

2010-07-04T22:20:00.000+02:00

jo here is how far i advanced with my "tinker" yet..,, its the highpoly, and its nearly all uvmapped yet. i will paint the highpoly and then also bake the diffuse

Art_II_09..also leveldesign and some bunkerstuff

2010-07-03T22:34:00.000+02:00

jo, also this course was a victim of my leveldesignclass. and we also created a cityscape.
since this was the second lecture of this type for me, i used some cool ideas for objects, that the students from art_i_09 invented before, like the sunblinds and angled buildings

then we had a small lecture in lighting, for which we used the box sample i also explained on this blog before.
and even after this we made a small concrete quickie but without rebars, because the time ran out then..

Art_I_09 Leveldesign in Berlin

2010-07-03T22:23:00.001+02:00

jo this time we had a small lecture in objectplacing.
for that we made a scene of boxes that should represent a city, and placed even smaller boxes in there that represent city objects. we placed the objects, so that smaller objects always stand besides bigger objects, and tried to create a nice and lively city scene.
the way we developed the city layout (with boxes) is exactly how we layout cities in my main job at piranha bytes. we place boxes, and then put them in a game environment to check distances and shapes/outlines of the cityscape.

we also used the hardware viewport effects of 3dsmax, to see lighting effects in realtime.

the next thing we made, was yet another grass, because we didnt make grass in this course yet.

even after this we had another few minutes, where we created some barbedwire...
yes its stuff that everybody needs to know ;)

art_II_09, an epic sandstone and some grass

2010-06-22T04:27:00.000+02:00

jo this course also got a lecture in stonedisplacements, but also in alpha grass.
see the results here.

The stones got some nice sandstone color

and 3d grass always needs some dark AO painted in the middle of the texture, so that it wont look flat, when placed in groups!

art_I_09. a broken bunker entrance of concrete..

2010-06-22T02:17:00.000+02:00

yay, this on was alot of fun! its some crumbling concrete, HOW AWESOME THAT IS!! well, at least me likes this type of fun... :D

art_I_08..this time a puddle and a stone

2010-06-22T02:00:00.002+02:00

o jo here another lecture about stones and puddles..it was fun and hopefully educational??
anyway, this was what we did:

The stones were made using the procedural displacement technique, thats also shown in the tutorials.

And the puddle was just a sculpt and a paint in mudbox. also the spec was painted in there.
then the maps were applied to a quad poly, which was then placed onto a landscape mesh

Gothic 3 Preproduction - Desert

2010-06-11T16:14:00.010+02:00

- If you want to see the final technique i used for the dunes in 3dsmax, watch this Tutorial -

This is a series of screenshots from an early "Genome"-Engine built.

My task was to prototype a desert like landscape.

the rocks were "dirty" boolean objects. and the sanddunes and mapping was done by using patch grids in 3dsmax.

it took quite a while, since i found an appropriate way to build dunes in 3dsmax.

the engine was not able to give shadow or anything at this point of develpment

though the rocks were nicely shaped, they took too much geometry, and were also dirty geometry. so we didnt take them. in the end i made rock displacements in 3dsmax, and then stiched them to the dunes by hand. the sand2rock transitions were then done by vertexcolors

we colored the screens in photoshop to get a feel, what works and what does not.

Ralf Marczinczik made this nice mood paint of the desert setting. i was not able to get this look in the engine though....well, i was young and noobish ;)

Risen stuff

2010-06-10T14:31:00.000+02:00

again some stuff i made for Risen. a role playing game.
its tomb i made in hurry in the last days of the development of Risen. it was a surrounding for a shrine of the undead, which was designed in a fanartwork.
all design for the tomb itself and mesh, textures, objects and lighting by the infamous: me.

The skeletons are both, bone pile texture and objects.

the lighting was mostly accentuated by the torches, which are so called "practical lights", which are lights in a scene, that have an actual shown visual source, but there are also many indirect lightsources. mainly greens

The whole tomb looks bigger than it is. actually it is one hallway, which end in a bigger room

the spiderwebs were done with alphas in photoshop.
in Gothic i always painted them. For Risen i also took free downloadable spiderweb brushes.

