Terrorist/Mercenary Character WIP

Plaguedude

Hey polycount, this is a character I've been working on for a friend's game. I could use some advice on how to improve him.

I made a base mesh in Softimage 2011, exported that to Sculptris to make the hi-poly, then painted in mudbox and photoshop. I'm mainly interested on improving the edges of his vest which doesn't look as convincing as I would like and also some tips for texturing his hair. Since two of my three other characters have loose clothing articles I'm a little more concerned with the clothing than the hair.



Thanks for any help you've got.

dpadam450

Shoulders are way too wide.

AtomicClucker

The guy is definitely shrugging, those shoulders need to be loosened.

Plaguedude

Haven't had much time to work on this lately, but I've made some revisions, most importantly I deflated his shoulders to be less huge. I seem to exaggerate shoulders, probably from looking at too many characters with colossal shoulder armor all the time. They may actually still be wider than normal, but for the project we need to use the UDK skeleton, so I'm trying to work a normal sized person onto a skeleton from a hulking steroid man.



Anyway, I'd really like to get some advice on texturing his head and body, specifically his beard and surface detail, such as pores, as well as his hair. The software I have to work with is Softimage, Mudbox, Maya (all 2011), Photoshop, Sculptris, and Crazy Bump. Also, you'll probably notice some weird seams at the base of the neck and where the arms meet the shoulder, those are minor fixes I'll take care of soon.

PaulP

Before thinking about fine details like texturing pores, you may want to consider spending more time on the anatomy, especially the face and arms. Creating believable anatomy with lesser textures will have a much higher impact on people viewing this model than better textures with poor anatomy. Something to think about.

As for texturing things like beards and pores I would recommend using a tool like spotlight in ZBrush, if you are not familiar with ZBrush I'm sure Mudbox will have some similar texturing tools. If that's not your cup of tea you could always just layer up some extracted reference pictures in your Ps texture maps.

Plaguedude

Have to agree with you, especially on the face, I can't say I was totally pleased with the way he came out. I think I'll do the head over, if not all of his body.

I would be using ZBrush without a second thought if I had it, but I guess I'll have to figure out how to do it in Mudbox since I would very much prefer painting directly on the model.