VG Remix - Skyward Sora

darkmag07

My diorama will contain Sora fighting Darkside in the very first boss battle from Kingdom Hearts. I'd also like to try to emulate the watercolor texture style from the Skyward Sword promotional art hence the "Skyward Sora" title.

To Do List:

• Attack effect models/textures
• Final polish pass

Completed Items:

• Darkside Model
• Darkside Rig
• Darkside UV Layout
• Darkside Texture
• Sora Model
• Sora UV Layout
• Sora Texture
• Sora Rig
• Dream Sword Model
• Dream Sword Texture
• Platform Model
• Platform UV/Texture
• Shadow model
• Shadow uvs
• Shadow textures
• Shadow Rig/Pose

darkmag07

This guy is sitting at 753 tris at the moment. I figure since Darkside is like 4x the size of Sora it's okay to multiply the suggested triangle limit by 1.5. All those hair vines really killed the limits.





And a sketchfab for the interactively inclined.

[SKETCHFAB]sI06AcJjKR01FBje0HqSYgG1ueM[/SKETCHFAB]

darkmag07

I put together a working rig for Darkside last night.



I worked on Sora this afternoon.



He's at 603 tris. I'm not really sure where else I can drop some. His hands could be condesned into one plane instead of a split I guess and that'd save 20 more tris by my reckoning. It seems that everything else is contributing to the silhouette so taking it away will break part of the character.

And another skechfab for Sora.

[SKETCHFAB]e04c23b7ac4a434192b7217035c3a265[/SKETCHFAB]

darkmag07

Managed to rig up Sora. Ran into a weird bug but managed to fix it.

darkmag07

The 128x128 texture size is killing me. Well that's a good first pass anyway. Next to mix in the ambient lighting which has a distinct light-blue color in the Skyward Sword promo art.

darkmag07

Updated my Sora model after viewing Mariomanzanares thread and being reminded that Icospheres are great for low-poly rounded things like Sora's pants. I ended up reducing the polycount to 557 tris and got more detail in the hair somehow.

[SKETCHFAB]3482b85a0d5241ccb5e3860ebfaea74b[/SKETCHFAB]

darkmag07

Did a trace and then paint over of some official art of Sora to practice emulating the Skyward Sword art style. I think I need to do a little more to really "get it" but it's fairly close.

Edit: Updated image to be even more SSish.

darkmag07

First pass at the texture. I'll move on to Darkside and the environment and then come back to clean up texture seams, etc.

[SKETCHFAB]92cf4d52c81d41c3b32c0794638f05ef[/SKETCHFAB]

darkmag07

Worked on Darkside this morning and tried out 3D Coat for the first time. Seems pretty cool, too bad my trial will run out in 30 days.

[SKETCHFAB]d6f5f7894f11443a96b032273250077a[/SKETCHFAB]

darkmag07

A little more work on Sora's texture and built the Dream Sword.

[SKETCHFAB]70fb0967115d40ecb94a983d405d7b67[/SKETCHFAB]

The sword is at 108 tris and a 32x64 texture. I also down-rezzed Sora's texture from 256x256 to the official contest size of 128x128.

minorthreat

Darkside's looking completely badass, awesome model. I think the Sora texture looks really good except for his eyes, or really just his entire face.

Afrodiet

Okay, Darkside is awesome, very good job, Sora has a good model but the texture is'nt really the best, make the colors more bright and change the face, he looks like he's been rolling in flour atm :P

Looking forward to see the results ^^

darkmag07

@Minor Threat: The face is just a placeholder.

@Afrodiet: The "flour rolled look" is kind of the art style I'm aiming for (watercolor). I agree that he does need brighter colors though. Here's a compilation of most of the references I'm looking at for the texturing style.



Edit: Blocking out Environment ideas. Not really my area of expertise. I don't know if it is worthwhile to do the background into quarters while the character overlays on top would still be 64 rez. I suppose I could argue that that portion is a character, and upsize to 128 for a transparent overlay with Belle, Beast, and the top circle.

darkmag07

Working on the platform.

[SKETCHFAB]f44e98efde2249d1a80441e9500c62bd[/SKETCHFAB]

Here are all my textures thus far:



And here is a paint-over for where I'm headed:

darkmag07

Worked on the Shadow this morning. All that's left on this guy is the texture. He's already rigged, uved, etc. He was really quick to make. Hurray simple designs!

[SKETCHFAB]10b7e9b40dab4cb1a256464f6a758df0[/SKETCHFAB]

darkmag07

And the textured version.

[SKETCHFAB]9ddb79b3550e4a2d985ce3ef94efd400[/SKETCHFAB]

mafubash

Very nice! I really like how the heartless are looking! I feel that Sora's face could use more texture space so you can get more detail in. Keep up the good work!

darkmag07

@mafubash: Agreed. I'll be revisiting that soon as I need to fit in his belt too and I"ll have to move stuff around on the texture anyway.

