Gender monkey warriors ( I need a better name)
polycounter lvl 6
So here's the plan dudes,
As suggested, I am going to make some more fellows with more textures and more zbrush anatomical details.
I will first model these dudes as a package of 8000 tris with no normals and painted textures
Then I will model this one with normals as a high poly scuplt with many tris, normals and thing nature.
With that said, I will start on this venture soon
As suggested, I am going to make some more fellows with more textures and more zbrush anatomical details.
I will first model these dudes as a package of 8000 tris with no normals and painted textures
Then I will model this one with normals as a high poly scuplt with many tris, normals and thing nature.
With that said, I will start on this venture soon
Replies
started sculpting the male fellow today. What are your sentiments?
How is it looking people?
If no one has anything to say, that I will move on to the low-poly retopo of the male and female
Anyone got any more to say, so that there aren't any headaches or misunderstandings later?
I'm not sure if the matcap is helping, do you have anything closer to a flat lambert, or clay like?
i really dont think you need more anatomical details or more textures. you just need more polish to your models and textures. think quality, not quantity.
also, for these character i suggest you model them all in traditional polygons in Maya and forget about zbrush sculpting altogether.
doing traditional poly modeling will give you very clean results.
as for polish, this is what i mean. your concepts have lot of clean smooth shapes with consistent thickness, angles and general design elements. your 3d falls apart in following your own concept.
these are just two example, your whole model has many issues like that. pay closer attention to your concept. follow the clean shapes.
MM: I just thought that those hands weren't "girly" enough and folks would say something about it, thus I changed it. I will use the other hands then if it is an issue.
In other news, I finished the retopo for the male one, how is that?
all the lumpy-ness, uneven shapes etc needs to be polished if you want to improve on this, other wise you are right back where you started before all this.
also that topology on the retopo looks very stretched and distorted.
did you actually retopo it or just use the lowest subdivision ?
Forgot to post these yesterday, yeah these aren't armor types, it's more like the tight cyber suits you know?
also I messed up and posted the wrong retopo too so, here is the correct one...
So today I will be one who textures
Idk, I've been at this for the last few days and am following that dota guide.
This no lighting, no normals, only texture business is tough bossiness.
What should I do to make this one better, I don't want to overdetail like on the test,
but this one is under detailed now.
I am not really feeling this one right now, characters should sparkle, and glow, and this one doesn't have
it, this is rather troublesome indeed.
Thanks indeed, but I think I might need normals for this one
this any better? Seems too low poly for me even though this is the sort of thing you fellows like
I know it might be super frustrating, but honestly I suggest going back to the sculpting phase. MM brought up a lot of good points, like overall polish/quality/uneven shapes. It doesnt look like these things have been addressed. MM also mentioned doing some poly modeling to use as a base to sculpt on-top of, and I agree 100% It would help keep clean shapes throughout the process, and you could even use the basemesh as a start for the retopo. Zbrush has really nice hard surface tools to flatten edges and do bevels and such, but if you're not careful with them they can give really messy results.
These characteristics seem to have been carried over to your low poly also. It looks like you took the lowest subdivision from zbrush and used it as a retopo. I do this too once in a while too to save time, but it takes a lot of cleaning up to make sure you have nice clean loops and such. I suggest you take a look here for some nice reference - http://wiki.polycount.com/BodyTopology?highlight=%28\bCategoryTopology\b%29
With the topology you have in place now, if you were to pose or animate him you might get some odd results. If you're going for a 100% diffuse character with no normals, topology and UVs are pretty important.
Can we see the your texture flats?
Hope this helps
There is the texture. The gap is left for the male gender weapon, that I was going to texture later once I got the general feel of this dude
I didn't use the lowest subdivision, I retoplogized because this is a low-poly model.
People said for me to do a low poly. Honestly I would have used the zbrush lowest subdivision and had the chest with detailed chest, but this is a low poly as I stated before. I only added more geometry to the fingers and toes due to the fact that I always had issues rigging when I tried to save geometry on the hands. I honestly would rather do a polygon heavy model, but you dudes have been saying for the longest time for me to do a low poly or painterly texture dude, and here we are.
