Caldria - ArenaNet Art Test

Caldria

Ahoy, my friend suggested I try this a while back, and after seeing so many new threads start with this topic I reckon it would help me to start one of my own.

I feel a bit overwhelmed with all the amazing progress shots I've seen so far. Hopefully I'm up to the challenge.

Here's the last screenshot I took; I'm a fair bit further now, blocking in the armour, and the beard/hair is mostly all done. (Also fixed a few anatomy issues with the pec flowing into the shoulder correctly etc)

Will hopefully post more pics soon.

s33th

Solid looking start.

Since you're taking the anatomy pretty far with this sculpt there's a few things that you may want to touch up.

Spacemonkey's nicely stylized anatomy is an excellent reference.
http://badpolygon.com/wp-content/sagat_lineup.jpg

-The trapezius needs to extend down the center of the back more. That should push the rest of the muscles into place.
-Watch the volumes on his torso - the serratus muscles should slope from the ribcage up to the lats. Currently they're a bit too wide.
-It could help to differentiate the upper abs from the lower sets to define the volume of the ribcage a bit more.
-The obliques could come up a bit higher.

-The kneecap could use some volume to it.


but really most of it will be covered up by the armor so... if you nail the bigger volumes you should be all good.

Caldria

Thanks loads for the assistance s33th. Managed to fix up most of it, figured it looks good enough now. Also adjusted his proportions some, to be more norn-like but also still relatively close to the concept.

I've played the GW 2 beta a lot and seen quite a few norn bodies, so I'm hoping my current state, while relatively close to the concept, wouldn't be out of place as a norn in-game (closer to the smaller/skinnier norn body type, as the armour of the concept is in fact norn elementalist armour)

Blocked in the hair/beard, and started on the armour - never had much time at all to work over the weekend, hopefully I can dedicate more time to it now ^^

Everyone's entries are looking pretty amazing so far.

Pancakes

bah bah bah bah bahhhh I'm lovin it

Natland

Looks great so far! I will follow this thread. Good luck!

Caldria

@ Pancakes, Natland - Thanks guys, I hope I can keep delivering ^^

Smallish update, started detailing some items.
And just blocked in some of the fur, since I'm not quite sure yet how I'll be doing that.

The wolf sculpting was fun, first time I've done anything even remotely animal related in 3D.

I'm also still deciding if I should push the proportions even more to fit with the norn ingame (though I do not wish to go for the biggest norn body)

Caldria

Little more progress, not too happy with the fur yet though.

Alex Pointer

It is all looking really good. You have a good understanding of anatomy and I see you made the corrections that were already pointed out. The one thing I am noticing in your base model (before clothing) is that you appear to have an extra set of abs which is pushing the location of the belly button too far down the torso (do they have an extra set in the concepts?). If so, please ignore me but there is a top set of abs that overlay your lowest set of ribs, but you appear to have two of those. All you really need to do is blend those two upper sets of abs in with one another, make them a little smaller, pull the rest of the abs up slightly and the belly button will look right (can you see the belly button in the concept?)

Also, none of this is beneficial to you for this character because that is all hidden in this one, except that silly belly button.

Caldria

Haha thanks, yeah there was an extra set of abs. I corrected that when I fixed the earlier things mentioned by s33th - I also believe the belly button moved up due to this change. I pretty much did exactly what you said

I could move it up a tad more though, it does still seem low. thanks ^^

Alex Pointer

No problem! Based on everything I have seen so far I think you have a really good shot. Did they set a deadline for this thing?

Caldria

Not that I know of, but I think I saw one of the arena net guys mention we should give ourselves around 3 or so weeks I think? They said it's pretty much until the position is filled.

Thanks! I live in South Africa though, so this will most likely just be a cool challenge/portfolio piece.
I also love guild wars and arena net's art style for GW 2.

Caldria

Small update, been a busy day. Mostly just some of the hard surface on the skirt.
And fixed the belly button.

Caldria

Little more progress. Skirt, boots, hair etc.
Trying to get the fur looking decent before moving to higher SubD levels...

Any crit/suggestions are gladly welcomed.

Pancakes

I just have one thing to say to you: Please don't enter the Mixamo fantasy character contest, I want to have at least a small chance at getting 3rd place!

j/k

Caldria

hehe, thanks. I'm still learning myself, and I don't think I'd have time for that competition; it looks like it could be great though.

DannSw

This is looking great dude. I can't remember the brief for the project, are you working from set characters/armour designs? It's a damn shame you wont be submitting this to ArenaNet, it'll look fantastic once its finished.

Caldria

Thanks DannSw. Yeah, it's from a concept from artist Hyojin Ahn. Also, I will be submitting it to ArenaNet - I just think it's unlikely that anything will come of it, since I live in SA

but it's worth a try of course.

chaosblade

Looking really cool so far, but maybe give him shoes first before u go furthur on the detailing?

Zamite

Looking great. Good luck with those feet

Can't wait to see some normal maps on a 6.5k poly model, and some textures

I'm teaching myself Maya and Zbrush, and I'm keeping this challenge for later to do some testing of myself

(just not going to do it for this test for time-restraints)

PS: Very inspiring.

