Game Character - Modelling assets around a body

Purge117

Hi guys,
Thought I'd drop this question here since no doubt most of you will be flooding with advice.

Long story short, I'm not good with characters, but I have decided to try my best so I'm modelling Ulthane from Darksiders. I decided on this to keep me interested :P

Below are a few images, 1 of my model and 1 of an actual image of Ulthane



As you can see, he has several other meshes about his person such as the belt and clothing etc.

I can see from the image what is a model and what is just textured, but as for the process I'm not sure how to go about modelling his scarf, belt etc whilst keeping it looking fixed to his character...if that makes sense.

Also if anyone has any corrections or tips for my current model, please let me know

Thanks everyone!

Vertrucio

Such things are usually just modeled in place against the character's skin.

It helps to select the actual polys from the high poly body and duplicate them to form clothing and such.

Purge117

Vertrucio wrote: »

Such things are usually just modeled in place against the character's skin.

It helps to select the actual polys from the high poly body and duplicate them to form clothing and such.

Ohhh I get you. So like the belt I can just take the polys from the stomach and extrude them. Good tip

BradMyers82

yea, its hard to visualize the low poly by itself. Much easier to sketch a highpoly out, with multiple subtools (for control) Get stuff looking correct with the hp, then just retopologize in your modeling program of choice.
Often times if I'm making just a low poly handpainted character, I'll still create a rough high poly for the sake of creating a perfect lowpoly via retopology. Some people are pretty good just building a lowpoly straight, but I seriously doubt anyone could do as good a job without a hp as they could if they had one to work off of.

Purge117

BradMyers82 wrote: »

yea, its hard to visualize the low poly by itself. Much easier to sketch a highpoly out, with multiple subtools (for control) Get stuff looking correct with the hp, then just retopologize in your modeling program of choice.
Often times if I'm making just a low poly handpainted character, I'll still create a rough high poly for the sake of creating a perfect lowpoly via retopology. Some people are pretty good just building a lowpoly straight, but I seriously doubt anyone could do as good a job without a hp as they could if they had one to work off of.

I do have a copy of mudbox so I might just do that. Would make for a nice normal map at least.

Purge117

Just a quick update, might be useful for anyone to point out anything that is wrong or that could be improved

Vertrucio

You should probably sculpt the body in highpoly first. Otherwise, you'll have to go back and resculpt the clothes and accessories to match the highpoly anatomy.

Windmaker

In my opinion, the best way to learn how a low poly character should look is by looking at wireframes of good models. Ben Regimbal is a huge source of inspiration for me. Look at the wire shots he has on his site and a lot of things will become clear.
http://www.benregimbal.com/
This thread is also full of quality inspiration:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=74450

As for your current model, I also think that making a high poly model first and then retopologizing is your best bet. Besides- that is more or less an industry standard these days. Even if you don't plan to bake normal maps off of the model, you can at least block a out a decent silhouette which after retopology will serve as a base for you to model all the clothing accessories and whatnot.

Good luck! And keep updating us with your progress!

Neox

BradMyers82 wrote: »

yea, its hard to visualize the low poly by itself. Much easier to sketch a highpoly out, with multiple subtools (for control) Get stuff looking correct with the hp, then just retopologize in your modeling program of choice.
Often times if I'm making just a low poly handpainted character, I'll still create a rough high poly for the sake of creating a perfect lowpoly via retopology. Some people are pretty good just building a lowpoly straight, but I seriously doubt anyone could do as good a job without a hp as they could if they had one to work off of.

the only reason for building a classical lowpoly with diffuse texture out of a highpoly is if you either can't model or texture properly without. Its a myth that the retopo of a LOWpoly is quicker than building it from scratch. Also dependent on how low the polycount is, retopo is NOT the best option for the best mesh. as it usually snaps to the surface which is not always retaining the volumes in the best possible way.