Been busy but I'll be back with progress tomorrow. For now some comments:
@independ-hans: I think right now your face feels really block like. More angles in the cheeks and side of the head. @tom mackie: Thanks for the advice! @Greenbeams: Thanks you good sir! I think I'm going to shoot for mid poly teir. Have have zero Zbrush skill so sculpting a hi poly is pretty much out of the picture. @pyrzern: Loving those clothing details and the surface cracks in the helmet. @luri: Really digging what you got. As for low poly, it just depends how low you want to go. I'm going to probably stay around the mid poly tier and my current build is at 1600 polys but missing fingers and the head. @AA3D: really dig those fingers.
please give me some advise how it looks compare to the Conzept.
I gonna see tomorrow if I can comments some one. good night.
Just because you're working on the high poly doesn't mean you need to be in the millions
Bring it down a lot of subdivs and work on getting all the forms correct before you start trying to get detailed. You're missing a lot here, and it feels blobby and messy. Clean it up on the lower subdivs and it'll clean up overall.
Here's my mech so far, still need the exhaust-looking parts. I got bored and had some fun posing it. at 7.2k tris. not looking forward to the texturing to be honest.
thepapercut & Mr.Moose, I did use your direction and did also a quick signal-color paint over for using the concept art in background. Spotlight was not so good so I did use the references shot that also can save camera position.
So I did work mostly on the head.
RuDolf Posing is a nice task, I try to watch all humans how they walk.
PyrZern Awesome!, I can't critic any. WindchILL make the shape right then move on. in what program you gonna present it?
independ-hans: It´s getting better but you should really lower the Sub-D even more to get the forms right (as it has been suggested already). You can easily work with 4k polygons. This way you wont be distracted be all the details. Its pretty tempting to raise the Sub-Divisions but it wont help you later on if the forms are not spot on. Also for the next model you should make your model in a more relaxed pose. It will make modeling and looking at your model much more fun
And another advice would be to ignore the clothing until you got your base model right so you dont have to struggle with 2 or 3 things at the same time.
I am not sure. Should I mirror the UVs of Hands, legs, exhaustion pipes and stuff like that? I mean, it will look more boring while mirrored, but the UV sheet will be much cleaner.
Itholon: A rule that I learned and like to follow is that if you can see both sides at the time, it shouldn't be mirrored. So for instance you can at each arm on its own but you can't really look at them both at the same time, so its okay to keep them mirrored. But with central areas like the head and the torso, you can see both the left and right side of the head/torso, so you will easily notice the mirroring, so its better not to mirror them.
independ-hans: I like the concept you're going for, but I think you need to go back and take your time with the base mesh. Work on getting the forms, shapes and proportions of the character in place first before you start going up in subdivisions and working in all the details. Keep at it!
Marko Richter: Nice work so far! One nit-pick I have is that the eyes are looking a little serpentine as opposed to cat/fox like. Maybe play with the size/length of the eye slit so it looks less sharp. I gathered a couple of references to illustrate what I mean.
Thats a creative choice you have to make since we're not bound by any lead technical artists or game engines or whatnot.
Id mirror the minor things but keep important things unmirrored.
btw did you work out the kinks in your normals map?
butt_sahib: Yeah, I am probably gonna mirror minor things but the main things like the armor around the hands wont be mirrored. And yes, I worked out the main kinks in my normal map, I just had to turn on the Hammersley Anti-aliasing.
Abidus: The torso and head wont be mirrored for sure, but some minor things will be probably mirrored. And thanks for the advice, this rule will surely be usefull.
Quick question guys. Like, reallly, real quick. Should I share texture map with all these small pieces that simply repeat themselves ? They are small in nature, but they are at quite a focus point and they will be quite noticeable when I add more details to their texture. If they share same texture, will that cheapen the piece too much ?
Note; I aim for about 20k tris, and maybe 2 x 4096 maps.