I also placed some fog and lightstreaks in form of particle effects

the normals were only done in photoshop. well anyway they cannot be seen very well

it was all greatly inspired by the first level of tomb raider underworld. well at least the color and wall textures..

A Barrel just for exercise

2010-05-29T09:37:00.000+02:00

Hi, I made a barrel, just for sculpting wood and metal exercise. It has no opening or plug, so its pretty unusable, if one could use this term for virtual objects ;)

Barrel turntable from Sascha Henrichs on Vimeo.
a turntable ani of a normalmapped barrel painted and rendered in mudbox

Tinker - P20

2010-05-24T01:21:00.004+02:00

hey ho.. today, i had an idea for a girls gun.
so i made a gun, put a heart on it and named it tinker - p20 ...great idea, isnt it? :)
i`m not happy with the scope though. its kinda basic and blocky.
best parts are the magazine and the rubberhold at the shaft

i also decided to model it.. here a first WIP

3dripper DX

2010-05-23T16:43:00.000+02:00

I make this entry, because i want to advertise for the great 3D Ripper DX by Roman Lut.
If you ever wanted to know, how great artists modeled their stuff in the big game titles, just use this tool and make 3D screenshots.

Believe me its VERY interesting, and you mind get some insight or inspiration on how to model things for yourself in future!

just go to this site, and then download it. you will start the program right before you start your game. then play until you want to make a screenshot, press the capture shortcut, you set before, and find all mesh and texture data in your 3dripper folder, you also set before.
there are importer plugins for the 3dsmax 2009-11 and also for maya i think.

for sure the shading wont ever look like in the engine, but for technical research its just amazing!
so go for it!

http://www.deep-shadows.com/hax/3DRipperDX.htm

Games Academy Basic modeling lecture for class GD_I_2010

2010-05-23T05:44:00.001+02:00

jo we made a weapon mesh in GD_I_10, and didnt get the mapping and textures in time.
so here only the mesh, for the record...
very nice people are you btw.! :)
concept by torvenius

a chair. concept from michael luekhof

2010-05-17T07:22:00.001+02:00

just a short exercise for fun.
not painted very inspired and also a technical disaster :)
but the second issue is no problem since the screenshots are stills, harhar ;)

Lecture @ GD_I_2010_FRA

2010-05-08T13:14:00.005+02:00

a result of a lecture at Frankfurt game design course I_2010

its a bardiche weapon, without a sculptmap. only nvidia normalmap filter.
it also has a spec map.nothing fancy so far.

Lecture at Art_I_08_FFM - medieval chest

2010-05-08T04:01:00.002+02:00

jo this time we made a medieval chest, that used not only sculpting but also displacements for the highpoly. the displacements were used for the metalparts and were done in 3dsmax with procedural maps.
the diffuse was made in mudbox and photoshop

Medieval chest in 3dsmax viewport with xoliulshader from sascha henrichs on Vimeo.

here is a crappy closing animation ;)
diffuse in mudbox and photoshop

Results from course Art_I_09_FFM

2010-04-17T21:21:00.001+02:00

hi again. today we made another floorpanel for the 2. semester art course in frankfurt.
so nothing too fancy, and i hope you students were not too annoyed by this :D

now that i see it, i shuld have made it more flat on the surface. it looks kinda curvy.

Class at "Art_I_08_FFM" - Concrete Barrier

2010-04-16T22:52:00.010+02:00

yeah, here is a real classic prop, the infamous concrete barrier.

we made the normals for the rebars with nvidia PS filter, and the normals for the concrete with mudbox.
diffuse also in mudbox
but we missed to make also some concrete rubble, that still sticks to the rebars.
also the rebars could use some more grey look.
we used patch deform for the rebars

thats the concept

and thats the product

Some Objects from the "Risen" Game

2010-04-15T17:55:00.006+02:00

its old stuff from 3 years ago, done for the environments of "Risen"
only used texture atlases back in the day, no unique textures here

3dsmax Environment Modeling #2 Procedural Stone. Mapping and painting

2010-04-13T12:23:00.002+02:00

sorry for this video being very fast, i wanted to keep it short.
there's a short audio bug at 7.35 min. two tracks overlay there. but i think its no problem, since no relevant info is told there.

