Still quite a bit of fine tuning, need to make the dagger, have to add the rings for the cloth and need to work on the actual frog details as well, but the end of high poly is near!
Finally the semester is over, now it is time to rock this out. Will post updates tomorrow. So many good things going on!
@pyrzern: Doing a quick check, no it seems the screen I pulled, the wireframe on that part just didn't show up. Also love the way your handling the coat, looks fantastic. @dimfist: Great continuation man. Really like the feet. @drogyn: Nice hand. @MrAwexome: Really well done paint job. The character too has a really great presence as well. @kapoff: Really digging the frog man, something with those red eyes pulls you in. @kmactastic: nice silhouette you got for her.
Oh damn. Nice Demon-ling there. I'm gonna give myself a few more sculpting days before moving to retop phase.
Shoot. I ain't gonna have time to finish anime 3d challenge, am I ?
Will continue cleaning up confusing wrinkles. Worked on her sleeves amd arm bracelets as well as pendant. Top hat next.
hey pyrzern, nice progress on this character!! really digging it
and the thing that i see w/ the folds is that it just starts and stops at sorta random points
i feel like the front of the jacket, where the buttons are, and the shirt work out pretty nicely but the back of the jacket and the mid to upper leggings still need some more lovin
Kapoff - your skin is already looking really good.
Almost ready to move on to unwrapping. I'm pretty happy with his shape, I made the neck/chest area thicker as previous crits suggested, but the hand topology is proving a little tricky...
Everything currently sits at 2,104. I'm not sure how much topology (edge loops around knuckles in particular) I need for the hands of a mobile character to still be able to have decent skinning. Any advice?
Also, would the 2,000 tris mobile guideline apply to the character and his props or just the character?
And, last question, how would I go about doing the necklace ? Model out the string similar to the belt, use an alpha, paint the string into the diffuse, or ignore this detail altogether for a mobile character?
Thanks for the help guys. I been making fixes and improvements.
@Ozzmosis I think his face is still off a bit. And also the shape of his mouth. Try snarling at yourself in a mirror, it should look kinda like that.
@Kapoff Very derpy-looking ! Well done. You blew my mind away!!
@Port-Seven The poly budget is mostly up to you. For the knuckle-joints topo, usually I do 2.5 edge loops.
Here's my progress. I cleaned up some random wrinkles and add some cloth compression and tension, I hope. Also added big sharp wrinkles around her waist. Have yet to fix her knees. Removed skin matcap, so I will paint more skin color.
here is my process at the moment. i bought maya lt on steam now i have to learn )
a question. i created a shaderfx material if i turn on "use selected light" my normal disappears..... whyy??!
So I spent most of my session today getting no where. This always happens when it comes to the top of the arm that flows into the breast, so I thought I'd ask so I can burn the answer into my brain: What is the flow that makes this section actually read correctly?
playing catch up, any pointers on how to do the arm and leg bands in zbrush?
In my opinion, extracting for leg band could be a bit random experience. My advise for this kind of gear is:
(choose between different options)
1- Create a spline in Max for example, using rectangle render (known issues: could be hard sometime to rotate properly the rectangle spline)
(maybe can we do something better using LOFT instead just render in rectangle option)
2- Create an IMM brush in Zbrush and playing with ( known issues: could be difficult to align properly the spline all around a thin part)
3- Create planes in Max, and extrude extrude extrude until you have what you want / create a shell / GOZ / use "Move topological" in order to place exactly where you want the band to be. (known issues: could be boring)
Personnaly, I'm using the 3rd solution. It's a bit boring, but efficient !
For the Arm plate: my advise is to create a cube or a sphere in Zbrush, deform it, playing with Dynamesh and Zremesher and then, extract parts by parts, you can also merge all parts and do a quick dynamesh / Zremesher.
And here I am already. Spamming the thread
Composite of my sculpt. I'm calling this puppy done! Next step, retopo and all that jazz... @Pieru Thanks! Dunno about the masterpiece but I loved sculpting this guy, the concept is way too awesome. And I love how you approached the knee piece, but it cries out for some sort of attachement to the leg right now imho. Don't let it hand right there like that. @thepapercut things like shoulders are probably the most tricky parts in terms of topology. There's a lot of different ways to approach it but here's a good ref that I usually use.
As Pieru already said it, run a loop at the start of the arm (the green loop on the right) and you should probably make another one that will be vertical if the arm is hanging down right at the end of the clavicle (green loop on the left). The red ones are horizontal loops that go from the chest to the back through the deltoid section.
So basically if you put at least one loop at the start of the arm and one of the red loops you are already good.