What do you guys use for unwrapping UVs? Because I am using basic 3ds Max with no plug-ins, and I just wondered if I am robbing myself of time. I dont use something else, mainly because I dont trust automatic unwrappers that much.
I really loved the Robo concept so I decided to throw my hat into the ring this time around.
I'm going low end. Keeping the tri count under 6k and the maps either 1024 or 512. While something low-poly and hand painted isn't outside of my wheelhouse, the timeline will be. Most of my side projects ramble along and I finish when I finish, but this one has a deadline set for me, which is good.
I managed to get a block out of him done today (he's sitting at 4,931 tris currently). Planning on finalizing the geo and doing an unwrap this weekend.
Great to see the progress train is still moving at full speed.
Where I'm at, rebuilding the secondary joint along with still having the face and fingers to tackle. To people are doing them mech, how are you handling the fingers?
@pyrzern: How does 3D coat's system and ui compare to 3Ds max? Is it as easy to navigate? Also fantastic progress, love the mechanical hands. @Dvolution: Looks great! May I ask though why the triangles on the canon barrel? @Jalfish: Welcome to the site! What type of polycount are you going for on your mesh? I would at this time try to block out facial features a bit more. @independ-hans: looking better but as others have said I think you need to knock back down a subD or two. The mesh still looks a bit muddy. @Marko Richter: Dig the paint job.
Pyrzern: Low looks good man No one really cares about polycounts anymore. as long as you dont have disproportionate distribution heh
Id copy those small objects. Copying them wont be very noticible IMHO. Youll just have to keep the textures mildly generic i.e no large dents or colours that become apparent on duplication
For UVing, i love Max's Peltmapping algorithm. Pelt map + Relax= WIN
UVing is so primitive and dreadful....it needs to be changed/improved or replaced altogether
PyrZern: Thanks man! Glad to be involved. I've been sitting on the sidelines for too long on this forum, so maybe this will kickstart me into being more active again.
Also, I agree with butt_sahib, no one would bat an eye at 20k as long as it's being used well. Keep it coming.
thepapercut: Thank you sir. The triangles on the cannon joint are because I started that block out with a turbosmoothed cube. Then I cut off the top section which was a 4 x 4 section of faces, leaving me with an uneven border to extrude the rest of the cannon from. So I extruded edges then collapsed and welded verts, creating the triangles you're referring to as a means of evening the border out. Hopefully that answered your question. If not, and you were asking more in line of why the topology isn't pure quads, then let me know and I can ramble about that too.
@thepapercut Just make joints and knuckles, and position them together to form hands :P Well, it's a bit more than that, but nothing you can't handle !! Good progress there mate ! As for 3D Coat, I find it quite similar to Maya. I don't use Max, so I don't know about that :P I think there's Demo for 3D Coat ??
@butt_sahib Alright man. I remember a 3d character tutorial by Magdalena or someone I can't remember for sure. She made Napoleon and her low res was like 45k or something ? At that time I was like, 'whoa, dang, that high ?'. I guess I will copy those cylinders. I can always rotate them around and flip them upside down, and turn it around some more to make them look different I guess :P
WindchILL make the shape right then move on. in what program you gonna present it?
A
as of now, i'm not quite sure. i have zero experience in rendering, and very limited knowledge of udk. most likely gonna present in zbrush rendering or marmoset
after find out that my import from a lowsub div level with perfect symmetry (export to obj. and import from older version) and transferring the data from an older version was still asymmetrics.
I did clean up the 65k in maya but with welding border edges and vertex target operation. I now have a clean mesh. ( make the border II edge show big in the ui to find them easier )
I work now on the 4K level to get the shape perfect,
First off, I done a fun edit of the progress of my sculpting from the last days and uploaded it to youtube http://youtu.be/qnhmFlSVnrc
Abidus thanks for help, the forms, shapes and proportions sound for me like the Bridgman complete guide to drawing from life. like it
Marko Richter interesting, force me to work on 400 poly and 4 K polys. I got good flow now thx
thepapercut Thank you, maybe I should next time just delete subdiv level 6,7
Edit:
Itholon It would help to bake an ambient occlusion map, that would help easily see that that part supposed to be.
