Tortoise Island
Hi everybody! Here's a project I'm working on. I am a student at The Game Assembly in Malmö, Sweden, and this will hopefully be in my portfolio when I am done with it. Lots of work left though :P
The plan is to make a floating island in UDK with a sacred statue of a tortoise-god and have tortoises walk around it. I am going for a handpainted style, but haven't really decided just excactly HOW handpainted I want it.
Also, I've never used UDK before, so I'm expecting a lot of blood and tears on the way. But I'm super amazed with what I've seen others do with the tool so I'll do my best to learn it.
Ref-pics:
Concept and more refs:
The only thing I've done thus far: A tortoise, both High Poly and Low Poly. The Diffuse isn't finished at all and there still isn't any specular map. I just tossed it into UDK to get a feel of the finished result while I was working.
The tortoise-ref I've been using the most. Note that it is mostly its colour and texture I like, my own tortoise-mesh is a mix of about 30 different tortoises.
Please give me your support and critique, this is the biggest project I've ever attempted in 3d.
The plan is to make a floating island in UDK with a sacred statue of a tortoise-god and have tortoises walk around it. I am going for a handpainted style, but haven't really decided just excactly HOW handpainted I want it.
Also, I've never used UDK before, so I'm expecting a lot of blood and tears on the way. But I'm super amazed with what I've seen others do with the tool so I'll do my best to learn it.
Ref-pics:
Concept and more refs:
The only thing I've done thus far: A tortoise, both High Poly and Low Poly. The Diffuse isn't finished at all and there still isn't any specular map. I just tossed it into UDK to get a feel of the finished result while I was working.
The tortoise-ref I've been using the most. Note that it is mostly its colour and texture I like, my own tortoise-mesh is a mix of about 30 different tortoises.
Please give me your support and critique, this is the biggest project I've ever attempted in 3d.
Replies
Put your polys where they are going to be seen most i.e. the shell of the turtle.
Also, the normal map gives me a nasty seam in UDK, I somehow fixed it before but now I don't remember how I did it. If anyone knows what's wrong please let me know. It works fine in Maya, I figure there something funny with the mirrored UVs.
Tomorrow I'm gonna start on the centerpiece statue, I'll keep y'all updated.
And I know the UDK-environment is funky as mustard, but one step at the time.
Another way (about the same thing just longer text)
If you bake a normal map where uv shells are on top of each other you are gonna get inverted normals in your normal map.
Easy fix is to have one "bake" scene that you only use for baking your normal maps. In this scene you can just move all your dublicated uv shells outside the assigned UV space in your Uv texture editor. That way, parts of the normal map wont be baked on top of each other. Once you have a nice normal map exported and saved you just open up the "real" scene where the uv shells are on top of each other again.
Its a bit messy to explain, will you be at the school during the weekend? I might be able to be there on saturday (thinking about comming in and fixing a few things)
It will probably mess up the rest of the mirrored areas, but then you'll know that thats whats causing it.
This! Had this exact same problem when I was working in the UDK as soon you set the texture to TC_normalmap the seam should be gone
How big is he in game???
Kel-shaded, you have a good point. The 512 px limit is part of the assignment, however. I might be able to get the teachers to change it into a 1024 but I think that the tortoises are gonna be very small in my scene.
You could say I completely overworked the sculpt. *sigh*
The good thing is if I keep them small I don't have to work more on the seam-problem. I'll see later on in the process how big I want them.
It's time for the next asset now!
Here's what I did today, orthographic views of the centerpiece statue.
I was actually hoping to start blocking the thing up in Maya today but got caught up in the design. But that's just as important so whatever, I'm happy.
It's very sketchy but I think it's good enough for a starting point, I'm sure I'll change and add things as I go.
Thanks everybody for your comments, keep'em coming!
It is supposed to have been carved out from one piece of stone(by one insane sculptor I guess). It still looks super-wonky because I was mostly focusing on the topology, all of the shapes will be fixed in zBrush.
edit: I also made the base higher, since the statue a is center piece it has to have dignity. But I'm still not 100% sure about which I like better, the concept version or the 3d version.
His left arm is angled out temporarily to make it easier to work on. Lots of things left to do as you can see. Trying to get a few more angles to catch the light in this sculpt.
Another thing: I strongly recommend to use different subtools for the statue. It just makes everything easier from sculpting to retopo and texturing. It would also looks better at the end because the geometry creates crisp lines that you don't get when using textures.
edit: Added textures
Today I've been sculpting rocks. Feel like I could've gone on forever but I have to keep moving on to keep this on schedule
I don't like the sculpted statue- I think it's very blobby, and brings down the scene(The rest of the scene looks nice, so far). The base-part that he's sitting on is sculpted very well, though.
Did you use any reference while sculpting him? If not, check out these statues of Ganesh:
http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/project1photography/project1photography1205/project1photography120500055/13678169-stone-ganesh-with-moss-growing-on-his-face-in-bali.jpg
http://www.lotussculpture.com/mm5/graphics/00000001/1-green-ganesh-statue.jpg
And this one of Shiva:
http://blog.cleveland.com/reviews/shiva.jpg
I'd say real rock statues have a tendency toward the tubular more than the blobby forms which zbrush tends toward.
Also, I don't really get what you're going for, with some of the forms. I assume he's a turtle man, but the anatomy doesn't back that up. His mouth is flat and pinched, where he would likely have a proper snout, with some volume to it. Also, the human anatomy in the body isn't right, either. Most notably, the shoulder areas, and upper arms.
This Ninja Turtle sculpt really addresses the issues I see in yours. This has a nice snout, good solid arm anatomy, and really looks like a turtle-human hybrid:
http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/189/0/9/ninja_turtle___leonardo__sculpted_by_micky_betts_by_mixta110-d56hn1n.jpg
Also, consider using a tiled texture on the rock parts of the island (as an overlay, perhaps, since there are some nice tone variations there already.), because it's quite plain right now.
I look forward to seeing how this turns out.
I agree with you on the statue, but I am not sure if I am going to put more time into it. What I was going for was a sort of Kappa-warrior, like this http://www.cryptomundo.com/wp-content/uploads/kappa11.jpg mixed with this: http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/nruboc/nruboc0801/nruboc080100023/2371075-an-ancient-asian-goddess-statue-over-white.jpg .
But I agree, as you are saying, that it doesn't quite show. Currently it's trying to be a little too many things, and the material isn't completely there. Those refpics you sent look very nice. I feel that now I am in the middle of the process and have to suffer because I didn't know excactly what style I was aiming for in the beginning.
As for the rock, there is a tiling normalmap going over it. I didn't even consider doing it with the diffuse as well, will try this later today, thanks!
I'm also considering the idea of lowering the island down into water, instead of floating around randomly, but I'm not sure.