WIP Anthro Wolf Character Designs
Hello, PC. I'm a newbie here, but I've been dabbling and learning technique for a good decade or so at this point -- this is my first time seeking heavy and serious critique on a project, so I'd like you all to be honest with me on how it looks and feels.
To begin with, some background: I've been developing a fantasy world since junior high school, so for more than 15 years now, and it's a world inhabited by my takes of the traditional fantasy races as well as a few of my own creation. I feel a strong affinity for the wolfmen of this world, and have attempted to model them several times over the years. Some of the old attempts can be found as far back as december of 2005:
http://hunterkharon.deviantart.com/art/Gramurn-Head-26648566?q=in%3Ascraps%20sort%3Atime%20gallery%3AHunterKharon&qo=44
I've always done my modeling work in Blender due to finances and long being a Mac user -- though I've migrated to Windows, I still find Blender to work for me. Once Blender added sculpting, I played with a new model:
http://hunterkharon.deviantart.com/art/Gramurn-Model-Sculpt-208376961?q=in%3Ascraps%20sort%3Atime%20gallery%3AHunterKharon&qo=1
I even attempted to make a clean model from this, which ended up in this shape: http://hunterkharon.deviantart.com/art/Gramurn-Model-Retopo-WIP-1-209154652?q=in%3Ascraps%20sort%3Atime%20gallery%3AHunterKharon&qo=0
That was five and a half years after the previous, and a few iterations had happened since.
What matters now, though, is the current attempt, which follows. As I was preparing to apply to a Game Design program at a university, I decided that I needed to showcase the peak of my skills, so I set out to make a usable final model.
So I created a base mesh with the intention of sculpting out the differences and crude anatomy, but I bit off a bigger project than I aimed for, and only achieved partial success in the one week I allowed myself to make this portfolio piece. So, the first picture here is my base mesh.
After that, I spent a few days of my free time sculpting the shape, not to a hyper-defined form, but just to a good look which met what I saw as my goals for making a wolfman. The second picture is the end result of sculpting, and shows details in the feet, the shape of the eyes, etc.
Following that, I targeted a 1500 poly game-engine model. At first I was very confident that I could do this, but my end result initially came out at around 2100-2200 tris. Further cleanup, after the silhouette was finished and all parts of the body had been modeled brought it down to 1490 total tris, while still looking like a very good model. That's the third image below.
Finally, I spent some time building a UV map and 256x256 textures for the head and the rest of the body. I intended at the start to flesh him out into a rigged character model, but I ran out of time before my self-imposed portfolio deadline. I wrapped up with a three-up ortho render of the model (the final image below) and a turntable animation:
http://youtu.be/U8-xPzEY38E
This concludes my first week (10 days, actually) of this experiment, and shows a decent idea of my topology -- but I've picked it up since then and made more changes to take a second pass on the project. That's where my next post will pick up. But for right now, I'm curious if you polycounters have any advice for me on this project.
Goals for Phase Two:
To begin with, some background: I've been developing a fantasy world since junior high school, so for more than 15 years now, and it's a world inhabited by my takes of the traditional fantasy races as well as a few of my own creation. I feel a strong affinity for the wolfmen of this world, and have attempted to model them several times over the years. Some of the old attempts can be found as far back as december of 2005:
http://hunterkharon.deviantart.com/art/Gramurn-Head-26648566?q=in%3Ascraps%20sort%3Atime%20gallery%3AHunterKharon&qo=44
I've always done my modeling work in Blender due to finances and long being a Mac user -- though I've migrated to Windows, I still find Blender to work for me. Once Blender added sculpting, I played with a new model:
http://hunterkharon.deviantart.com/art/Gramurn-Model-Sculpt-208376961?q=in%3Ascraps%20sort%3Atime%20gallery%3AHunterKharon&qo=1
I even attempted to make a clean model from this, which ended up in this shape: http://hunterkharon.deviantart.com/art/Gramurn-Model-Retopo-WIP-1-209154652?q=in%3Ascraps%20sort%3Atime%20gallery%3AHunterKharon&qo=0
That was five and a half years after the previous, and a few iterations had happened since.
