Knight Lady
greentooth
Latest update!
Hello all!
Recently I realised I haven't finished a full character in over a year - gonna try and remedy that asap! I want to try and make something that will push me out of my comfort zone and give me some practise at something I'm not great at/haven't done much of - hard surface modelling in Max! Time to make up for those years I skimmed over learning Max properly in order to get to sculpting as quickly as possible (and paid for it later!)
This thread is to keep a record of what I'm doing and set mini-deadlines for myself so I don't get overwhelmed and actually finish something for a change
I'm going to try and make this lady by wraithdt
Going for something between realistic and stylised, want to keep the forms/proportions relatively naturalistic. I have a bad habit of exaggerating things according to what my brain thinks it sees rather than what's actually there, so please call me out on something if it looks off!
Current progress~
For the face I was going for a young, slightly innocent heroine type, with a slightly pissed off baked in expression! Texture is just a very generic base right now, will have to re-do the UVs and reproject later so I can add some wear and tear and make her more characterful.
Crit much appreciated on this, I really want to get better at faces! Tried to stop repeating my habits with this one, I'm guilty of eyes too far apart, mouth too low down, features generally too big for the face. I want to ground it in realism while still having character.
Blocked out some armor in Max, for some reason zbrush has made a mess of the meshes, but I'll post some Max screen grabs later. Trying to keep it as clean as possible at this point.
Will post more as I go! Determined to finish this one!
Hello all!
Recently I realised I haven't finished a full character in over a year - gonna try and remedy that asap! I want to try and make something that will push me out of my comfort zone and give me some practise at something I'm not great at/haven't done much of - hard surface modelling in Max! Time to make up for those years I skimmed over learning Max properly in order to get to sculpting as quickly as possible (and paid for it later!)
This thread is to keep a record of what I'm doing and set mini-deadlines for myself so I don't get overwhelmed and actually finish something for a change
I'm going to try and make this lady by wraithdt
Going for something between realistic and stylised, want to keep the forms/proportions relatively naturalistic. I have a bad habit of exaggerating things according to what my brain thinks it sees rather than what's actually there, so please call me out on something if it looks off!
Current progress~
For the face I was going for a young, slightly innocent heroine type, with a slightly pissed off baked in expression! Texture is just a very generic base right now, will have to re-do the UVs and reproject later so I can add some wear and tear and make her more characterful.
Crit much appreciated on this, I really want to get better at faces! Tried to stop repeating my habits with this one, I'm guilty of eyes too far apart, mouth too low down, features generally too big for the face. I want to ground it in realism while still having character.
Blocked out some armor in Max, for some reason zbrush has made a mess of the meshes, but I'll post some Max screen grabs later. Trying to keep it as clean as possible at this point.
Will post more as I go! Determined to finish this one!
Replies
Forhead is ok but she might need slightly sharper femaleish brow protrusion
look at profile reference of beautiful women, but that is really up to you because it looks more or less ok anatomically, Just sayin'
Don't lose confidence in what you are doing.. hm , it look good so we are just nitpicking.
@The_Blenderer, Thanks for the crits man! Do you think the mouth is too low on the face or too wide? Something is definately off with it...I might do a few paintovers to experiment! Thanks for the tip about the brow. Usually I find nitpicks are really useful criticisms that make the difference between something average or great :]
@dudealan2001, The nose is a bit generic and smooth at this point? Maybe I should define the bridge more, was just trying to avoid a very thin, fake-looking nose, thanks for pointing it out :]
@toolpaddz, Thanks, agree with that, even though the armor covers it its important that the head and the body work together!
Will post more this weekend...!
Basically, I think the face portion of the head is too large (or the rest of the head is too small, however you'd like to think of it). It dominates the frontal plane so much that it makes the head feel too wide in front (although my paintover may be a bit of an exaggeration). The mastoid process muscles could also come in closer together at the base of the neck.
Looking forward to seeing your progress on this.
In the middle of moving house, no pc at the moment for the latest files! Going to post some screens of the hard surface stuff to see if I'm on the right track...
Crit much appreciated, I'm trying to improve my Max modelling so I don''t rely on zbrush so much. Will post more progress soon, gonna make some changes to the head and get working on some cloth stuff!
@stoyan, ah thanks for the tip, I put them so close together to try and get those harsh edges, I'll try get a softer look and space them out more.
@imijatov, its bothering me too, I overcompensate so the characters don't look dumpy but thanks for pointing it out, I'm toning it down
@ikosan, even though one of them might be covered with hair I still want to get the shape right, I'll take another look, thanks!
