UT3 Character Wip

BoilingOil

Hello everybody. I'm new to these forums, and new to Modeling in general.

I've started a character that I would like to import into UT3. I'm going for a post apocalyptic man who's wearing some type of modified football pads with metal riveted/welded/strapped to it.


I'm pretty new to 3d modeling, this is my second attempt at character creation.

If anyone has any constructive criticism for me i'd greatly appreciate it. Help me get better at this!

Thanks!
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Ro-Sham-Bo

I would say go back to the concept stage and draw some concept out. Get a character that is more original, find refrence pictures of football pad and metal pieces. work out all your simple details on paper even if you cant draw super well you will end up with a much better piece.


As for you mesh so far, i would deatch the head and make it its own object completly. add more subdivisions in the elbows. and your over all anatomy really needs work. You have a nice flow over all though that could work as a nice starting place. Keep at it. and have fun with it !

BoilingOil

Thanks for the feedback! I appreciate the crit! I did these before i started the model, quick and dirty. I wanted to get right to modeling.

[IMG]http://www.boilingoil.com/images/bitbucket/Heavy Armor Vaultdweller.jpg[/IMG]

The whole model is broken into sections. Head, left and right shoulder pads, torso, arms, legs, and boots. I know the anatomical proportions are a bit off, could you be more specific as to what really needs work? I know he's a bit wider than a normal human, but from the andrew loomis stuff i've been studying it's not so far off.

Right now i'm working on the torso and the arms. I was trying to do the whole thing in quads but I guess to get a good shilouette and good edge flow i'll have to have a few triangles in my mesh. Will that give me trouble in the long run?

I'm really using this model as a learning process and trying to get familiar with good practices. This is only my second character, and probably the first one i'll complete. I want it to look it's best, and i'm sure future works I do will be much better. If anyone can give me any tips on joints as far as rigging and good practices on the whole process would be much appreciated!

Jeremy Lindstrom

i'd link with image tags but I dont want poop to pay for it... so here's a link instead.

clicky ---> http://www.poopinmymouth.com/process/tips/limb_deformations.gif

BoilingOil

Ok i've done some more work on this character. I finished the head and done some work on the body. I think i'm ready to unwrap it and do the highpoly stuff in zbrush.



The three to the right have the shoulderpads hidden.

karera

If you will be moving the geometry alot in zbrush, theres no need to unwrap yet, better u wait until you're done with the highpoly. then change the lowpoly to fit the new geometrys siluette better and "then" unwrap the lowpoly.

Unless u had something else going on? U r going to normalmap it i guess

Rick Stirling

The anatomy is still off, not by miles, but enough to be noticeable. Grab every face from the bottom of the neck to the bottom of the knees and move them down. Why?

Because:

The shoulders are too high and square, dropping them a little give a nicer shape.

Not only is the torso too wide at the bottom, the chest portion is too high up - this ties in with the shoulders being too high up. The arse is too high, again dropping the entire torso will fix this.

Knees are too high.



Hands are too big. In profile view, his head isn't deep enough behind the ears.

He also is very straight, with no real shape or curviness to him, have a look at the gentle S curves on this Loomis image: http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y253/Aremah/Loomis/idpropmale.jpg

BoilingOil

Ok here's an update.


Fixed his stance a little bit and fixed his proportions - shrunk his hands, fixed his head, fixed his legs, fixed his arms, worked on the neck a little bit, I plan on adding a little bit more detail to the neck/deltoid area.

Even after I took these shots, I went right back in and started adding detail to the torso. After all, if he's gonna have some makeshift armor it might as well cover his belly and back. I think I'll do some legpads and armor for the forearm too.

EDIT: I just looked at the amount of tri's in this model. Spooky.

BoilingOil

I started working on a pointover so I can get an idea of how i'll do the Highpoly model.


Just trying to get some idea of where to put the welds. I want it to look really makeshift and scavenged, so i looked all over for pictures of rusty metal and rusty welds.


I'm going to add some wear and tear, like bullet ricochet marks and things as well, but I can only find pictures where bullets already go through the metal.

BoilingOil

Yeah, his neck kinda goes down into the armor. I redid it a little bit and it's a little bit shorter. I got my character all UV mapped and imported into zbrush. So far this is all I have.
[IMG]http:///www.boilingoil.com/images/bitbucket/dwellerheadsclupt.jpg[/IMG]

I still have to add more detail - places where paint would be chipped off from bullet ricochets, heavy rust and welding, and rivets and straps that keep it on.

Only trouble i'm running into is when I subdivide after I've appended torso (right now it's 900,000 polys, I think i'll need more) I get a vert that likes to shoot straight up from the bottom all the way above the head. I subdivided to level 6 before I appended it to the head, and I didn't have this problem. Is there something I can do that will stop this from happening so that I can continue to subdivide without my mesh growing horns?

BoilingOil

Ok, I finished the torso:


I added more detail to the head, but I tried to subdivide and zbrush crashed.

I think I just might try and split up my subtools so I can get more detail. Maybe.

BoilingOil

Probably gonna go back and redo the detail. Make it more... crusty looking.