Helloo all, I'm back - thanks slosh, I hope so too, had a great time though! I really liked Nara and seeing all the deers!
Dan - aa thanks, I moved it and it looks way less awkward now! good call.
Been hammering it over the weekend to get the high poly done, I'm trying to speed up and not be as slow/getting obsessed with small details. So I'm still not 100% on colours, and I think some details are probably a bit too small and need to be embiggened, but if you notice anything like that please call it out and I'll edit stuff at the low poly stage instead of messing around in zbrush.
edit - that skirt lace geometry is placeholder!
This week is going to be the painful retopo and unwrap stage, gonna aim for around 10k tris with all the tails, hopefully thats reasonable.
D_Wall - thank you! for the skirt I actually had a few goes at making it! I started by subdivision modelling it in Max, just treating it like a hard surface object really to get the forms of the pleats really bold. If I wanted a more naturalistic look I'd probably use Marvelous Designer and construct it in there, but I didn't think it would suit the character. In Max I just started with a cylinder and counted out the number of pleats I wanted, then extruded them inwards and chamfered all the edges to make a really blocky looking skirt with basic forms. Then in zbrush I moved it around to fit her body, used a lot of anime figurines as reference as well as photos as they usually have really cool dynamic skirts! Then its just a few details added with the standard and clay polish, not sure how well they'll come through in the bake though. Hope thats helpful!
Thanks so much for the comments guys! Still powering on with it, here's the low poly progress so far - I think her upper body is definitely too dense. Finding it difficult to optimise a character who's completely made out of curves, ha.
Any crits please let me know.
Hoping to get the unwrapping and baking done this week..!
If you are looking to save some polys so you can keep the density up top where more attention will be given I would suggest just losing the fold detail in the skirt and having it just be in the texture. Also the little shoe accessory could just be a flat texture, from game cam you are not really going to be able to make out anything that small and far away. Even the bow on her chest could be faked in the texture. Other then that, looks great.
There is soo much there you can cut out. I guess it depends on how low you want to go.
- Make Head, shirt, arms, top part of the dress legs and shoes 1 watertight piece of mesh. (shirt collar buttons and bag straps can all be textured into the diffuse)..optional..( texture bow "ears" and knot into the diffuse and just keep the loops to break the silhouette)....(texture stockings..they add nothing to the silhouette)
- Add Shoe Tounge as a seperate "floating" strip of geo. do the same with the Skirt pleats.(you really do not need to model every individual pleat).
- Looks like you have modeled tuffts of hair into her ears..they can just go into the texture..easy.
- You have modeled in the separation between the Shoe sole and upper...save those loops and put it in the texture.
Hair looks ok and I am not sure about the bag but that should save you a heap of tris.
Hope that helps. Give me a yell if you want me to go over anything again.
Turret, duncan, thank you for the tips! Those were all super useful! I got down to about 13k last night but still hoping so strip some more out - I forgot we can use alpha, so tempted to do things like buttons on little square buttons to keep the resolution intact. I'll do some tests while baking...gonna start unwrapping tonight!
Looking good! Although i agree that a lot can be stripped out from the low poly model.
Here some bits that could go
- skirt pleats
-braces and shirt could be one mesh - you could lose a few polys from that area.
- buttons
Although i did hear that some of the highest models around are around 14k and average is around about 10k/12k
Game camera i think you should think about the scale of some of the pieces on her.
Id make the bow much bigger like 4 times the size.
Scale up the buttons, the details on the shoes and her ears. Otherwise they will be so small it will just look like a smidge of colour at that distance!
You have a 2048 for a single character...PLENTY lol. I don't think you will have any issues texturing buttons onto the outfit and having them still be clean on the model. I would cut all those useless polys out if you can. Plus it just makes for a cleaner texture job. Love how this is going btw!
Baked her! Spent the weekend getting all the maps and combining them, 90% of that was painting out errors. Still lots to fix, the front of the hair especially.
charles - thanks!! yeah I agree about the bow, it looks pretty diminutive, I'll take a look and tweak the scale of those things now that its baked.
slosh - haha, yep you're right, baked the buttons onto the shirt instead
Teriyaki - I'm hammering it atm, not sure how much longer I can hold out before collapsing in art fatigue!
Oh god hand painting is so hard. How do I define materials without shaders to rely on? Did another pass on the face, she was looking a bit nuclear before - also thanks Daew, you're right about that, do they still look a bit bright?
Haven't touched the bag or flower yet, also I think the cuff of her sleeves needs to be the same colour as the collar.
Critique greatly appreciated, really not sure what I'm doing! Please let me know if anything looks weird.
It's looking good! I think right now, a lot of your lighter colors are getting blown out to white. I really try to avoid any values that are desaturated whites and blacks...so also greys for the most part...it just ends up looking muddy. So, like your shirt and possible the highlights on the arms and the hair, you could bring those back a tad and possibly subtly add color. Also the shading on the skirt looks too AO dominant so maybe add color to those shadows. maybe you can add a touch of red to the neck as well.
I think this looks great but small details like the texture on the skirt won't read well from the game's camera. Make them really prominent or go with something with big swathes of color.
You're almost at the finish line! Good luck
Agree with polymath about the fabric texture. Also, I feel like the highlights on the hair are too fine and you should try for big highlights. The way Slosh did the hair for his Annie is perfect IMO, so look at his for the example
This will definitely be amazing so please finish it!