I am not sure, what exactly are your going by when you are referring to the scuplt?
I wasn't trying to make armor I was trying to make a body suit with some hardened parts, more digital guys. Not some cyber armor like you dudes were referring to.
Half way through sculpting I realized that it was similar to the 2003 megaman redesign and was going to quit this one. I honestly don't get why you and MM are on about the scuplt, what did you want this one scuplted as? I know I am not a perfect fellow, but what exactly are you guys referring to? Is this in reference to another title I haven't heard of? this is perplexing
It's too late back, and what would be the point of that? What I need help with right now is textures and how to make them look more appealing, not with the scuplt or the polygons. No one has said anything about that, and that is what needs the most attention.
There aren't supposed be any flat edges on this one, what exactly are you guys looking for on this?
Also this project has to get done, soon. The next job fair is on September 17 and I wanted to have 2 more dudes (aside from the female monkey) done and I've been holding off on drawing/modeling them because I have had difficulty painting this one.
All I can say is study the textures & wire frames on these models from Allods and search through the Polycount Wiki
i will polish it up or re-sculpt and send it back to you. you can send it privately over PM or email if you want.
this way i can practically show you what i mean by polish. so if you are up for this i will be glad to do the paint over.
so I would suggest the paint over more so than anything
besides, i wont redo the entire model but only part of it like may be the arms or the lower body. you can send me the entire model if you are comfortable then i can pick an area with considerable problems and do a paint over.
the character concepts you have (most of your designs actually) are very smooth with semi-hard edges. it if is a good idea to plan your base mesh accordingly with proper edge loops and supporting loops so that the subdivided mesh is 70% close to the final highpoly.
you can also completely forget about sculpting altogether and just make these character in lowpoly models only with hand painted textures. the results would still need to be clean in order to be appealing but to me it seems that highpoly sculpting is not really needed for these characters.
anyways, after inspecting your model, i can see that polygonal modeling is where you are falling behind. your edge loops are not consistent through the mesh, you have holes and uncapped areas in places causing difficulty in sculpting and you even have weird intersecting topology like in the gloves. also, if you uses zsphere to make the base for the torso which is fine but its topology is not efficient and does not have proper center edge.
here is your current base mesh:
here is the new base mesh for the body:
here is your current sculpt:
for the zbrush sculpt, it almost looks like you are sculpting with a mouse. if that is the case then I would recommend investing on a tablet. your current sculpting is quite lumpy and uneven. you can sculpt on a lower subd level or leave the sculpting for only small details and do the rest with polygonal modeling.
here is my revised highpoly with minimal sculpting.
for the lowpoly, it seems you did use parts of the lowest subdivision of the zbrush sculpt in lot of the areas causing stretched polygons carried over from the sculpt base.
here are the new highpoly and lowpoly:
http://work3.fx81.com/morris/ReviewForMorris.zip
finally, for the textures i think your current painting quality looks a bit dirty or lowres. i cant quite dissect what is going on here though. you also have lot of visible texture seams on the UV borders. they should be seamless specially when you use patterns like you did here. on the gender symbol in the chest, i can see that you used bevel effect in there. this looks very outdated just bad. either use a light angle that is straight up and more consistent with your over all texture or dont use bevel with default setting like that at all. your AO is also way too dark and looks very low resolution. there also seems to be lot of artifacts from the AO bake. i suggest you clean up the AO bake manually as much as possible before you use it.
for good benchmark on hand painted texture, study these artists works thoroughly(download all their work if you can). each of them have wide range of painting style - from simplified shading to detailed painting. study them well and try to dissect the colors, brush strokes and over all quality.
http://joshsinghblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.bobotheseal.com/published_art.htm
http://www.benregimbal.com/
that is all for now, i might have gone a little over board with the feedback but hopefully you find all this helpful to point you in better direction.
Thanks indeed, MM you are a real 3D benefactor.
