Been messing around with this AI image generation tool called "Disco Diffusion".  Its pretty neat, def. has a pretty strong learning curve in order to make anything useful, but now that I'm getting the hang of it I'm starting to discover some use cases.  I got this idea to use some AI images I generate with prompts to make a cohesive Matte painting... then get it printed to a large canvas and then use real oil paint to make a hybrid type Impasto painting.  This is the first real Matte painting I've made so far with this process.  Anyway, ask away if you have any questions, the bottom two images are the main images I used that were generated by AI with prompts (disco diffusion).  So that gives you an idea with how much post I did on this after the generation.  Oh yea, I up-res'd this a lot with Topez AI Image enhancer, so its at print scale and painted a bit more after that.

Starting point below (AI generated image):

Grabbed the ship and modified it from this other generated scene below:

This is a tutorial/demo of the main techniques I use for hard surface in zbrush.  I wanted to have a video resource for my students to refer to moving forward.  Its a little long, but I broke it down into 3 sections, covering how to tackle 3 distinct objects you would typically want to create in production each with their own challenges.  So in about 2.5 hours I cover it all, and its free so please have a look and let me know if you find it useful.  Cheers!  

Screen grab from the end of the video:

There is a quick demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdBOsyogEVY

This is a substanace painter material I recently made in substance designer.  Often times when making textures in substance you will want to add some subtle random color variation. I can't tell you how much time I have wasted setting up materials like this from scratch in substance painter, so making a proper material in substance designer to do this is long overdo for me. This material will make that task quick and easy for you.  It works with both the metalness workflow and the spec/gloss.  Please let me know if you find this tool helpful and if you have any questions.  Cheers!

(lots more info at the store:)

Get it Here Free: https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/Aa1l5/free-substance-painter-material-color-variation-mixer

Got my lighting setup and just thought I'd do a few test renders before finishing polish and pushing likeness further.  I'm moving to Seattle and it might be a bit till I can wrap this up officially... so I figured it would be good to post one more update before finishing it.  Getting close though! 

So last time I posted I had done the work in marvelous designer for his clothing (*see last blog post).   Since then I worked on the zbrush sculpt, retopo'd, baked, worked on the first texture pass and got it setup in marmoset.  The fur I made with cards, if anyone is curious I can elaborate... but its game res geo so I'm pretty happy with the turn out on it. (*see wireframe image below).

Next up I have to get some decent lighting in the marmoset scene (this has just been super simple lighting for working purposes), Then texture polish (because this is all simple blockin right now), and then more work on the likeness to finalize everything.  I'll probably do another pass on his hair as it looks odd from the viewing left side in some lighting.  But other then that, its finally getting close!  :D  Feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Here is some more progress on my Ryan Gosling Likeness Sculpt.  I have barley used Marvelous Designer in the past so I had to do quite a lot of research to learn the software for this.  I'm really happy I did, its a very cool program and not so difficult to learn as I initially thought.  I focused mostly on the jacket here since the rest of him should be pretty easy to just sculpt.  I might have to jump back into Marvelous for some pants, but well see how it goes.  So what you see here will just serve as the base to sculpt on in zbrush.  I'm looking forward to seeing how much more I can push it sculpt and texture wise.  Feel free to ask if you have any questions and thanks for watching!

Initial zbrush import from Marvelous, no work done yet in zbrush to the garment...

Got my Ryan Gosling Bladerunner 2049 Likeness posed so I can start making some clothes and sim it properly in this pose.  Anatomy won't hardly be seen so I shouldn't get too picky, but I did get into sculpting the muscles for this specific pose rather then just t-pose.  The hands were pretty tricky.  Also added his gun and a little polish here and there.  Hopefully when I get all the pieces in place I can really nail down the likeness some more.  

References:

Added a body and made more adjustments/polish to the face.  Definitely more refinement needed in the likeness and the texture maps are still very placeholder for now.  Pieces are slowly coming together tho.  Next up will work on some clothes, and then start thinking about posing.  
Thanks for watching!

Continuing my Ryan Gosling/Blade runner Likeness project.  Got my xgen groom mostly done and now imported into marmoset for real time rendering.  These screen shots are all still super basic lighting setup, no fancy dof/ color correcting or anything.  I'm still polishing this up before I worry about any of that.  Figuring out the best method to import and setup the xgen hair into marmoset real time was a pain, but I'm satisfied with this so far... just need to see if I can push it a bit further.  Next up a bit more polish on the sculpt and bake/ likeness refinement.  Then some more texture work and polish there.  After that getting the body and clothing in.

The real time xgen hair in marmoset has been a bit involved so feel free to ask if you have any questions.  Thanks for looking!

Here is another attempt at an oil painting style portrait, this time of Game Of Thrones Character Missandei.  This was done on my trip back, on the plane flying from Finland to SF Bay area where I live.  Been researching/studying up more on real portrait oil painting, trying to wrap my head around it so I can simulate it better with digital and get better at this.  I think this is a step in the right direction over my first attempt at least.  I'm planning on continuing to do more of these GOT characters, but I think the next one I'll do will be a master copy of John Singer Sargent, as I think more can be learned doing master copies at this stage.  Oh and again, I intentionally diverted a bit from the photo here and there.  I tried to make her face pop more by adding more light to it and more shadow on the outside parts.  The second image shows the painting with the ref there (How I worked while painting this).  Also played with saturation and color mixing of course.  Hope you like it, thanks for looking!