3dsmax Environment Modeling #2 Procedural Stone. Mapping and painting from sascha henrichs on Vimeo.
This video covers mapping techniques for highpoly objects, and painting of objects in mudbox 2010.
its very technical and much longer than the first, so beware.
~17 min
~300 MB of HQ video

Its the 2nd part of a stone modeling tutorial
find the first one here
http://vimeo.com/10163233

Art_I_2008. Sculpting and baking a concrete wall

2010-04-11T22:07:00.007+02:00

another post...this is the result of the lecture at Art I 2008 in berlin
its sculpting and baking a concrete block, and also some alpha channel stuff with barbed-wire.
we made the sculpting in mudbox, baking in xnormal and textures in mudbox and photoshop.
the barbed wire is stroked with black, due to a shader bug with shadows
and yes the barbed wire got no fix points, and everything is really basic ;) we just got not time

Art_II_2009, Hard Surface, Wall Panel

2010-04-11T22:03:00.008+02:00

Jo, this is the result of the lecture at Art II 2009 in berlin
its hard surface modeling of a Wall Panel, with a cable channel
we made the modeling in 3dsmax, baking in xnormal and textures in photoshop

Art_I_2009, Hard Surface, Floor Tile

2010-04-11T22:03:00.007+02:00

Hi this is the result of the lecture at Art I 2009 in berlin
its hard surface modeling of a floor tile.
we made the modeling in 3dsmax, baking in xnormal and textures in photoshop

3dsmax Environment Modeling #1 Procedural Stone

2010-03-15T02:59:00.004+01:00

Hi folks,

here is part one of another tutorial about stony stuff.

In this tutorial you will learn how to set up a modeling rig on a sphere object, in order to make it look like a stone.

This technique delivers a very believable result and is absolutely non destructive. Once set up, you can easily modify the results, only by changing the mappingoffsets in the first "cellular" displacement map.

This video is only about the modeling rig, a later tutorial will cover the mapping an texturing for the highpoly, as also an approach to make this a game ready asset.

~ 8 min
~ 110 MB HD

3dsmax Environment Modeling #1 Procedural Stone from sascha henrichs.

Schnupperkurs 2010/03

2010-03-12T22:10:00.001+01:00

the result of schnupperkurs berlin.
yes its a knife, a dagger...another melee bladed weapon...will it ever end?

BS_III_09 Dark Lord Bust

2010-02-13T20:54:00.006+01:00

today was a nice lecture with the basis semester BS_III_09
you all did your best..and that even on a saturday. well done..
here is a rendering of the darth vader we took as a modeling subject...

we modeled the lowpoly and for the beauty rendering, i tesselated and then meshsmoothed him..put some architechtural max materials on it, and then lit it with a 3 point setup. then placed some reflection walls, for the mirroreffect for the helmet can reflect something..

but the lowpoly also came out quite nice
nevertheless i tweaked some proportions for the finalrender, since the low is a bit off.

BS_I+II_09 Berlin - 'nades!!!

2010-02-13T00:37:00.001+01:00

nade spam in berlin..in both courses we made the same grenade. in bs II we also tried a diffuse map..
for the rendering i meshsmoothed the ring one time. cause the lowpoly ring looked odd for a nice render..
you see a three light setup and a shader, using only the diffuse texture also for specs and bump..

Art_I_08_FFM some screenz

2010-01-31T01:46:00.001+01:00

we took a tour on procedural materials and again stone sculpting...
here the shots.

3dsmax Props for games #1 Procedural Stones - Sneak Peak

2010-01-29T03:08:00.000+01:00

hi, one more time you will learn, how to make cool stones.
currently i'm recording a "how-to" video concerning procedural displacment maps for stone props in 3dsmax.
so no more sculpting stones, now its displacment time.
but here you see only a sneak peak of the tutorial, just to justify another blog update ;)

ART_I_08_FFM - Day 3

2010-01-09T19:11:00.001+01:00

We made a comcept sketch of a weapon and then started to model it.
the results were pretty cool and i will post some of the sketches here later.

for now i will only post my sketch:

and we made a grass texture...

