PETROL/BLOOD - BagelHero
interpolator
A bit of a late start for me. Hell of a time to have computer issues, I tell you what.
So, while I'm working on my entry on my own, I'll say I'm in a team...
My mom is helping me on the concept end! I'll post some of her stuff once I get permission.
She came up with the idea. Giant Crab, ho!
I'm going to start sculpting this week; I could spend weeks trying to refine the painting and I don't want to get stuck there.
Some sketches to get the ball rolling from the past week or so.
Concept sculpt to see if the shapes I wanted to go for worked. answer was... sorta. Got a better idea so some of this is scrapped entirely.
Looking forward to getting some work in on this! :poly136:
So, while I'm working on my entry on my own, I'll say I'm in a team...
My mom is helping me on the concept end! I'll post some of her stuff once I get permission.
She came up with the idea. Giant Crab, ho!
I'm going to start sculpting this week; I could spend weeks trying to refine the painting and I don't want to get stuck there.
Some sketches to get the ball rolling from the past week or so.
Concept sculpt to see if the shapes I wanted to go for worked. answer was... sorta. Got a better idea so some of this is scrapped entirely.
Looking forward to getting some work in on this! :poly136:
Replies
Threw up a base to sculpt off of for the crab. Gonna try and get one out for the rider tonight, too, as well as a paintover for some shell/creature armor for the back end of the crab.
Yeah that bust gonna need some tweaks on the proportions. He looks really flat for now. But you did not work on the anatomy yet so I guess that's why.
Yeah, I was more playing with silhouette than anything else. Final is going to have a lot more care put into it, haha. :poly136:
Taking a break from sculpting the Crabman base in order to better sort out details. Still missing some stuff, but it'll be much easier for me to sculpt from without getting sidetracked.
Aaand that's my progress for today. Base for the guy (who I really need to name) is almost done, sans importing some feet for him and giving him his carapace/shell. Also, fixing his head design so he can actually move it, but it still looks like a crab. Because if he can't bend his neck he'd get eaten in a second, and his defense mechanism... wouldn't... work.
I'll try to illustrate that at home, actually, but having no computer is making it a little difficult to sketch out ideas cleanly, lol.
Thanks! I'm super looking forward to getting to that detail level in the sculpt, it's gonna be sweet.
I had an art test today, so I only managed to do a little work on his carapace.
Crab people rule, bring on the carapace!
Heck yeah! Thanks for the words of wisdom, haha.
More slow work today, basically only got to work it in my lunch break. Finally got a computer at home though, so I should be able to pump out more tonight.
Edit:
Finally gave him feet and finished the limb carapace...eese...
Might work on his back/neck a bit more before going to bed.
Thanks. I'll try my best! :poly136:
@atomicguppy
Thanks, I'll collect some more ref in that direction. I've got a feeling I might have to do more research before finalising the back anyway, but I think I'll wait until I have fresh eyes and move on to fleshing out his body for now, because I've been fiddling for three days and nothing's really come of it.
As for the saddle, I agree, but I'm on the wall about this one. It does look awkward, but the original idea was that the crab and the crabman grow up together and come to rely on each other in a symbiotic manner, the crabguy providing bountiful food and maintenance for the crab, while the crab returns protection.
The idea behind it was that under threat, the dude could easily buckle over and be hidden, or on close inspection pretend to be a smaller shelled creature, rather than a mostly soft creature that would make a good snack. This becomes a lot less natural to do if you've a saddle under you.
As it stands, the harnesses, armor and fabric that serves as a placeholder for a saddle are all makeshift and if he wasn't pre-prepared, he wouldn't even have those, so for day to day use he has to have something that comes with the crab... Ech, I'm going to have to get creative I guess. Maybe leg-grooves? Maybe, like, a large shell that just provides a slightly harsher curve?
At this point I'm just brainstorming out loud though. Thanks for the feedback, I'll make sure to do some more thinking on it.
I've finally blocked everything out, I think (the paintover is for details I'll do later), so I can get to work on sculpting in more detail instead of moving shapes around now.
Got a little more detail on the dude. Slow going, I don't know why but I've been super drained the last half of this week.