I had some fun creating a Icosahedron in wings3d and modeling very systematic to produce a object where you can see Ambient Occlusion (this is real time by opengl shader, what will probably not baked), if your can bake this (in zbrush or maya, 3ds max etc, unity pro) down you can use this also a good helping view to start seeing where what is on the map.
So, I unwraped the mech and the UV turned out like this. That looks messy as hell. I will probably have to make myself some color ID reference. I am thinkin about 6k resolution, because there is a lot of small things that take away some texel density for the big parts. Or is that overkill and I should try only 4k?
Itholon: There is no need to squeeze the entire model onto one texture sheet (especially if you don't have technical limitations or budgets). In my opinion, you should separate the pieces of the model into two groups and lay them out on separate texture sheets. That way you can keep the details on your mesh and not have to go to ridiculous lengths (i.e. 6k res texture) to satisfy that. A couple 2096 maps should be more than enough for most high-end models, imo.
Keep up the good work guys Sorry for my absence but I'm busy with work & learning modo so I can continue this challenge I finally got persuaded by all the awesome tools it has, so I figure I should really move on from blender. 3 Years in blender and now I am going to be hitting my head against the wall trying to learn modo
Also doing an anatomy practice this month, will get back to this robot as soon as I figure out how to properly use modo XD!
Let me preface this by saying that I'm writing this late at night so forgive any misspellings or bad grammar.
As tempting as it may be, try not to embellish your mesh too much before you've gotten basic forms down. Also, when making a humanoid model (or any organic model for that matter), try to create a relaxed pose--not an unnatural, rigid pose. As a rule of thumb, if the pose doesn't feel comfortable, it probably isn't very natural. Not only does it look better to have a relaxed pose, but it can also help with anatomy--you're more accustomed to seeing people in a relaxed pose so you should have an easier time identifying anatomical mistakes.
You also don't have to be working that low polygon. Get your main shapes and anatomy down below the 100k poly mark and you'll be fine.
Lastly, orthographic view is your friend for models that require accuracy like hard surfaces, if you going to model in orthographic, routinely come back to perspective to insure everything looks right--perspective is what your object will look like in game (for the most accuracy you can adjust the FoV to the match the engine you plan to view the final result in).
@AA3D
Nice work on the detail. I can't figure out the shape of the shoulder strap thingy, so i'm going to steal yours as reference, haha.
Sorry i'm late to the party guys, just got my laptop back, and been installing all of the shit i needed all day long.
Anyway, here's the block out for my "dude 8"
thx pyrzern ... looking cool man .. well distributed pixels there
jimmyrustler : thx man . im flattered :poly136: of course feel free . it still needs adjustments ... right now the belt can easily fall off the iron piece haha need to fix that .
glad ur joining BTW
@WindchILL Give him Gatling guns instead of hands !!!
@JimmyRustler Glad you join us in time Might want to test his upper arms if the hands could go inside the front pockets nicely. Overall, really nice shape and form you got there. Very solid.
Half way through the baking I remade the helmet for more geo/tris. Just realized that this will look a crap ton better if I go for like 35-40k instead of 20k tris
I change the pose, to more relaxed worked on 65k, avoid asymmetry. Searched form Form in the concept, I wanted to adapt. Did a sculpt in some idea of my anatomy from memory, but had to open the bammes for arms and back, I should train more anatomy. Take back all Fluffyness from body mesh beside the Face and Ears. Created new clucky fluffiness volume objects show them in transparent ghost.
Before I move to the Cloth and spezial hat, I wanna see what you think on the body mesh.
