The Blighted, diffuse painted character
polycounter lvl 8
The Blighted: another diffuse painted model for an as of yet unannounced project by InsaneRoot (concept by Matt Dixon). 7781 triangles with 1k diffuse map. As usual, Maya + BodyPaint + PS. Other models I made for this project are Botler and Brutus.
I'm not sure what this guy is exactly, but I thought of him as something like a mutant orc. :poly124:
I'm not sure what this guy is exactly, but I thought of him as something like a mutant orc. :poly124:
Replies
Looks excellent either way, that is a beautifully painted diffuse.
willl be going into my inspirational folder!
Would i be able to see the texture map a little bit bigger? If thats okay with you : )
I agree with Patrick that some of the forms could have been modeled in more. These dents in the shoulder, for instance, would cost you not even 10 triangles in total, and vastly improve the silhouette of the armor plates:
It'd also look a lot nicer if the nails and toe/fingertips would have gotten a bit of extra geometry rather than just being a collapsed cylinder.
Texturingwise, I think the boils and veins stand out a bit much, they don't blend in and the colour of them is more suited to a pinkish skin tone rather than greenish grey.
Is this 'Matt Dixon' secretly just your real name or alter ego?
Rather than just make a 3D interpretation of the 2D, you always seem to magically make the concept art into a model lol, it looks so impressively alike!
PatrickL: You're right, I actually was going to model out some of those dents, particularly in the shoulder armor, but I guess it slipped my mind. I also had similar concerns regarding the chains. My client wanted to avoid the use of alpha if possible, and the poly budget was 8k so I figured I'd see what I could do with modeling out chains as much as possible. I think with careful skinning the chains shouldn't clip too badly when animated, but the most problematic areas might be the chains that attach from the shoulders to the body (although perhaps those could use their own joint chain from the shoulder that could be animated to correct odd positioning). My natural instinct would have been to model the chains as an extrusion from the body itself, but then I'd be limited by the resolution given to the skin areas and stuff like that. Great comments though. I'll keep these things in mind for future models.
Jungsik: Thanks! Here's a cropped view of the texture:
Snader: Kind of hard to see from the image, but the smaller chains ARE actually 20 triangle box shapes. You're probably right about the nails. That was kind of a last minute tweak. As for the contrast of the boils and veins, I know what you're saying and struggled with it. For some reason it looks great to me on the concept, but it was hard to get it to look right on the texture. I figure they're so bright because he's got radioactive blood or something.
creationtwentytwo: Hahaha, I only wish I could paint concepts like Mr. Dixon. Seriously though, if I do something from a concept, I hope to translate as much of the original artist's ideas as possible even if it means doing stuff I might not normally do for my personal work/tastes.
Hazardous: Thanks, man. Yeah, the teeth, and face in general, could probably use more asymmetry of shape. I figured I'd leave that up to the client's discretion though. My anal retentiveness makes me reluctant to do things like that, and it's something I really need to address!
Was this for a freelance ?
Also, for your personal works, do you come up with your concepts or do you use other peoples, and if you do where do you usually find them? and how fast do you work normally on your characters?
I like your style! Goodwork
Jungsik: Yea, this was freelance. For my personal work I usually do my own work, but lately I've been doing more from pre-existing concepts. There are a lot of concepts out there that are much better than what I come up with on my own.
achillesian: I agree, the skin in general could probably stand a lot more sharp details. The arm is mirrored, but the leg isn't because the mirrored skin blemishes were too obvious there.
Goraaz: Thanks. Yeah, there are definitely parts of the skin that could use more stuff on them.
b1ll: Haha, man, I will forever be known as the polycount ass now. :poly136:
Digging through my saved files, here are some progress images. It's not as informative as an actual tutorial or anything, but I hope it's useful:
In cases where I have a nice concept to work from, I always try to see what I can get away with by simply projecting the concept on to the model. Sometimes it's helpful, sometimes it isn't. At the very least it kills the blank space and gives a nice starting point to sample colors and values from. There are downsides to it though such as being distracted by decisions that were made for a 2d image that can be frustrating to harmonize into a 3d model.
Transferring the diffuse onto a new UV layout is also something I rely on because I can't always be certain what I'll need until I start actually painting. Fortunately this kind of thing is pretty forgiving when only dealing with diffuse textures.
As far as the actual painting goes, I tend to lay out basic colors first. I then do kind of an occlusion pass on things to give them some form and then detail out from there. The next time around, I'd like to experiment starting with a darker base. Contrast is always something that I'm fighting with so maybe starting at one extreme will help ground my choices better. There are still some unresolved contrast issues, but I thought it was a reasonable enough interpretation of the concept.
*EDIT: fixed image size. Damn Photobucket.
The only thing that annoys me is the lack of shadowing overall, under the metal pieces, etc (the left shoulder mainly)...But i assume there's a lot of symmetry in the uv's, so...
Do you have this WIP sequence in a larger size? :thumbup:
fabio: Thanks for pointing that out. Photobucket resized my image, and I didn't realize it. I edited the link and am hosting it myself so I hope it's better now. Can anyone recommend a free image hosting site that is less restrictive?
Jungsik: In this case, I did resize from 2k. I can appreciate the benefits of painting at actual res, but I typically work double res. It does tend to be more time consuming though.
I actually like how "lose" this is. Interesting style and I'd love to see it in conjunction with its intended invironments. Awesome style.