Wiped out for a few days and stopped working on personal work. It happens, I guess, but it was a bummer. Forced myself to work on it during the not-work half of my half-day at my internship. Fixed some stuff I didn't like, started detailing. Not sure I like his upper chest/clavicle area, and any feedback on that area would be greatly appreciated.
Keep it up !
Good luck!
(Do I see some crabcore influence in rider's stance in the first concept image? Just kidding :P)
Hm... I'm still not sold on it, but if it's not jarring I might leave it until I do my final detail pass.
EmAr
Thanks! I'll look into the turtle shell-esque idea, it could be pretty neat. Also, tbh, totally caught me with the crabcore. :poly122:
Okay, good news and bad news!
Good news. I finally fixed my computer, and I'm back to two monitors and being able to run Toolbag 2 and Photoshop together without the entire computer crashing!
Bad news. I've done near-to-nothing and have fallen WAY behind schedule on this. Still intent on doing it, but I might have to cram and I'm still not feeling so crash-hot so IDK if I can do it.
Update:
Still gotta get his hands up to scratch, and finalize the shapes on his back, neck and head. If I have the time, I'd like to re-sculpt his bum, too, but that's pretty low priority lol
I did get in his eyes, do some more work on his back, and tighten up some forms, though.
I'll probably be moving back onto the crab for now, because she's very blocky still.
Bonus: Feetsies.
Good Creb
pep pep
Basically finished the claws, apart from detailing, I think. Legs next.
Edit:
LEGS!!!
Daew
It is, unfortunately, just fabric stretched over a large shell... But that starfish idea is really cute. The poor starfish, though! Surely that wouldn't be comfortable for anyone involved, lol.
Finally freakin' finished the main bulk of the hi-poly for both the crab and the rider. There's still some bits to add to the crab, but I'm confident that I can export this and start the low poly by tomorrow. I suppose I'll be crunching every evening from now on if I want to have anything done by the 23rd. oi vey...
Started my Rider's low-poly (and deleted, and restarted a few times...) and I was pretty pissed, feeling like I'd screwed up the topology too bad to keep it again, so I did a test bake to calm my nerves and... Honestly, it's turned out okay. A couple of places aren't great, but certainly fixable. I feel silly for scrapping it so many times, I probably had something workable a few hours back (My first go was probably fine on my crab, too). :poly142:
I'll keep this and try to get it done 100% by tomorrow, figure out what to do with the crab, and then UV properly, lol.
have you tried polypainting the topology on your highpoly first?
this usually helps me when im struggling with the edgeflow.
also a cheat i use when im too lazy to retopo my stuff i just dynamesh everything together in as high a resolution as my machine can handle, then subdivide as mush as possible, reproject highpolydetails from a duplicate and then just zremesh the whole thing.
the edgeflow is usually garbage but you got an even topology so you can bake everything down without any major uv stretchings.
and a good uv is all you need in marmoset, just bake out a displacement map and all your dodge topology is invisible.
rigging that shit is usually a pain in the ass though, but for 1 or 2 shots you can tweak the skinning just for those poses, wich saves a lot of time.
Thanks for the advice. I do paintovers to help me, but they can be sloppy and not take into account geo that I don't see in the screenshot, so polypainting sounds like a great idea. I'll be sure to put it into practice next time I get to that stage!
And regarding the dynameshing/zremesher mess, that's what I was thinking for the main body of the crab, not like it's going to be doing much moving anyways.
I powered through today and finished the bulk of the LP for the crab guy. Next up is his armour, and the crab which I will hopefully also squeeze in tomorrow.
(ps; apologies for using eyebleed orange)
I find it just incredible that even this close to the deadline my brain can find ways to justify procrastinating, didn't do too much today (just the carapace). I'll pull an all-nighter if I gotta, I'll get this done. I fully intend to have the Crab low poly at least started tonight, for now I'm done with the Rider. Only got his mouth and eyes left to shove in, I'll be doing the crab right about now.