ART_I_08_FFM - Day 2

2010-01-08T19:30:00.002+01:00

jo, you learned about hard surface modeling and baking normalmaps and creating diffuse maps.
we made some floor tile with all those maps and then imported it into the unreal engine.

these are the raw files for the treadplate. we modeled one quad of riffles and then baked the normal. and then arranged this part in photoshop to a full blown treadplate.

Then we modeled a highpoly floor tile. every student made his own 2d concept in photoshop. and then modeled in 3dsmax.
this is the bake of my plate.

Then came the painting of the diffuse

and then the self illumination mask in the red channel and the specular in the green channel of a composit texture

and this is the infamous result we achieved with the techniques, when imported into the unreal engine..

Art_I_08 .... 2 days in Berlin

2009-12-12T22:24:00.002+01:00

hi, here are the results for Art_I_08 in Berlin.
we only got 2 days and made some project review, some weapon concepting and normal baking practice..
here is a concept scetch. i taught a technique where you mainly erase things, rather painting them..also
using highlights and such, to create some depth.

and here is a low poly part of a weapon, with a baked normalmap on it..
was quite a bit of work, to get it working

Talk at "Lichtblick4d"-Event at 11.12.09 in Berlin

2009-11-27T19:08:00.008+01:00

hi, next month the 11.12.09 i will give a talk about our action role playing game "Risen" at "Lichtblick 4d" in Berlin.
Lichtblick 4d is a successful autodesk reseller in germany, that is very active in the german CG community. the event is free, so be sure to check it out. But you have to sign for it on the website!

click here for the event page

[edit] was much fun and success!! was great to be there, cu perhaps next time!

2 Blogs of my team mates

2009-11-27T18:41:00.006+01:00

hi, i want to introduce 2 blogs from my team mates at piranha bytes.

the first one is from Dietrich Magnus, who is one of our animators.
see his blog here: http://dietrichmagnus.blogspot.com/
its about animation stuff...he grabs cool videos and stuff all about animation related and credits it in his blog.. sometimes he also shows off things of his own. valuable stuff! check this out!

and the second one is very new and not yet layouted.
its from Horst Dworczak our character sculpter.
he mainly shows off thing of his own: http://cgsculptblog.blogspot.com/
quality stuff! check it out!

Mudbox techniques for props #3 - Tileable Stone

2009-11-09T04:30:00.007+01:00

here another tutorial concerning tileable normalmaps in mudbox
sorry bit long with 20 min. and big with 90 mb..
hope its useful to you.

example files for this tutorial

BS_III_2009 8h Speed lecture at GA

2009-11-07T19:01:00.005+01:00

jo hi students, i just pimped the picture a bit with lights, and put the diffuse also in the bump.
so here is the result. it was a cool lecture with you. nice people you are.
see u next time

and yes, the shadow comes from the wrong side :)..

BS_II_2009 8h Speed lecture

2009-11-06T22:01:00.006+01:00

another day at Games Academy.
this ones also a plane mapped dagger.
you students were very motivated! well done and keep it up!

BS_I_2009 8h Speed lecture

2009-11-05T23:22:00.005+01:00

good compact lecture. was very much too teach in a few hours, but you students were very concentrated.
the result lacks of any complex uv mapping, and also the texture is only the concept bitmap mapped planar onto the knife.
here it is.

if you liked my lecture, recommend me on linked in and xing

Random Risen stuff again

2009-10-29T10:20:00.004+01:00

From CG Environments by Sascha Henrichs

Here is one conceptrendering for the underworld housings:

and some boats

trying to sketch a weapon

2009-10-26T03:17:00.005+01:00

jo, since i got my new wacom, i'm now free to spend all my time with it :)...
this one is a first attempt on sketching a weapon in about ~10 minutes..
and another one.. with sketchbook pro

Basis Semester at Games Academy Frankfurt

2009-10-25T00:23:00.006+02:00

hi students..here are the presentations of the projects we did the last days..
as always, textures are not worked out.
BS II 2009 FFM did the Scythe:

and BS I 2009 FFM did the Flail

thank you. it was a pleasure to teach you. hope you had fun!

