Sci-Fi Character WIP
interpolator
***Latest***
His finished Gun:
View in 3d, Marmoset viewer:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/P4JO3
Gun Concept:
Someone posted this concept art by Daryl Mandryk here on polycount and I just started sketching it in zbrush.
I like where its going so I'm going to take a break from my Bane character and work on this.
So far I just made a quick and dirty zbrush sketch. I basically wanted to establish proportions and stuff, so I can make a proper clean highpoly in 3ds max. Then I'm gonna come back into zbrush and finish the hp up there.
Here is where I am at...
His finished Gun:
View in 3d, Marmoset viewer:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/P4JO3
Gun Concept:
Someone posted this concept art by Daryl Mandryk here on polycount and I just started sketching it in zbrush.
I like where its going so I'm going to take a break from my Bane character and work on this.
So far I just made a quick and dirty zbrush sketch. I basically wanted to establish proportions and stuff, so I can make a proper clean highpoly in 3ds max. Then I'm gonna come back into zbrush and finish the hp up there.
Here is where I am at...
Replies
Damn I can't wait to see more.
Anyway, I'm using Modo now and I thought it would be a good time to finish this up. Here is a render from Modo of the cleaned up HP model from zbrush (remodeled sub-d). Its mostly done, except I have to finish the backpack which is why I didn't show a back view yet. I might remodel a few bits here and there cause I'm ocd about stuff, and I need to do a hp detail pass as well. Oh yea, and make him a gun of course.
JoshuaG: Thanks for letting me know about that. I have no recollection of this being from Turok, so I'm not sure I ever knew. Makes me even more excited about making this, seeds of evil is one of my favorite games of all time.
Ok, I finished all the sub-d for the character.
Next I need to make him a gun. If anyone has any preferences on what the gun should look like please post up concepts here. The current concept doesn't have much of any detail showing in his gun so I'm not sure I'll even attempt to make the same thing he is holding (match the current silhouette).
On another note, I had to design the back parts as I didn't have an image for that, especially the backpack. Hope you guys like it. Let me know if you have any crits, and in the mean time I'll be working on that gun.
Tkail: Thanks, I didn't do anything special there honestly, and I wouldn't recommend the way I did it actually. lol. The proper way to do it would make a straight cylinder with a bunch of loops and extrude those ribs out, then rig it/skin it to the character and bend it in place via the rig. But what I did since I only know how to rig in 3ds max (I'm working in modo here) is a mix of soft selection, falloffs and the move brush (move brush works the same in modo as zbrush). So its a pretty dirty way to model but since I kept the low poly non-subd version as simple as possible it wasn't that difficult to manipulate.
Here are the wires: sub-d on the left and non-subd on the right.
Other than that, everything is looking super solid. Loving project so far, nice work.
Nuclear Angel: Yea, a lot of people these days do hard surface work in zbrush. I think many of them get pretty good results, however I feel I have more control over the exact shapes and edge quality in Modo versus zbrush, and you get a lot cleaner work faster working in Modo with sud-d versus zbrush (at least I do). There are advantages and disadvantages to either, but I plan to go back into zbrush to take advantage of some of the tools there when I finish this up. I think detailing in zbrush is really powerful, but I prefer to get the large clean shapes in traditional modeling software apps like modo. But since I'm bouncing back and fourth between the two programs, hopefully I get the best of both worlds.
[edit] Just to my add to my thoughts on zbrush hardsurface stuff... I notice when I look at peoples art, especially when doing similar style characters to the one I'm doing with lots of metal plates and stuff, often times I can look at the highpoly and know right away, "ok that was done in zbrush". You can just see those super even cuts everywhere, and the bevels looks the same everywhere. Its a subtle thing, but I really think it hurts the overall feel of the surfaces. I see people get really good end results however (like in final renders), but I still prefer to handle those shapes outside of zbrush for that reason.
Anyway, to answer your first question, I use primitives if its a simple enough shape, otherwise; I go into Modo's retopo room and just retopo the shapes with as low poly geo as possible and either set that up for sub-d or use the smooth shader method. Hope that answers your question. Modo can be a rabbit hole that just keeps taking you deeper and deeper at first, lol!
(please ignore that white line going across, this is a viewport screen grab and thats part of the light widget. )
Joshuag: Yea, that was my first concern with this workflow, but actually Modo bakes normals perfectly when using this shader so as long as you bake normals in Modo (obviously if you use something like xnormal that doesn't support the shader it wont work) it will work perfectly for you. As you can see in the image it smooths edges but also smooths intersections even if I don't boolean add them (no welding needed). So I can literally drop a cube ontop of a slightly offset cube and it will smooth the transitions without any effort. ( you can see that in action in that image where I have a smaller cylinder intersecting with the larger cylinder at an angle. Also note, that you can easily set the meshes up with the shader to not smooth intersections. So its not like you have to have smooth intersections if you don't want to, and you can always adjust the amount of smoothing too as needed.
Maxilator: There are 3 things I miss from max that I can think of off the top of my head.
-The modifier stack. You can use this in max to work non-destructively. The only thing you can do in modo really is save iterations and copies of meshes, its a destructive workflow unfortantuly. So if I bend something its bent for good, no going back in a modifier stack and adjusting the bend.
- Path deform. This is an awesome modifier in max because you can manipulate complex objects on a spline in real time. You don't need it too often, but when you do its super handy. There are various scripts hacks and falloffs you can use in Modo, but its not nearly as powerful as max.
-FFD box. I beleive there was a script for this at one point for modo, but I don't think there is any more.
-Oh, and invalid geo. Its a steep learning curve dealing with invalid geo at times in Modo. Modo lets you do anything, while max doesn't let you create invalid geo. Its a double edged sword and most of the time I'm annoyed Modo lets me make retarded geo by accident. You would be surprised how often it can happen if you aren't used to working a certain way to avoid invalid geo.
That said, there are so many things Modo does better than max. Personally I can take the good with the bad and I still prefer Modo even though I am a long time max user. I learned 3d on max and have used it for the majority of my professional career. Still I think Modo is faster and overall a much more enjoyable experience over max. Just know that if you dive in, its gonna be very very frustrating at first. lol. Its worth it tho.
I see, I'll probably try it out at some point!
I got the highpoly of the gun done on one side. I need to model in some A symmetry bits on the opposite side but getting ready to wrap this up.
Finished the high poly, I'll make a proper render at some point, but on to the low poly gun now. Making the low poly should be super fast and easy because of the smooth shader workflow I am using, I can literally copy and past most of the hp.
After that, on to the uv's, baking, and texturing. I'm gonna give substance painter a try (I have yet to use it but I've been watching some tutorials and it seems super easy to use).
I'm planning on making the entire in-game gun model first before jumping back onto the character as it will get me prepared for whats ahead with the character (the important part, heh.)
Back to the character!
I decided I wanted to attach his gun to the backpack so it seemed like the backpack was more functional. I think it makes it a bit more interesting overall.
I'm currently sculpting on the cloth parts including reworking much of the hands (they were pretty temp). But the highpoly should be done pretty soon, so I can then start working on the lowpoly, uv's and bakes.
Modo screen grabs, just to show the progress...