Also the how long should it take to create a lowpoly, uv, make a pose, make textures and setup shader for presentation? I will try to aim 12K max 17K Polycount, with 2K to 4K map.
Thanks you all for help, this make this learning really fun for me, also if was a little frustrating on some point.
Marko Richter 1. 4K polygone level, less distracting by detail (checked)
2. raise sub-divisions wont help if the form is not on spot. (ckecked)
3. next model shall be be in a relaxed pose, will makeing looking at it more fun. (that shall be in future)
ClusterOne
1. do not embellish your mesh too much before you've gotten basic forms down.(check)
2. create a relaxed pose. not an unnatural rigid pose. (tried)
As a rule of thumb, if the pose doesn't feel comfortable, it probably isn't very natural. (berry look now stronger but, not relaxed)
looks better,
help with to seeing accustomed relaxed posed,
then you can see easier mistakes. (ok)
I dont have working on that low polygone ()
3. get the shape right below the 100k polymark. (ok in this case 65K)
4. orthographic view is good for require accuracy like hard surfaces. (checked)
5. come back to perspective to insure everything looks right (checked)
you can adjust the FoV to the match the engine you plan to view the final result in (I can't find it the Camera setup in Zbrush)
thepapercut looks not more like blockyface
Abidus I did give the Body Mesh Give some love
@JimmyRustler Nice you see here, will be fun. Seem a good start.
PyrZern Looks good, nice presentation. I can't criticize it, I copie your colors this this post. it 6 o clock, I gonna sleep good now.
PyrZern: Bakes are looking good so far. Is that a cast shadow down the center of the left pec?
independ-hans: You might try to pull the mouth and nose out a little bit. Maybe check for "cat skull" references. You are making good progress.
---
I made some time for the mech. I made a base mesh to get the shape and placement. It's a simple mesh with smoothing group splits. I'll be making the high and low off of this base after I finalize the shape.
@DonEngland: You seem to have some proportional issues. I had them too and when I solved them it looked 10x better. I made a silhouete of the concept in PS, and then checked the silhoutte of screen of my model, it helped me a lot.
Sorry it's been a while, i've been wrestling with this normals issue but i can't get it. Can i ask everyone's advice, please?
I made a high poly (180k tri) and then a mid poly (16k) and the idea was to use normal maps to generate the detail. I've never done a normal map before so i may be doing something hideously wrong but there are some bits i just don't get.
I have also made a 6k version and am wondering, is it better to just hand paint the details onto the 6k version or stick it out and crack this normals problem?
As far as i can see, wrapping a smooth, round object (like the chimney stack) around an object with only a few sides would explain the black bouncy rainbow shape effect on the edges of the model. But the eyes.... dear lord, they EYES!! xD
Anyway, i would love to hear your thoughts on it as, like i say, it's my first crack at normaling (that's a thing, right?). I can provide any info you need, screen shots or wips to help.
OK, thanks very much and fingers crossed!
Here's the 6k low poly, too. Any advice on shaving tris off this would be welcome too :
GreenBeams: In xNormal I find the best thing to make clean normal maps is to use a cage mesh. It is basically a mesh that is the same resolution as the lowpoly but a bit larger so that the low and high Poly fit into it. Use this as a cage for baking. In xNormal you can find an checkbox in the low poly mesh row to set this "Use Cage". So you load in your high poly and your low poly AND in the low poly tab also the cage and set it to "Use Cage". This should help you (i hope )
Yeah my first render (page3) looked really wobbly/blobbly. I mainly think this is because it had no normal map, or materials (which looks bad in marmoset)
Here I baked a normal map and rendered in 3DS Max
@independ-hans I think the character would benefit from a curvier profile - Spines are naturally a little curvy like an "S". Check this Loomis pic http://www.pinterest.com/pin/557179785121049942/
I had a stab at drawing what I mean... Ignore the arm
@GreenBeams - Really liking the Mech - You can shave a couple polys off the top of cylinders with straight lines across instead of triangles meeting in the middle. I think maybe you could save a bit by simplifying the fingers if you can.