Yeah. Progress.
ah you know we are all guilty of that
keep at it, you can do it!
im not even at the retopo yet, and i gotta work next week X)
I polished off both high poly for both today, which is great, though it turns out I probably need to edit the low poly for the Rider and redo the crab (which is fine tbh).
But when I went to soften my normals in maya before baking, it smoothed every thing wrong. I mean, this definitely isn't correct, and it certainly wasn't doing this before I had UVs.
Not happening to the other mesh for his carapace, either.
Additionally, once I soften the edges I have to undo in order to harden them again; pressing Harden Edge won't work. Is it just a 2015 error? Anyone know how I could fix it?
EDIT: Fixed it by exporting as OBJ with smoothing and normals off, then importing it back in. Incredible.
DOUBLE EDIT: Okay, but now Marmoset's doing the... that thing it does sometimes.
Showing all the seams, with and without a normal map applied. I know there's fixes for this one out there, I'm gonna go hunting in the marmoset subforum-- and I am stupid and forgot to turn normals and smoothing back on.
what I get for trying to work so late. :poly136:
Kinda wanted to have the bakes done tonight, but I knew I'd run into issues, haha. It does not help that my meshes are teeny tiny, which is frustrating since I can't do much about that with the zbrush mesh. OTL Might be able to cut off a million points or so with decimation until Maya/my laptop will hold it together long enough to scale up by 10. Why I don't check my scale beforehand, I just don't know...
You can adjust scale in the scene object properties too within TB.
Except now it's showing seams.
Not on my low poly this time, only showing when I bake my normal map.
Finally, a shot from the front, though! lol
Got a full, mostly error-free bake. Packed it mostly by hand so some areas have weird texel densities but dang nabbit at this point I don't think it's worth trying to balance it out; it still looks fine, if not as crystal clear as before.
Going to get the crab ready to UV tonight, hopefully. If not, then I'll at least start a first pass in DDO for this guy and try to pump out the diorama base sculpt.
But here's a super glamorous shot of my rig at midnight tonight:
Hopefully maybe I will also have the crab rig done at some point soon.
Considering I haven't started texturing, I've not touched DDO in my life and also my home laptop barely runs the suite without crashing, I figure my chances of finishing this up for the deadline are slim to none; but hey. I am trying, and getting places faster than I would if left to my own devices, so that's a positive.
Update: It is 2AM and I am dying but I finished the crab rig. Thinking too hard about what to do next so I am going to go to sleep. :poly142:
Oops I guess...
EDIT:
YEAAAAAAAAAAH
then layout the uvs ontop of each other.
if they dont stretch in your poses, you should get the same result when you unfold the UVs.
if thats not the case, you might want to get rid of some edgeloops, and start snapping.
the other way would be to uv the default ones and just skin those to your crab.
you should have the rig in the T-pose at 0 or -1 right? though looking at your question it doesnt seem that way
Yep, no T-pose at 0.
I'm pretty bad at rigging, I always mess up at one point or another. In this case; I have no version of the skinned rig at the default T-pose. I overwrote the save that had the default pose for the crab, and I hadn't keyed every joint correctly to frame one, which was my back up solution. I have no way to get these posed versions back to their default, other than perhaps opening an old, unskinned save and copying numbers which might work...?
The UV idea is good, though! That should work fine, thanks heaps. Now all I gotta do is the diorama and harnesses, and I can move on to worrying about how the heck to use DDO, lol.
EDIT: Okay, yeah, definitely diorama time.
Aaand pose 2. Diorama for serious now, so I can actually bake my prop sheet.
Why do I always do water in Marmoset?? Why do I always think "Oh yeah, that'd be cool!" about ideas that I am in no way skilled enough to excecute??? Who knows but I am here and doing this, it is midnight here and I MIGHT just have time to finish this, bake and maybe even texture enough to not be disqualified. I'm pumped up seeing this come together at all, actually.
Here's how one of the dioramas is currently looking, the other is a little more WIP because I had more props that needed textures. I'll finish these guys to slap on my portfolio, just... not today. :poly114: Darnit.
usually if you get errors, you need to free up more space on your harddrive (atleast i had this problem)
im talking a lot of space, atleast 10 gig, better 20.
maby that helps