ESCAPE - Her Last Act - Team Flying Penguin Babies
interpolator
Team Flying Penguin Babies
Characters:
Yuri Alexander
Polycount Username: Ysalex
(http://www.yurialexander.com)
Environment:
Evan Liaw
Polycount Username: EvanL
(http://evanliaw.com/)
Environment & Hard Surface:
Joeri Vromman
Polycount Username: JoeriV
(http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=93888)
WIP Title:
'Her Last Act'.
Scene Description:
A mother, father, and infant are separated by zombies in a subway station, abandoned after the zombie outbreak. When their scramble fails, the mother does what she has to do.
Technical stuff:
We'll be using UDK, hopefully eating up our PC's with all the fun DX11 stuff. We're committed to pushing ourselves to make some good art, but also to focus on making good 'game' art, by optimizing and making intelligent tech choices.
We're chosen to limit our environment to a single small scene in order to focus on polish, instead of doing a massive scene with more quantity.
Assets:
Train station
Male
Female
Penguin-pajama clad infant
Zombies
Broken Train.
We're excited to join the contest, and looking forward to pumping out some good art.
Characters:
Yuri Alexander
Polycount Username: Ysalex
(http://www.yurialexander.com)
Environment:
Evan Liaw
Polycount Username: EvanL
(http://evanliaw.com/)
Environment & Hard Surface:
Joeri Vromman
Polycount Username: JoeriV
(http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=93888)
WIP Title:
'Her Last Act'.
Scene Description:
A mother, father, and infant are separated by zombies in a subway station, abandoned after the zombie outbreak. When their scramble fails, the mother does what she has to do.
Technical stuff:
We'll be using UDK, hopefully eating up our PC's with all the fun DX11 stuff. We're committed to pushing ourselves to make some good art, but also to focus on making good 'game' art, by optimizing and making intelligent tech choices.
We're chosen to limit our environment to a single small scene in order to focus on polish, instead of doing a massive scene with more quantity.
Assets:
Train station
Male
Female
Penguin-pajama clad infant
Zombies
Broken Train.
We're excited to join the contest, and looking forward to pumping out some good art.
Replies
Really hope you can dead island trailer this biz up, sounds like a coolies idea
Also penguin pajamas roooooock
For me however, more male character - Everything is polypainted in zbrush, trying not to use phototextures for my own sake. I hope to learn a lot from all this speed work.
Sorry for all the images:
Finished this guy just in time to keep on track for finishing 3 characters for the challenge.
Also on budget at 14,100 tris. 2 2048 textures, one for the skin, one for the clothes.
Rendered in Marmoset.
Got some real nice dust from dDo that you can't see. Need to think about how to deal with dust.
Not sure about floor pattern and color scheme.
Also need to think about the dx11 light reflections as they don't really match the rectangular light fixtures.
Will definitely need to smash everything up quite a bit.
And sorry for the abnormally large screenshots. I'll remember to make them smaller next time.
This is my ref, although I'm not super sticking too it. I need to make my model look older, and also round out the face a bit.
just my 2 cents.
Clothing, material, etc:
And the WIP face:
for the guy, i think the non-bearded version was really working better.
anyways, the thing you are doing with the arms is not working IMO
it looks very awkward and tense/rigid.
Tom addressed the issue already here
Like I did with the space-dive character, I will rotate her arms (and legs, so they aren't so close) back into t-pose position before I retopo - so that I can get a better topo, so that I can get a better bake, and so that rigging will be easier.
anatomically it is just a bad decision to model/sculpt in that awkward pose because that is not a relaxed pose in 99% of the time in any animation/game etc.
i have never seen any production characters being modeled in that awkward pose.
it is very unlikely that your character would push the elbow inwards to create that bend.
if you want to create than inward elbow pose then it is better to do that later with rigging.
I completely realize the inefficiency. You can call it a tick if you want. I have a hard time visualizing t-pose characters in action. I get bored on working on a sculpt with no dynamicism (word?) in the pose) It's maybe a habit I wouldn't want to bring into a production environment, for sure.
