The Hill process with QuickCurve! A Blender Addon for Drawing in 3D

hey guys welcome to part two of this little quick curve series so the first video was i'm going over the features in quick curve what every option does uh in this one we're just doing like a time lapse as i work through this samurai scene i talk about like why i'm choosing certain things what the process is like and um yeah if you're if you're new to quick curve this is a tool that jam major or ivan i've been building we have a couple of them we have quick shape quick to form quick curve and these tools are all built with the purpose of drawing in 3d and so that's what we're trying to bring to blender okay so i'm starting with a side view drawing here with quick curve now you know there's a million ways that you can start out but the idea is to just have some kind of simple mannequin in this case i went with side view and then scale it out just mirror it and you kind of have a base that you can either use as is to build on top of or remesh it and sculpt it and um then it depends on how you know how detailed you want to go with the sculpt and i tried a bunch of those things added a couple of different levels of detail and you'll see that later on but for now i just have this first one so i'm starting with like for the armor shell pieces of the samurai i'm basically thinking about it like a piece of clay where i just draw it and it has that you know hand-drawn feel because of that and then i'm taking advantage of the 3d aspect by just moving it into place and scaling it and adjusting it how i see fit so i think that's one of the ways that you kind of get the best of both worlds of 3d but then it also looks 2d and then i started i switched to surface draw it's it's kind of like surface draw is really good for the medium and small shapes usually in some cases like for environments you could do big shapes with it as well but for something like a character it seems like in my experience the workflow is draw it kind of in 3d space and then for for the big shapes and then for the small and medium you can switch over to surface and start doing all these little details uh here's just a case of me trying some different things out until i find what i like um there what happened was i just deleted some parts like i turned the video off it was like let me think about this and then we did a few parts but for the most part it's the same thing and then i started with a revolve with quicker for the helmet shape and eventually i realized later on it's just easier to kind of do it with polygons and that's really the thing you know you want to use quicker for what it's good for and then you know for like 10 20 percent if you need to go into polygons or go into sculpt that's great i think uh quick curve it's really good for the base shape and then to sculpt on top either you re-measure first or you don't but i think it's just so good to get the initial form with that hand-drawn look kind of where you want it how you want it and then to go in and either sculpt on top or go into surface draw and keep refining i turned on uh pressure for that one it's really there's only like a couple of different settings that you need you know i'm switching direction i'm switching tapering i'm switching pressure and then i'm just working with the work plane to kind of figure out where i want the drawing to start in this case because the isolated mode is kind of broken right now it'll like still see other objects so i'm having to i you saw me move it out of place so that i can draw on the helmet properly but that will be fixed in the next update helmet a little too big there okay it's obviously like i'm fine with that as a base if i just wanted to leave that and then do a more refined one that's kind of how i approached it oh here so here's a really good one so i've realized that you know when you draw the shape you kind of want some kind of bend to it so the lattice is really great at doing that and i'm doing that through quick to form and in the future in the next quick to form update i think it will just be automated to where it's like you can bend it kind of around its middle you can taper it you can um yeah taper it and bend it and rotate it based on based uh on different points like the 3d cursor or maybe just wherever your mouse is and to really just streamline that process because i found myself like all the time i'm drawing the curve and then i have to add divisions to it and then i add a lattice so there's some more automation that we will be adding in to these tools these are by no means you know finished but this kind of workflow where you draw the base shape manipulate it quick to form lattice into some kind of more complicated form has been really it was very nice to work this way this part's cool um i'm just kind of thinking about like i don't know exactly what these things are i'm just thinking about a very 2d like painterly way like when the light is on the form is going to cast some kind of shadow and i'm just trying to draw something that will create cool shadows that will make it look detailed that makes sense again here you know just if something catches the light great that's all i'm trying to do here if i wanted to go crazy then i could remesh it i could sculpt it i could continue to draw on it it just depends on how much time you want to take here i'm using the uh or the curves from edges type of thing i think we call it quick tubes so that's what i did there again just adding little details little something to catch light cast a shadow and then get out of there it's such a like not just a drawing way of working but like a painterly way of working as well this is sped up five times by the way so i think this whole project like if you just sit down and focus it was like a day but it was spread out over a course of a couple days because you know taking notes of like what we want to add what do we want to improve so it was very helpful to do a simple