First post....finally

artstream

First post here on polycount....don't hold back...I want to know what's wrong so I can make it right...

Here's some work from school....The first set of images are for a character I did for a short animation. My teacher had us try to keep it in the 2000-3000 tri range due to our time constraints (we had to model, unwrap/texture,skin, rig, and animate) two characters in 1 week. He currently stands at about 2100 tris.
[image][/image] [image][/image] [image][/image]

Tom Burns

I'm not a character guy so what I say may not have any technical merit but here goes:

I think it looks great. And by great I mean I'm glad he's not some overly-muscled-smaller-head-and-longer-legs-than-in-real-life guy.

That's my feedback and good luck with your studies!

Tom

fritz

it's really hard to judge anything w/o a concept for one thing. feet look like flippers...too long. fingers? what's your conceptual goal for this guy?

Jesse Moody

my honest crit would be that there is a ton of wasted polys and weird topology in areas.

2100 is high for a guy with mitten hands and no real form.

Huge ass too and small midsection.

Feels really squat...

pliang

There are kneecaps and other joints that need to appear in the silhouette...also it seems you mirrored it as the same mesh flow problems in appearing down the mid section...what you should is take some time in between and split some edges where the joints are in order to form proper mesh flow when it comes to the rigging and animation. As there can be deformation issues with the straight poly mesh you have.

Also it'd be nice to break the head apart and take some time
fixing the facial features...it looks like he's wrapped in bandages.

Psyk0

Id revise the proportions, shape of the hands/feet, and clean the edgeflow: if it doesn't contribute anything to the silhouette, get rid of it.

Were you required to model it all in quads?

Zwebbie

It looks as if you're desperately modeling everything in quads. Please, don't. If there's anything that'll get you an outrage on Polycount.net, it's modeling a low poly model without triangles. And if your teacher asked you to... prepare for some nasty words

You can just cut off loops with a triangle if they don't define anything. There's no reason to have that many loops going down his chest if 2000-3000 is all you have.

You've got some anatomy issues as well; knees don't actually taper the leg like that, they actually bulge out on the inner side, for example. Gauss' Loomis orthographics might help you fix a thing or two, though ideally, you'd want to actually study some more anatomy.

artstream

Thanks for the responses guys---it really helps.

ComradeJ and Psyk0: I wasn't required to keep it all quads, I did that by choice only because I want something to throw into ZBrush so I can start learning it and I was under the impression that ZBrush had problems reading anything besides quads (which if I'm wrong about, please let me know)And yes, I agree, the anatomy does need work.

Jesse Moody: I agree about the mitten hands and I will admit that I did that as a cop out due to the workload I had that week and I just needed to get the model done. Also, I haven't actually had my character modeling class (this guy is my 3rd character) so I just wanted to give something like hands and feet. But I definitely need to learn to model hands.

Pliang: I hate the head, good to see I'm not the only one. I'm still trying out new techniques for head modeling. The first time I did it with just a box, second time I edge modeled it, and the 3rd time, I used a box, but with a different approach to it.

Fritz: The conceptual goal was more of just a wraith like character who wasn't human. So I just gave him flipper feet and mitten hands. Looking again, his feet are way too long and I probably could have made his hands look more wraith-like and not like he's preparing for winter.

Thanks for all the critiques guys---it really helps to have people tell me how things really look.

Psyk0

For zbrush sculpting it's better to have evenly distributed polygons and density, i usually prefer to add some edgeloops for the head...which gives more density to the area but so far it has worked very well for me.

here's an example:


I suggest taking a look at Arshlevon's basemesh too:
http://www.davidostman.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/baseman.zip

artstream

Psyk0: Thanks alot for the example. So I was correct in the all quads thing, awesome. I noticed you modeled the mesh in terms of where the indents would be (her neck, her hands, her rear) which also helps me understand more about modeling for ZBrush....

About modeling in tris, should I just model the tris, or get the tris during optimization? I'm not used to it, so it should be an interesting learning experience.

Psyk0

Correct, quads are what you should aim for when modeling a basemesh. It's better to keep the geo like a grid, or you won't have the same deformation behavior when you sculpt areas that have a dramatic shift in density.

Yeah the indents are basically my approach to blocking-in he forms. Some crazy bastards start with a cube and turn it into a complete character...i havent reached that level yet , so i prefer to start with a mesh that has most of the major forms represented.

I model in quads, some areas i'll optimize as i'm modeling because they're obviously too high poly. When i'm done i'll do a clean up and check the silhouette, taking out anything that doesnt add definition and in return i will distribute polys where needed on the silhouette (...and i don't mean i'll add back all the polys i just cut, just the amount needed! ).