Monster Mushroom
Found the inspiration to model this after I had watched Totalbiscuit's "WTF is... Ziggurat?" and noticed that the game had some interesting concepts. I didn't directly copy it, but I did want to create my own variant of a monster mushroom. I made the base mesh in Maya, starting with polygon primitives to create the stem and shroom. Mouth was created by extruding inwards to the mesh, with again, polygon primitives to create the teeth. I wanted an almost grotesque look to the mushroom and used google images to gather some reference images for stem colours and shroom ideas. Overall quite brown.
After making the base mesh in Maya, and creating UVs for the mesh, I exported it as an .OBJ and then imported it into ZBrush so I could add detail to the stem and shroom. I wanted spots, rough texture and overall less than attractive look. Using a mixture of the standard brushes and a few alpha maps, I made the mesh the way I wanted with a polycount of around 8 million.
I then gathered some images using either photoshop or a bit of the internet to create an assortment of assets that I could use to colour my mesh. I wanted the shroom and stem colours to be somewhat similiar, but not the same. I wanted the stem to be quite a light colour, and the shroom to be harshly darker in comparison. As for the mouth and teeth, I wanted it to resemble a human mouth in colour and texture, with very dirty, clearly unkept teeth. After finishing the texturing and sculpting in ZBrush, I exported them both at 4096 * 4096 resolutions. The reason I chose such a high resolution is because this then gives me the opportunity to downscale it to whatever compaitible resolution I wanted if need be.
Not a huge fan of organic modelling, I personally prefer to create weapons and armor. However, I did enjoy creating this and the most important thing I gained from it was "trigger time" so to speak. When I got the urge to make this, I jumped on it because if I had put it off, I may have lost the enthusiam to make additional 3D objects. The more time I spend modelling, texturing and sculpting, the more practice I can get in and the better assets I can create. I may not enjoy certain types of modelling, but I do appreciate the skills and refinement I get from doing the work.