DRD [Farscape]

My first official foray into hard surface modeling. This little guy is a DRD (Diagnostic Repair Drone) from the sci-fi TV series Farscape.

To all my fellow Scapers out there: I salute you!
 
Tools:
ZBrush - Modeling, UVs
PS - Texturing, Post Processing
Maya - Rendering

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Two more angles:

First, I come bearing lessons of my own folly:

1) Texture in PS. Do not polypaint, unless you're in a rush. I knew I'd have more flexibility, but god damn. I should have done this from the beginning - chalk it up to laziness, idiocy, and being an overall fekkik.

2) Don't just use stamps/stencils (grunge brushes and the like) on their own to texture. Paint over them, combine it with a masked image, anything to increase complexity. Many thanks to my friend for helping me catch on to this! All this is embarrassingly basic, holy hell.

3) Use lights... better. I can't think of a snappy way to put this. Strategic use of lights can really amp up presentation (obvious). I nearly sent this one out when it was in retrospect, lackluster as heck. Another point to my consultant - I really should be paying you.

4) When you plug your textures into your materials in Maya, you can choose the filter type. By default, it's set to Quadratic. By turning it off, it made the texture significantly sharper. I stumbled onto this on YouTube, and I'm super glad that I did. Every single render I've made in Maya prior to this could have had sharper textures. Take care though: in this forum thread, Thev states that turning the filter off may negatively impact render speeds and RAM usage.


Now, on to workflow. I adopted a more conventional process this time round; I created diffuse, specular and bump maps in Photoshop before plugging them into Maya. And it makes all the difference. For the past couple of projects, I've been plagued by bland renders. I believe I may have found the path to more professional-looking work. Surprise! It's what people have been doing all this time. My renders are still lacking, but I think I'm headed in the right direction.