[Noob-Learning] Rat Warrior

Ashaman73

I need to take a break from coding. I've always loved to create art, but doing most of the time only a little bit of texturing, modeling, rigging etc. but never really a complete piece from sketch to animation. To take the time I will attempt to create a new creature for my hobby game, a rat(man) warrior.

It will be a 4-7k model, no sculpting/normal maps, but hand-painted diffuse and specular maps.

I hope to improve my skills by doing a complete model+texture, therefore I would really appreciate C&C

Current wip:

Blaisoid

it's pretty basic so it's hard to say much. it could use bigger muscles on lower part of legs since at the moment they look like they wouldn't be able to support such heavy body.

Ashaman73

Thx for the feedback. I've added bigger muscles to the legs , changed the face a little bit and added a quick design for the outfit:

Ashaman73

Here's the first model attempt as turntable:

Ashaman73

Here's the next wip.

I have revised the model arms and shoulders. Less polys in the hands, larger hands and arms, more defined muscles, less hunchback, added a quick rig to put it into a pose.

And eventually I've started to create the texture which confronted me with two challenges. The first one is to texture large areas, this time I wanted to texture the whole creature without additional accessories which breaks up the texture/model. The second challenges is anatomy. I have never tried to use proper anatomy to create a character texture, therefore it could look somewhat weired, especially at the shoulders and upper arm.

The texture style is a mix of TF2 and Dota2, hand painted, no normal maps, but a spec map, and at least stylized.

Wip:

Shmaba

I'm gunna be watching this. Ratmen are actually one of my favorite creatures.:poly128:

Right now the biggest thing is that a lot of it needs more depth and definition to it, especially in the face. Faces are super important and even more so around the eyes. If you're going to mess up anywhere, don't do it around the eyes.

Since you're not using normal maps, you should paint in that depth by hand. It's just exaggerating some details and painting in AO. Also a thing that is especially prominent in DOTA and TF2 characters is this gradation of light to dark from top to bottom.

Here's a paintover to help explain things


Take a look at what Valve talks about here http://www.dota2.com/workshop/?l=english and open up the character art guide and character texture guide. They're pretty sweet.

m1neh

Hey ashaman - firstly, wheel of time ftw.

Not a massive anatomy nerd, but first thing that pops out at me is the flatness of the abs. But pretty much all the muscle definition could be stronger. shmaba's paintover for the arms, head and legs is awesome - do as he says!

Ashaman73

@Shmaba:
Thanks for your great paintover. I tried to improve the overall muscle sharpness and the face, moved a lot of the contours into the AO map and added a dark to light gradient from the bottom to the top of the model. I know both Dota2 guides, both are really great, though the texture generation is based a lot on the really detailed (hi-poly)models.

@m1neh:
Thanks for pushing me in the right direction. I tried to make the deeper, but I'm not quite happy with the result yet.

m1neh

Much better, but would still reccomend getting more shape in the lower torso, maybe change the low poly a little to give it a bit more definition?

Ashaman73

@m1neh:
Yeah, after looking closer at an (human) anatomy chart I see the misstakes I made. I will try to fix the issues with the abs, especially I will try to hint the external oblique in the mesh.

Ashaman73

So, here is the next wip version.

Adjusted the abs (changed the model too), color, cleaned up the texture and changed the rendering setup. C&C are appreciated :-)

Rednaz

Have a look through this dota character guide if you didn't already, I think it can help you add some more color variation to your model
http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/workshop/Dota2CharacterArtGuide.pdf

Ashaman73

I tried to adjust the color a little bit, reworked the face, tried to correct the back anatomy and failed at adding more color :-(

Nevertheless, here's the next wip:

uncle

Try to check Avian Defender by Hai Phan in Vertex. It is really good read about hand painted textures. Also check out Valve documents on Dota2 asset creation - lots of good stuff about color and choosing a palette.

Right now I think it is good direction, but overall he lacks color differentation. You have just two main hues here and while it is good beginning you should try to broaden the range of colours. Also maybe you could try to work with diffuse only or 100% self illuminated model to get the values right.

Good luck bro.

Ashaman73

*gasp* this piece of e-paper is amazing (->vertex), they should print and sell it (start a kick starter campaign for the publishing costs and you have my pledge).

Back to the topic, it is good to see that I have a similar way of approaching the texture workflow, though I stumble once I reach the coloring stage. Ok, I will take a step back and attempt to push the diffuse texture first. Currently my biggest fault is , that I have only a value gradients and not hue shift in them. And I will try to add a third basic hue.

Ashaman73

Here we go, updated the color variations and render the T-poses with the texture only without any shading, though the large image is still using a shader.