hey TeriyakiStyle: yeah i think you are right, but not entirely ^^
i'm not totally decided yet if i want to go for 100% clean pixar eye look or if i want a bit more realistic definition of the eye and materials. right now its of cours just a sphere, with outward bending normalmap for the specular and reflection (cornea) and a inward bending normalmap with some details for the diffuse (iris, eyeball). so if course there isn't the same amount of distortion as with a with a modelled cornea. However i think i should rather sharpen up the reflection and specular used there and somehow use AO/Shadow to mask off the reflection a bit. like here
you can see that the reflection totally overlaps and influences the pupil, but overall the reflection is just much sharper, i guess it also comes down to what it reflects, right now its blurred cubemap of its surrounding. so making it sharper might do the trick.
though in brave it seems in some shots they used more obviousl reflection, which is much much more sharp than in my case and i guess thats what makes thes look a bit dull
also i totally need an eye overlay layer for the shadows and stuff but i'm really not sure yet how to handle those, fo course creating a spherical layer with texture is easy but it wouldn't move with the eyelid when closed so i really have no clue how to properly handle that
thanks for the overpaint, i might not have made the shadow that strong but yeah i agree
stunning work overall man putting big industry to shame!
thanks but thats too easy to say, we are zusing tesselation in UDK which is close to not usable at all in a game environment, for us its easy right now to max out stuff, without having to care tooooo much about performance at this point. All we can do is hope that it one day work like in cryengine, with little or no hit on performance. The engine question is totally not set yet. We love to work with unity, artwise i really like the cryengine for its out of the box shaders and stuff. We decided to stay with udk though, as all our assets are there, a lot of stuff is tweaked, and not every asset needs touchup right now. But using UDK 3.0 definitely has its flaws when it comes to some of the DX11 features.
That makes a huge difference, let's hope some shader magic can give a similar result. (the eyelid shadow/no reflection can be tricky?)
yep agree and i have that on my list of things to do, but i'm not sure how to handle it, its kinda easy for the default pose, but for any emotion it won't work. I mean for sequences i could easily just blend in new masks, but a more automatic solution would be great. thanks to bump offset i now have more depth in the iris, works pretty well. will show it in the next update.
Would it be possible to add a polygon layer attached to the upper eyelid with a transparent shadow texture? (think decal) That way you could animate it with the eyelid. Although it won't be physically accurate, and not remove all of the specular, it would follow the eyelid and maybe sell the effect to some extent?
Love it!
Something to try, put ao the main layer, then take what you have already and toss alpha on that and do a push modifier out a bit and offset the UVs. Keep the outer layer for shape but that will give it a bit more volume.
Decided to take a look through the thread from the beginning (I recommend it), and from 2009, to the stuff we're seeing now, it's hard to describe, it's just a huge leap in art direction (mainly character wise) I liked the old character, but the face of your latest character is just so much more human, more emotional.
And the environmental stuff is starting to look great to (it was great before, but now it's just getting so amazing - hard to believe you guys can exceed your previous art like that)
Can't wait to see everything meet and exceed these new standards you guys have set yourselves
Would it be possible to add a polygon layer attached to the upper eyelid with a transparent shadow texture? (think decal) That way you could animate it with the eyelid. Although it won't be physically accurate, and not remove all of the specular, it would follow the eyelid and maybe sell the effect to some extent?
I think this is a good idea. I'd done something similar with that elf swordfighter:
If I were going to rig it, I'd probably make an extra eye bone that would follow the eye's up-and-down rotation and rig the entirety of the sphere and the upper eyelid to it.
Would it be possible to add a polygon layer attached to the upper eyelid with a transparent shadow texture? (think decal) That way you could animate it with the eyelid. Although it won't be physically accurate, and not remove all of the specular, it would follow the eyelid and maybe sell the effect to some extent?
yup besides the overlay mesh it looks like i have pretty much the same features in my eye,iris coloration is a good idea so we could use the same texture on any char. might add that
the thingbis, a realistic eye, like in the preview of that crytek page has waaaay less area to cover, skinning is therefore a lot easier and closing the eyebis also quite a bit simpler
anyways thanks for the input
as for the last concept. ooooh till we reach that area, quite some time will go by
we did quite a few other games in the universe, some of them based on this one, simpler in style and gameplay, but it never really felt right. The closest thing to something we could consider good enough was a top down turnbased fleet commander game, a little like heroes of might and magic. We will show more of this later on. the good thing is, we can use those assets for backdrops, we created some ships and islands, carriers and whatnot which are definitely good enough not to be wasted.
The yellow field was a bit of an attention-grabber thouhg. Might wanna tone that down.
Lots of things are just ported from unreal 3, we are working through the assets, but if we delete everything that will be redone now, the set will be pretty empty ^^
@joseph: well i hope so, it's been quite some time since we worked on this version of the airborn universe, having learned nothing in that time would be pretty bad :X
This game is the reason why I came to Polycount (back when it was still a mod)and I'm still super excited; Can't wait for it to be finished. I'd love to see some more workflow on any of the materials and texturing process.
