Q4 Gorre Redesign

dfacto

I wanted to make a thread for this because this is the first character I've ever tried to model (aside from some low poly thing I did last week) and I'd like to get some good feedback on it.

Here's my concept: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v19/dfunkt/Dfacto-GorreFinal.jpg

And the head so far:

My main question is: is the geometry looking alright? And, I have the visor split from the face, so should I fill in the big gap in the face with geometry, or should I leave it as a hole. Same goes for the back-side of the visor.

And two things to keep in mind are that he doesn't have a nose, and his face is majorly screwed up, so his cheeks aren't supposed to be normal.

Daedalus

there are many vertex that aren't weld correctly according to the shading artefact.
and the edge loop look a bit chaotic.
Personnaly id remove all smoothing groupe while modeling.

dfacto

I model in flat shade, but I made the screen like that for some reason. I'll post up flat shaded stuff in the future.


Bit of work trying to get the edge loops smoother, plus I moved the visor away and filled up the hole just because it was bugging me to see the other side of the model. Still don't know if I should leave it like that or not.

As for the visor, I think I'll leave that till later. It's true that it isn't smoothing properly, but I can't find any 2 point polygons and there was only 1 unwelded vert that I fixed up. Either way, I'll probably just remodel it.

ScoobyDoofus

Dfacto: I'd say get more of the model fleshed out, the major masses, before going in an trying to model anything even resembling detail.

vahl

I second Scoobydoofus there...try to get the basic shapes of your model done prior to jumping into the detail crazyness ,your model will become a lot more solid and details will be easier to add as you'll already have an idea of the global volumes of your model.

Makkon

I agree. Creating a model is a lot like painting a picture. Block it out, first, then add layers of detail after detail. If this is for the q4 engine, you already have too many polies on the face.
For your first character this is phenomenal. YOu don't want to see my first...

If it at all interests you, I have a base model I'd be willing to contribute to your cause. If you'd prefere to do it yourself, I can understand, as this experience is needed.

vahl

he doesn't have too many polies for a highpoly model for normal map baking though...he just need to work on a "layer" method as you said ^^, just to structure the mesh

dfacto

I was initially gonna make some excuse about practice, but the stuff you guys have said is much better for the job. I asked EQ some questions and I think I'll try to make a decent zbrush base mesh for all of the organic parts, and model the rest as high poly. I'll save the low poly for the end.

What would be really great though is if someone has a good picture for what proper joint geometry looks like. I.e. shoulders, elbows, hands, neck. I think I can piece the torso and head together well enough by stealing the geometry layout off of pior's patriot model pics.

Btw, vahl, you asked if you could do my model in the q4 thread. Not sure if you got my PM, but the answer is a definite yes.

vahl

Oh yah, sorry I recieved it of course, just had some other project I wanted to finish first. I'm still planning to work on this.

Makkon

[ QUOTE ]
I think I can piece the torso and head together well enough by stealing the geometry layout off of pior's patriot model pics.

[/ QUOTE ]

Funny thing is, that's exactly what I did with the base mesh I built. Of course, mine's not nearly as good as Prior's... he's like... a God!
Does Prior have any character tut's by chance? If not, his godly neck should be lynched. It's practically stealing!

vahl

BTW dfacto, I don't want to prevent you working on that model only because I plan to give it some highpoly love...
keep it up ^^ training it the way of the samurai !!

dfacto

No problem vahl, I'm doing it more as a learning excercise than anything else. I want to learn character modelling and the only way is to model some. :P

Here's an update:


I left the head I had and just reworked it somewhat. Hopefully it will make a good zbrush base, and I can use it as a lowpoly later as well.

The body is coming along, although I have no idea if I'm placing the geometry well enough. I used the loomis orthos from "Figure Drawing for all it's Worth" to get the shape right.

Asthane

God I hate that default pumpkin color in Silo. It's... unique, certainly, good advertizing in a way, but still ugly as hell :P

Er, that's all, carry on, keep practicing, yes I know you can change it, nothing to see here...

dfacto

Dunno, I find the yellow to be pretty cool. Very visible.

Anyways, here's my "final" low poly organic body. The Ignore anything below the knees, because it's totally useless for the final model, so I left it with little work.





Any and all comments would be greatly appreciated.

MoP

Well, since you mentioned you were gonna take this into ZBrush, I have some tips (although they'll probably annoy you for coming so late).

I've found (and regularly read) that for using a mesh in Zbrush it's better to use geometry that has a roughly consistent quad size throughout. This means that when you subdivide, everything gets a roughly equal amount of detail. Obviously for stuff like hands and faces you can afford to up the resolution a bit, but for the most part you can actually get away with a very low-poly source mesh. All that really matters are the edge loops and keeping quad geometry.

Basically some areas that will probably become annoying in Zbrush if you used the current mesh, are around his stomach/waist area (you'll end up with a very subdivided mesh around that thin line of polys ringing his waist, but the area with the long vertical polys across his abs will have less available detail which will be frustrating).

Likewise the amount of geometry you have in the back of the neck is just going to get unweildy and annoying if you have to sculpt there much, you'd be surprised at how little detail is necessary for a base-resolution ZBrush mesh. When you start subdividing, the detail and polys multiply up very quickly, and (as I found out recently) if you have carelessly put too many polys in an area which doesn't need much detail, you're going to be spending far longer in that area smoothing things out and fixing the shapes than you really should.

Likewise the forearm is going to subdivide into an area of long thin polys, which may cause problems depending on what sort of detail you want there. It's better to try and keep the quads as square and evenly-distributed as possible. It doesn't even matter about maintaining a decent silhouette really, since you can move all that around much more efficiently in ZBrush itself.

Basically I think you'll be doing yourself a BIG favour if you lose a lot of polys where they are unnecessary (head, neck, waist, maybe even ends of the fingers), and even out the poly size and distribution so that it's an easier result to manipulate in Zbrush...

Actually if you saw that Sorlag head I Zbrushed in the "Q4 Character redesign" thread here, i actually started with a mesh that was pretty much a 30-poly rectangle... the main shape was then roughed out using the Move tool in Zbrush, and refined as the mesh was subdivided. This meant that the detail level stayed consistent throughout, which I think is a big bonus.

So the shape and mass of your mesh here are looking fine, you just need to refine the construction a lot. It's a different ball game modelling a control mesh for zbrush detailing than actually making a true sub-d model, IMHO.

dfacto

Wow, good advice there. Didn't know any of that.

Well, luckily, the stomach and back of the neck are going to be covered by armor later, so that isn't a problem, but I'll have to see about the forearms. If it doesn't work, then I'll go back to my model and fix it up.

And uh... I did try zbrushing him already. He's got skin cancer now. Lots of it. T_T