As for baking - I never really get "perfect" bakes in a single pass, and cheat on mini projects by Tweaking in Photoshop - Is normally quicker than re-modelling & re-rendering, but good bakes are still important
Anyways, here's my little progress on the mech.
I'm gonna try get him/her into Unreal Editor 4 and tweak maps & render sometime
Also heres some WIPS on Berry n Twig - Making a more effeminate version with acorns
Anyway, worked on the dude some more.
I have no idea what should i put in his back, i'm going to redesigned it later. I'm not good with hard surface....
Hey thanks for the "wow" JimmyRustler - Really liking the backpack/sword holder idea
I think university has turned me into a work-aholic... and making stuff is really fun
From a design perspective I would probably tilt the holders to make more of an "X"... Or is there gonna be a place for four blades?! Would look coooool
@DonEngland Your mech is looking tight - and nice WIP renders. as a crit I would say the feet remind me too much of slippers
@PyrZern Your Dude8 is looking very nice - I'm looking forward to seeing the finished result. As a crit I would say maybe make the buckles and straps a bit "bulkier" and exaggerate them a bit, But its a personal taste thing maybe.
Sorry for second post so soon, but a bit excited - Making a tiling material for the Berry & Twig character
This will hopefully work as a stencil in Substance Painter - Love that program
Replies
Harrard: The UVs look great. But i reckon itll be more fun if the front werent mirrored
Fenyce: Yes why dont you
1- Smooth/average your normals (except the hard edges)
2- The mesh is triangulated
3- Cage is big enough
and then try again
please give me some advise how it looks compare to the Conzept.
I gonna see tomorrow if I can comments some one. good night.
@independ-hans: I think right now your face feels really block like. More angles in the cheeks and side of the head.
@tom mackie: Thanks for the advice!
@Greenbeams: Thanks you good sir! I think I'm going to shoot for mid poly teir. Have have zero Zbrush skill so sculpting a hi poly is pretty much out of the picture.
@pyrzern: Loving those clothing details and the surface cracks in the helmet.
@luri: Really digging what you got. As for low poly, it just depends how low you want to go. I'm going to probably stay around the mid poly tier and my current build is at 1600 polys but missing fingers and the head.
@AA3D: really dig those fingers.
Just because you're working on the high poly doesn't mean you need to be in the millions
Bring it down a lot of subdivs and work on getting all the forms correct before you start trying to get detailed. You're missing a lot here, and it feels blobby and messy. Clean it up on the lower subdivs and it'll clean up overall.
already i can see proportion of some parts needs fixing
Here's my mech so far, still need the exhaust-looking parts. I got bored and had some fun posing it. at 7.2k tris. not looking forward to the texturing to be honest.
picking up so many tips here by the way!
@RuDolf Really nice pose there :P Looks half drunk, lol!
Second day of retopology. Sitting around 12k atm. The shoulder piece is really troublesome... Might have to make some adjustment...
So I did work mostly on the head.
RuDolf Posing is a nice task, I try to watch all humans how they walk.
PyrZern Awesome!, I can't critic any.
WindchILL make the shape right then move on. in what program you gonna present it?
A
And another advice would be to ignore the clothing until you got your base model right so you dont have to struggle with 2 or 3 things at the same time.
I hope to learn new stuff and practice on these monthly challanges I chose the Berry Twig concept..
Heres my progress today:
You should post a wireframe though. those thigh look kinda blocky
Itholon: A rule that I learned and like to follow is that if you can see both sides at the time, it shouldn't be mirrored. So for instance you can at each arm on its own but you can't really look at them both at the same time, so its okay to keep them mirrored. But with central areas like the head and the torso, you can see both the left and right side of the head/torso, so you will easily notice the mirroring, so its better not to mirror them.
independ-hans: I like the concept you're going for, but I think you need to go back and take your time with the base mesh. Work on getting the forms, shapes and proportions of the character in place first before you start going up in subdivisions and working in all the details. Keep at it!
