Scifi pilot girl - finished!
polycounter lvl 16
Latest progress, finished! http://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2460382/#Comment_2460382
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Helloo polycount, long time no post!
So i've been meaning to update my 'folio ever since i made a new one and i figured now was the time. I've wanted to make something in the style that i like for ages, plus this is proving a great opportunity for me to try out a bunch of new techniques and experiment with a zbrush heavy workflow outside of work deadlines
I also wanted to do the whole deal, new concept, new basemesh, new
head, new everything. Nothing recycled, just to show i can do every
step, ideal for the 'folio.
I'm finally at a point with it where I'm feeling pretty good with where I'm at but burnout is setting in, hence the thread! Keeping this updated should keep me going. Plus I really need eyes on it, been kinda in a vacuum so far.
Anyway enough words, pictures!! Rip it to shreds guys
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Helloo polycount, long time no post!
So i've been meaning to update my 'folio ever since i made a new one and i figured now was the time. I've wanted to make something in the style that i like for ages, plus this is proving a great opportunity for me to try out a bunch of new techniques and experiment with a zbrush heavy workflow outside of work deadlines
I also wanted to do the whole deal, new concept, new basemesh, new
head, new everything. Nothing recycled, just to show i can do every
step, ideal for the 'folio.I'm finally at a point with it where I'm feeling pretty good with where I'm at but burnout is setting in, hence the thread! Keeping this updated should keep me going. Plus I really need eyes on it, been kinda in a vacuum so far.
Anyway enough words, pictures!! Rip it to shreds guys
Replies
details details details
looking forward for more progress
I can't even come up with any immediate critique...
At first I thought her legs looked a tad too long, but after seeing the armor on her, the exaggerated proportions work so well!
Awesome job with the model and especially the design! Crazy impressive!!
I wanted to post to update tonight because i've been hitting it hard but there's not a lot to show really since last time. The highpoly (for the body) is polished to the point where i'm happy to call it done. Finished up the detail around the neck and gave the gloves a bit more love. I still want to do a bunch of polypainting on the head and add more detail to the helmet but i've started on the 'topo for the body for now, gotta get this wrapped up. I did a quick test bake of the head with the handplane baker too and i've gotta hand it to those guys, that little tool kicks BUTT! I love it.
Here's the bake test in marmo and the status of the body's retopo after 4 gruelling hours. Wish me luck
edit - update! I hit the polypaint and microdetails hard today and fixed up that ear too. I wanted to get into building the hair alphas but i was having too much fun with the curve brush. At least i ended up building some better hair, much closer to what i'll be reproducing with alphas when i get there
I was away all weekend so i haven't had as much time as i'd like to work on this, but i did get some things done these last 2 nights. Still need to put a ton more work into the hair, its not really where i want it to be yet but.. progress.
Been bogged down with slow PC problems today, nightmarish. But still, this is getting closer to where i want it. I figured out why i didn't like what i had so went back and rebaked all the hair with thinner strands, i prefer this. It still needs some work, my girlfriend keeps hounding me that the style wouldn't work in real life but honestly, anime hair ftw. I definitely want to clean up the hairline and add some scalp connection pieces before i consider it anywhere near done, but i think I'm going to focus on the body for a little while. Time away from the head to let my eyes freshen up will be good i think.
Anyways.. as I was super close to finishing the topology of the body tonight i threw some quick UV's on the bits i had and did a quick bake test. The decimated zbrush mesh i used as a retopo proxy holds up surprisingly well to a 4k bake and even with dirty uv's and no cage it didn't come out too bad. Needs tweaks, but not a lot to fix come time for the real bakes
She's sitting at around 47k tris, 57k including the hair and i still have some bits left to retopo. I can and probably will ditch a whole bunch of tris before the end but honestly i'm not too fussed at this count. Considering games like FFXV and U4 this is the way things are going, plus making a super detailed model with a no limit on the tri count was kinda the whole point!
@apllana - Thanks dude. I did put some more work into the ear, attached a screeny. It could probably use some more definition round the back now that i check it out. If you've got any C+C be sure and let me know man
I've been tinkering with the helmet design, wasn't feeling the old shapes anymore and i'm much happier with this. Not 100% sure about the back yet, plus it still needs refinement and then a polish, but all in good time
Also as a bonus, the head actually fits into it completely now without having to chop a little off the back ;p
I'm in agreement with the helm comments. I've been playing and i'm pretty happy with this, took inspiration from the top end AGV helmets i will never be able to afford
Cleaned the meshes up, went ham with the smooth tools rather than retopo-ing this time. There's still some wibbly lines but i'll see how they bake before i spend ages with retopo. Not quite final screenies below
The rest of the lowpoly is also done so i'll be starting the bakes for the body after lunch, then its substance time
I've jumped off substance for now because i started noodling and immediately got lost. I never did any proper colour exploration for this suit, i had ideas but nothing concrete. So I ended up wasting 2 hours just playing with materials and trying to figure out why my ID mask was making such bad pixellated edges. Anyway, rather than waste time i threw out a screenshot of the blank bake and did some colour mockups. Would love some thoughts on these.
