Rodin is among the artists I always have in mind when working on these quasi sculpts.
So, testing hdris as background.
My question. What about scale? Is there a rule or something?

Is this a request?
It's coming soon.

Testing Oli's hdris. A blender/cycles render. 30 secs. 300 passes, 1600x1200 px (before cropping)
I used a very wide lens for testing possible distortions. Great work from Oli!
This produced quite out of scale effect, but it's a test.
There's a trick to use jpgs as hdri lighting. I made a second image 32 bit, lot of contrast. This is is invisible to cycles camera and only lights the scene. Another node for the original jpg background.

@unknownuser said:

Hexagon = Brush modeling like zBrush.

Don't forget to try the tree editor.
You can export foliage separated from the branch.
As obj files, watch the density to be lower than 64k each group.
Use any app that can convert it to 3ds format (blender for me). Import in SU...

Another tip?
bryce can render equirectangular panoramas.

Still one of the best apps for landscapes?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXxT3vIuud8&feature=player_embedded

One of my first 3d apps, back in 97
It still looks like a 97 app.

Hexagon for free.
It says, free for a limited time.
What does this means?

Long time passed before Pete tries to comment one of my posts.
This shows how right I am.
Buy a macpro Oli, you deserve it. Money you gonna spend... stop thinking like a british, they're famous on this money subject. What greeks are famous for, it's another matter of discussion.

@unknownuser said:

While I love the simplicity of an imac and smooth OS, you just can't update them. If you buy a brand new imac now for say £2000, it is already outdated!!

Welcome to hell
How much a macpro costs? A lot? I have one three years old (2xXeons 16 threads) I updated the GPU these days, I updated RAM a year ago, hard drives etc.
It still is among the fastest in all forums. Only the macpros 6cores Xeons are a bit faster.
So, for a three years old machine, ~$3000, I wonder. How much Solo paid all these three years for upgrades? I bet he bought 1-2 completely new machines from scratch.
MacPros are cheaper. You can boot them as WIN only, if you like this.
From 2002-2007 I was among those who came back to PCs after '97. I hope I won't do it again. I don't even have a dual boot engine - wrong, I have a linux boot -

So what about this? How much a PC costs, like this one?
http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro
I mean the second on the list, ~$3,800 = £2,348
Think carefully Oli. A <250 display, calibrated under the excellent OSX is more than enough for you.

Don't listen to PC users, they simply don't know much...
I mean it.

Edit:
If these were not enough,
An ATI performs better under OGL than any nVidia (except the very expensive quadro FXs)
New GPU (cuda based) rendering engines (like cycles, octane etc). what about them?
A 2xXeon 6 cores =24 threads CPU will perform almost the same, without all the known issues under CUDA.
I'm very sure about this last one issue.

Thanks for the kind comments.
I call them doodles because this is what they are.
I don't have any particular concept in mind when sitting and sculpting.
I may do some boolean operations first, then sculpt on it, then translate it to something else.
As for the avatar, I like it. It's a bit funny. Made by artisan and rendered as a SU raw export.
I like all the sculpting tools-apps I tested so far. All of them. It's a bit irrelevant to what I prefer to work with.

@ Bryan K
Always download latest version of blender 2.6x from graphicall.org. The trunk builds, except if you like to experiment with sculptring dyntopo branch.
And a small addon to all users. My favorite UI skin. A little modified from an existing preset. Just copy it to application support/blender/2.63/scripts/presets/interface themes
Open blender prefs and under Themes tab enable it (upper left pulldown menu). Save prefs if you lie it.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/24090090/michalis.xml

Another fast one doodle. If byzantines where sculpting... how it could look like?

@Pilou
This image of sisyphos... describes blender better than a thousand words. No jokes, it's so true.
Maybe I'll try it on the next blender splash-screen contest. What an idea!

"My" blender involvement isn't so far different from what you describe.
After spending a peaceful year with SU I started learning zbrush and blender.
A love story
No, two love stories.
We should say Eros stories.
(since Eros was the child of Night (Nyx)
Like his mother he still blossoms at nigh, he also doesn't care about money.
From his fisherman father he also learned how to use nets.
Sorry, unable to recollect correctly, (from Plato's symposium)

Now, think about the language barrier.
Eros and love are two quite different words-meanings in greek language. Ancient or modern.
How can I translate them? Love and love?
Don't even dare to translate Eros as sex or something. It's quite irrelevant.

@unknownuser said:

I thought I asked before but curious why do you use the computer for this? You obviously can do this by hand. I would think it it more direct by hand in clay or wax. Or is it?

Not that simple. I'm a lazy artist.

1. for real sculpting, you need a studio, far away from neighbors, especially if you work at night and on stones.
2. I'm a 2d artist, in 3d sculpting, I found a nice tool for studying drawing.
3. Yeah the tools, funny, because such tools exist in digital form too. ha ha

Anyway, computers is just another medium. Some people asked me once, why watercolors? You can do better in oil painting. (and ask for better prices actually )

@ Bryan K
It's about blender sculpting, which is much different than modeling. It's not fair to compare it with SU, artisan for instance, we're talking about huge meshes, retopology, UVs and baking workaround.
After all these last years, blender became a much better app than it was. I don't see any reason to be more productive in SU. After all, blender 2.6x has pushpull and inset tool (F) as well. LOL (it also supports ngons which I, personally, find it a little useless).
We also have two fine artists on this forum (french, je ne l'oublie pas, pilou ), who use both SU and blender.

This is a good one, latest mac build. (more advanced on cycles renderer section than the official)
http://graphicall.org/856
You won't find sculpting - dynamic topology though.
It's experimental build. So, try this one
http://graphicall.org/979
You may have as many builds installed as you like. They even share same preferences.

Learning curve in blender may take long, as Pilou explained. More than a year. But think otherwise. Blender is a massive app, a sculpting tool, an editor, an animator, a renderer (two or more renderers actually), a compositor, a video editor, camera tracking. Almost everything. In professional quality. Take one at a time. I would suggest for sketchup users to install the free TIGs obj exporter and start importing and learning Cycles render engine. How to navigate, set up scenes. Then, it's about time LOL, learn UV unwrapping. You gonna love it after all we have seen in SU. Don't forget to ask for help. And login in blenderartists.org (blender community forum)

The dynamic topology blender-branch is almost ready. There're some less important bugs for the moment but it perfectly works.
Surprisingly perfect, I could say. Bye bye sculptris. This is what happens when a company like pixologic buys a free app and stops development.
Some more studies. All dyntopo sculpts ~600-900K, shaded and rendered in cycles-blender (I updated the older nvidia with a decent ATI these days )

and a sculptris ~1.2M just to show how better details you can sculpt in blender using half of the faces.

You probably are familiar with the impressive work of David Carson, right?

You should.
It's your birthday. Not so easy to accept it.

Happy birthday Gaieus

It's a great day, whatever you feel and believe.
It's your BIRTHDAY
You have some great beer there. So drink as much as you can. LOL

@unknownuser said:

Yes michalis, super smart!

Because I usually sleep at ~5AM.
May I ask, what time are you going to bed?
If these all sound ridiculous, so it's the subject of this thread.

Yeah yeah,
I'm smart too... Does visiting and commenting on forums counts too?