Marko Richter: Nice work so far! One nit-pick I have is that the eyes are looking a little serpentine as opposed to cat/fox like. Maybe play with the size/length of the eye slit so it looks less sharp. I gathered a couple of references to illustrate what I mean.
Id mirror the minor things but keep important things unmirrored.
btw did you work out the kinks in your normals map?
Abidus: The torso and head wont be mirrored for sure, but some minor things will be probably mirrored. And thanks for the advice, this rule will surely be usefull.
Note; I aim for about 20k tris, and maybe 2 x 4096 maps.
I'm going low end. Keeping the tri count under 6k and the maps either 1024 or 512. While something low-poly and hand painted isn't outside of my wheelhouse, the timeline will be. Most of my side projects ramble along and I finish when I finish, but this one has a deadline set for me, which is good.
I managed to get a block out of him done today (he's sitting at 4,931 tris currently). Planning on finalizing the geo and doing an unwrap this weekend.
@Dvolution Looks pretty nice there man ! Glad you're aboard.
Skyrocketing to around 20k now !
Where I'm at, rebuilding the secondary joint along with still having the face and fingers to tackle. To people are doing them mech, how are you handling the fingers?
@pyrzern: How does 3D coat's system and ui compare to 3Ds max? Is it as easy to navigate? Also fantastic progress, love the mechanical hands.
@Dvolution: Looks great! May I ask though why the triangles on the canon barrel?
@Jalfish: Welcome to the site! What type of polycount are you going for on your mesh? I would at this time try to block out facial features a bit more.
@independ-hans: looking better but as others have said I think you need to knock back down a subD or two. The mesh still looks a bit muddy.
@Marko Richter: Dig the paint job.
Id copy those small objects. Copying them wont be very noticible IMHO. Youll just have to keep the textures mildly generic i.e no large dents or colours that become apparent on duplication
For UVing, i love Max's Peltmapping algorithm. Pelt map + Relax= WIN
UVing is so primitive and dreadful....it needs to be changed/improved or replaced altogether
Also, I agree with butt_sahib, no one would bat an eye at 20k as long as it's being used well. Keep it coming.
thepapercut: Thank you sir. The triangles on the cannon joint are because I started that block out with a turbosmoothed cube. Then I cut off the top section which was a 4 x 4 section of faces, leaving me with an uneven border to extrude the rest of the cannon from. So I extruded edges then collapsed and welded verts, creating the triangles you're referring to as a means of evening the border out. Hopefully that answered your question. If not, and you were asking more in line of why the topology isn't pure quads, then let me know and I can ramble about that too.
@butt_sahib Alright man. I remember a 3d character tutorial by Magdalena or someone I can't remember for sure. She made Napoleon and her low res was like 45k or something ? At that time I was like, 'whoa, dang, that high ?'. I guess I will copy those cylinders. I can always rotate them around and flip them upside down, and turn it around some more to make them look different I guess :P
@Dvolution You're welcome. And thanks
as of now, i'm not quite sure. i have zero experience in rendering, and very limited knowledge of udk. most likely gonna present in zbrush rendering or marmoset
after find out that my import from a lowsub div level with perfect symmetry (export to obj. and import from older version) and transferring the data from an older version was still asymmetrics.
I did clean up the 65k in maya but with welding border edges and vertex target operation. I now have a clean mesh. ( make the border II edge show big in the ui to find them easier )
I work now on the 4K level to get the shape perfect,
First off, I done a fun edit of the progress of my sculpting from the last days and uploaded it to youtube
http://youtu.be/qnhmFlSVnrc
Abidus thanks for help, the forms, shapes and proportions sound for me like the Bridgman complete guide to drawing from life. like it
Marko Richter interesting, force me to work on 400 poly and 4 K polys. I got good flow now thx
thepapercut Thank you, maybe I should next time just delete subdiv level 6,7
Edit:
Itholon It would help to bake an ambient occlusion map, that would help easily see that that part supposed to be.
