Modeling fightpunch's Viking
polycounter lvl 14
I was looking for a stylized character to model - and also a chance to work on hand-painted textures - and I came across this concept by the very talented fightpunch:
I decided to take a crack at the dude on the left. Here's my progress on the model so far:
And one from the Max viewport showing the wireframe:
Obviously it's still a work in progress. I'm about to move on to the shield texture next. I might try modeling the dude on the right once I'm done with this guy, too.
Anyway, hope you guys like it!
I decided to take a crack at the dude on the left. Here's my progress on the model so far:
And one from the Max viewport showing the wireframe:
Obviously it's still a work in progress. I'm about to move on to the shield texture next. I might try modeling the dude on the right once I'm done with this guy, too.
Anyway, hope you guys like it!
Replies
Really nice. Can't wait to see how this turns out.
- BoBo
And I'm glad you like it, fightpunch!
Total count came to 10221 tris, one 1024x1024 texture (viking) and two 512x512 textures (shield and hammer). All textures are surface shaders - all the lighting information is painted in.
I've got a buddy who's in the process of rigging and skinning him, so hopefully I'll have some animations on this guy to show soon, too!
Wonkey - The head of the hammer was really simplistic, both in structure and silhouette, so I felt I didn't need to give it as many tris.
coots7 - Good call. I'll tweak the texture and repost when it's done.
amile duan - Thanks! But the concept for the character was actually done by fightpunch.
Too much? Not enough? Just right?
I usually sculpt a blockout mesh so I know where certain details should be, bake cavities, etc. but I'd be interested in seeing other people's model/painting techniques.
This is the process I've been using for most of my stuff. I don't know if it's the best way to do things, but it's been working alright for me so far.
Anyway, I usually start off VERY briefly in 3ds Max. I create extremely rudimentary, low-poly geometry made up of all quads so it will divide well in Zbrush.
The above image was my blockout mesh for the head - super rough and low poly. I spend as little time with this process as possible - maybe 10 minutes or so for all the parts of the body - then I export them to OBJs and bring them into Zbrush, where I do the majority of my work.
The more comfortable I become with Zbrush, the more time I like spending in that program more than any others. I feel like it's easier for me to not only sculpt details but also adjust proportions in Zbrush. So, other than that first rudimentary blockout stage, my first major part of the process is sculpting everything in Zbrush.
Once I get everything looking the way I want in Zbrush, I combine anything that needs combining, then export all the parts as high-poly OBJs so I can retopo them in Topogun.
In Topogun, I make the low poly meshes, then take them into 3ds Max for unwrapping. Depending on what type of model I'm making, I'll usually bake normals, diffuse, and AO maps in Topogun, too. With this guy, though, I wanted him to be more stylized, so I decided not to bake the normals - though I could've used the normal map and AO map as a guide for painting my diffuse if I wanted to.
Anyway, when I'm done with topogun I have the low poly mesh:
The only thing I have left to do at this point is paint the diffuse texture.
That's my usual process. Sometimes there's a lot more iterating, where I'm going back and forth between programs to get the results I want, but this guy was relatively straightforward due to how stylized he is.
As I said, this may not be the best way to do things. It's just the way I've been doing them.
Hope that helped and answered your question!
Nice post though.
joshmtyler - True, the colors are pretty muted. I liked the colors fightpunch chose in the concept, so I decided to stick pretty close to those for the most part.
Torch - I used to model almost everything in Max, but I think Zbrush makes the whole process more intuitive and less tedious, so I've been working in it more and more as I become more comfortable. Glad you like it!