African Women Run Brushes

[ivan louette]

Dedicate to the beauty of african sportswomen running, these two brushes are made of several steps including bitmaps created in 3D programs, converted to brushes in Expression 3 and then exported to Xara X through .ai vector format. That was a very interesting exercise of importing and exporting files. I will explain the making of in next days.

Here they are

Enjoy,
ivan

[jclements]

Ivan!!!

I believe this technique would be super for creating icons/symbols for web interfaces, particularly where the icons represent actions (verbs) to perform.

[ivan louette]

Thanks John ! In fact you will see that so many different styles are present along the process that one could use the steps for many many purposes. That's the quality of really inventive programs to keep the user very free of what he can do.

Here is only an example of what can be done in playing with several programs toghether. Very analog things may be obtained with other programs, but the help of Xara X is fundamentally a must at each intermediate step.

Enjoy,
ivan

Step 1 : modeling of a silhouette character in ZBrush (1.55b)

Step 2 : posing it only with the rotate tool applied to the limbs separately

Step 3 : skinning with the adaptive skinning ; a = density 3, b = density 2, c = density 1; for this use I have chosen the density 3 because it will be modified again in Lightwave.

[This message was edited by ivan louette on February 12, 2003 at 10:37.]

[ivan louette]

1. importing the .obj silhouette in Lightwave ;

2. applying metanurbs ;

3. applying the "spikey" tool to the metanurb object ; this tool divide each polygon in triangles by their center (thus here 4 triangles for each polygon) and moves the center (here slightly outside) and sometimes the effect can be very sculptural.

4. Patching the metanurbs with polygons ; no need here for Ã* high density patching because this is the definitive stage of an object which will be used for very small renderings.

The below objects are different rotations of the same object rendered in Lightwave and exported as separate transparent .png files.

In fact I was absolutely amazed by the effect which associates sculpting effects and sensuality in a very expressive manner. The simulation of the muscles and the soft parts of the body was absolutely impredictible !

[ivan louette]

A. Several poses are selected and assembled in an unique bitmap which was imported in Expression 3 ;

B. the bitmap is converted to a greyscale bitmap brush which is applied to a very wide stroke ; then it's exported through Illustrator 5 format ; this export will vectorise the bitmap brush.

[ivan louette]

a. The Illustrator 5 file is imported into Xara X (an error message occurs allways but import anyway) ; at this stage it has no transparency and is of a very pale grey ;

b. stained glass transparency is applied ;

c. I often apply a four color fill with four different and very pale colors. This is allways interesting to resize widely the handles of the filling afterwards.

The drawings are ready to be ungrouped (and re-grouped by figure) and converted to a brush !!!

[jclements]

Created (invented), Described, and Illustrated like a true artist.

I admire your ability not only to depict (draw) but your extraordinary talents in understanding and utilizing the capabilities of multiple software applications.

[ivan louette]

(I am emotioned)

ivan

[Earl]

I like it!

[Dan Huff]

EXCELLENT, Ivan! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

Very interesting combination of programs, and nice description of the process!

Dan Huff
http://home.neo.rr.com/nikko/indexNEW.html