Final Fantasy IX characters

MrOneTwo

I want to recreate Final Fantasy IX (best FF ever). Unfortunately I don't have solid workflow for characters yet.

Plan is as follows:
- sketch character in Zbrush
- retopo it
- use retopo geometry to create character with hand painted texture (no normals, spec or gloss)

Maybe I'm wasting time in Zbrush since I won't use normal maps. It just seems way more natural to block out character in Zbrush than with normal Modo tools.

First character I want to do is Steiner. Here is concept for him:



And here is what I have so far.





Also modelled sword but that's simple stuff. Working on proportions and overall feel of the character. I hope I will be able to pull it off.

I want to remake some of the main characters (...all maybe ... ?). Would be cool to learn some rigging, animating on those too but that's far on the to do list.

Help me with your professional eye. Thanks!

vincentvangeel

The basics are starting to look like the concept.
There are some small mistakes here and there like in the pants, armor and hat. In the concept these are made of different pieces which overlap each other, and that I'm missing in your model.

About your workflow, it's not the quickest way but you can easily get the right basic model and flow. Just don't go over the top with detail if you are not going to use a normal map.

As for the rigging, skinning and animating of the character, if you stick to a basic biped, you will find enough tutorials online to make it work out without a lot trouble.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of your progress.

MrOneTwo

Thanks.



Retopoed sculpted geometry. I will now tweak that in Modo. Face needs some more sculpting. I also need to add few things like straps, belt, sleeves.

MrOneTwo

Finished geometry except face. Will jump into uving and texturing. Since it's rather low poly I will be able to modify the geometry even after texturing (with some fixing).

MrOneTwo

Slowly doing my stuff ... ;p

MrOneTwo

Hand painted stuff isn't that simple...

MrOneTwo

At least I know where I am at the graph



Half of the battle behind me... ;p



After 2 days of reading and messing around I figured out how to create skeleton, bind it and weight it in Modo. Also found Etereas weighting tools which helps in mirroring weights. Learned a lot. Still working on proper weights. Texturing still in progress.

almighty_gir

i feel like you could do with having greater contrast over all. there's very little detail in your texturing despite being obviously higher resolution than the source art... look how much detail they crammed into such tiny textures! (256*256 for the whole character).

maybe look at the overall proportions. he has comically large boots/armour compared to his body frame in the concept, this should be carried through to match the style of FF9.

lotet

Using the replyometer to guilt trip me! damn you!
anyways, Almighty_gir has some great points.

your big problem here is your textures are flat. Have you used any maps baked out of your highpoly? Ambinet oclusion, normal maps, anytthing like that?

MrOneTwo

I will work on those proportions and texture. I actually like how he looks now but it is far from the concept. If I fail at bringing him closer to the original I will keep him as he is.

I didn't bake anything because it's hand painted stuff. Only diffuse 100% photoshop painting.

Thanks for replies. The reply-o-meter wasn't to cause guilt but I just find it funny how true it is

SmilingMountain

Even if you're going for a completely hand painted texture it still helps to bake out and AO map to give an impression of the recessed areas. I would recommend reading this article by Michael Dashow, and also this one by Sean Matsuda if you haven't checked them out already. Both bake initial lighting into the texture before they start painting. I'm no expert but they really helped me. Almighty_gir is absolutely right that the texture needs more contrast generally. Also as others have mentioned there is no point in creating a High Poly if you don't intend to bake a normal map.

Anyway hope that helps

MrOneTwo

I actually baked AO. It's just subtle. I want to paint the lighting information by hand.

Also I wrote in first post that creating base in zbrush seems easier for me. It's just easier than polymodelling. That's why I created highpoly and then retopoed it to get the final geo... If think there was point in creating high poly. I didn't spend time detailing it. Just sketched freely in Zb...

almighty_gir

if you've baked down an AO map, use that to create base gradient layers in photoshop.

just incase you're not aware of how to do this, select your AO map layer, then go:
Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient map

then check the box labeled "use previous layer as clipping mask".

then you can change the gradient colours and they'll be based on your AO map with the darkest part of the AO being the colour on the left, and the lightest being the colour on the right.

you can use this to get some really nice oldschool skin textures going among other things.

you can also use this technique to fake some lighting, if you bake out a bent normalmap, and copy just the green channel and use that as the mask for a gradient map, it only deals with vertical light information, so you could fake a kind of blurred cubemap effect by having brown and blue in the gradient, simulating earth/sky. this would work well for metals.

MrOneTwo

Thanks almighty_gir. Those are some cool tricks. Will try them today. Here is where I am right now. I will probably bake new AO map. Previously I baked in Modo. May have to improve it/change settings/change baking app (maybe will go back to xNormal).