She's still looking pretty derpy without hair and that gormless expression....
As usual, critique is loved, I want to learn!
Made the leg armor this weekend, probably gonna need some help on where to position all those buckles and straps to hold things together. I wish there were more hours in the day to do that stuff!
The shoes are going to be a knightmare...
The hard-surface work is looking really lovely. Very realistic, and surprisingly flattering.
Looking forward to seeing more of this!
Another quick update, looks a bit more put-together with straps and buckles, just blocking the shoes out now. Trying to figure out how to positon the tasset and not have her hips looking disproportionately huge.
@PDC, planning to do something metallic, but with a bit of a fantasy-influenced design for something more elegant, since the actual medieval soleret look like metal flippers to me! In the process of gathering a bunch of ref.
Thanks, sometimes its hard to get a femenine look but I'm stylising the shape a lot to keep the silhouette so its not really that accurate! ^^;
Can't wait to see more
@Chrisradsby, thanks! Hopefully it'll look decent after I bake it down.
@mrmagee1000, heh I'm curious too, think I'm gonna go with alpha planes, lots and lots of alpha planes.
Looong overdue update, only a couple of hours a week to work on this, weekends are taken up travelling, wish I was a student again so I could work on my own stuff full-time
Anyway, gotta push on! Been working on some high frequency detail and hitting the ref. I dunno if I should simplify things a bit, its really hard to get cloth looking like its pinching. I could spend forever on this stage!
I changed the matcap to plan grey so you guys can actually see it. I'm so out of practise with cloth sculpting, it looks super sloppy still. Crit much loved as usual!
I don't know if this character is supoosed to be for a still or an animation, but if it's for animation try to avoid doing extreme wrinkles which give an indication of the character turning, such as on the back (left shoulder to right waist). Its not a huge deal, but something worth thinking about if the character will be animated (especially when animated normal maps may be used).
Anyway great stuff, keep it up!
Its actually just for fun/practise as a showpiece, so I guess I wanted to add a little drama! When I'm doing a character for a game I try to make clothing creases and such as neutral as possible like you said
Had a free day at the weekend so I've been hitting zbrush pretty hard to finish the high poly! Everything is modelled now, at last! Decided to rework the shoes and made em leather in the end, with some ankle guards and steel toecap type metal bits. Historical accuracy went out the window for this one, but I like shoes.
Made another greyscale render with some fake painted on hair. No idea where I'm going with that yet.
Tomorrow I'm gonna take another look at the head and make a start in baking it down.
But I couldn't help wondering..?
Isn't her head looks a big too big, especially when you look at her shoulder?
Maybe it's just the perspective view tho!
Looks awesome, refreshing.
Been doing some uninteresting stuff like retopo and unwrap, I messed around with xoliul shader to get the above, no diffuse just normals. The result is really aliased, would be cool to find a way around that!
Finally finished, yay! onto something else!
what you thinking of working on next?
How did you do the eyes?!?
Id tighten up the spec and reduce the diffuse noise on the metal parts though,if naything
You graduated in 2011 like me? Maybe I should have looked into DMU..
There's something slightly off about her head in relation to the rest of her body, I think the heads too big or the shoulders are too narrow which makes the full body shot look a little strange
her head is too big.
SA_22 - Thank you, just gonna do some zbrush work and quick sculpts I think for a while, doing a full on high to low poly character got tedious at times but I did learn a lot.
butt_sahib - The eyes are done by building a simple cornea shape over the eyeball which bulges out in the middle to get the correct highlight, its just set to have a very high specular, set to alpha, and reflects whatever environment map you choose in marmoset. Agree, I think the metal needs another pass too, very noisy looking at it now.
Ravanna - DMU was a lot of fun, I learned everything I knew at the time from a couple of guys in the year above me who all went on to great things! If I didn't have friends there and just followed lectures, I think I would be doing something very different.
mr_ace - I'm using the new marmoset which has the fake SSS skin shader in it, which works ok, I'll pose the face textures but there's nothing special I did there, just photo sourced textures and AO bake on the face.
Yeah I always struggle with getting the head to look natural on the body, she is pretty short, about 6 heads, I agree with the shoulders and head ratio looking off, I'm going to make a better female base I think and make it correct to real life. I think its because I always shrink down the shoulders and the head looks like this big balloon just sitting there! Gonna try shrinking it down and see if its better smaller, probably will be!
Mimiws - Yesss haha I'm very happy with the female Ramza comparison, I love FFT. I wanna make one of the characters from Tactics now...
I think the final presentation is a little boring though honestly. It would be cool to get at least one screenshot with a more dynamic pose.