Ok I will admit most of the retopo aside from the head was really more so cleaning up the messy topology from the zspheres in sculpt. For example, I just cleaned up the tail and added a few more lines of geometry when I did the original low poly
Normally I would have made the topology in maya first and then detailed in zbrush, but this year I feel as though I must get 100% used to the pipeline and use zbrush first. I didn't use zbrush as much before last year and wanted to catch up by making almost everything in zbrush first and having scuplts. I was mainly full maya topology guy, and thought that that wasn't enough in this day and age. When I was in school, I was the only mid-poly guy in my class, everyone else was either a low poly dude or animator so I sort of wanted to see how things were done from this perspective.
Speaking of which, how did you render things out in zbrush? I wasn't aware one could do that.
I honestly wasn't aware that there was an actual topology flow within
zspheres, excuse my ignorance.
I wanted to use the lowest polycount I could on this one, because I was dead set on using the specs from one of tests a recieved; and learning to do more painterly textures. In the process it seems as though I neglected to use the basics of modeling in order to just save polygons; normally I would have payed more attention, thanks indeed.
I was hoping normals would do all the work like that 900 tri thing I did for a test once.
I guess 512 is too low, I should probably use the standard 2048 for this one
to achieve the the maximum results you know? Also the ao did get burnt multiple times while do this, I probably should clean up with the dodge tool
To tell you the truth I didn't like the one I was working on, it was looking as though it was PS1 quality.
You definitely have set me in the right direction and I thank you for that.
regarding zbrush or maya workflow, it doesnt really matter as long as you get clean result.
you have too few edges in places where they are needed and too much in some places where not needed. my example mesh should give you a good idea on improving that.
for rendering in zbrush it is just basic document export of BPR render, i just applied MatCap Pearl Cavity and hit BPR render. Also i have set my zbrush document default canvas size to 2100x1800. after render i just export to PSD and scale down in photoshop and compose together.
regarding polycount, you will see that the lowpoly i made is around 5200 triangles. with the head it should be no more than 6500 triangles which is similar to your initial budget but with more efficient topology.
normal maps can do many trick if and only if the both highpoly and lowpoly are down really well. normal map is not magic, it is just highpoly information on the lowpoly.
512x512 texture can be perfectly fine for each of these characters. it is most likely your painting quality that is making it look low resolution.
you should not be dodging the AO map again and again. make a mask out of the AO greyscale map and create a blend layer based on that mask, then just adjust setting accordingly.
How is this one?
I took the guidelines from your version of the mesh and made a new one, MM...
As stated before, I was sacrificing quality in hopes of going for an ultra low poly count, that was no good. I should just use the standard amount of polys you know, thus far this one still is under 8000.
Folks will often say things are too over detailed or under detailed. So I didn't over detail it.
hmm, is that a new model you made from scratch ?
i ask because it looks like you took the body mesh i made for you and just attached your old head model and textured it. if that is what you did then i believe all my effort has been somewhat pointless.
also, you keep failing to understand what we are talking about.
too many polygons or too little polygons is not the issue
too much detail or too little detail is not the issue
it is all about consistency an quality.
a model can be 300 triangles with 512 textures and still be very high quality with the right amount of polygons in the right places and good textures.
a model can have 8000 triangles with 2k texture but still be really bad if topology is bad, stretched or just non-uniform polygons and bad painting.
*EDIT*
i just noticed this, your image is blurred around the neck ....
you think people wont notice that you just stuck your old model to this new one and blurred it to make it look like one complete model ? really ?
i am starting to feel like you are trolling, if that is the case then i wasted my efforts on this...
MM, even if it's wasted on him, it's not wasted on people viewing this thread.
And besides, practice is always good.
Your wireframe is actually a really clean example of character topology. I'm keeping it as reference, personally. I'd like to see it on the wiki, under character topology. It's a different sort of model than a lot of the examples on there.
EDIT: Morris, I said "if" it's wasted on you. I wasn't accusing you of anything, I was simply stating that even if MM is right, what he did is not a waste.
I second this.
(not such lolet,but the other fellow has been on my case since the begining)
"oh even if it's wasted on him it's such good advice", "I hate that guy he throws everything to the wind" It's as though a pack of wild beasts are waiting to pounce on every thread I make; soon the meat brigade will appear and turn this into a joke thread.
