Sketchbook: benji

benji

Hey all

Please critique the fuck out of everything I post on here - be rude, honest, and overly harsh - I need the motivation to improve!

To start - here's a quick render of a half-finished, half-assed character I've been "working" on for 6 freaking months...
It's for a university unit: the brief was to design, model, sculpt, map, rig, animate, light and render a character and thematically consistent environment. My environment is a run-down urban dystopia taking heavy influence from Kowloon city in Hong Kong. The character is a female militia member exploring her new surroundings.

The character is almost done - a bit of high-poly work, optimisation, texturing, rigging and applying mocap data to be done still.
But the character is not my priority right now - I have 3 weeks until the deadline and I have barely made a start on the environment yet - progress will happen soon

benji

Some progress on the environment - just under 2 weeks left now! :poly122: I need to optimise my work flow and be more efficient... nothing unnecessary will be done and everything will be modelled with modularity in mind - I want to be able to re-use as much geometry as possible to make it look like I've done more work than I have.
I guess this is a great lesson in how the real world works...

benji

More progress! it feels good to be motivated.
Been working on modular shop fronts and signs today. The normal map on the awning was processed in Njob from a photo of my flatmate holding up a pillow case haha. a strange request but much quicker than sculpting and baking high poly.

BigErn

Looking good man, I assume your screenshots are in 3ds or something? looks like you got a good selection of parts, I know how annoying making all those are but you should have enough bits, now you just need a few different textures per part to break up any repeats. I have not had enough time to really do this in my scene, but you seem to have a good grasp of your scene.! Best o` luck! I`ll pop back to check.

benji

Thanks man. Yes these are quick max renders with a skylight - I gotta sort out the lighting properly soon!

haha I found the modelling of these bits quite fun actually, I think the frustration will come when I try assembling them together and find they do not fit

I didn't really consider using alternate textures as the primary means of creating variation, but that'll probably be a much more efficient use of my time!

The next screen shots will be some shiny new textures for sure

benji

Currently rendering the final video for this project; 11 hours and counting for a 40 second clip, I shouldn't have used that skylight

Here's a render of the finished character though, crits welcome.


A few things I want to fix: better skin shader, more realistic skin texture (needs more colour variation etc), more detail on the shorts and bags (zips, seams, etc), better material definition on the gloves. Actually I should do a whole re-design, I didn't put enough thought into this.

When the video is done I'll post it up on Vimeo with some stills on here too

*Kai*

I think that the character looks good. One thing I would add to your list to do is maybe make it so that the clothes "pop" a bit more. I don't mean by adding detail ((you already have that listed)) but more of actually popping out a bit more. I think if you add a specular map ((or add more black/white transitions to the one you probably already have)) it'd help with that.

Over all though, as I said, it looks really good so far and you seem to already recognize the other little things you already need to do. Can't wait to see the video of this in action.

benji

[vv]23551348[/vv]

Would appreciate some feedback on this!

benji

Thanks for the feedback Kai, I agree, the textures are not very engaging and quite monotonous as they are - I've got a spec map on there but maybe the lighting setup doesn't show it off very well (or maybe it's a crap spec map )

*Kai*

No problem Benji. Nothing is ever "Crap" it's just things that might need more tweaking. Your map looks good, but I think if you go in there with a thinner brush and add more little details to get that realistic feel, it'll really come together.

As for the video, WOW! I have yet to really do a level/scene as detailed as that one! The only concern I really see off the bat is the stiffness of her walk and neck turning. It seems she either has an injury that just isn't really showing through, or the smoothness of the walk just hasn't hit yet. I few more key frames would probably solve that and make it more fluid.

Overall, I can't wait to see more!

benji

here's a still from the environment with a little post processing in photoshop
crits appreciated!

Daven

Looking great so far . I think it was said before that you might need to change the color of those shadows away from black to match the res of the scene, but you're on the right track. I want to see you push this further. It seems like there's a lot of potential still in here. You've got your pieces in but now you really need to bring it to life.

benji

Thanks man! yeah I think the lighting in general needs a rethink. this was put together without a lot of thought - the blue light in the alley that the character is looking towards is totally nonsensical (why would there be a bright blue light in an alley? aliens?) but I thought it would bring some kind of interest or narrative to the scene. The rest is a couple of omnis and a weak skylight.

I am a noob at lighting and I need to study the basic principles of lighting for games and how it ties into composition/colour theory etc. know of any good tutorials on this?

I was thinking I'll put this all together in UDK once I've got to grips with it

I should also reconsider the overall composition and silhouette of this environment, it's not very strong right now.

thanks for the crit, I'd be happy to hear any further suggestions

*Kai*

One of my professors gave us a tutorial on proper 3 point lighting and lighting in general. If I can find it Benji, I will totally send it your way. ^^

Julien Noel

I think It's getting well, but you should take care about compostion to get better!
Your point of interest which is the character, and her head, is quite on the centre of the picture that is not that good.
The way you placed your camera seems to be a one vanishing point perspective, the is not that good too...
You should maybe read some composition and perspective tutorial on the net to really improve your picture with some basic tip

For me, you should turn the camera a bit to the left and put the the character at the right third of the picture, to let more space in front of her

keep it up

benji

Kai that would be awesome - thank you!

Julien - thanks for the tips - I have totally forgotten the rules of composition it seems :P
I will recompose this scene to observe the rule of thirds, use light more carefully to emphasise elements of interest, better balance, and more consideration for silhouette and leading lines.

*Kai*

Sadly, it seems that the tutorial was on my computer that decided to take a dump last year. =( If I come across something that might help, I'll still send it your way!

benji

No worries Kai, thanks anyway.


I fixed a few issues with that render tonight with slight modifications to the lighting, placement and composition, but I don't think it looks much better. Botched depth of field perhaps, and too much incompetent fucking around in Photoshop. I should learn not to do that. The colours are messy and it all looks a bit muddy...

benji

benji

2 years since I updated this sketchbook!!

Crossposting from my thread with this; it's a shot from Cryengine and a subsequent paintover to help define the direction I take with it, photomashing some additional elements from this concept by Andr