project like this so i can see where we're going to take the future updates skipped ahead a little bit there but um i'm doing a bunch of samurai so you'll you'll get to see the other ones where i do like the sword and things and the mask i did a couple different versions here trying to focus on like different themes like different variations of the same idea of a samurai i think that other one i just uh remeshed it and it looks kind of nice when when that's done too but then you know you lose the material so you want to maybe re remesh it in like bunches of pieces kind of figure that out but for this i was just using like a great material so i didn't bother with any of that that was a nice example of just drawing it remeshing it being able to sculpt it into place because you have a lot of geometry and then switch the surface mode add details i found that that was like a very freeing way to work started reusing little drawn pieces it's kind of cool to have like these kit bash pieces but they're they look drawn and you know handmade i think that is the first samurai maybe added a few more things adding some kind of belt here and then i went into a quick shape to just cut out a circle in the middle added the little felt thing back i like doing these it would just take so long to manipulate those into place draw it done a lot of these times where you see me go into edit mode i'm i'm kind of pausing mentally and uh going in and writing down like what can i do what can we do to add some kind of tool that will let you not have to go into edit mode and not interrupt your creative process so version two is gonna be a really big update for quick curve where we're gonna solve a lot of those problems we're gonna solve the quick deform lattice thing like we just really need a bend and a taper wrapping up this one samurai before i do a couple more okay here so this is the thing i was talking about earlier where you can kind of remesh things and go and sculpt them you have a nice base to start from obviously this isn't a sculpting tutorial or anything i'm just doing something really simple again just kind of enough for there to be a shadow that kind of looks good when the when there's light that's all i'm going for almost done here and with this you know you could just use a scanned mesh obviously but the thing is you know for work i would but for something like this i'm just trying to push the kind of personality a little more i want to have a little bit more gesture a little bit more character you know like is this guy a warrior is it a princess is it some kind of specific thing with a specific kind of mood as opposed to all those scans are just like an office guy you know just like some worker it doesn't have any kind of like art artistry to it i i would say so that's just something that i'm personally trying to go for and that's why i really like doing these kinds of base meshes almost done here that's what i was missing okay so here i'm using a quick deform feature i think i've covered it in the tutorial but the previous ones where it's just so much faster to use quick deforms extract instead of trying to do it through blender and just get something cool and different from the other versions that i did okay now i think we're ready okay so now now i'm doing the teeth and again it's kind of set the work plane or the alignment up in a way that makes sense for this task and in this case i just ended up drawing it for that one and then moving it into place on these i used that first point depth a line and uh just had a taper on there so i got those teeth now i'm just adding little details with surface draw and it just comes out not perfect and that's really what i love about it all those little mistakes just add up to new shadows being cast and details being implied and that's what i'm going for a little bit of slowdown here that i was gonna fix later in the code but typically it's pretty fast there's just like a very specific situation where you can get a little bit of slowdown but nothing major find out different things i don't think i kept this kind of like it though yeah it's weird to see me work like this okay i think just the final details here and this one this samurai will be wrapped up i ended up bringing these later but um now i was just doing a little bit of an adjustment to the pose i had some bad geo here so i was just trying to figure out what i can do but then i didn't i don't think i kept it yeah just trying stuff out you know it's it was fun i think it was really fun to work this way and kind of not deal with topology or extruding anything at all okay here we go final details get the alignment right reusing little parts i think it would be really cool to have a like a kid bash library of these kinds of hand-drawn details because everyone releases these really clean nice ones but um hopefully we can do some hand-drawn ones and now so here what i did is i just sculpted on that face mesh a little bit or a similar kind of base mesh and now i'm doing a different version so here i'm just going right into the drawing on surface to create my shapes forms again the same kind of idea where it's like it's a piece of clay i put it down and then i manipulate it into place there's just so many way different ways to do it and this is just one way that i tried i mean it's kind of why it's so hard to make tutorials about these tools so far it's like there's so many different ways to approach it and i really like that so with time i think we'll be able to cover every possible route but for now here's a couple you know i think on this one i went back to the revolve to do the kind of spherical shapes that's always a good option but then i just ended up sculpting on top of that base mesh and polygon editing just staying efficient you know 10 to 20 percent can be done with polygons and sculpting and the the rest 80 can be done with quick curve and quick deform and quick shape i think this one was my like kind of