WIP / Need help [low poly texturing]

Jalechah

Hey guys. It's been a while since I've done any 3D modeling and I really want to get back into it. I love low poly work but texturing has always been a little hard.
I drew up a little concept and made the character in 3D.
Total Tri count comes to 272. Right now the texture is 1024x1024 but that's just for the time being
So any tips, words of caution or other forms of help/critz would be appreciated.

Here's what i have thus far.






Thank you for your time.

JO420

For starters your resolution of 1024 is really large for a character in that style. Perhaps you could tighten up your UVs as well.

Aside from that you really need to jump right into it.

Bombshell

your priorities so far,
base colours - colour each part in whatever you think the base colour of that area will be,
colour cleaning - clean the edges and add the largest of details
colour picking - now you have a basic idea of what the colours will be, make your highlight and shading colours, keep the highlights around the same tones and the shadows around the same tones and likewise the midtones about the same tone.
basic shading - shade larger details, many ways of doing this, some like myself airbrush, others shade in blocks and blur later
finer shading - keep shading and highlighting finer and finer details until your happy with the look.

NOTE: before or during shading is when I advise you should set transparencies, it'll help you know where your edges are.

@JO420's reply, you could work in 1024x but it is advised you downscale the final image to 256x for something of this style, some people would argue 128x or 512x but I think 256 would be perfect balance for efficiency and a crisp look.

JO420

Bombshell wrote: »

@JO420's reply, you could work in 1024x but it is advised you downscale the final image to 256x for something of this style, some people would argue 128x or 512x but I think 256 would be perfect balance for efficiency and a crisp look.

If there are not alot of small details perhaps,id say source 512 and scale down to 256 or 128

Jalechah

thanx for the help. i havent had much time to work on this model and ive started over a few times. but finally have a lil layout and base colours in. sorry for the slow progress but feel free to pick out stuff as i go

MrNinjutsu

Probably be easier if you try painting in a 3d piece of kit like bodypaint/zbrush/3d coat or other equivalents.

uberphoenix

ooo not bad at all looking forward to see moar!

/watched

Jalechah

Quick update.
just added in some shades and the alpha. Although the alpha needs some tweaking, I think next update will be the final product. If you see some areas that could use some extra attention then please point them out Despite how obvious the mistakes/need areas might be I might forget about them next time I work on it.

Danglebob

looks good! on the head piece, i would cut the plane into a diamond shape. It will give you a cleaner edge on the jewel and shouldn't mess with your uv's.

AzzaMat

my only comment is to look at the what I can only describe as gods of the low poly world and learn as much as you can from there work,
firstly Tom Tallian - He remade the TF2 characters and they look amaaaaaazing =D
http://tommytallian.blogspot.co.uk/p/low-poly-tf2.html

A 128*128 texture sheet! and less than 500 tri's

and Genc Buxheli - re-created both Altair and other game character in low poly
http://genci.studiogmsoft.com/


Finally Ben Mathis - Yet another talented artist, his main page also has a load of tutorials that are worth going through
http://www.poopinmymouth.com/index.htm

Hatsya

Azzamat, are you recommending him to follow the coloring methods set by those examples? Or do you also recommend to alter his character's body style?

rb2610

There's a very noticable seam in the texture where the face meets the left side of the head. You might want to move your UV seam to the back of the head if possible?

AzzaMat

I was just trying to post up some useful links to some high quality work, also it shows what can be done with low texture sizes.