What matters now, though, is the current attempt, which follows. As I was preparing to apply to a Game Design program at a university, I decided that I needed to showcase the peak of my skills, so I set out to make a usable final model.
So I created a base mesh with the intention of sculpting out the differences and crude anatomy, but I bit off a bigger project than I aimed for, and only achieved partial success in the one week I allowed myself to make this portfolio piece. So, the first picture here is my base mesh.
After that, I spent a few days of my free time sculpting the shape, not to a hyper-defined form, but just to a good look which met what I saw as my goals for making a wolfman. The second picture is the end result of sculpting, and shows details in the feet, the shape of the eyes, etc.
Following that, I targeted a 1500 poly game-engine model. At first I was very confident that I could do this, but my end result initially came out at around 2100-2200 tris. Further cleanup, after the silhouette was finished and all parts of the body had been modeled brought it down to 1490 total tris, while still looking like a very good model. That's the third image below.
Finally, I spent some time building a UV map and 256x256 textures for the head and the rest of the body. I intended at the start to flesh him out into a rigged character model, but I ran out of time before my self-imposed portfolio deadline. I wrapped up with a three-up ortho render of the model (the final image below) and a turntable animation:
http://youtu.be/U8-xPzEY38E
This concludes my first week (10 days, actually) of this experiment, and shows a decent idea of my topology -- but I've picked it up since then and made more changes to take a second pass on the project. That's where my next post will pick up. But for right now, I'm curious if you polycounters have any advice for me on this project.
Goals for Phase Two:
- Sculpt a specific character, not a generic
- Hair & Clothing will be added -- fur texture may be sculpted too
- No strict poly limit on the clean remesh
- Cleaner unwrap and more intelligent texturing
- Rig model and pose it for final still
- Demo animation including several poses.
Replies
http://youtu.be/ZIx-HoP0AM8
I'm a bit of a render-junkie, so I have a lot of renders from some projects, but not many video outputs yet. On this project, though, I realized that I needed to tweak the proportions in a few areas of the body. In addition to this, I created a female variant to the model -- though I should have waited to finish the whole shape before I did that.
The next project is to figure out the areas most in need of work and tweak them, and I really need help on spotting anything that I may not notice myself. I do plan to rebuild the female from the finalized male, and I probably need more proportion tweaks overall for the female.
I want to start with, "I'm no expert."
Now I can get down to business.
I feel like your models aren't distinct enough. You mentioned you were trying not to make it look generic. You need to do this more.
Think of things like:
what's this creature's diet?
Have they gotten any battle wounds?
what do they care about most?
Then you should put those things into the model! Try to tell a story without words.
When considering whether or not to make topology for animation, the first thing you should ask yourself is.... am I going to animate this?
You should know what to do from there!
As for not wanting to make a generic, my end goal is a unique characters from among the species, but this part of the process is remaining focused on the generic forms that define the species as a whole. A base with hopefully good topology is my first goal, and then the character development.
I do plan to animate them, so animation topology is part of finalizing these bases. I worked tonight on the head -- taking the elements of a previous iteration and bringing them back into this model. The puffs on the cheeks went away, but the rest of the body is due for some major work over the next few days. The iteration I'm using to draw out previous elements is this:
Specifically, I liked the overall shape of the head, though I retained the ears from the newer pass. I haven't quite decided if I want to keep the "double chest" -- my recent designs lean towards no, though.
My plan right now is to work out the topology moving downwards from the head -- I have some ideas of what I want, so I suppose the actual order of my list above is to first get a clean model and then sculpt a new character out of the clean base -- with a properly defined base I won't need dynamesh as I did for the first sculpting pass.
But right now, I'm falling asleep at the keyboard, so it's off to bed. Thank you, Xavier, for helping me to straighten out my priorities about where this is going.