loose one oh here so i selected a bunch of pieces and remeshed them which is a really great way as i mentioned after after that you sculpt it up and then you switch to surface and do some details which i'm pretty sure i'll do later really with the samurai you get this kind of an organic mesh in a way with quick curve you're doing some organics but then you're also kind of doing hard surface and it kind of shows the versatility which as i've mentioned many times now it's a real priority for us to be able to do all types of things when working this way like i mentioned it's really the most important aspect is probably to think of think in 2d and think about that light casting shadows make it kind of implying detail and not just like this is exactly what this thing looks like it should just be like from a distance with the light and potentially a texture will it look good enough and if it does to me that's that's enough because that's that's what i'm trying to do as a concept artist i'm not trying to you know go into zbrush and make this like a 40 million polygon thing you could you could do it in blender even and i'm sure we will at some point show that as well but for this just keeping it nice and simple and low poly here's the sword i messed up a couple times on drawing this one i was trying different things out and then i just went with this one put it into place a little spear for the back i just deleted it okay oh yeah here i tried the remesh just to see i find myself like i'll just do something totally useless because i'm thinking about like what my next step is i'll just i just moved his foot like four times for no reason but now so this i took that that mesh and i just sculpted on it for another hour just it was kind of a test for me just to see like how far i can push the anatomy but this is what i got and now i'm going in and doing another version so this is now the third different one and i think i ended up doing four different ones but i believe that this is the last one in this video so here i'm kind of not using quick curve as much for this moment i'm just using polygon editing and then quick solidify from quick to form and i really love this feature that we have where it just draws with the mirror i cover how that works in the part one but it just works quite well i think i feel like there's no other program that has that i don't or at least i don't know but it seems like it like everything should just have that you should be able to just create objects with mirror automatically but we have it and i think it's really useful again like that curved shape is so annoying to make in uh you know in box modeling or whatever but here you just draw it and rotate it and it's done and these kinds of like antlers the curve is obviously just great for this kind of stuff just first click depth move your viewport and it just aligns perfectly and it's exactly what you want and then i think i ended up twisting them yeah i really like this feature this just adds a little bit more a little bit extra and some new stuff stuff i like mixing the square brush with the round brush it you know just creates that natural contrast right there for you and it in quick curve to switch it's you just press alt d and you get that and that's really cool i think i think i was i was trying something here that i'm going to show a little bit later i just cut that out but i do a much clearer demonstration of that in just uh just a minute here i think okay forward a little bit to where i already did the bow now i'm just wrapping up some of the details i think i switch over here from the square to the round in a second to create some variety oh and ended up doing a mask for this one as well just the same press ctrl e with quick deform it just extracts it right away and kind of clears the mask and sets everything up for you then you can just sculpt i think i went with a more demonic looking one here the kind of like forest demon with the you know he's got the bow and arrow he's got the creepier mask trying to have some variety in these samurais okay here i go you know for the round do some something more organic these little um cables ropes actually whatever you want to call yeah so i thought this like having the round here kind of contrasts nicely with all of the square that i've been doing okay so now this is what i wanted to show you so i did this square and i did this profile and the profile can be any kind of shape you want the square can be anything but i'm using the array features to kind of draw with those objects and then i'm pressing shift u to change the spacing and so that's this is creating like some really cool details really fast i think it would be very annoying to have to place each of those objects manually and then it doesn't have to be a square you know like i said it could be some kind of complicated thing that you would design so that's very useful and it's just a nightmare to set up set this up in blender it would take you so much longer than just drawing it so and then the profile thing that i'm going to show very soon is even cooler that's probably my favorite part of this whole process and it was drama's idea of course so like a creative genius gives the best ideas oh here's another example of the lattice you know so once we automate that to be able to taper it with just one click in quick to form that's going to be beautiful i think i'm about to go in with the ornaments okay here we go nope not yet just a few more details first yes it's so fast to do these details i mean i don't even know how like it would take so long to do that it's just nothing and it looks drawn everything i want adding some buckles and stuff again just something from a distance sort of looks like i did something and that's good enough i'm clearing up a little space here for the ornaments now i went too much into detail too soon classic problem big medium small every time okay so the ornaments the profile basically is just something