Odosketch kicks major ass

2009-10-23T02:03:00.004+02:00

here is a sketch i did with a cool online sketching program call odosketch (wait a second till the sketch starts)
my colleague dietrich magnus found this nifty software! try it out!
heres the pic, since odosketch is somehow down currently

Skinny Ghul vs. Giant Monster Scorpion

2009-10-19T19:48:00.002+02:00

and just another old Risen mood rendering, cooked up to work as a poster or desktop pic...unfortunately a scene like this is never to be seen inside the Risen game ...the initial lighting was way darker! but for this poster it was pimped up..for sure still enhanceable in many ways..

credits for this pic:
creatures: horst dworczak (sculpt) , thorsten kalka (lowpoly and diffuse), dietrich magnus (rigs)
environment and props, concept, arrangement, lighting and rendering: me :) sascha henrichs

Some random "Risen" stuff i did

2009-10-12T21:04:00.008+02:00

hi my beloved anonymous.
today i bring you some production stuff from our game "Risen"..it came out 2. October '09 ...

its random stuff i have on my disk. there are mainly props and beauty renders..
so here is the first one, its a druids shrine i modeled from a concept that came from a fan contest..
the price was: being in the game...the initial task was to create an undead shrine.. but since there were many good ones, we also had a second place.. this one was then used as a druids shrine.
sculpt in mudbox, render in max.

The next one is a render of some vegetation props..
the grass was the gothic 3 grass..i did a new one for risen.

here is another foliage thang, i also have on my page www.saschahenrichs.de for ages now..

the last one is a concept render, to get an idea how dungeons could work..

cu!

Hard Surface Modeling Pt.2 - Art_I_08

2009-10-10T20:12:00.004+02:00

jo today (the last day for art_I_08 unfortunately) we did the wall tile...
also with hard surface mod. in 3dsmax. also had some fun with splines (the wires)
the students were at hardcore lecture mode, until saturday evening!! respect. :)
i hope you all were statisfied with the lecture and see you the next time!

see the effort here (viewport render) :

Hard Surface Modeling - Art_I_08

2009-10-10T02:34:00.004+02:00

Jo, this is day one at Art_I_08 at Games Academy Berlin.
Guys and Girls..you were so tired :D .. i had hard time to keep you awake...but ok, the topics a bit unspectacular..
we did some hard surface modeling, and the teaching of it can be very boring, since we always do the same: supporting edges :)
but believe me, once you did it sometimes, its really fun, since the results can be great
look at this floor tile....textures can always be improved.
we modeled it in 3dsmax, and rendered the highpoly on a single plane.
then we had the normal and the ambient occlusion.
then we put some base metal texture on it, and alsosome colors...i also did a specular map for it..
this one is rendered offline.

Conan Axe @ Schnupperkurs

2009-09-19T00:09:00.007+02:00

There was another "schnupperkurs"..(or "taster course" like dict.cc sez) @ the Games Academy..
so greeting to the students, hope your new 3dsmax basic knowledge may help you in future! you were very teachable :D

we modeled a slight modified concept of the Conan Axe. heres the concept:

and here the model..never mind the textures, which are very beta:

Mudbox techniques for props #2 - Stone

2009-08-29T04:45:00.005+02:00

Mudbox techniques for props #2 - Stone from sascha henrichs on Vimeo.

hi there, here is a second video concerning stone sculpting..
its mainly scraping and stuff..so nothing fancy

try it

Best Game at Gamescom Poll from PCGames - Risen

2009-08-27T15:10:00.011+02:00

hi, as you perhaps know, we were present at the gamescom exhibition in cologne these days..
and the PC Magazine PC Games made a poll about the best game there..
and due to nearly 1700 participants on this poll, we are the best game there
see it in this article

ok, in my opinion we were definitively NOT the best game...that was Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2 ;)
but anyway, a great news for us, that everybody like our game!
so thanks to all people i met there! those were great days and even better parties! :)

[edit]
We are also best game at gamescom @ Gamestar.de
out of amazing 8009 participants

Normalmap How to's

2009-08-26T23:28:00.004+02:00

Hi, i stumbled upon 2 papers about normalmaps, and how they work.
the first one is from Nicholas Etheridge and its a PDF, you find it here

the other is from the polycount forum. here it is in the polycount wiki

Mudbox techniques for props #1 - Wood

2009-08-20T13:28:00.001+02:00

a first video concerning sculpting techniques for props

Mudbox techniques for props #1 - Wood from sascha henrichs on Vimeo.