@cgartlandI personnaly started by duplicating the body subtool and masked a part of it. Then converted the mask into a polygroup and went to smooth the jagged borders with a GroupLoops in the Geometry pannel. Then after isolating the clean looking group that I just created I deleted the hidden part of the mesh and pannel looped it to extract some volume out. Started some basic blocking out of the shape, dynameshed it a few times in the process, then ZRemeshed it before starting the details in order to work with a pretty topology that subdivides nicely.
MrAwexome -- I like the way you've taken the character, but you have zero to very little form definition in the arms and legs. Additionally, it looks like the spikes on his shoulder are just sitting on the skin instead of protruding out of it. If you add some build up of skin around the base of the spikes it will really make it look like they belong there Dimfist -- feet are looking a little small. Possibly the camera angle though PyrZern -- Nice progress so far dude! Your elbow and knee areas need more attention. The anatomy looks off in those areas (knees more so than the elbows). Your cloth folds still seem really random. She doesn't appear to be cross eyed to me! drogyn -- hands are looking sexy! Ozzmois -- Nice start! It looks like you have a weird bend at the elbow joint that doesn't really look natural. The best I can describe it right now is that it looks like your elbow is acting more like a ball joint instead of a hinge Kapoff and Pieru -- Awesome work guy! Really digging all the skin textures you've both made. robirobes -- To put it simply (the best that I can , the normal is disappearing because it is lighting information from the high poly and it needs a light to reflect that information
@Saigo Good start there. Keep going ! @Rafferty_Eggleston Hey thanks man. Today I worked more on her knees and elbows. Doubt I could get it correct :P Anyway, also make some adjustments to her face and around eyelids as well.
@Rafferty_Eggleston: Thank you guy ! @Kapoff:: Great colors, although I think the frog is a bit too much green everywhere, may you try to make more fades to another color? btw, thank you for your feedback, indeed I have forgotten to make an attachment for the Knee's plate
new update for my froggyfrenchfrog (I have tried another material :O)
@aaronmwolfordThanks man @Pieru Great work man, looks great! And yeah, my froggy is kinda overkilled on the green side, I will dull it towards a more swampy green when I bake my vcol's and start editing the textures in Photoshop. Because right now it's some simple polypaint and it's quite tricky to shift a hue or the saturation right in Zbrush.
jstyles3d that is what I had thought too, but I think it is just how they're interpreting it from the concept. I think it is just an illustrative technique in the concept to make the hands more natural, but I think those who've joined them in their models are making it look pretty sweet
@ PyrZern - that is a very inefficient way of unwrapping a body. Split the arms off from the sleeve down, slpit the torso at the top of the pants, split the sleeve off of the body, and split the shirt in half at the top of the shoulder. Also want not just move the seam on the pants to where you have a seam sculpted in. I think the biggest reason you are getting seams is because of the angles of your UVs. Spliting things up more and allow them to be more straight. You will get better results and be able to use more of the UV space.
8,200 Tris right now. And a preview of her head with normal in Topogun. Retop her coat and its collar is very annoying <_<" Collar is because it is double-sided... Her coat is because the front part kinds of overlap itself, so I have to move em a bit further. Hopefully the baking will be fine.
@kapoff & Pieru: Thanks for the images and advice gents! @pyrzern: Love how it's coming along. Two questions though: Why did you build her ears if her hair covers them? second, What references beside the concept did you use for her head?
Will post more critiques later, along with my current WIP.
Just in case I do multiple hairstyles. ;P Also I can reuse the head later easier if there are ears too. I also make the back of her shirt as well, even though her coat will cover it... In case she takes off her coat :P
Is there downside to having her coat on top of her shirt like that ? Apart from when posing/animating if they clip thru...
Hmm, I don't really base her likeliness on any actual person, per se. Just face planes and muscle anatomy of face mostly.
@pyrzern: I see, that makes sense. Thank you for the pininterest link as well. Definitely a keeper. @Pieru: really like the details you got going on your frog, and especially the lamp and such on his back. @saigo: nice start. I feel though the eyes are to much on the side of his head. @kapoff: Really digging that skin texture/coloring on your frog.
Working on the gloves/hands and head right now. This is where it's currently at.
@thepapercutAwesome start. Why not throw an image plane in there to help you along? @Pieru I love the pedestal. Are you going to make the grass cards or geo?
@kmactastic:Thanks, I will do an alpha for the grass @PyrZern:arigato , TPOSEMESH plugin allows you to create a layer for each subtool of your tool, it's safe however, as I am parano
Hmmm... Haven't really used Transpose to its fullest capacity it seems. Gotta try that soon.