What exactly would you like to see? I#d rather not capture stuff in UDK, the DX11 features are so damn slow, we only turn them on for screens right now. The implementation is really buggy, i hope this will get fixed soon. Sculpting, Texturing etc. shouldn't be a problem though
Some character stuff, based on Neox old Tokatchu I did some "nextgen" stuff..
Close to final, still needs whiskers and I was to lazy to turn on displacement
Replies
i'm not totally decided yet if i want to go for 100% clean pixar eye look or if i want a bit more realistic definition of the eye and materials. right now its of cours just a sphere, with outward bending normalmap for the specular and reflection (cornea) and a inward bending normalmap with some details for the diffuse (iris, eyeball). so if course there isn't the same amount of distortion as with a with a modelled cornea. However i think i should rather sharpen up the reflection and specular used there and somehow use AO/Shadow to mask off the reflection a bit. like here
http://www.blacksburgphoto.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/eyereflection.jpg
http://photonhunter.co.uk/~art/potw/P0001525.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3571/3419240268_3e84f5e6a1.jpg
you can see that the reflection totally overlaps and influences the pupil, but overall the reflection is just much sharper, i guess it also comes down to what it reflects, right now its blurred cubemap of its surrounding. so making it sharper might do the trick.
while a pixar-esque eye pretty much doesn't reflect at all like here
http://www.hdwallpapers.in/walls/disney_pixar_brave-wide.jpg
http://www.ting731.com/characterlookdevelopment/sourcefiles/P2/pixar_eyes.jpg
though in brave it seems in some shots they used more obviousl reflection, which is much much more sharp than in my case and i guess thats what makes thes look a bit dull
http://pmcmovieline.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/brave_merida.jpg%3Fw%3D630
also i totally need an eye overlay layer for the shadows and stuff but i'm really not sure yet how to handle those, fo course creating a spherical layer with texture is easy but it wouldn't move with the eyelid when closed so i really have no clue how to properly handle that
thanks but thats too easy to say, we are zusing tesselation in UDK which is close to not usable at all in a game environment, for us its easy right now to max out stuff, without having to care tooooo much about performance at this point. All we can do is hope that it one day work like in cryengine, with little or no hit on performance. The engine question is totally not set yet. We love to work with unity, artwise i really like the cryengine for its out of the box shaders and stuff. We decided to stay with udk though, as all our assets are there, a lot of stuff is tweaked, and not every asset needs touchup right now. But using UDK 3.0 definitely has its flaws when it comes to some of the DX11 features.
yep agree and i have that on my list of things to do, but i'm not sure how to handle it, its kinda easy for the default pose, but for any emotion it won't work. I mean for sequences i could easily just blend in new masks, but a more automatic solution would be great. thanks to bump offset i now have more depth in the iris, works pretty well. will show it in the next update.
As for the tree, mind showing wires? Those leaves are awesome.
Something to try, put ao the main layer, then take what you have already and toss alpha on that and do a push modifier out a bit and offset the UVs. Keep the outer layer for shape but that will give it a bit more volume.
Thanks, I figured that's how you did it. Works really well, love the volume it has.
NICE!
I liked the previous character art style more though.
Decided to take a look through the thread from the beginning (I recommend it), and from 2009, to the stuff we're seeing now, it's hard to describe, it's just a huge leap in art direction (mainly character wise) I liked the old character, but the face of your latest character is just so much more human, more emotional.
And the environmental stuff is starting to look great to (it was great before, but now it's just getting so amazing - hard to believe you guys can exceed your previous art like that)
Can't wait to see everything meet and exceed these new standards you guys have set yourselves
I think this is a good idea. I'd done something similar with that elf swordfighter:
If I were going to rig it, I'd probably make an extra eye bone that would follow the eye's up-and-down rotation and rig the entirety of the sphere and the upper eyelid to it.
Love it!
http://freesdk.crydev.net/display/SDKDOC2/Eye+Shader
Latest concept art from the last page looks awesome! can't wait to see this realized in 3D :poly121:
the thingbis, a realistic eye, like in the preview of that crytek page has waaaay less area to cover, skinning is therefore a lot easier and closing the eyebis also quite a bit simpler
anyways thanks for the input
as for the last concept. ooooh till we reach that area, quite some time will go by
but for now a little something for your ears
http://soundcloud.com/ian-dorsch/pi-os-ride
I second that, so glad you guys are working on this again.
The right background island and the signs are placeholders, the crane texture is a solid color.
The yellow field was a bit of an attention-grabber thouhg. Might wanna tone that down.
Lots of things are just ported from unreal 3, we are working through the assets, but if we delete everything that will be redone now, the set will be pretty empty ^^
@joseph: well i hope so, it's been quite some time since we worked on this version of the airborn universe, having learned nothing in that time would be pretty bad :X
if you want it to come true help us spread the word once we are ready and kickstarting it
The eye shaders are incredible too!
Some character stuff, based on Neox old Tokatchu I did some "nextgen" stuff..
Close to final, still needs whiskers and I was to lazy to turn on displacement
I'm so glad to see all this steady progress, top notch you guys