Programmers Characters

programmer23

I have been working with Black Eden Studios on characters for an upcoming demo we are working on called Daybreak: Ashes of the Insane.

I have been given permission to post wip and final characters shots here.

Let me know what you guys think and give imput. This is one of the latest characters, just a wip low poly bake, next some texturing...

programmer23

Finishing up texturing this guy.

programmer23

Last update on this guy.

PyrZern

Shape of the pants looks a bit weird to me, including the pockets. Texture of the shirt, especially the sleeves, are not aligned to the end tip. Also, the collar could be of a different color for visibility. His fingers look pretty short. Or maybe I just have pretty dang long fingers myself...

BagelHero

Any chance of a wireframe? Might garner more input.
From what I can see here, your hair cards look a bit strange.

dpadam450

Legs look a little short. Fingers look a little short. The fingernails look super tiny. Bill on the hat looks like it needs to be fatter.

programmer23

Here are some wires for this guy.

Stirls

I think your hat could benefit from having a few more polys thrown at it to give it more roundness. Maybe look at adding a (very) slight gradient to your character? It will help break up flatness.

programmer23

Thanks for the crits guys, all of the proportions for everything including hands and fingers were done off of photos of this guy so idk, maybe he just has really stubby fingers, but yeah, with the shirt I had been trying to get the texture on the sleeves right and I kind of fixed the cutoff here. For the legs they might look stumpy because the shirt is covering quite a bit of them?

For the hair cards, I thought something might look off about them but I was not sure what, do you mind going into a bit of what looks wrong about the beard?

Stirls: How would I go about creating a gradient in blender?

PyrZern

Can you do something like this in Blender ? It's for gradient map.

Stirls

Daymn, son. I might steal this one for myself!

programmer23

Thanks for that tut PyrZern, it worked like a charm.

PyrZern

Glad I could help.

BagelHero

The cards are all gravitating towards the front, instead of "growing out" from there respective points of origin. Redline because words are difficult sometimes.




Also, examples.
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/CreatingHairUsingAlpha.html
A bit more hardcore, but look at how lovingly Joel's haircards were placed.


You can see how they all originate from inside the face, or are covered by other cards, without any of the top corners poking out. It's only really suitable to float them if your hair texture has thin wisps so there's no visible line created by the end of the card.

Hope this helps somewhat.

programmer23

Thanks for the beard info, I tried to improve the beard and added smaller hair cards. at the starts of the hair cards I have them pointed more out, but on my ref, the guy has combed his beard torwards the center wodn so it is not all over the place at the bottom.

Although, damn, Last of us has some of the best hair I've ever seen in a game.

garriola83

Presentation-wise, could you post it in multiple angles and light it little better? Try not to have completely dark shadows but use fill lights to soften those dark areas. The eyes need a little more love when it comes to its material property. That collar is looking darker than the shoulder its resting upon which is weird, might be a material issue. No sideburns? is he bald underneath? Also the hat looks like its floating over his head instead of resting on it. There should be a shadow underneath the hat line, an AO shadow to make it grounded on the head. Keep going

programmer23

Ok, I tried to improve the lighting a bit and used a non-exploded ao bake to try and ground some of the pieces. The character is in fact bald, I am not sure how to go about doing the eyeballs so they show up well in blender or UE4. The collar is darker to help it stand out from the rest of the shirt, as it was barely viewable before.

Here are new shots from the front and back.

programmer23

Working on some detailed arms for fps view.

programmer23

working on a drill

CarlCraft

Looking good! I would however expect such a rugged guy to have hairier arms, right now they seem smooth as a babies.