An update on the platform, which is basically finished now.

[SKETCHFAB]891171ef9654462b880ecccaa846046f[/SKETCHFAB]

Fenyce

I think Sora is the weakest point, which he as main character shouldn't be. You really should rework his textures. He's superduper-unsharp. That heartless looks great.

darkmag07

Updated Sora's texture today. I put his face on a new 64x64. Hopefully that's okay.

[SKETCHFAB]3d49037ad2a846a28fd77562a92cb884[/SKETCHFAB]

mariomanzanares

Nice Kingdom Hearts VG Remix! I'm working on a KH project too! indeed, I'm planning to do a heartless like you, maybe tomorrow. By the way, your texture on the small heartless is amazing!

But I agree with the comments: Sora is your weakest point and the main character at the same time, so maybe you need to fix that. You are trying to reach a "skyward" style, but just in Sora. The rest have an unique pixel look, which looks very good. If I were you, I would make a more "pixel-ish" Sora, but anyway the project is going very good.

Cheers!!

Fenyce

I think Sora looks better now, but his face could still be improved. It seems like his eyes are to far up, I'd pull them down a little. That would result in a cuter and childisher face propotion.

Keep it up. I think this will be a good entry.

Doctor 0

I dig the blue and the look you're going for but I think the value (and possibly chroma) are a little off. In both paintings, the blue is there because of the ambient light from the sky. Sometimes shadows are pushed to cool to add contrast too. So I think you should definitely stick with it, but paint in the blue on your texture sheet in the shadow areas. And always remember that reflected light will generally be a lot dimmer than your main light source.

Of course in your scene, Sora's environment has a strong light source from the bottom. It also tinted warmly or yellow. This lighting is absent in the game because the PS2 didn't do lighting like that and the texture artists didn't paint it in.

I made two examples. One is the outdoors type of lighting, and the other is the stained glass window type lighting.

darkmag07

I suppose using blue ambient light in this situation doesn't really make sense. I tried out switching it to yellow with a quick color-correction layer. Not terrible.

[SKETCHFAB]94e515242ddd495ab407f52df7243926[/SKETCHFAB]

I'm trying to work out the effects I can/should use to get the oppressively dark/empty atmosphere from the game as well as the glow factor from the floor. So far I don't feel very successful. Also gotta work on that pool of darkness a bit more.

darkmag07

[sketchfab]f6ae43506ee144828307b80450b5b1fe[/sketchfab]

Hurray for a hacking! I can't upload my own background without "going Pro" you say? How's about I make a giant geosphere and use that instead? Too bad you can't turn off the ability to see both sides of a face for specific objects. With that this solution would be perfect.

I'm going to work on creating more of a focal point in my scene by adjusting some overall texture brightness on the floor I think. It's also difficult to see the shadows on the dark swirl so I need to come up with a way to make them more visible. Maybe.

Edit: Adjusted the floor textures a bit.

evilblah

Its looking really good! The dark purple swirl on the ground is clipping with the ground if you rotate the camera around and keep it low. I wonder if you need to pull the swirl up a little more or if its a sketchfab thing?

Spacey

That big heartless dude looks really awesome. If you have the UV space, I'd try and arrange the hand's UVs to flow straight. The diagonal pixel effect doesn't look so good when used on things that are supposed to be straight. It probably wouldn't matter so much if it was just a monster's hand, but it's right at the focal point so it should look good. The triangulation is also making the hand's silhouette look weird (turning the two triangles on top of the hand should give it more mass).

Edit: And yeah, what evilblah says. I'm getting weird conflicts too when I rotate the camera around. Pulling the swirl away from the ground plane a bit will fix that.

darkmag07

evilblah: Yeah, I've noticed the clipping problem with the swirl, but it is floating above it so I'm not sure what's up. I'll try moving it up further and maybe that'll resolve it.

Spacey: I'll take a look at moving the arms later tonight to see if I can fix the diagonals. It's something I've avoided pretty well on everything else, but Darkside was one of the first models and I had no idea what I as doing concerning the pixel art style at that time.

darkmag07

Made a logo this morning to brand my entries with.



Also trying out a different composition. Any thoughts?

[sketchfab]b46fe801055547d7a88e5a5c6bc7e296[/sketchfab]

Fenyce

I really like the first one way better! Because you could go to some really awesome and dynamic looking angles.

darkmag07

Here are my final images. You were right about the angles, Fenyce, so I went back to the old one, but kept a few of the effects from the new.

[sketchfab]d45f27c332964785be5ad737ea0ab108[/sketchfab]









There are also separate sketchfabs of each major part of my scene separated out so you can view the wireframes and/or a little bit more on how they were constructed.

• Sora
• Shadows
• Darkside
• Environment
• Attack Effect