I had some fun creating a Icosahedron in wings3d and modeling very systematic to produce a object where you can see Ambient Occlusion (this is real time by opengl shader, what will probably not baked), if your can bake this (in zbrush or maya, 3ds max etc, unity pro) down you can use this also a good helping view to start seeing where what is on the map.
Also doing an anatomy practice this month, will get back to this robot as soon as I figure out how to properly use modo XD!
gotta hurry up myself
i keep thinking ( plenty of time till the end of the month ) :poly122:
independ-hans & pyrzern & thepapercut thank u guys
adding some fine details .. and i think im pretty close ..should start on the lowpoly soon
slowly but surely
Mine is ready for baking now, I think !!
I done Eyeshader in Zbrush, base of Metal 1 and paint it the Eye. Boiling up some Fur as Extra Mesh.
Edit:
Now Germany Soccer watching with new pose.
Let me preface this by saying that I'm writing this late at night so forgive any misspellings or bad grammar.
As tempting as it may be, try not to embellish your mesh too much before you've gotten basic forms down. Also, when making a humanoid model (or any organic model for that matter), try to create a relaxed pose--not an unnatural, rigid pose. As a rule of thumb, if the pose doesn't feel comfortable, it probably isn't very natural. Not only does it look better to have a relaxed pose, but it can also help with anatomy--you're more accustomed to seeing people in a relaxed pose so you should have an easier time identifying anatomical mistakes.
You also don't have to be working that low polygon. Get your main shapes and anatomy down below the 100k poly mark and you'll be fine.
Lastly, orthographic view is your friend for models that require accuracy like hard surfaces, if you going to model in orthographic, routinely come back to perspective to insure everything looks right--perspective is what your object will look like in game (for the most accuracy you can adjust the FoV to the match the engine you plan to view the final result in).
Agree with clusterone. Nail the basic form first, and focus on the detail later. Keep practicing.
@Pyrzern
Can't wait to see your texture
@AA3D
Nice work on the detail. I can't figure out the shape of the shoulder strap thingy, so i'm going to steal yours as reference, haha.
Sorry i'm late to the party guys, just got my laptop back, and been installing all of the shit i needed all day long.
Anyway, here's the block out for my "dude 8"
jimmyrustler : thx man . im flattered :poly136: of course feel free . it still needs adjustments ... right now the belt can easily fall off the iron piece haha need to fix that .
glad ur joining BTW
@JimmyRustler Glad you join us in time Might want to test his upper arms if the hands could go inside the front pockets nicely. Overall, really nice shape and form you got there. Very solid.
Half way through the baking I remade the helmet for more geo/tris. Just realized that this will look a crap ton better if I go for like 35-40k instead of 20k tris
Before I move to the Cloth and spezial hat, I wanna see what you think on the body mesh.
Also the how long should it take to create a lowpoly, uv, make a pose, make textures and setup shader for presentation? I will try to aim 12K max 17K Polycount, with 2K to 4K map.
Thanks you all for help, this make this learning really fun for me, also if was a little frustrating on some point.
