September News! Acropolis, Tutorials and Livestream Collection Discount :-)

Whoa, the summer has flown by already and already September is here. Fortunately, I used the last two months to work on Heroes of Bronze as much as possible. Mostly, I finished up my Character Creator - IClone - Blender pipeline, with animations, facial performance and better looking shaders. I took the opportunity to introduce an exciting tool that came out recently for Character Creator - the SkinGen plugin, making automated skin texturing a real joy!

Connected to that topic, I also made a free tutorial where I explored how you can create your own clothing simulation directly in Blender, without any external tools.

Finally, my work on the ancient Acropolis of Athens, ca 500 BC, is coming together.  It is a slightly different city than most of us probably know from the time of Pericles. At around 500 BC it lacked both Parthenon, the magnificent statue of Athena, Propylae and other famous structures. These would only be built after the wars with the Persians. Instead, the Acropolis offered a view of two older doric temples. Still, even then it must have been a magnificent sight...

This still a wip model I was able to put together from my architectural assets and a bit of KitBash 3D. I used Cycles for rendering, Megascans and Grasswald for vegetation and World Creator for some background terrain generation :)

Last but not least, I was able to put together the first 10 livestreams, edit and polish them and put together into this Gumroad package. It is 10 hours of content, detailing my workflows, tips and tricks, Blender, Substance Painter, Photoshop and Character Creator pipeline. Just for you, followers of the blog, you can now get it 50% off with the coupon code: “hoblivestreams110” :-)

Also, as a small teaser, have a look at this image - and know that soon, I will do a tutorial on how I made the beard and hair for this character in Blender.

Enjoy the rest of the hot summer days, my friends!

Chairé,

Martin

February News - new experiments, building scenes, finishing courses...

Hello everybody,

Good news! After I’ve finished two of my courses lately I’ve been working on these past few months, I am speeding up the production of my project. First of these courses is of course the Substance Painter Launch Pad for CGBoost.com, which is now complete, and a perfect start for your Substance journey. You can read the reviews, if you’re interested :-)

The other course is free and it’s this one. Go ahead, try it:

Other than that, I have of course been working on new models and scenes! A lot of experimentation is going on, lately, for example, I tried again the awesome Waterial shader in combination with the Ocean modifier in Blender, to create some stormy seas in this artwork. Now all I need is to figure out the splashes, because now they’re done in postproduction, and also the rain. Soo… that’s next :-)

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I have also been quite busy finishing the main characters. After Penelope, I worked a lot on NIkephoros as well as Alkaios, trying to push the look of their faces as much as possible. For that, I used this Realistic eye pack by Jim Morren and Eyebrow pack by Nazar Noschenko. These really helped me improve the models! These are still work in progress, but what do you think? Leave a comment below :-)

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Chairé!

Martin

November News! New assets, new tutorial and more...

The time flies! Another month is gone and a lot of work has been done on the Heroes of Bronze project. Mainly, I was able to finish the Greek armor and clothing assets for the warriors. The most important parts and armor types are done, from which I can now quickly create variations, to fill my scenes with loads of different looking hoplites!

You can see a preview of the warriors here:

I was also able to do finish the model of the main heroine Penelope, the narrator of the story. I think she improved quite substantially from the previous version, what do you think?

Finally, I have also started a new tutorial series, detailing how I made one of my helmet assets, the Chalcidian type with an archaic crest. In it, you will learn how I modeled and UVed the mesh, how I textured everything in Substance and made the crest in Blender.

I’ve done a lot more work and loads more incoming, so watch out! For example, each free evening, I am now working on this Ionic temple, one of the last building assets I need to finish before I start putting together the final shots.

Thanks to your kind Patreon donations, I am now able to work on the project much more and make better job at it, so I can’t thank enough to all my Patrons! Shoutout especially to Jason Poulin, the highest Tier patron, who allowed me to cross the $100 mark.

Also, one last thing - I was able to finally put together a special page for my '‘Before the Storm’ Teaser Breakdown Course with some neat testimonials, so check it out, if you will :-)

Chairé!

Martin

How to Quickly Create Clothing using Blender and Marvelous Designer

Hello friends and welcome to this new tutorial detailing yet another technique I use often when making Heroes of Bronze.

This time we’ll have a look at Marvelous Designer, an awesome tool for creating and simulating clothing. You will learn how I combine MD with Blender, how to create simple garment and cloak in MD, animate it, and export back into Blender.

Hope you like the tutorial and if you want to get the project files and exclusive content, consider supporting this project over at https://www.patreon.com/MartinKlekner :-)

Also, get the mentioned Zach Reinhardt's CGBoost Blender Launch Pad here.

Chairé

Martin :-)

New Tutorial: Quickly Make Large-Scale Landscapes

Hello friends , a new tutorial is out, detailing yet another technique I use often when making my Heroes of Bronze short film.

This time we’ll have a look at World Creator a great tool for creating detailed landscape models, like the one you see in the banner.

Find Project Files and more tutorials at my www.patreon.com/MartinKlekner

Teaser Behind the Scenes Videos!

Exciting news, my friends!

After finishing the Pedestal tutorial course, I am now starting a new series of videos, connected closely to the “Before the Storm” teaser. In it, I will be dissecting the shots you can see in the teaser, showing you behind the scenes of my Blender, Substance and After Effects files.

And already, a first of these videos is available for free on my Youtube, and also, a second one you can find on my Patreon channel, where it’s unlocked for the Hypaspist and Hoplite tier Patrons :-)

More BTS videos will come soon…

Chaíre!

Martin