Pink Crocosaur WiP
polycounter lvl 4
Hello polycount people !
I'm currently working on this pinkish crocosaur. He's about 7 434 polys and I plan to animate him and integrate him in UDK and/or Unity. I wanted to create a monster from scratch to learn more about character workflow.
For the moment, the crocosaur is modelled, textured, rigged and the skinning is currently in progress.
I still have to correct the UV's (the diffuse looks strange in some places ...), to create normal maps and to animate him. Any feedbacks are very welcome
Replies
Looking forward to the animation!
I feel like his overall body shape/design turned out feeling quite a bit different from your initial concept sketches. Your sketches have his back seeming much more prominent, with his back & shoulders as a whole being pretty bulky. The sketch of him laying down would indicate that his arms should be much lower on his body than you have them now, and I think having them (the shoulders) lower on his body would look more natural. The standing sketch actually has a nice, natural pose to it - again you can see the bulk of his neck/back/shoulders. Without that bulk, his front end is not looking particularly strong right now.
Is there a reason you modeled him in what is essentially a "T" pose? I imagine this creature standing, swimming, and doing most other things with his arms hanging lower as presented in the sketch, and think it may have been easier to model & account for deformation with his arms placed somewhat more naturally (not all the way down, perhaps just a more natural inbetween).
I'm also confused, you said in your original post that you still had to create normals & animate him, but here you seem to consider your diffuse pretty much done. Do you have a high poly/sculpt? Don't folks generally complete their high poly/sculpt first, then bake down onto low poly, then work on other textures? I'm not terribly knowledgeable, but it seems weird to say diffuse is pretty done without normals in play. Especially if your normal map will contain anything in the way of muscle definition (which I think would be nice, and again may be easier to define with him in a more natural pose).
Could be I have no idea what I'm talking about, so if someone more knowledgeable wants to chime in feel free.
Some people make diffuse only textures, it's the 'handpainted' style that's pretty popular right now. World of Warcraft is the most popular example of a game that uses this style, i think DOTA and LoL do that as well.
EDIT: Correction - Didnt' see the part where they said they still have to do normal maps. In that instance, it's conceivable to make normal maps in a normal generation software like nDo (though to be honest I havent seen that done a lot for organic stuff)
T-Shape is best for texturing and rigging models because no part of the model is occluding any other part, you 'pose' it afterwards.
I know this was common years ago, but more neutral poses seem to have taken precedence over the past several years (not arms to sides, but also not arms way out in a t-pose) on account of deformation involving clothing and anatomical accuracy (potential for shoulder stretching, etc). For a creature such, his "t" pose has his arms raised about as high as would seem possible, and modeling the shoulder/back bulk from the concept I imagine would be very difficult as a result. I can understand it being easier to rig, though.
Edit: Thanks for chiming in Vader, I may not pursue 3D myself but I love absorbing this sort of stuff.
I def see what you mean now though, the way he has the arms raised up he'd basically need to model like a pile of bunched up shoulder muscle/tissue with super dense geo to compensate. Good eye, You definitely know what you are talking about for a not 3d artist haha!
The shape is good, the painting too, great work ! However I don't like the color on the nose, it's very dark and break the all gradiation.
Can't wait to see him animated !
First of all, thanks a lot for all your feedbacks, I really appreciate them
Two Listen, about the T pose : I modelled the Crocosaur this way mainly because it was the only solution I knew X) And, indeed, a more natural pose would have been better... Lesson learned !
I hope to be able to post more content soon (especially animations). Cheers !