PPS: Also, are you sure the concept if for an elementalist? The whole fur/leathery look of it together with the left arm wrist protection suggests a ranger (specially the wrist thing).

Stoop_Kid

Wow, this is looking great! Keep it up, I'm looking forward to seeing.the finished piece!

Caldria

@ chaosblade: hehe thanks, I don't know why I left the shoes for so long - same as the handplates : P

@ Zamite: thank you, I'm glad it's inspiring - I'm also still learning quite a bit, and I'm actually rather scared for the retopo haha, taking it all down to 6500 xD.

Regarding the armour type: it does say on the concept medium armour, but ingame character creation has the armour on the norn elementalists, so I guess they decided it worked better as light armour.

@Stoop_Kid: Thanks, im hoping to get there soonish. I still feel rather slow with the whole pipeline.

Some more progress, hopefully very close to finished - just the hand and skirt plates left to do, with some minor touchups (I'm hoping the fur looks good enough to be finished, any crits on that specifically would be great). Either way I plan to finish the sculpt this weekend.

Selaznog

Wow, gotta say this is definitely one of the best Arenanet submissions I've seen so far. Nice job on the fur, as well as the hard surfacy bits

katana

Yep, what he said.

The render is looking a little pixelated, but the forms are great/ Good luck.

Zamite

Texturing and retopo on that model is going to take a lot of work to make sure it gets the same detailed feel the model has

Caldria

@Selaznog: Thanks, I really appreciate it
@katana: Thank you, I've actually been playing around with zbrush's render tools recently - hopefully it won't be pixelated much anymore.
@Zamite: Yeah, especially due to the low polycount - I hope it ends up looking good hehe.

Haven't updated this in a while, I actually finished the sculpt on monday. Been messing around with some ideas for the mixamo contest, if I do enter.

Also mostly finished the lowpoly, at about 6600 polys now.

Zamite

Great work on that silhouette of that poly (making him very identifiable), you can definitely see a lot of detail without the expense of a lot of polys.

One thing I'd change would be the sleeves (the shorter ones), perhaps exagerate the silhouette to make it more evident that he has that right shorter sleeve.

You can probably save some polys on the head.

Can you give us a side view? I want to see that "door knocker looking thing"'s silhouette

Again, great work

Caldria

Hey, thanks Zamite, I'll see what I can do with that sleeve.

Finished the low poly on friday - final count is 6494
Been busy doing some normal and AO test bakes (and messing around with a little colour on the head, even though It isnt using the final bakes)

Also, do you want a side view of the high res or the low? (though the silhouette isnt all that different)

Zamite

Just wanted to look at the low poly side view, to see how it looks So far it looks stunning. Btw nice count there Good job with the head poly reduction.

Caldria

So after both PC and Internet trouble, I finally managed to get back to this.
Got it baked and started texturing (just base colours so far)

Zamite

Great progress, can't wait to see more detail

Only thing I'd change is the belly and make part of the leather armor (but darker leather). At least that's the feeling I get from the concept art. Though the design you show is quite coherent with ingame looks and even GW1 norns (always liking to show a lot of skin).

Best

Caldria

Thanks Zamite. I decided to keep the belly area bare. Since, as you say, the norn like to show skin - it also at least seems to be a logical male version of the female skin bearing outfit.

Just about done with the textures. Crits/suggestions on how to spice it up a bit are gladly welcomed.

Zamite

Hey.

Base colors look pretty cool, and lighting is definitely getting there.

Only crit at the momment, is that it maybe looks a bit too "tidy". He looks adventure-ish so maybe "staining" the leather a bit, nothing too evident but showing a bit of wear might help improve it.

Also giving the skin some flaws "spots, marks, whatnot" might make it interesting. Again nothing too evident.

Looking awesome so far, as always. You clearly know what you're doing

praetus

I think it looks pretty good overall. The only thing I can think to mention is when I looked at this I thought you had desaturated the final render by 50%. Your values are good when I look at it in grayscale, but the colors feel lackluster. This is just with a Hue/Saturation layer with the Sat set at +35.

Caldria

@ Zamite - Thanks - I ended up giving him a subtle skin texture with some arm hair etc. Also I didn't want to put too much wear and tear on the armour since I still wanted it to feel like a "new" armour set a player would receive or whatever. However I did try to bring out the existing wear/tear a little more, hopefully I succeeded?

@ praetus - Thanks for that, after seeing the attached I realised my error - the lighting setup I used was Night in marmoset with the brightness cranked up a bit, but I had forgotten to place lights of my own as well (I'm still rather new to Marmoset). In addition I did crank up the overall saturation of the diffuse by about 15-20 units. Thanks for the crit ^^

So I'm finally finished and would like to thank everyone who gave me crit and helped clear up questions throughout this project, and Polycount for being super awesome.
I shall be sending it in soon.

Zamite

Very cool stuff!

mix

woah!! this is awesooome!!!!

Caldria

Thanks guys ^^