The Royal Guard Armor

Jonnyboy0121

Hi guys,

I've been volunteering and working on an indie game team making a medieval fantasy RPG called "Three". A lot of the models I'm making I've been using in my portfolio.

This was my first, not following a tutorial step by step, character in zbrush. I made the basemesh in 3ds max and then detailed it up later in zbrush.

Comments and critiques are more than welcome please! I would be very thankful for your time.

Here's the concept art I made, my drawing skills are pretty laughable but helped me communicate the idea I was going for.

Jonnyboy0121

Here's the game resolution mesh after all the retopology, baking, and texturing was done. The armor is around 8k polys. My next steps, which I'm still working on, are posing him, making a better breakdown showing poly counts and such, and giving him a weapon or two to pose with.

Brian "Panda" Choi

I know mostly everything is done past the sculpt, but just a couple of critiques:

• All the cloth pieces, especially the front loin, don't seem to make sense. I'm not sure if you used reference, but I would recommend in the future to do so. Especially the loin cloth, it doesn't seem to be obeying gravity so much as just having random folds to make it look like cloth. A cheap way to maybe do this is to use a cloth sim real fast to set something up as a base, but otherwise, use reference next time. Same thing for the cape.
• Add a little bit of blue color, or something cool, to the steel specularity. Very rare for metal like that to not have some SLIGHT hue to its specular.

Besides that, I'm holding back on design feedback since I'm not sure what the game is, or what the purpose of the character is, unless you are allowed to elaborate on it.

Pretty solid in the end, just mostly cloth issues and the elusive difficulty of specular maps.

ng.aniki

Too bad you did not spend more time on the concept. (Note: Use Shift to draw straight lines in photoshop, or a ruler if you are doing it by hand, for the weapons, this really look like you didnt care)
You really should have worked from references.

In my opinion, for a royal gard armour, it doesn't look that classy/prestigious. (Particularly the front part of the helmet)
Some that I find stunning, from the costumes of GoT: http://www.abload.de/img/vlcsnap-2011-05-02-23h68hj.png (Maybe it doesn't suit your world, but you get the idea)

Otherwise, about the model itself, there are strange reflections in the lowpoly with normal map, like the top of the front of the helmet. It looks 100% clean on the highpoly, and it looks like the metal was bent on the lowpoly with nm. Same for the sides of the shoulderpads.

If you are not going for a cartooney look, you should add some metal textures in overlay for the metal, and sharper details for the fabric. Same for specular.
Maybe try to improve the material before doing the beauty shots (add reflection)

Otherwise good job, sorry if my comments are a bit harch, I just pointed the things that needed more love, in my opinion.

Moppyboy

May a suggest maybe try a lighter or brighter metal to go with the gold like maybe a silver look. It looks pretty good if using photoshop for your reference art remember to use layers and use the shift key to draw straight lines like ng.aniki said.

oxblood

nice geometry and i like the distinct lines in the armor. i think you should really work on the wrinkes in the cloth on his cape. mabye try using the pinch brush to make the creases more defined, and use a smaller standard brush on the bits that stand out in order to make them look more realistic. and perhaps change the directions in which some of the creases go. it is looking good so far though, but besides what everyone else has said, thats what stands out to me.

Jonnyboy0121

Thank you so much guys, your critiques are extremely helpful!

Here's a character bio I came up with, maybe this will help you understand what I was thinking about while designing him:

The members of the Royal Guard of the High King are intimidating soldiers. The King, plucking his guard from the ranks of the finest warriors in the kingdom, spares no expense in the training and outfitting of this elite guard. They are fiercely loyal until death; cohorts of the guard are never far from their beloved king. The design of the Royal Guard's armor is lavish yet functional, featuring solid, blackened steel crafted by the kingdom's finest armor-smiths and accented with golden inlays and flourishes melted down from gold from the kingdom's mint.


JadeEyePanda: You're right.. the cloth doesn't make much sense. It's definitely a weaker point for me, I wasn't using a reference for this model and it shows. We were planning on using a cloth simulator in engine so I was hoping maybe it'd be less notice-able. But that's a great idea to use the cloth simulator in max for a base. Also a blue highlight makes a lot of sense because I think a highlight on the color of that metal would have a blue-ish tint to it, so thanks, I'll try it out.

ng.anki:haha, my concept art skills are really lacking.. I more or less used it just as a base and did a lot of experimenting with the basemesh in max and then more in zbrush. I'm a better modeler than designer I think (not saying much) but I should work on my drawing a little more regardless though. I'd like to be able to hold up well in both areas.

I love the armor designs in GoT.. really cool, gritty and functional looking. The designers really nailed it.. especially the Lannister's armor. I was trying to stay realistic, I know I intentionally stayed away from the other side of the spectrum - really fantastical looking stuff. But I think it does come across as a little unintentionally cartoony.. that's a great suggestion about the metal overlays, maybe a little dirtying up could help.

