Hi, it’s Sami here!

First post after site update. I added new “pages” which i wrote during weekend. These pages show some of my hobby projects from 2 years ago to this day, which i haven’t shown on our site yet.

Check out these pages from right side column in “S-S’ Portfolio” section under “Pages” heading.

These pages show part of Max scripts i’ve written, “Toon Guy” character rig which i finished recently (it also includes Max scripting stuff!) and a demo page for my Zbrush & Modeling galleries.

Hope you find these pages interesting!

Hi, it’s Sami here!

Time for yearly website update (more like 2 years since last update!) There are many changes to website!

Worpress is updated to latest version 2.5 and gallery part is also updated. Navigation in gallery should be bit easier now. Website layout is also new, it’s built based on other theme than previous one - so i hope you like it!

I’ll be posting new stuff soon, have done some new rigging related stuff. Stay tuned!

Hi! It’s Sami here!

I thought i’d post another study which i did during weekend and last week’s evenings. I think wrinkles in clothes turned out better than in my previous models.

Hi! It’s Sami here!

Another study from today.

Hi! It’s Sami here again!

Haven’t posted anything for a while. Today i had time to get back to modeling once again, and made this model. I guess he’s not that much a thug, more like a nice guy - but hey, it’s just a name for the pic!

Hi it’s Sami here once again!

Another render of this model.

Hi it’s Sami here again!

Another one from today evening. Sculpted a head, and then experimented with pores, wrinkles and such.

Hi! It’s Sami here!

Got ahead with clothes last weekend, and today had time to make some test renders. So here they are!

Hi, it’s Sami here!

New week, new study. Still keeping previous model on hold and did another study. I started this one  yesterday after the work and then continued it today.  Model is sculpted from scratch and i used some photos as reference for body and head.

Model is still relatively lowres and i intend to continue working on it. I used photos of real people as reference and i put a bit of likeness of certain real person there too.

Hi, it’s Sami here once again!

Another nightly study. This time goal was to create a sculpted muscle guy with heavy build. A typical hero / protagonist type you would see in 80’s brawl games.

I  first shaped the body then legs and finally i sculpted the face, which i think came out quite nice.

Friday night i rushed ahead and built clothes for him. Next i will add some details to clothes and then i will proceed to sculpting! (if i’m still happy with the clothes design…)

Hi - It’s Sami here again!

Long time no post. It’s a new year and i thought i would start it by learning new stuff. So it’s again a freetime doodle. He’s a sort of detective or private eye character.

 Modeling was done in 3ds Max and Silo and after basic setup was ready, i proceeded to Z-Brush to add details. I experimented with custom brushes which i used on clothes. Finally i built a holster for him and sculpted it a bit too.

Hi, it’s Sami here again!

It’s nearly christmas and dark as ever outdoors! During weekend i did some studies of painting skin details. So here’s one of them.  He’s a sort of thug character. First i sculpted the head which i think turned out to be quite nice. After this i experimented with various alphas and brushes.

Hi, it’s Sami here!

During this week’s evenings, i decided to model  and sculpt a hand. I started with a simple model and proceeded right to Z-Brush. After spending quite a while and experimenting with brushes i finally ended up with this model. I decided to do everything in geometry, so there is no texture.

Hi all again!

Here’s another sculpture I did on last week’s 2 evenings after work. Didn’t have time to post this earlier, been too busy with work all nights and days and other stuff. I did this just as a modeling study, used a base mesh I’ve made for my 3D sculpting tests. It’s modeled in the pose. Anyway I just wanted to experiment with various shapes and surface forms and have some practise at same time, exploring some quite cliched scifi themes, again.

Another render set of the same sculpture. See the link.

Haven’t posted anything for a few months! Time…

Here’s three sculptures I made during easter and weekends before that. I spent something like day and half on each sculpture and another one fine tuning details. All of these have been sculpted from a simple approx. 120 polygon base mesh of sorts and then just brushing for multiple hours… Renders are made in 3dsmax. No texture maps, just geometry, which was rendered via displacement mapping due to memory constraints. There’s about 4-6 million polygons in the sculptures depending on the model, I think the cardinal had the highest polygon count. I got inspired after watching sculptures made by old masters and tried to imitate similar style and approach to this kind of subjects. Hope you like these.

New year has already started, first month gone, too… Anyway, here’s some work I’ve done on my Mental Ray character shader + setup study… I’ll post some additional renders later. Hair is geometry so that it could interact better with GI and other lights. That’s all!

Here’s a close-up of the character’s head. See the link.

Hi,

Here’s a test I managed to do this evening - Did some simple rigging trying to get arms etc working, fixed some minor skinning issues. Also adjusted lighting etc. Well, not much but something. Work has been taking too much time lately, but I hope we have something to show soon!

Posting these images from now on with the new system, so there might be some bugs or other unwanted features, I’ll be hunting these down as much as the time permits!

Hi All!

As you probably see, if you’re not first time visitor to this site, that it’s been finally updated! I just took the time from my sleep and nerves and decided to update the site. The whole system is now running on php based solutions, a gallery software and latest version of wordpress was installed too, so updating + posting stuff is a lot more easier, same goes for articles etc that I’ve been planning to do for a few years.

Anyway - If you see some bugs and quantum leaps happen in some parts of site, don’t worry too much, these will be eventually fixed! If you see something more serious, you could e-mail me.

My and Sami’s new and updated portfolio pages can be found here and here.

That’s about it. Lots of work and hours was poured into this project, hope you like it! I’ll post some new stuff sometime soon, have to relax rest of the week… It’s way too late so I’ll go to bed right now!

Hi,

Now something new, have to make up the missing time from last summer - Here’s a project I’ve been working on and off for a long time, too long time, repeating same stuff I always do. Bit more optimized mesh (base mesh of sorts) and condensed texture mapping etc…

Anyway - This is built 100% in mental ray and usability in mind, so the stuff comes out of the oven in one pass… Lots of control and no hacks. Anyway I tried to learn mental ray as we’re now using in it our movie production for some things. I also tried to but together decent hair shader setup for geometric hair so that ambient occlusion and radiosity could be used on the hair. Oh and it also renders fast enough!

As a few last notes, the skinning etc are just temp stuff, but this time I feel this mesh etc is something that might function well as template, both for realtime and rendertime models. I’ll start working on some illustration based on this character sometime soon.

I did a few test renders out of this, color correction is applied, no other post tricks. Might add a few other tests if my gfx box is free to render.

Click link below to see the image (or the thumbnail):

Close-up view of the character. Link.
Full body view of the character. Link.

Hi again…

Long time no posts, have been overloaded by dark forces of the universe, work, taxes and death… So my spare time has been very minimal. Here’s a technical practice - Nothing original but an cheap imitation of japanese style + ideas. I’ve also tried to imitate technical solutions for hair etc. It’s a realtime model, but rendered with some skylight and material properties.

There’s also some new scripting demos coming out from Sami soon, so stay tuned for those. Also a major re-make of website is in progress.