October News! Teaser #2 is coming, finished new tutorial series and more...

Hey there friends!

The Heroes of Bronze project is proceeding slower than I expected, mainly due to several new upcoming projects, some of which I will be releasing before the end of the year. Yep, there will be a new CGBoost course, so that is taking up most of my time now.

Still, every day for at least a bit, I am able to push new shots for HoB, so the new teaser is definitely coming, only later than expect :-)

In the meantime, I have finished up this series of tutorials focusing on Hair & Beard creation in Blender. Watch the whole playlist here:

Also, I made this piece just for fun, to test the Mixer Brush in Photoshop, painting over 3D render to make it look painterly :-) It is a a moment set around the events of Battle of Cunaxa (401 BC) from the March of Ten Thousand .

The idea behind it was: the phalanx just ran a good distance, trying to get from the reach of Persian arrows. After retaining order, they are forming up behind their commander who took the lead, encountering one of the group of Immortals in the process.I figured there would be chaos going on at that moment,before they formed a line again, giving space for an almost duel-like moment to ensue.

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Much more info coming next month!

Chairé!

Martin

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

June News - The Crew of Persephone, Zeus Horkios and the last stage of the process

Phew, the time flies when you’re having fun! And I certainly had fun these last few weeks, not only with the new tool I am using - the Character Creator-IClone pipeline - but also with Blender procedural landscapes. I was able to learn a lot about landscape creation and you can be sure I will be sharing my knowledge in the near future.

Firstly, I was able to finish up upgrading my hero models for my film, so now, the main crew of Persephone is more or less done and ready for the battle of Marathon!

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The Crew of the trireme Persephone, from the left:

Nikephoros - the main hero of the story, an aristocrat and landowner from Attica, also, the Trierarch of Persephone, the blue trireme on the right. He is husband to Penelope and father to Alkaios, through whose eyes we will view the short film. He is one of the (fictional) heroes of Marathon.

Aegeus - Taciturn Spartan exile. He left Lacedaemon after his family fell into disgrace, leaving for the open seas to find a new life. Instead, Egyptian slavers found him. He was saved by Nikephoros and his crew and now serves as a captain of marines.

Chalcon - Carefree and merry Kretan archer who joined the crew mostly because he was terribly bored of his life in his hometown of Phaistos.

Bias - Nikephoros' childhood friend, son of a freed slave serving on his estate. Due to his tough upbringing, where he and his father had to flee Aetolia when their hometown was sacked and survive on their own for many months, he learned many outdoor skills. Now he servers as a scout for the crew.

Hermogenes - a mercenary from Boeotia, likes women and drink and often wears the archaic bell armor of his father to battle. When it comes to fighting, he likes to plough through the enemy lines as directly as possible.

Also, I started updating some of the older shots, so I’ve completely redone the intro shot of the original teaser, to have it make more sense. In this version, I added Nikephoros and he is now actually kneeling before the statue of Zeus Horkios, swearing he will uphold the rules of upcoming athletic competitions. This something each athlete needed to do before competing in the Olympics.

Finally, I continued playing around with lots of environmental stuff in Blender, using nodes to generate procedural landscapes. Putting together various tutorials from Youtube, I was able to finalize my ocean shader and desert shader. I’ve shared setups for both of these on my Patreon, and broke them down in my livestreams, available there as well. Hope you like!

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With that, I am pleased to say I am finally entering the final stage of making this short film. Now, it will be all about shot assembly and animation. Lots of work ahead of me, but I am positively brimming with excitement. I was looking forward to this stage for so long it’s now almost surreal to get to it :-)

Let’s finish up this thing!

Chairé!

Martin

Character Creator boosting my pipeline!

Oh wow, these tests coming out of my new Character Creator - Blender - Substance Painter pipeline feel really awesome. I’ll be sure to make some more videos about this topic. In the meantime, a few images :-)

Chairé!

Martin

May news - New Characters, Livestreams and Substance Sculpting Tutorial

Hello and welcome to this news report, looking back at the month of May 2020 in the world of Heroes of Bronze. What a crazy world we live in, right? Well, nothing I can do about it here, from rainy Czech Republic, so I guess I’ll just go back to work, creating new scenes for my short film. Like this one, where I finally got to use my new sacrificial animal - a ram model.

No proper Ancient Greek battle could happen without animal sacrifices to the gods. In this scene from my Heroes of Bronze project, I wanted to capture the moment before battle, with the rest of the army patiently awaiting the result of the sacrifice. Often, specialized non-combatant priests were appointed to carry out the sacrifice, however many warriors among the hoplite class were taught in the art as well. That's why Nikephoros could theoretically perform it too.

Also, since the end of Fuse CC is nigh and Adobe will soon discontinue this software (rest in piece, Fuse, you were good to me), I wanted to look around for a different character creation-rigging-animation solution. And I found… drumroll… Character Creator by Reallusion. It’s not cheap, but so far, what I’ve tried to create in ti, blew my mind.

Basicall Fuse on steroids, with so much more to offer and a bright future ahead, especially thanks to the grant by Epic. Loving it so far, as you can see on the updated model of Penelope. Now I need to figure out her hair… will probably make it onto cards rather than hair Particles…

Of course, I did not forget you, followers of the project, and I created a tutorial describing a new technique I have now discovered - a 3D sculpting process directly in Substance Painter! Definitely a game changer for me, the amount of time saved by not jumping between Blender / Zbrush and Painter is immense. Definitely check it out, maybe you’ll find it useful as well!