GAMC #1 Voting

2009-08-18T00:41:00.007+02:00

jo hi, i think my avantgarde concept, was not, what people expected ;)
currently i got 4 points...see the voting thread here but only participants can vote

it seems the winner will be Ben Bolton who created this masterpiece

Game Art Mini Challenge #1 - Final Submission

2009-08-14T13:49:00.006+02:00

yesterday night i finished this little challenge thingy for Game-Artist.net, since i have no time at the weekend, and the deadline is sunday, august 16th.

so the result i posted is somewhat dirty, and made in a rush..perhaps nothing for the portfolio.
not to mention, that the design is really crappy..i could have done muchos better, but didnt ;)

i used mudbox to sculpt the concrete parts, and bumps in the copperbulbs.
then i also used mudbox for the baking of the normal and AO of the unique mapped parts.

the concrete parts are stacked uv chunks to save pixelspace. having a payoff in the seams...

i used the 3dsmax 2010 viewport DX shader with 3 lights
the free " shader FX"takes the opacity part of the fences

1 diffuse
1opacity
1selfillu
1normal
1spec
all 1024x512..

the selfillu and opacity textures could have been optimized with another uv channel and smaller textures, but then it comes to renderproblems inside of max..
and i had no time to find another render solution

GAMC_#1_Aphexx_Diffuse_01.jpg
GAMC_#1_Aphexx_Glow_01.jpg
GAMC_#1_Aphexx_Normal_03.jpg
GAMC_#1_Aphexx_opacity_01.jpg
GAMC_#1_Aphexx_Specular_03.jpg

Triangle Count: 1412 tris

Game Art Mini Challenge #1 @ game-artist.net

2009-08-08T01:45:00.009+02:00

hi, i decided spontaneously :) to take part in the GAMC #1 at www.game-artist.net

goal is to make a "Wall Unit".. from a given concept
here it is

it can be changed a bit..so here is my concept and lowpoly so far:

here some diffuse

Mudbox missing material presets and lighting presets

2009-08-07T14:48:00.006+02:00

hi, i stumbled upon this problem sometimes now:
after installation and starting of Mudbox, the material and lighting presets were not there.
so here is the solution in a thread on area.autodesk.com njmaxaddict found the fix, and it worked for me.

here how it goes:

1. Move the “Materials” and “Lights” directories

From here:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\Mudbox\2009-x64\presets

To here:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\Mudbox\2009-x64\data\presets\

2. Then delete the Trays directory here:

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\Mudbox\2009-x64\settings\Trays

third day of Art_I_08_FFM lecture

2009-07-27T23:23:00.005+02:00

jo a bit late but finally a viewport shot of the stone, that was modeled in 3dsmax, then sculpted in mudbox, then mapped in max, then speed painted in mudbox :)
the trick is to go for hard edges otherwise this whole thinge would look too blobby.
currently i have a stone making video tutorial in the making, but its not ready yet.
perhaps the next week you can download it!

the initial diffuse and normal size was 2048, but it also works both reduced to 512!

second day of Art_I_08_FFM lecture

2009-07-24T20:28:00.008+02:00

currently i'm in frankfurt giving a leveldesign lesson at Art_I_08_FFM

so far this lecture contained:
modeling of a low poly landscape mesh. meaning a canyon/cave entrance surrounded by rocks.
and sculpting a rock normalmap in mudbox, as also painting the diffuse map for the rocks in photoshop with the help of phototextures.