I'm almost done with retop now. Almost Funny how minimalistic wrinkles look so clean and neat... Smaller ones gonna pop up after baking, and I hope they look good too.
@cgartland: really like the eyes. I do think though the amount of wrinkles under the chin are a bit much for my taste. @pieru: Really dig that paint job, strong transitional values in areas like the hands and feet give it a lot of character. @pyrzern: Looking good. Nothing more to say. @kmactastic: Thank you! Also I do have the concept art in the background, it's visibility is just at 0 right now.
JELLY-RAWCHIKEN-SEMITRANSLUCID FROG! (eyes are place holders)
So I retopo'ed the body and baked this puppy with a temporary UV set. And everithing is all nice and pretty... except in the parts where it isn't:
UGLY UV SEAMS in the normal! Oh dear how I missed you my old friends. Could have stayed away one more time, I wouldn't be mad at you. Anyway...
Tried almost everithing so far I think: smoothing the normals in blender ans in max, evel manually edited them in max in order to be sure they are unified. Checked if the object was'nt broke into several geo elements, and dropped the usual reset xform just in case. I even tried to bake the thing with a cage generated in xNormal.
Checked the different tangent methods in marmoset to see if that helps and even started shifting the mirrored parts of the UV's to the tile outside the 0,1 so xN doesn't take them into the baking process but didn't baked it yet because the torso/core section isn't mirrored and the seams are still visible.
I'm pretty sure it's a tangent and bitangent thingy but I'm not versed enough into that science to debug it right now. Especially taking into account that I'm tired and I really hope that I'm just being an idiot and not thinking of the most obvious problem. So I hope one of you guys may have an answer maybe, in the mean time, I'm off to bed.
EDIT: Never mind, just rebaked it for the "fun" with the shifted UV's and it's solved... kinda mindfucks me but hey... who cares!? It works! If someone still has an explanation to the black magic voodoo witchcraft that this situation was, please don't hesitate to throw rock and science at me, I would only be happy.
Got a bit of time to do some more work. Now I basically just have to add some textures to the frogy and go back in and tighten up the skirt a bit. Then it will be alpha texturing and adding alpha planes for the grass on the spear.
That's about it before I start on lowpoly.
You guys are looking good! I'll post some crits later tonight.
Finished retop, I think!
I also did most of the UV. Got some see-through problem with her hair. Grrrr. Gonna adjust the alpha some more and maybe widen each hair plane as well.
Pieru: Top notch.
Kapoff: Looks pretty damn good so far. HOpe you can get those seams sorted out.
Kawldio: Try using an emissive map or glow map instead of an alpha. There is a slot for it on Marmoset.
Pyr: Topo looking nice man.
CGArtland: Good start bud, hope to see you finish this.
Thepapercut: Keep pushing man. Don't forget to set some smoothing groups so you can see how the geo is looking. Hard to see exactly what is going on with your proportions from that angle. Looks like she might have some stubby wide legs.
@dimfist: Thanks man. I hate to ask, but is there a difference from using smoothing groups to the mesh smooth modifier? What I usually do is throw a meshsmooth on top of my stack and turn it on and off while blocking out my work to see how it looks.
Replies
Still quite a bit of fine tuning, need to make the dagger, have to add the rings for the cloth and need to work on the actual frog details as well, but the end of high poly is near!
-MrAwexome Are you doing his horns and such?
@pyrzern: Doing a quick check, no it seems the screen I pulled, the wireframe on that part just didn't show up. Also love the way your handling the coat, looks fantastic.
@dimfist: Great continuation man. Really like the feet.
@drogyn: Nice hand.
@MrAwexome: Really well done paint job. The character too has a really great presence as well.
@kapoff: Really digging the frog man, something with those red eyes pulls you in.
@kmactastic: nice silhouette you got for her.
hey pyrzern, nice progress on this character!! really digging it
and the thing that i see w/ the folds is that it just starts and stops at sorta random points
i feel like the front of the jacket, where the buttons are, and the shirt work out pretty nicely but the back of the jacket and the mid to upper leggings still need some more lovin
https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5231900/il_570xN.169495709.jpg
for the tail end part of the jacket
http://imgur.com/wdsVXDG
and just folds in general, hope this helps
Derp-dee-derp, sculpt progress. WIP on the skin detail right now. It will actually take way more time than I imagined.
A flat color for those who are interested.
And a "clay" render for the volumes. Reads way better like that.
Kapoff - your skin is already looking really good.
Almost ready to move on to unwrapping. I'm pretty happy with his shape, I made the neck/chest area thicker as previous crits suggested, but the hand topology is proving a little tricky...