Using this technique, I was able to sculpt the last helmet that was missing in my collection - Greek Illyrian helmet.

And of course, I’m doing lots of livestreams these days, in fact, every two weeks! Join me at Patreon to learn all about the next one and also, occasionally influence the topic or date :-)

Chairé! Martin

April News - the Battle of Marathon is Coming to Life!

Hello there dear followers of the Heroes of Bronze project. Another month of quarantine flew by so fast I haven’t even realized it was May already! Good thing is, I managed to do A LOT of stuff for Heroes, mostly focused around the most important part of the short film - the Battle of Marathon.

If you've been following my Twitter or Instagram, you probably already know about this scene I’ve recently published. It’s in the thick of the fight, directly in the center of the line, where the battle was the most difficult for the Greek army. This is also where Nikephoros and his group are stationed to fight…

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You can see Aegeus on the far left, using his spear with the overhand grip, striking over his shield. To the right is Hermogenes, his spear probably broken already, so he is wielding his short xiphos sword. Then there's Nikephoros, holding the onslaught of several Persian soldiers, holding the spear with the more common underhand grip. Most of the enemy infantry is Sparabara, lightly armed infantry, but the one who managed to hack through the shield wall is actually a Persian Immortal. Below him, overwhelmed, is Boter, trying to get back to his feet, while Chalcon on the right is calling to the rest of the line to form up.

It was so much fun to work on this scene, I just love putting together these battle scenes, depicting my favorite moments of Greek history!

In connection with this artwork, I also published a collection of some of the Persian models I used. You can see an Anatolian rider, heavy Persian Immortal and Sparbara infantry with huge wicker shield, and then some lightly armed Saka warriors. The last one is an Egyptian marine archer.

I also worked on other Marathon related environments and scenes, though I don’t want to reveal too much, so just thumbnails now :-)

It’s all coming together! Still a long way to go, but I’m getting there, one step at a time!

Oh, and also, to reward my dear Patrons over at Patreon, I decided to make the livestreams I make (which have become somewhat regular now) available in recorded form only to them (Hypaspist and Hoplite tier). However, you can still watch my livestreams live, next one is for example coming on Monday the 4th of May at 8 PM CET :-) Set a reminder here.

Chairé!

Martin

March News - Environments, props, characters... and Corona

Phew, what a crazy time we live in, right? Paradoxically, the spread of the Corona virus that isolated most of us in voluntary self-isolation,  also  increased creativity in most of us, 3D artists… right?  I mean, what else is there to do that’s better than your personal projects? Apart from tutorials, movies, TV series, games, books, board games, long telephone calls with parents, long philosophical conversations with your close ones, counting toilet paper rolls… OK, apart from THAT, I think we can all agree, that working on your personal projects is the best thing you can use this quarantine for.

So… I am. I finally jumped into finishing many of the most important environments - like the city of ancient Athens, right around 490 BC. This is not the city you know from all the paintings, books and from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. This is Athens before the great temples and statue of Athena were built, before the city was burnt by Xerxes. You can have a look at its visualization here, on the Ancient Athens 3D project website.

Anyway, I was finally able to finish the gates of Athens, through which the city’s army marched out, towards Marathon.

While we’re at it, you can have a look here, at the Eevee preview of the scene.

I am also working on one of the more difficult scene for the film, which is not yet finished, but I will post an ambient occlusion pass here anyway. Lots of new assets in this one, especially the horses, the chariot, crowds, houses, oh… and the archaic Acropolis of course. Still quite a lot of work ahead, but getting there.

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Here, you can see just one of the assets for this scene, a stall. It is barely visible, in the background - but it’s there! :-)

Oh, and the shields. Let’s not forget the shields. I always knew that I simply do not have enough aspis decorations for my short film - after all, there was A LOT of hoplites at Marathon and most of them liked to adorn their aspidae with unique emblem. Luckily, I found a magnificent package of these on CGTrader, so I immediately bought them and simply love them. These will get along marvelously with my own shield assets.

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And, of course, in between the environments and assets, I am still improving the characters for the film. Apart from some generic crowd characters, I also worked some more on Nikephoros. I made him a brand new 3D eyebrow. Thanks to it, he looks perpetually “not impressed”. One thing I also learned - Corinthian helmets at the time did not have large ear holes. Soo, it seems I will have to redo my helmet models. Oh, well….

And finally, a new model I am working on right now is this Persian noble. While it is true that most of the famous Persian cavalry regiments were not present on the Marathon battlefield, at least some riders appeared and made the hoplites’ lives difficult. So, I obviously need to have them there too. Work in progress of course.

And with that, let me wish you good health and lots of creative spirit. Let’s hope this quarantine will lift off soon :-)

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

January News!

Hello everybody, I am very sorry for the radio silence these past few weeks, but I was insanely busy with finishing this huge Substance Painter course for CGBoost and it took basically all my time. With that, I am now back and already producing new assets and putting together new scenes for Heroes of Bronze. Which, of course means that there will be new tutorials and behind the scenes videos too!

Also, I decided to present my Greek warrior models in a slightly better way than last time, so here goes. Great fun putting all the assets together into a scene.

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And finally, the temple scene is slowly but surely growing. Still a lot of work ahead, characters and little environment details are going to be very important, but I think im on the right track.

Last time, I showed you an improved model of Penelope, so a few days ago I decided to work a bit on the whole scene.

So, that’s it for now! Expect more news in the following days :-)

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