I've had that "bent" normal map problem before actually.. and I'm not sure what's causing it. In some areas it's like a wavy-ness like on the helmet below, right in between the eyes.
You can see it in the texture too of the normal map.



I notice this issue a lot, especially on lower poly stuff when I use Topogun for baking.. that waviness in the bake around geometry edges. Does anyone know what may be the issue? Is it because my topology is bad or maybe is it just too low-poly for baking?

And yeah, he needs reflections, that would help the metal look like.. well, metal haha. I know the Marmoset Skylab previewer in dDo has an HDRI reflection viewer and it looks AWESOME ! but doesn't seem like the full version of Marmoset does yet. Or atleast, that it's easy to find and set up - I'll have to do some research on that.

Moppyboy: I'll definitely try that out.. silver/white on gold. I'll make it as another variation.. going back to GoT, in the books there were talks about knights with that kind of armor. Always thought that would look pretty sharp. I used a program I found online called "ScribblerToo" to do the concept art. Haha, I saw another 3d artist use it and he made a really cool looking rock golem.. just thought I'd try it out but I'll go back to photoshop. Here's a link to it if you're curious.

http://www.zefrank.com/scribbler/scribblertoo/

oxblood: Thanks for the tips! I think that seems to be the overwhelming consensus, that the cloth is really lacking.. Maybe it's just an untrained eye thing but I didn't notice it as something blaring until you guys pointed it out. Funny how that works.. but I should definitely put more thought into where the folds go.. because right now I'm not really.

Depending on what's causing the normal map waviness issue I may go back and rework the bakes, and cloth models. If the problem stems from somewhere really fundamental though, I may just be better to store it in my mind and use the new knowledge for the next suit of armor (there's a few on the horizon).

Again, thank you for all the comments guys.. they've been really helpful

Jonnyboy0121

Update: for shits and giggles I ran his sword normal map bake through both xnormal and topogun and the results are much better using xnormal. I don't know why I get that waviness around the edges in Topogun.. all I can think of is either I'm not setting up the bakes correctly or there's some issue with the way I'm importing the low polys (like checking export normals, smoothing groups, and other settings in the export dialog box).

I'll sit down soon and see if I can find some posts here on Polycount that talk about similar issues with Topogun.. but for now it looks like my bakes will be coming out of Xnormal.

If you're curious here's the difference between the two prior to clean up..

Jonnyboy0121

Hey guys,

Finally got around to finishing this guy up. Revisited the cloth bits with reference this time but I didn't really get the results I was looking for. My next project is going to really focus on getting some proper folds in the cloth, and develop a decent work flow for it.

I added a white armor variation, I like it a lot - also a blue with a blotchy rainbow-like pattern specular for the gray variation. My attempt at a gun-blue. Plus I used xnormal to fix all of the normal maps.. so no more waviness.

I went a little trigger happy with Topogun so he's more low-poly than is probably necessary. Another thing to keep in mind for my next model.

Any additional feedback, tips or tricks are welcome as well!

Memory

Hey there. You could have a pretty decent piece on your hands if you spent some time on the materials and material definition. I think your spec right now is killing your piece. Take a look at some gold material reference and then some metal material ref. If you nail those two things it would improve this piece without a doubt. Right now dat yellow spec is lookin' a little wild. Check this maybe and try to duplicate the result http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/Gold_material

GDR

I'm a bit of a noob, but I think you could do something more with the handle/hilt of the sword! Seems kinda boring for a Royal Knight/Guard, but I admit to not knowing so much about swords.

A couple I liked:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Medieval-Crusader-Chivalry-Knights-Long-Sword-w-Scab-/350808229379?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item51adccc603

http://www.realswordmaster.com/product_images/f/632/Medieval_Knights_of_Templar_Crusader_Short_Sword_7__74903_zoom.JPG

Personally, I like the second one, but I think the first one would fit with your armor pretty well.

I really like the armor! Looks great.

Jonnyboy0121

Hey guys, thanks for the links!

Memory: Yeah, I think I turned the specular up a bit too much in the shader for the blue/grey guy. His gold in particular looks a little neon lol.. I agree, I should tone both of them down.

I appreciate you saying that it could be a decent piece too.. I've been getting frustrated with it, putting a lot of time into it and not quite getting the results I want. But I should keep trucking along, already put a lot of time into it, should spend the time to fix the parts that even I know need improvement.

GDR: Thanks man! Those are great references.. I agree I like the details of the sword in the second link too. Gave me some ideas, I'll see if I can implement something to make the crossguard a little more interesting. The first sword is neat too though.. looks a bit like Narsil from Lord of the Rings.