that will look like an ornament when you draw it and the big thing here is that if you try to do this in default blender because of how it aligns at like complete random it just doesn't look nearly as good because it it'll draw like one kind of flat and then one super wide if you get what i mean it's like rotating around its axis and what we've tried to do is at least get it can like 90 percent consistent consistent 90 of the time so because of that you can do this kind of stuff and get something get what you're expecting you can draw it on the surface you don't have to worry about it kind of clipping off into space it just always stays on the surface and it's a very nice way to add some details you could combine it with the lazy mouse from quick to form you can remash it there's really a ton of different avenues you can take it down i thought this looked pretty cool and then you could set up you know a bunch of different profiles that you like and just switch between them really quick by pressing j a lot of options there try to turn it into a little bit of a dragon then if i want to fix the rotation or change the rotation i'll just go into edit mode and ctrl t but we're going to make a shortcut for that outside of it you can just do it pretty quickly okay i think that this last samurai is done and now i'm doing a little demonstration of the foliage basically i set up a profile i set up pressure and i set up a taper and now you can just draw oh and i set up a random size so now you can just draw things i'm not sure what i was testing there but yeah once you get the settings right you're just off to the races i did the i did those flat but now if you change the alignment mode to a long normal it'll kind of draw well off the plane and this is something that i covered heavily in the previous video but just showing it again because i actually really like this feature it's just so useful so i just drew these clumps and i'm constantly kind of rotating the viewport in order to get a variation in the rotation but in the next version certainly there will be a random rotation as well as i found that that would be very useful i think these are the final clumps that i actually ended up using and then i used quick shape a little bit here just to create some rocks just so fast you know this feels like 3d coaches cut it get some nice rocks and now i'm doing the tree because my my idea was that he's by this huge tree for this one i just went square brush draw in space and then along surface or on surface get the roots and uh pressure was on this whole time for this one and again rotating the view using first click depth which is just basically probably the best way to work with quick curve but i mean it's hard to say it's best it depends on what you're doing but for this definitely the best because you you know you need to branch out okay and then this one i started the video a little bit late but using the round brush for this one this is just a different version of a tree i thought maybe this one has like a canopy and actual leaves which i just kind of roughed in towards the end but again same thing here first click depth you're going to start from your first point and branch out yeah so this is how i'm doing the leaves obviously this isn't a final type of thing this whole thing really is just a sketch like a one day type of experiment but when you know when there's fog and on top of it you can also just put a texture on there it was fine so here is the kind of scene that i put together that just shows the different versions the different assets and i do have this available for download if you're interested you can do anything you want with them those i did some gesture drawing practice as well to warm up and this is the final assembly like going to war type of scene now all in eevee and this one with some depth of field i was trying to go for that like rashomon type of look here in this second one uh with the leaves a shadow of the leaves the heavy scene so here i have all the flying leaves the grass the tree there in the background god rays a character stand in there and that is it so just as an ending to this video um i know that this was kind of just like a process video like a narrated time lapse it's not really a blender tutorial it's it just focused on quick curve but you might want to know about how like i'm rigging stuff or how i'm setting up the light or anything like that if you you know are kind of new and just discovered uh the video so i wanted to just recommend the best resources that i think are out there obviously my partner jama has made some incredible blender tutorials he's who i learned from you can get that one this one incredible and the tools quick shape the curve it's on his page i'll have all of the links in the description quick to form is on my page and then i also want to shout out jetsaber for this tutorial it's great and florent as well this tutorial is incredible and then uh outside of blender just general assets um i just wanted to point this out obviously like my assets that i did here and then i included and then i showcased in the video are just like these simple little sketches and but but you might want something kind of more photo scan more high quality and to me these are like you know if there's triple a where it's like naughty dog or something i think this is quadruple a i mean this team has been doing some amazing stuff so i highly recommend checking it out and uh yeah okay thank you guys for watching i hope that this video was somehow helpful in just being able to explain my thought process while i'm working with quick curve and then you know i have the other videos on my channel that show how all of the features of quick curve and uh yeah stay tuned more more is coming thank you

Channel: ALKSNDR

Views: 38,686

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Id: eqNH1mRYJYU

Length: 44min 36sec (2676 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 19 2020