for modeling landscapes its useful to spend some minutes in a rough concept in photoshop. use interesting shilouettes and overlapping shapes

then i personally model it with "plane"-modeling in 3dsmax 2010, meaning: extruding edges with the shift+move tool. to achieve organic look and feel, scale random edges after extruding.
use the "blend"-script from the "polymagus action items"-scripts to assign the blend-script to the space-bar..then you will model light-speed-like :).
3dsmax has a new cap tool in the graphite modeling tools that is capable to blend edges, that share one vertex, with only one click on a button. but you still cannot assign this button to a key...so still this blend script is the only valid solution for high speed modeling.

here is the result so far, rendered in mental ray....

for the normalmap, we used mudbox to sculpt the topology on a plane. do not forget to create many topology features on the plane, to be able to map this texure some bigger on the landscapes. then make this map tileable in PS.
after rendering the normalmap, you can also render an ambient occl. map in mudbox. this can be used for a base in photoshop to paint the diffuse. or you use the blue channel of the normal map in photoshop, which mainly acts like a cavity map.
the stone normalmap itself is copied and blended with overlay 2 or even 3 times. i recognized, that it is helpful for rock or stone structures to have a real strong or even overdone normalmap. so i overlayed it 2 times. but do not forget to normalize after the first and second overlay.
or try to overdo it in mudbox, with the sculpt.

here it is with wireframe

that's the normal, you see how it looks overdone. but it works actually better in this way, at least for rocks!

tomorrow we will sculpt a stone, make some 3d grass, and then arrange it in the scene. then render it.
cheers

Alchemy

2009-07-13T13:08:00.006+02:00

hi, i just discovered the great drawing application: Alchemy through the neil blevins gallery.
its a drawing programm, that creates very neat fractals and somewhat random shapes.
ideal for creating hip and fast artificial drawings, or it can even be used to integrate in the production pipeline of your art department.

you can find forms and silhouettes very quickly, or you can even go for rough concepts..
here are some terrain shapes created within seconds..

Art_I_2007 3rd day of last lecture

2009-07-11T17:56:00.002+02:00

so last day of this lecture contained rebar modeling and baking, and bit of scene setup

Art_I_2007 2nd day of last lecture

2009-07-10T20:43:00.007+02:00

high speed lecturing here in Berlin..
this is the result of the 2nd day of my lecture for the art_i_07 course

a low poly sculpted wall with fence and barbwire..
tomorrow we'll do the rebars
theres also a problem with the razor wire, which is somehow one sided...

Art_I_2007 first day of last lecture

2009-07-09T20:42:00.003+02:00

art_i_2007 will finish their studies soon.
and this is what we did in the first day of my last lecture there:

A Gun modeled with GD_I_2009_FFM at the GA

2009-06-30T20:15:00.010+02:00

hi, here something new, we did in the course.
tired of making swords, i offered to choose between a sword and a gun..
and so the students chose a gun.

this concept was found in the net, and it was from torvenius at deviant art

heres our model. we also have an animation, which i will post later

---

---
(to make youtube videos start instantly and loop them, use this term in the embed code:
http://www.youtube.com/v/VIDEOID&loop=1&autoplay=1 where "VIDEOID" is your unique video ID)
---
we had no time for the mapping, so we plane mapped it from the side, to project the concept picture as a texture. the only thing we pelted was the handle.
the model is a bit optimized, but could be even more optimized.
also it has no spec and normalmap on it.

The Quality Link

2009-06-25T01:12:00.006+02:00

for all students of Games-Academy and other visitors out there
i added a QUALITY LINK section on the right..
so if you seek knowledge, visit the linked sites and do the tutorials!

btw..
for this news i crafted a scene with a "quality chainlink" and rendered it with vray..
if you have vray and you are interested in the materials used in the scene, you can download
the scene HERE! they are complete procedural. vertex colors were used to blend the "weldings"

Cave Scene Update.. Finished creature modeling!!!

2009-06-17T23:18:00.005+02:00

Creature modeling has just finished.
but i think there are still many regions i should give a clean up for later rigging and animation.
the model has ~ 31k tris at lowres, but is meant for subdivision
i think real char modelers would have modeled it far cleaner and confident so excuse any weirdness inside the wires

i think the next step should be cleaning up the mesh and then do the detailing in mudbox for the displacement..or perhaps only normal map to save later rendertime?!