Necromancer - Debut Character Feedback
polycounter lvl 8
Hi Polycount! Im 21 and I dont want to work for another day in my life. Today marks one year since I unofficially started to teach myself game art production and I am very proud to present my first finished realtime character.
LATEST:
The latter is an old render in Zbrush with placeholder hair and skirt. I have spent more time on this than I would like to admit but eventually I did move on.
The character sits at 1684 tris for the scythe and 16904 tris per total. I realize now that geometry is very cheap and I could have aimed for better surface fidelity, but I should probably leave that for my next project.
It would mean the world to me if I could have some feedback and reinforcement. I dont mind going back as long as I am making steps towards improvement. Thank you!
LATEST:
The latter is an old render in Zbrush with placeholder hair and skirt. I have spent more time on this than I would like to admit but eventually I did move on.
The character sits at 1684 tris for the scythe and 16904 tris per total. I realize now that geometry is very cheap and I could have aimed for better surface fidelity, but I should probably leave that for my next project.
It would mean the world to me if I could have some feedback and reinforcement. I dont mind going back as long as I am making steps towards improvement. Thank you!
Replies
On my phone, so keeping this brief: your textures lack detail, they feel very flat color-ish. Could use a lot of work.
Now on the cattle skull mask I would like to understand better what am I missing because I dont think there is any loss in detail, if only because I am a beginner. The textures certainly did suffer some post-bake modifications, but imo they were for the better. Here is a side-by-side comparison between the highpoly and the final object, with and without key light, in case that might be the problem.
I have already started doing a texture pass and I will update soon. Thanks again for the comments and I will try to put them to good use.
the biggest thing holding it back at the moment is your textures. Presently, they mostly appear as flat colours with some ambient occlusion/baked lighting info overlayed over them. This makes the materials look a bit undefined and flat. if you try and look at some other texture examples of the amount of detail other people put into the diffuse you'll understand better.
you can try painting some variation and highlights in photoshop, you can also use polypaint in zbrush to start your textures off, use some photographic overlays to help define materials, paint in dirt, details, damage to clothing etc. skin has a lot of variation to it, it's not simply 1 colour.
the second thing is your render. I would try using some sort of realtime rendering engine, ie a game engine or probably more suitable would be marmoset 2. it's very straightforward to use, will get you much more used to setting up realtime shaders, and will alllow you to make your character look better
like i said this is a great character for your first finished project, and you can easily improve it a lot with some tweaks to the textures and the render, best of luck
1. holyshit dem thighs! she's got very male bodybuilder type quads going on. i don't have a problem with muscular or defined women, but this doesn't fit the rest of the character.
2. in what way is she a necromancer exactly? she looks more like a goth chick at halloween or something... other than the mask there's no real indication that she dabbles in the mystic arts at all.
Here is a quick update on the texturing process, so please let me know what you think. Ignore the small lighting glitches as the scene is not quite there yet. Next up is resculpting and painting the skin details, which I suspect will be much more difficult.
@mr_ace, thank you for your feedback. I should say all shots including this one and except the highpoly were rendered in Marmoset 2. You are right, it really is very intuitive and I picked it up in no time. In fact, I am quite happy with the shader I made for the stockings.
Strongest point is the hipoly in my opinion.
Texturing was a lot less good. But I see you are still working on it. And the last result shows improvement! I like the stockings. It`s not noisy and reads well.
On the skull, it was the harsh drop shadow wich made it look weird. But I hope to see an improved texture on this as well. Weathering and damage can make the skull and the whole piece really become awesome.
keep going!
Skin on her torso is still a little flat, though, try to get some reds in places where blood would be close to the skin, yellow in bony places, a little blue for vein-y and fatty deposits (loose guides, not rules. Fatty areas can be yellow/white tinged if excessive, and also this is all super subtle). Giver her some moles, bumps, cuts, scratches, a bruise... just something to break it up!
Perhaps have a look at getting an anisotropic shader going for the hair as well, and render on something a little lighter for your final-- hard to make out some forms.
Still, all that said, this really looks a ton more "finished" than your first post. Good job!
For example, check this one out.
But then again, this is a more fit person than your model so I understand that there could be more curve, BUT as the TFL approaches the illium, it decreses in size, espcially someone with a muscular femoral region.
Also, the full black attire looks to simple, you could put some dark colors on the corset for example, with decorations on it...
Hope that helps
very nice mat definition.
congrats!
@BagelHero, I appreciate all your support. I will update soon with the much needed improvements. I will be finishing this character while working on this month's character challenge.
@TomDelboo, Probably the biggest disadvantage of being self-taught could be the lack of external critique, but I am very glad that's no longer an issue. Hope you'll like the subtle improvements on the skull.
@garriola83, Thank you for your insightful input. Although the area is mostly covered by the skirt, I will address the issue if only for the sake of learning, which is actually the very purpose.
@Abrvpt, I am very surprised that nobody mentioned this earlier and it is something I've been worried about since the beginning. Perhaps I should have left the concepting on more capable hands, which is why I decided to join the character challenge.
@Aga22, You are absolutely right about the lack of accessories, but could you be more specific about the skull?
@tierzilla, You have no idea how glad I am to hear that the textures are no longer shite.