Marko Richter 1. 4K polygone level, less distracting by detail (checked)
2. raise sub-divisions wont help if the form is not on spot. (ckecked)
3. next model shall be be in a relaxed pose, will makeing looking at it more fun. (that shall be in future)
ClusterOne
1. do not embellish your mesh too much before you've gotten basic forms down.(check)
2. create a relaxed pose. not an unnatural rigid pose. (tried)
As a rule of thumb, if the pose doesn't feel comfortable, it probably isn't very natural. (berry look now stronger but, not relaxed)
looks better,
help with to seeing accustomed relaxed posed,
then you can see easier mistakes. (ok)
I dont have working on that low polygone ()
3. get the shape right below the 100k polymark. (ok in this case 65K)
4. orthographic view is good for require accuracy like hard surfaces. (checked)
5. come back to perspective to insure everything looks right (checked)
you can adjust the FoV to the match the engine you plan to view the final result in (I can't find it the Camera setup in Zbrush)
thepapercut looks not more like blockyface
Abidus I did give the Body Mesh Give some love
@JimmyRustler Nice you see here, will be fun. Seem a good start.
PyrZern Looks good, nice presentation. I can't criticize it, I copie your colors this this post. it 6 o clock, I gonna sleep good now.
PyrZern: Bakes are looking good so far. Is that a cast shadow down the center of the left pec?
independ-hans: You might try to pull the mouth and nose out a little bit. Maybe check for "cat skull" references. You are making good progress.
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I made some time for the mech. I made a base mesh to get the shape and placement. It's a simple mesh with smoothing group splits. I'll be making the high and low off of this base after I finalize the shape.
Wires blender:
Realtime blender glsl:
Clay blender cycles:
I made a high poly (180k tri) and then a mid poly (16k) and the idea was to use normal maps to generate the detail. I've never done a normal map before so i may be doing something hideously wrong but there are some bits i just don't get.
I have also made a 6k version and am wondering, is it better to just hand paint the details onto the 6k version or stick it out and crack this normals problem?
As far as i can see, wrapping a smooth, round object (like the chimney stack) around an object with only a few sides would explain the black bouncy rainbow shape effect on the edges of the model. But the eyes.... dear lord, they EYES!! xD
Anyway, i would love to hear your thoughts on it as, like i say, it's my first crack at normaling (that's a thing, right?). I can provide any info you need, screen shots or wips to help.
OK, thanks very much and fingers crossed!
Here's the 6k low poly, too. Any advice on shaving tris off this would be welcome too :
Yeah my first render (page3) looked really wobbly/blobbly. I mainly think this is because it had no normal map, or materials (which looks bad in marmoset)
Here I baked a normal map and rendered in 3DS Max
@independ-hans I think the character would benefit from a curvier profile - Spines are naturally a little curvy like an "S". Check this Loomis pic http://www.pinterest.com/pin/557179785121049942/
I had a stab at drawing what I mean... Ignore the arm
@GreenBeams - Really liking the Mech - You can shave a couple polys off the top of cylinders with straight lines across instead of triangles meeting in the middle. I think maybe you could save a bit by simplifying the fingers if you can.
As for baking - I never really get "perfect" bakes in a single pass, and cheat on mini projects by Tweaking in Photoshop - Is normally quicker than re-modelling & re-rendering, but good bakes are still important
Anyways, here's my little progress on the mech.
I'm gonna try get him/her into Unreal Editor 4 and tweak maps & render sometime
Also heres some WIPS on Berry n Twig - Making a more effeminate version with acorns
Enjoying seeing everyones' work - Keep on rockin
@Tom Mackie
You're making two?? Wow..
Anyway, worked on the dude some more.
I have no idea what should i put in his back, i'm going to redesigned it later. I'm not good with hard surface....
I think university has turned me into a work-aholic... and making stuff is really fun
From a design perspective I would probably tilt the holders to make more of an "X"... Or is there gonna be a place for four blades?! Would look coooool
@DonEngland Your mech is looking tight - and nice WIP renders. as a crit I would say the feet remind me too much of slippers
@PyrZern Your Dude8 is looking very nice - I'm looking forward to seeing the finished result. As a crit I would say maybe make the buckles and straps a bit "bulkier" and exaggerate them a bit, But its a personal taste thing maybe.
Sorry for second post so soon, but a bit excited - Making a tiling material for the Berry & Twig character
This will hopefully work as a stencil in Substance Painter - Love that program