Everything currently sits at 2,104. I'm not sure how much topology (edge loops around knuckles in particular) I need for the hands of a mobile character to still be able to have decent skinning. Any advice?
Also, would the 2,000 tris mobile guideline apply to the character and his props or just the character?
And, last question, how would I go about doing the necklace ? Model out the string similar to the belt, use an alpha, paint the string into the diffuse, or ignore this detail altogether for a mobile character?
@Ozzmosis I think his face is still off a bit. And also the shape of his mouth. Try snarling at yourself in a mirror, it should look kinda like that.
@Kapoff Very derpy-looking ! Well done. You blew my mind away!!
@Port-Seven The poly budget is mostly up to you. For the knuckle-joints topo, usually I do 2.5 edge loops.
Here's my progress. I cleaned up some random wrinkles and add some cloth compression and tension, I hope. Also added big sharp wrinkles around her waist. Have yet to fix her knees. Removed skin matcap, so I will paint more skin color.
And a Zbrush thingy for the wip if the sculpt.
here is my process at the moment. i bought maya lt on steam now i have to learn
a question. i created a shaderfx material if i turn on "use selected light" my normal disappears..... whyy??!
playing catch up, any pointers on how to do the arm and leg bands in zbrush?
@robirobes - when you want to use maya's real time shader switch to viewport 2.0. That should work with your normal map
my little update:
Mask and then Extract is what I usually do.
This is an exemple, could not be perfect, but it works fine.
In my opinion, extracting for leg band could be a bit random experience. My advise for this kind of gear is:
(choose between different options)
1- Create a spline in Max for example, using rectangle render (known issues: could be hard sometime to rotate properly the rectangle spline)
(maybe can we do something better using LOFT instead just render in rectangle option)
2- Create an IMM brush in Zbrush and playing with ( known issues: could be difficult to align properly the spline all around a thin part)
3- Create planes in Max, and extrude extrude extrude until you have what you want / create a shell / GOZ / use "Move topological" in order to place exactly where you want the band to be. (known issues: could be boring)
Personnaly, I'm using the 3rd solution. It's a bit boring, but efficient !
For the Arm plate: my advise is to create a cube or a sphere in Zbrush, deform it, playing with Dynamesh and Zremesher and then, extract parts by parts, you can also merge all parts and do a quick dynamesh / Zremesher.
And here I am already. Spamming the thread
Composite of my sculpt. I'm calling this puppy done! Next step, retopo and all that jazz...
@Pieru Thanks! Dunno about the masterpiece but I loved sculpting this guy, the concept is way too awesome. And I love how you approached the knee piece, but it cries out for some sort of attachement to the leg right now imho. Don't let it hand right there like that.
@thepapercut things like shoulders are probably the most tricky parts in terms of topology. There's a lot of different ways to approach it but here's a good ref that I usually use.
As Pieru already said it, run a loop at the start of the arm (the green loop on the right) and you should probably make another one that will be vertical if the arm is hanging down right at the end of the clavicle (green loop on the left). The red ones are horizontal loops that go from the chest to the back through the deltoid section.
So basically if you put at least one loop at the start of the arm and one of the red loops you are already good.
@cgartland I personnaly started by duplicating the body subtool and masked a part of it. Then converted the mask into a polygroup and went to smooth the jagged borders with a GroupLoops in the Geometry pannel. Then after isolating the clean looking group that I just created I deleted the hidden part of the mesh and pannel looped it to extract some volume out. Started some basic blocking out of the shape, dynameshed it a few times in the process, then ZRemeshed it before starting the details in order to work with a pretty topology that subdivides nicely.
BTW, does she appear crossed-eyes ? I can't tell anymore.
Started working on this mobile frog today. Hopefully will get it finished in time.
@Kapoff: Wow, that looks great
Dimfist -- feet are looking a little small. Possibly the camera angle though
PyrZern -- Nice progress so far dude! Your elbow and knee areas need more attention. The anatomy looks off in those areas (knees more so than the elbows). Your cloth folds still seem really random. She doesn't appear to be cross eyed to me!
drogyn -- hands are looking sexy!
Ozzmois -- Nice start! It looks like you have a weird bend at the elbow joint that doesn't really look natural. The best I can describe it right now is that it looks like your elbow is acting more like a ball joint instead of a hinge
Kapoff and Pieru -- Awesome work guy! Really digging all the skin textures you've both made.
robirobes -- To put it simply (the best that I can
@Rafferty_Eggleston Hey thanks man. Today I worked more on her knees and elbows. Doubt I could get it correct :P Anyway, also make some adjustments to her face and around eyelids as well.
