Catacomb Slasher
polycounter lvl 10
Hey everyone, I'm working on making all new creatures and characters in hopes of landing a different job. For a while I was posting on sites like CGtalk and ZBrushCentral, but I couldn't seem to get many honest critiques. The forums were too filled with posts of "awesome work!" on obviously half-assed models.
Please critique, comment, complain, whatever you feel like doing. I don't take offense to constructive statements, not that you'd hold back anyways. :P
I went a bit heavy on the polys with this one, but there are some areas I can (and probably will) reduce the geometry. I'll be adding some hair to his back soon.
Please critique, comment, complain, whatever you feel like doing. I don't take offense to constructive statements, not that you'd hold back anyways. :P
I went a bit heavy on the polys with this one, but there are some areas I can (and probably will) reduce the geometry. I'll be adding some hair to his back soon.
Replies
Anyway, I don't think this guy needs much work. I think you'd be better off making new stuff at this level than trying to make this guy much better because this is pretty kick ass as is.
The eye could use some work though, it's a bit flat.
The gum area looks too much like skin, this looks a bit odd considering how far out it hangs beyond the teeth. I'd be curious to see what they'd look like if you darkend them a lot and added lots of spec. Could be cool
Considering the tris already used, you'd probably want to add just a bit to make those boils pop off the mesh a bit. Could just use the cut tool and make cirlces around 'em then pull 'em out a bit. It's worth it considering there's only a couple of 'em.
Skin seems a little barren, I see some splochy areas at the very top near the spikes, would be nice to see more of that filling out the creature. Not too much though, the skins already pretty good with just the stretch mark normals. But there is that area on his back that could use some of those colorful sploches.
I wouldn't worry about tri count too much. As i was reading some of the senior members say in here not long ago, you don't get jobs because you save tris better than anyone else. You get a job because your portolio has kick @$$ (*#$ in it.
I would also say, if this character is for a video game, then the polycount should be taken down by about half of what it is currently at. If the character is for cinematics however; then never mind that statement. I'm thinking the stats would realistically be like that of the wretch in Gears of war (1024x1024 texture, around 8,000 tris if memory serves me correctly). Lastly, I would bump up the spec value in some areas like already mentioned also.
Anyways, these are as tough of crits as I can give you because it really does look nice.
How does this critter spend it's days?
It obviously spends its time waiting in dark corners to eat YOU!
What does it look like face on, I'd expect that view would be the most important. I think the eyes could stand out a little more.
I forgot to mention in my first post where the concept is from, it's a Guild Wars concept done by Jaime Jones.
Adam - Thanks, I'm glad you liked my other stuff too.
Crazyfingers - I'll add the skin detail you mentioned and try bringing out the boils with geometry. I wasn't going for in-game specs with this one when I started, just a nice creature that doesn't have any faceting on the profile.
DrillerKiller - Yes, it does.
Lampoly - Glad you like it, I'll definitely be making the gums darker and more specular, the images I posted above don't have a spec map on them yet.
P442 & BradMyers82 - Thanks for the suggestions, I'll dirty 'em up and probably break a couple of them. I'll be reducing the number of tris today, there are plenty of them that aren't serving much of a purpose right now.
Brad, could you elaborate on what makes my demo reel better in your opinion, just wondering because that is my work from a year ago. I plan on adding a few human characters to my gallery, which it is obviously lacking right now.
zenarion - The concept isn't mine, it was done by Jaime Jones. I'd like to think that he spends his days relaxing by the cave pools smoking cuban cigars, but that's just me.
Very cool creature! I like the way you sculpted the different kinds of skin. Welcome to PC.
Therefore, once you add some realistic humans to your gallery I'm sure I will have changed my mind about your demo reel being better. I like the fish guy better than the glowy guy, because the glowy guy is just too out there. The main thing (which is very very small thing) that bothers me about the fish guy is how he isn't properly gripping his staff. I also find it sort of strange that an underwater creature would have a staff like that in the first place.
Here's the Zbrush sculpt and textures:
Things like the subtle play between green and pink on his fore-'arms', you know?
killingpeople - Thanks! : ]
MightyPea - Those were great suggestions, thanks. I think I was able to get quite a bit more depth in the color map.
Here's an update, I think I'm pretty close to finished with him.
I'll most likely have to start setting him up in another engine/viewer soon though, Marmoset isn't playing nicely with my alpha.
Those huge claws on his front legs are way to big for any form of agility, if he could get up on his rear legs, then maybe, but the anatomy dosn't allow that.
And when talking about anatomy, his front "hip-bone" seems to connect to his jaw.. and that looks a bit wierd.
that reminds me of a song from monkey island..
The hip-bone is connected to the leg-bone..
the leg-bone is connected to the head bone.. la la la laaa
Huge improvement from the first post though, good stuff
16k is tremendously large in terms of poly count though, for any engine -as far as I know. He's small enough that you could probably cut him down to about 4-6k tris. The extra poly counts probably help make him look super aliased for presentation purposes though!
Great job!
One idea to try out for the hell of it: see how it looks with the normal map intensified. You may already know this, but to do that try duplicating your normal map texture over itself and setting the dupe to "overlay" or "hard light" blending mode, then use the RGB Levels to set the dupe's maximum blue level to halfway, and dial the layer back to 33% opacity or so.