EXO mecha WIP

Rikard86

I started working on this during an Easter break from my job to work in a bit of a higher poly environment (I am used to making <10k tris assets so this was both an attempt to push myself out of my comfort zone and a breath of fresh air ) but since I will soon be reassuming my work schedule I decided to post this as a WIP so that I don't forget that I made it in the first place and maybe to get some motivation to work on it when I get time instead of playing xcom or something



Sketchfab viewer:
https://sketchfab.com/models/b3d4f8e04ce448e4b77ef87305ff42cc

As you can see there are still a lot of blocked out parts (expecially the EXO upper part and the arm units) and the character is just a black silouhette so feel free to ignore them. No UV and textures yet, just basic materials. Feel free to destroy the rest or give me suggestions on stuff .

Now that I got that out of my system see you in 2018 when I actually finish this

Rikard86

That's not a driving pose, I just put the legs as straight as possible to model the suit over them, so that they look like a single piece when I pose them

Kid.in.the.Dark

I think the equal balance in all directions is a bit dull, I'd definitely go with a forward slant so the suit gives off a kind of  buggy feel.



Not the exact silhouette I'm thinking of but ideally somewhere in this direction... the back half should stand a little taller and then the front legs should be a little lower so the character looks like it's leaning in a little bit.

Then again it's personal preference but I would feel as if this would bring a more dynamic shape to your model than it is right now.

Rikard86

@KID.IN.THE.DARK: that's achievable by posing, although 4 legs are meant for stability. I'm modeling it in a neutral pose so that I won't get in trouble when rigging.

I'm working on the EXO part right now, I went on a different direction with the chest unit as the previous one didn't really make sense from a mechanical point of view. This one should be close to the definitive blockout, I think I can start working on detailing and on making everything make sense now.



And before anyone says anything, yes, the legs have no visible feet, but you're not supposed to walk in those.

peanut™

that's pretty much what is wanted. keep working and show us the results.

Rikard86

I needed the head shape of the pilot to finish the exoskeleton (neck/head unit to be exact) so I took a pause from designing mechanics and threw her in Zbrush, right now I just shaped her face but I'd like an opinion on proportions, anatomy and stuff before doing any actual detailing or working on the actual under suit. I'm aiming for semirealistic here so please point out if I accidentally exxaggerated any feature too much. Should be a woman in her late twenties in my intention.

also, here's a picture of the exoskeleton itself, I think I can add more details on the arms but I'm gonna do that when I get back into Maya, I'm not planning to add it in Zbrush as I'm a noob at hard surface. There is no anatomy definition yet on her body so please don't comment on that.

pior

Careful with this head - you are modeling it tilted back (as shown by your side view), yet you are sculpting the features in the Zbrush front view as if the head was straight on. This causes a shifting of the features, symptomatic of sculpts made in zbrush.

To avoid this problem there are two things you can do : 
1 - either adjust the angle of the head in side view so that it is straight-on ; or,
2 - force yourself to NOT shift-snap to front view EVER - because in your current case, the "front view" of the Zbrush scene is not a front view of your character.

I've seen that problem creep up and affect beginners and experienced modelers alike time and time again over the years, and the culprit is always shift-snapping.

An obvious check for the issue is to look carefully at the side view and imagine the line linking the external corner of the eyes to the birth of the ear - that is to say, imagining the branch of a pair of glasses. It is obviously tilted here - therefore the front view is actually not a front view.

Rikard86

The ref pictures I threw in for the profile had the model looking forward with a straight head, so I think this has actually more to do with how I placed the head on the neck. Hang on, let me check if that's the case.

[EDIT]: hey, you had me take a better look at the profile and I noticed the head was too far forwards, thanks for that.



And yeah, I traced a straight line from the outer corner of the eye to the birth of the ear and they seem aligned, don't really see what's the problem there. Care to help me out?

pior

At the end of the day ... it really boils down to avoiding to shift-snap to front view as much as possible.

An interesting way to test this out would be to rotate the view manually into what you think should be the front view of the face, and then shift-snap to front. If the view angle shifts ever so slightly, that means that you are effectively sculpting an unintended slant to the whole face.

(and of course this might or might not be the case here, I have no way to be 100% sure. But I have noticed it so many times on other sculpts that I cannot not bring it up here )

Another thing to take into consideration is the fact that people naturally tilt their head up when raising their arms sideways - meaning that many reference pictures taken in that context are not as natural as they may seem. In contrast to that, a heroic portrait look (as seen in sport portrait photography for instance) often involves tilting the head down ever so slightly.

Rikard86

I know what you mean, I wanted to give this character the face of a local model, but for everything that's holy I couldn't find a picture of hers from straight on, she had her head either tilted slightly down, up or sideways in all of her photoshoots, so I had to resort to stock pictures which gave my character a sorta "generic attractive woman" look, hopefully I'll fix that somehow.

Let's not even get into the 'model pose' (head slightly tilted, hands on hips, shoulders hunched forwards) btw.

Rikard86

Hope double posting is ok since I'm posting some update.

The suit and the face are pretty much done, although every color you see here is placeholder (I'm going to give her some proper texturing in Quixel once I get her bakes done, no polypainting) I think I'm pretty satisfied with it. Added a sketch of a headset on her head along with a basic Dynamesh to draw hair planes on.



Now, time to get back in Maya to finish her exoskeleton and move onto the mecha's arms.

Rikard86

Rikard86 said:

mecha's arms.

Which I'm doing right now.



I moved the shoulder armor to expose the frame (modeled as it's probably going to be quite visible). Here's how it's supposed to look:

Rikard86

WIP update.

Finished the body of the mecha and gave it a base texture with some basic detail. I'm trying to get as far away as possible from the "straight outta Quixel" effect but I still have a long way to go.

I'm gonna get back on working on the pilot as soon as I finalize this.

Rikard86

Bumping this thread one last time to show off the "finished" models, both the character and the mecha. There's so much else I could add but I think this is a good spot to call it done and move on.



3D Viewer and higher res pictures on Artstation:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/aaDR0
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/g5Gg8
(Note: Artstation killed the quality, if you'd like to take a better look at the pictures just choose the Download option).

Thank for your attention guys, I'm out

C86G

The shapes are very hard to read. This is caused by the flat lights (use a different environment map or use lights with slightly diffrent colors) and because all shapes use the same base colur. GIve them some slight variaton to make the signle shapes easier to read.

Rikard86

Yeah, adding another shade of green to the armor might help, guess I'm gonna throw it in quixel again and add another paint layer, don't
really have anything better to do atm. Ty.

About the lights I'll see if I can figure out a good setup, I always end up making things look bad, if you have any suggestion feel free to throw them at me.

Ged

yeah these last shots its really hard to tell whats going on. Get a 3 point light setup so you get some rimlight or something like that and some nice shadows, that would help seperate the forms from eachother so its less confusing.

Rikard86

Added a shade of darker green to create some variety, remade the light setup and toned down the bloom. Hopefully I'm heading towards the right direction.

C86G

Adding a DARKER green and using a black background isn´t really the best idea ; )

Rikard86

It's not really DARK green though, I can clearly tell apart the background and the darker parts even when darkening my monitor quite a bit, besides the background isn't even black (there's a vignette effect on the borders but that's it).

Here's with the BG lightened up a bit just in case.

better worse y/n?

C86G

Tis is just 2 minutes of photoshop. Working on the actual lighting would help so much to show you work, which is really good but hard to see.

Rikard86

I see what you did there.

Guess I'm gonna experiment with cranking up the lighting a bit and then reupload everything on Artstation and Sketchfab.

tyvm man