@Kapoff:: Great colors, although I think the frog is a bit too much green everywhere, may you try to make more fades to another color? btw, thank you for your feedback, indeed I have forgotten to make an attachment for the Knee's plate
new update for my froggyfrenchfrog
@Pieru Great work man, looks great! And yeah, my froggy is kinda overkilled on the green side, I will dull it towards a more swampy green when I bake my vcol's and start editing the textures in Photoshop. Because right now it's some simple polypaint and it's quite tricky to shift a hue or the saturation right in Zbrush.
Great work all round. You guys are really smashing these out.
Oh, and I did figure out the problem with seams. Bad Maya Exporter screwed it up :P I will add some more geo, then cut it up like you said
@Kapoff: Thanks
Next up is hands.... I hate retop hands.
@pyrzern: Love how it's coming along. Two questions though: Why did you build her ears if her hair covers them? second, What references beside the concept did you use for her head?
Will post more critiques later, along with my current WIP.
Is there downside to having her coat on top of her shirt like that ? Apart from when posing/animating if they clip thru...
Hmm, I don't really base her likeliness on any actual person, per se. Just face planes and muscle anatomy of face mostly.
Usually I just browse thru my pins for awhile then look at my sculpt and see how I can make her beautiful like those girls.
http://www.pinterest.com/PyrZern/reference-faces-n-hair/
@Pieru: really like the details you got going on your frog, and especially the lamp and such on his back.
@saigo: nice start. I feel though the eyes are to much on the side of his head.
@kapoff: Really digging that skin texture/coloring on your frog.
Working on the gloves/hands and head right now. This is where it's currently at.
last update for the sculpt:
next: color, retopology, etc...
@Pieru I love the pedestal. Are you going to make the grass cards or geo?
@PyrZern:arigato
I'm almost done with retop now. Almost
My progress for today
at the rate I'm going I probably wont be able to finish a texture but I might try to get the low res done
@pieru: Really dig that paint job, strong transitional values in areas like the hands and feet give it a lot of character.
@pyrzern: Looking good. Nothing more to say.
@kmactastic: Thank you! Also I do have the concept art in the background, it's visibility is just at 0 right now.
So I retopo'ed the body and baked this puppy with a temporary UV set. And everithing is all nice and pretty... except in the parts where it isn't:
UGLY UV SEAMS in the normal! Oh dear how I missed you my old friends. Could have stayed away one more time, I wouldn't be mad at you. Anyway...
Tried almost everithing so far I think: smoothing the normals in blender ans in max, evel manually edited them in max in order to be sure they are unified. Checked if the object was'nt broke into several geo elements, and dropped the usual reset xform just in case. I even tried to bake the thing with a cage generated in xNormal.
Checked the different tangent methods in marmoset to see if that helps and even started shifting the mirrored parts of the UV's to the tile outside the 0,1 so xN doesn't take them into the baking process but didn't baked it yet because the torso/core section isn't mirrored and the seams are still visible.
I'm pretty sure it's a tangent and bitangent thingy but I'm not versed enough into that science to debug it right now. Especially taking into account that I'm tired and I really hope that I'm just being an idiot and not thinking of the most obvious problem. So I hope one of you guys may have an answer maybe, in the mean time, I'm off to bed.
EDIT: Never mind, just rebaked it for the "fun" with the shifted UV's and it's solved... kinda mindfucks me but hey... who cares!? It works! If someone still has an explanation to the black magic voodoo witchcraft that this situation was, please don't hesitate to throw rock and science at me, I would only be happy.
Got a bit of time to do some more work. Now I basically just have to add some textures to the frogy and go back in and tighten up the skirt a bit. Then it will be alpha texturing and adding alpha planes for the grass on the spear.
That's about it before I start on lowpoly.
You guys are looking good! I'll post some crits later tonight.
I also did most of the UV. Got some see-through problem with her hair. Grrrr. Gonna adjust the alpha some more and maybe widen each hair plane as well.
Okay, detailing done. Now to start doing low poly. HOpefully i can get it done in time.
Kapoff: Looks pretty damn good so far. HOpe you can get those seams sorted out.
Kawldio: Try using an emissive map or glow map instead of an alpha. There is a slot for it on Marmoset.
Pyr: Topo looking nice man.
CGArtland: Good start bud, hope to see you finish this.
Thepapercut: Keep pushing man. Don't forget to set some smoothing groups so you can see how the geo is looking. Hard to see exactly what is going on with your proportions from that angle. Looks like she might have some stubby wide legs.
Will post more crits and WIPs later.