You say I have a bad attitude?
You say I start fights?
No, people start things multiple times, I saying thing about, that's the difference, I will not have people being rude to me with out warrant or start making PSAs about me with no proof.
MM
I did things to the exact specifications. I mimicked (not with 100% accuracy) MM's topology over the body sculpt. The reason why that is blurry is due to the fact that I didn't detail the neck yet from the head topology I had previously, only the face. I am still painting this one and just wanted to ask how it was ooming along
I did everything you asked of me, cleaned up the initial head, I redid the mesh, I textured things, and yet there is still an onslaught of anger and contempt.
I model in parts, the head is one part, the torso is one part, the hands and feet are one part.
I do that so it's easier to unwrap and so that I can recycle the parts on other characters if need be. I was going to use all the parts except for the torso on the female model and make a separate sculpt for her torso for efficiency.
Edit: I don't think anyone posting after is trying to fight you valuemeal. We just want to let MM know that we have really appreciated his feedback to you because it's pretty helpful as far topology goes.
The reason your getting this 'onslaught of anger' is down to one thing, your attitude. Every time someone challenges you on a design decision, general execution or even basic practice you seem offended, and snarky in your response, and in many cases refuse to even address the issues. I don't want to derail this thread and nor should you by beginning a flame war.
The feedback that MM gave you is some of the most in depth I've seen on these forums, and I'd kill for something even remotely close to that. I strongly suggest that you go back to the beginning with this project, start from the base mesh and work up using MM's models as nothing but reference, just take it slow and work at a sensible rate. You'll learn a lot and in the end it'll better your general skills.
You should take some time off and reflect on the fact that some of the best in the industry are actually taking their time out to help you, possibly thousands of dollars worth of help if they were charging you for it.
I am not the one exuding anger here. People were on me about making something that was low poly and mostly about textures, I finally decided to do something like that; I decided to use the method I used in the 900 tri challenge , and everyone else just seemed ready to pounce on this and assume that I knew nothing about topology.
The mesh that MM posted was not the mesh I used initially, that was the zsphere topology's default lowest subdivision; I made my own topology for the head and hands, but altered the one for the body
Admittedly I shouldn't have rushed and made it one piece; I also didn't subdivide as much as much I should have/
I honestly didn't notice those things because either the details weren't that sharp on the screen I had or they were more visible on the renders he had. That was my mistake alright. My computer might not be up to snuff either, I really didn't see any of the sculpt inconsistencies on my screen, then again I wasn't aware one could render in that software till this thread.
Instead of people saying "oh I can't do this or that" why not actually suggest actual solutions
" You need better line art"- suggest someone to use paint tool sai instead of photoshop, I wish someone pointed that out years ago to me.
"Renders are sparkly enough"- Use a different render engine or get a good graphics card, again people are quicker to anger than pointing that out.
Given MM's advice, I decided to just model things normally instead of going this new route, I posted the results and people assumed the worst. One part of the neck was black because the AO pass didn't get it or something and I stretched the white part of the mask. Soon the hordes of onlookers and came in to ridicule me.
"Even if it's wasted on him.....", "that's not your piece, you should redoit" that's direct attack. You honestly are going to question my attitude? How would anyone respond that? If anything the majority of you would be cursing people out or making hateful threads like you have done to me in the past.
The fact that I would be accused of plagiarism, is infuriating; I took the time to redo the poly flow, based on his poly flow, and followed his advice. Comparing the two sculpts, the anatomy was pretty much the same., he had just fixed the low res errors and made the crotch larger. I was assuming this was the three dimensional equivalent of a red lined image. I didn't outright copy his sculpt and present it as my own, I just tried to mimic the way he made his topoloy, I didn't use the one he made. Why else do you think it was about a day or two in between posting that instead of it appearing suddenly?
I would never steal from anyone, and only do my work.
And for your information, I had a job previously but it went under due to management and I had several small commissioned jobs. I guarantee you that I probably have a better attitude, than many of the people here, it's just the fact that I refuse to be talked down to and/ insulted like in the past.
