[WIP] Fallschirmjager

Abidus

LATEST UPDATE (8/31/2014):



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I've been playing Company of Heroes 2 lately, and it sort of reignited my love for everything WWII, so I decided to take a shot at modelling a German ostfront paratrooper as a portfolio piece.

References can be tough to find for certain items/views, but this is the sort of look I'm going for:



This is where I'm at so far. Keep in mind that the only parts that will show from under the uniform/gear is his face so I won't be detailing the rest of him.




The problem I'm facing at this point is that I'm not sure how to proceed with the uniform. I've somehow managed to avoid modelling/sculpting cloth on my characters up to this point (opting for some sort of armour instead). Sculpting something that thin and not having it be a nightmare is something I'm yet to learn it seems.

How do you guys typically approach modelling clothes like this? starting out in max and move to ZBrush?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Giacomo X

How do you guys typically approach modelling clothes like this? starting out in max and move to ZBrush?

You're way above my level, but when I've had to do clothing I've found the best way is to start with a clean, extremely low-poly mesh of the body, copy and "thicken" it to get the general shape of the garments, and go from there. The idea is: model the base topology and paint the folds and wrinkles.

Abidus

Giacomo: Thanks for the tip. That is kind of how I approach hard surfaces between zbrush and max, but with fabrics they always end up looking doughy or otherwise unnatural.

Some progress:



The quilt pattern is just temporary to see what it would look like.

The pants, gloves, boots and helmet are still just zbrush blockouts. I extracted the jacket shape in zbrush then retopologized in max before appending it back in and adding some basic deformations. Still a long way to go obviously.

I'm gonna model out the rest of the belt and shoulder straps before I move on to the coat, since it's all affecting the shape of it anyway.

Abidus

progress update



Still not sure how I'm gonna approach the scarf/head wrap, can't find good references for how they should look.

Critiques/Comments are very welcome!

Deathstick

If you'd like to get some of your cloth wrinkles less "doughy' as you said you could probably play around with using the hpolish brush, dam standard, pinch, flatten, trim dynamic, etc. and go over some of the spots where you already pushed out some of the wrinkles.

Mixing these types of brushes on your wrinkles here and there may give you the sharpness your looking for.

Best of luck! And yeah, I'm totally feeling a WW2 resurgence after years of it being overdone to death in games and films. Now that everything's modern warfare/zombies ate mah neighbors, World War 2 is looking appealing again

Abidus

Thanks for the tips Deathstick, I think it looks a little better this time around but I still need a lot more practice before I nail natural looking fabrics.

WWII feels like it was the last "fair" war, where the different sides felt somewhat evenly matched against each other, and the fighting had a lot more face-to-face action, instead of the drone-infested, ridiculously asymmetrical warfare going on today. Ofcourse, I'm only speaking from an aesthetic/story-telling/gameplay point of view. Real-life wars suck.

Progress:



Bonus BPR silliness:


I think next I'm going to try my hand at modelling an MP40 to strap onto him. Haven't modelled any weapons in years!

As always, Comments/Critiques always appreciated. Don't be afraid to rip into it (as long as its constructive).

John Baxter

I think German paratroopers were issued a helmet without the big lip on the back.



It also looks like it has a different strap system than the normal helmet.

Abidus

John Baxter wrote: »

I think German paratroopers were issued a helmet without the big lip on the back.



It also looks like it has a different strap system than the normal helmet.

Interesting. I found references for both kinds of helmets so I wasn't sure which was more accurate and went with the aesthetic preference. I'll work on fixing it, thanks for the feedback.

harricool

good work..I can see see some stretch and seams in his jacket. Looks like you have used a drag brush with alpha. Better result would be obtained if you unwrap the model and use surface modifier. All the best

Abidus

I actually am using an alpha with the surface modifier. The stretching is, as you said, due to the fact that it hasn't been unwrapped yet. Thanks for the feedback.

Abidus

Did a little more work on this, and decided to have some fun with a polypaint. I haven't tried this workflow before, but I'm hoping I'll be able to project the polypaint onto the low poly when I get around to doing that.

note, the stretching on the sleeve pattern has been fixed (coat uv).

Suba

Bottom of his eyes are too low, don't you think? Love the theme.

Abidus

Suba, do you mean the lower eyelid or the position of the eye socket itself? thanks for the comment.

UPDATE:

Retopologized, Unwrapped, and began texturing him. I have the main elements (head, good, helmet, jacket, pants, boots) on a 2k map, and the rest of the accessories, belts and straps on another 1k map. Haven't unwrapped the weapon yet, but it will probably have its own 512 or 1k map when I do.

29k Triangles with the MP40 (4K triangles).



Comments/Critiques are appreciated!

Abidus

Small progress update, rendered in Marmoset

Abidus

Moving on to texture the MP40 for the time being.

Abidus

I think this is as far as I can take it on my own.

I'm gonna take the opportunity to try and learn creating basic rigs for presentation purposes, since it kinda sucks to go through all this effort just to show something in T-pose.

skodone

the only thing that bothers me a bit compared to the rest the textures on the bottle and bag at the back look a bit flat

Abidus

Yeah, unfortunately that's a result of some oversight on my part with the UVs. I chose to map the equipment on a 1024 map and had to shrink some elements to make space for everything else. Basically, overestimated the space I would have. Lesson learned for the future!

tl;dr stop looking at his butt

Calling him done for now, had a lot of fun with this one!



As always, comments and critiques are very welcome!