That all said, I always fix my high-polies (put them back into a t-pose) before I go into the retopo stage, so that there is no problems with my mesh deformations or baking or rigging.
i totally agree with you about t-pose being boring and that makes be even more confused because a relaxed pose is far from a t-pose.
what you are doing now is closer to t-pose and less dynamic than relaxed pose would be.
just having the bend angle in the arm doesnt make it dynamic, the tense posture makes it more rigid.
anyways, final quality is all that matters and if you can achieve that after rigging then all the better for you.
btw, i like your character work quite a bit and that is only reason i bother to comment/critiq on it.
/off topic
no, i think any pose could be considered dynamic. even a resting pose could be very dynamic.
a t-pose is rarely dynamic BUT always rigid.
a relaxed pose or a "figure in repose" in most cases may not be dynamic BUT it will never be rigid or tense. it will be a figure in rest without any major muscle effort.
a t-pose is in most cases is rigid and tense with all arms/legs/fingers straightened out. your arm pose is forced and rigid.
either way, being dynamic not static is not the issue here i raised.
the key is to avoid rigidity.
/on topic
what you are doing with the arm is forced pose and rigid. you could call it dynamic but that is not the issue here.
if you want your anatomy to work in majority of screen time then you need to find the happy balance of relaxed-dynamic posture but avoid rigid-dynamic posture.
also, a relaxed figure looks more aesthetically pleasing than a rigid figure IMO.
side note:
the reason why you may see such arm pose in some photo references is that the model is asked to pose a certain way and its the model and photographer at fault for taking that photo for reference. in many photos you will also see the model pushing her knees too far back to stand straight or holding her head too upright. all of these forced posture has to be taken into account when modeling a character that will eventually be in various poses and not just the pose she/he was during the photo shoot.
As for updates, a small one. Done overnight, about 4 hours. Tried to work cleanly.
Plan for low-poly is as normal, except that I will roll a nice hair system and the transparent sweater into their own material with a larger map, to get some nice clean alpha/transparency.
So the idea behind this is that half our escape team left, so we needed to come up with a way to mitigate that work. Switching from generic monsters to this (black shadow type monsters using mostly spec to show position, and careful lighting to ensure the monsters fade into the shadows) is one possible solution.
We've been seeking an FX solution, but I'm starting to think this is easier, so we'll discuss it and come up with a final idea, and then work off that. This is the escape character high-poly and the 'shadow monster' hands.
Obviously, the final scene will be low-poly, but after illness etc. I needed an excuse to work on something other than the low-poly escape characters for a day or two. I'll finish this tomorrow and then continue, and this will just a be a 'poster' of sorts, but nothing official. Just for me.
I like the "poster". Technically I like how you did the interaction between the hands and face, and the overall idea with the shadow creatures sounds interesting.
A couple of thoughts. Just having specular on the black might look like painted skin than some non flesh material which I suppose they're made of? The description makes me think of smoke. Perhaps having the body built up by streams of smoke would be cool, like you can barely make out the structure of the thing. Could be done with some tiled texture. You can get a lot out of some simple shader effects as well, like a falloff outline (ghost or x-ray effect) and such.
Hope things work out for you guys. Will be keeping an eye on this.
Having some issues with the light beams that need fixing. Floor still needs another pass over it.
Also having an issue with lens flare that hopefully someone might have the answer to. In the very last screenshot, you'll notice the lens flare not being occluded by the signs and instead shining through the signs.
Just noticed the issue a few minutes ago, so haven't had a chance to google it yet. Just thought I'd mention it, and see if someone could help.
I do have some dust effects that I forgot to turn on. It needs tweaking anyways. Need to remember not to forget about it.
Hopefully I can get all the assets I want in before the deadline. Got an art test I need to work on too...this week is going to be nuts.
Starting to think a train would really help frame the final shots better, but since we lost our vehicle guy, a train will have to come after the deadline.
A few more props left. Will try to squeeze as much as I can before the deadline. Would love to be able really trash the place with junk.
For some reason, can't get the spec to show up on the blood...
I may try to push the environment out and submit it on its own, but I think it's best to take the time to polish it. I definitely want to get a train in as I think it'll help frame the scene so much better. And if Ysalex is up for it, we may get the characters in and do a few storyboards of this concept.
http://i.imgur.com/BBs2qJ9.jpg
I think it looks amazing and it would have been one of the best entries for sure.