I really wanted to avoid the generic 'scifi dark grey' or white but i'm not going to lie, those are probably my favourites. The only ones i don't really like on this sheet are the green one and the grey+orange one. Pink is cool but not the vibe i'm searching for. In the final poses I want her to appear confident and hot, kinda like bayonetta but in less of an overtly sexualised way, so i'm feeling myself being drawn really heavily to the black and red one right now. The white ones could work too. I dunno
Even with darker suits in sci-fi being a little overdone, I really like the gold trim accent for the last one (bottom right), and it could have a really nice contrast with her hair color (if and when the helmet is off). Gahhhh! A lot of these are so great that you probably won't have any trouble with whichever one you end up going with. I think the darker suits give off the sleek and stealthy type of read (more Bayonetta), and the white ones actually make her look a little more front-lines sturdy, warrior type.
Here's a wip shot of the materials anyway, colours subject to change
At many models I feel that the grey textureless version (normals only) looks better then the textured one, but not here.
Really great work!
Here's a slightly older shot of the legs and a fresh one underneath, currently working on bringing the helmet, shoulders and neck piece to the same level as the main body before going too crazy with details (hard to stop myself though!).
the model looks solid!! i really like the details and materials!
however, i definitely think you should spend some more time on the face and hair, since they brings down the overall quality of the model.
also, the hairline looks "funny". (too far back on the sides)
i think this can be fixed without having to change the sculpt and re-baking. lower the normal map intensity and adjusting the low poly will work fine i think!!
i made a paint over. hope you don't mind!!!
if just spend some extra time on the head, this will become an excellent character model!!
@vickgaza Thanks man! I'm learning a ton!
the model looks really great, nice job. I also feel the face and hair are the weakest point. They are definitely not bad but it needs improvements considering the rest is so well executed.
I'm not a fan of the hair honestly. There's a serious lack of volume and you should thicken the strands. It reads almost like thin copper wires in some areas.
Concerning the face, the thing that bugs me the most is the chin area. It looks to soft somehow. I don't know, something feels wrong. I think she lacks stronger temples as well. Overall, I don't feel much the presence of the skull underneath the skin, somehow. The eyelashes are almost invisible as well which doesn't help. Don't hesitate to overdo them, especially the top one. To finish, the nostril looks weird as well, like there's only a normal map and no real holes in the mesh.
Hope it helps, and sorry for the rough writing!
Keep it up, you have a really strong piece here!
@Cremuss Thanks for the in depth crit dude. Your post made me go back and check and i actually found some weird skinning from the neck influencing the face which was distorting the jaw a lot. I was so caught up with getting the pose done quick that this totally slipped by me so props for making me check my work! Your comment about the skull may still be valid, at this point i've been staring at the head so much i can't tell. It's too much work to go back to the head sculpt and make big changes now but if you think I can fix anything in the lowpoly i'll do my best. I also worked a bunch on the hair to remove that copper wire effect, i see exactly what you meant. I wanted to keep the hair quite fine so i just softened those bits of the alpha, was a bit too high contrast i think. Let me know your thoughts man. Oh and i hit the eyelashes too, good shout.
@Ged cheers man
Everything besides the head feels like it's 99% there at this point, i'm pretty satisfied with most things. I do wanna add some little HUD elements to the helmet though and do a few more poses for the screenies, i'll be hitting those tonight along with more face fiddling
Can we get a front and back view of the whole character? It's hard to form a critique without seeing the model in its entirety.
What do you think?
@Leinadien Thanks! There's loads of room for improvement imo. If you wanna follow what i did i relied heavily on Tom Parker's excellent tutorial, explains it much better than i could. But yeah i made the alphas, then i used geo from the zbrush curvebrush hair to start me off and just kept adding strips. It's a mess honestly and could likely be heavily optimised but it works, kinda.
@ThunderClouds , @amirabd2130 Thanks guys
@Mateus Cheers dude, saw your thread earlier today, you're killing it
Here's some pics so this post isn't just words. I've been making a few poses and the limitations of my quick and dirty rig are becoming readily apparent lol. I also finally got the little helmet HUD thing sorted, been on the backburner for a while. I think i'm gonna take a day's break away from it then hit it hard over the weekend and try to get everything finished in the next few days. Feels like it's ready to be wrapped up, I'm so bad at ending projects!