It seemed like you really wanted to make a fresh start at the end of your previous thread and it was almost like you finally got it...what this game art thing is about . But no, you ignore solid crit for the first half of this thread, at which point most people would be ignored, you get the most amazing feedback from MM. The guy shows you how your character should be...it's like a mini fucking masterclass...the sort of shit that 90% of polycount would be ecstatic about....and you just went back to your old irate ways man....like I say disappointed.
This thread should have ended on a high, not with another rant, although maybe it still can. The female is a promising start, but she has the same body as the male. Make a proper female body for her, aside from the hair the silhouette is not selling her as the female of the species to me....push the feminine aspect, exaggerated the hips, give her some curves. Show that you understand what MM has shown you man.
100% Agree with this... Half of the threads on here don't see much crit; to the point where the image of the polygraph being used declaring themselves average... (I'm sure half of you have seen it)
I pay for advice like this via tutorials or pestering those on hangouts and then you have responses like his... its pretty upsetting!
so far from the images it just looks like you used the body mesh i gave you and textured it and added your head model. trust me, i can tell the difference.
i even did a quick UV map but everything i did was for reference only. you are suppose to redo everything including sculpting new highpoly. that is the only way to progress.
Please people don't waste your time or effort trying to help him, it's a waste of time.
I really don't even like to say that, but it's true unfortunately.
On another note, it seems like there's some nasty jpg artifacting which I've seen mentioned before. You might want to check your settings in marmoset(or whatever you're using) and photoshop to make sure quality is maxed out.
Plenty of people use this approach, I think you don't actually understand why people get upset with you.
I was actually thinking of modeling your character to show you a good low poly edge flow and how it could be pulled off with 2,000 tris but then I remembered that you've always ignored my advice or tossed strange insults my way like "papery fellow".
and I second this to lol.
just show the whireframe and at least the "you used MMs mesh" part of this thread will be cleared out. its the best way to show that you did/did not redo the mesh.
I fixed the sculpt I had based on his and made sure it was near his proportions
And I made my own textures, I just saw the way he unwrapped hands and quick unwrapped it using unwrapping tool in zbrush
Justin Meisse
That's the thing, most of the 09' models that I made while still in school were around 4-5k tris, I saw people on this site making all sorts of things with zbrush back in 11' and thought to myself, " hey, everyone is using new technologies, I cannot remain in the digital dust"; thus I felt as though doing such would be no good. Also many people at the school I attended, said that low of a polygrade would be no good for a portfolio.
But, I was trying to use the method I used in the 900 tri challenge and that wasn't the best technique to use in this situation. That was my mistake.
Seth
I decided to make the shoulders a tad smaller, make the hands more slender and make the waist a tad smaller. MM, mentioned earlier about matching the concept to the model more so, when I tried to make the arms more slender, thus I didn't want to take as far. Is this alright? I really didn't want her to have heavily pronounced female features you know? I was going for the more cute appeal than the adult feminine appeal you know?
Also who said I wasn't appreciative of what he said? I thanked him and did what he suggested.
Some folks said that the advice was wasted on me and I had something to say about it.
I don't have a persecution complex, people say rude things, I retort until it's resolved.
Honestly anyone else would be screaming at the top of their lungs if this happened on their threads.
Seriously look at the comments, I am half way convinced that 4chan's /ic/ and /3/ are here to start some stuff with me; someone once said it was a good place to post back in 2010, but it was not, and no good fellows have appearing on occasions. Someone even admitted to being a no good fellow from there in the past.
JadeEyePanda
The speckles weren't a good idea? Perhaps I should get rid of them if they aren't reading well, I wanted to add something on the legs, but I felt another pattern would be over detailing it.
Your images always are full of Jpeg artifacts. Makes it not so fun to look at.
figured out what the black dots were, it's just the color run off.
I have the the diffuse color between two of the ao layers, one is at overlay and the other is colored a dark blue; thus anything out of the white zone shows up as black. That's why the dark spots aren't actually showing up on the model. I probably could clean that up if need be.
How are these poses? Also should I make a specular layer or just leave them as is?