She's turning out great. I argee with slosh that the whites need to be toned down. Also I don't know if you have reached this part yet but adding a gradient (dark at the bottom and light at the top) could really help.
Here's a paintover with adjustment layers.
(After staring at it for a while I'm not sure if it is an improvement or if it is too slight to tell :P)
edit: it definitely wass too slight...removed image to not clog up the thread and i'll just leave this >_>. Taken from the dota 2 character art guide
yo its looking great. I think the lighter colours are going out to white which is making it look slightly washed out. Also do a grident AO like daew suggested but do it as a last step. Ill do a paint over in a bit for you
ok so i done a quick paintover. Change scale of ears, bow, stripes on clothes. Think this will work better from a distance. adjusted levels and sat. Pumped some different hues into the hair (pink and blue) also added blue fur tips instead of white. added ao grident
Also when adding highlight i use colour dodge instead of screen, i think screen washes out colour too much
So, the paintover is a solid start but one thing, i would avoid using color dodge to do highlights...prob why they get blown out so much. Just use a lighter color to paint...I only use color dodge when i want a nice blown out highlight on like a metal surface. Again, just my opinion of course! I'm sure this will turn out great regardless...
slosh - thank you, I will bring in those whites! Definitely agree with you on the neck, gonna add more saturated AO
polymator - thanks! Yeah I wasn't sure about that texture either, I'll have a play with it and see if I can make it work, maybe just a subtle noise instead?
sukotto - I'll thicken up the highlights!
Daew - Ah yeah I see what you mean, I have the gradient on another layer atm so I'll turn that on and hopefully will ground her a bit more
charles - aaa thank you for this! I like the bigger ears and really love the pink in the hair, might try add this as a gradient just on the hair alone. The thicker stripes work really well! With you on low intensity colour dodge, screen looked bad!
Thanks again guys, got some extra crit from a friend at work today so lots more changes to make tonight, plus the posing..!
The most important thing about handpainting is that well, you paint everything. avoid using premade brushes, like what you put to mimic cloth. first it's no readable, and it's really apparent that you didn't paint it.
Avoid pure white, specially for the highlight. use a lighter color, do bigger strike, don't forget that in game it will be really small, so if you paint the hair to small, it won't read well either.
Bahhh it looks like I haven't done that much even though I've been working on it for hours! Still not had time to implement everyones crits, I did scale up the ears and bow though.
Still need to make that bow look less shit. So much polish to do gahh.
Lots of the details are still too small, but I wanted to keep some of the Ahri-esque elements!
Also, her furry necktie bit is in a really unfortunate place, hopefully when I pose that up it will read as its supposed to..!
Replies
I agree with Dan! about the tail. ...I'm pretty sure that's how her tails work in game anyway.
Dan - aa thanks, I moved it and it looks way less awkward now! good call.
Been hammering it over the weekend to get the high poly done, I'm trying to speed up and not be as slow/getting obsessed with small details. So I'm still not 100% on colours, and I think some details are probably a bit too small and need to be embiggened, but if you notice anything like that please call it out and I'll edit stuff at the low poly stage instead of messing around in zbrush.
edit - that skirt lace geometry is placeholder!
This week is going to be the painful retopo and unwrap stage, gonna aim for around 10k tris with all the tails, hopefully thats reasonable.
I mean, great job overall but i really like that skirt haha
But seriously a great sculpt! Can't wait to see the final model
Any crits please let me know.
Hoping to get the unwrapping and baking done this week..!
There is soo much there you can cut out. I guess it depends on how low you want to go.
- Make Head, shirt, arms, top part of the dress legs and shoes 1 watertight piece of mesh. (shirt collar buttons and bag straps can all be textured into the diffuse)..optional..( texture bow "ears" and knot into the diffuse and just keep the loops to break the silhouette)....(texture stockings..they add nothing to the silhouette)
- Add Shoe Tounge as a seperate "floating" strip of geo. do the same with the Skirt pleats.(you really do not need to model every individual pleat).
- Looks like you have modeled tuffts of hair into her ears..they can just go into the texture..easy.
- You have modeled in the separation between the Shoe sole and upper...save those loops and put it in the texture.
Hair looks ok and I am not sure about the bag but that should save you a heap of tris.
Hope that helps. Give me a yell if you want me to go over anything again.
Looking good! Although i agree that a lot can be stripped out from the low poly model.
Here some bits that could go
- skirt pleats
-braces and shirt could be one mesh - you could lose a few polys from that area.
- buttons
Although i did hear that some of the highest models around are around 14k and average is around about 10k/12k
Game camera i think you should think about the scale of some of the pieces on her.
Id make the bow much bigger like 4 times the size.
Scale up the buttons, the details on the shoes and her ears. Otherwise they will be so small it will just look like a smidge of colour at that distance!
But over all fantastic work as always B!
charles - thanks!! yeah I agree about the bow, it looks pretty diminutive, I'll take a look and tweak the scale of those things now that its baked.
slosh - haha, yep you're right, baked the buttons onto the shirt instead
Give me a shout if any of the values look off!
Laid down some flat colour and worked on her face, gonna start the hair painting tomorrow, crits greatly appreciated!
PS: if you read this, close your browser and go back to photoshop :-P
Oh god hand painting is so hard. How do I define materials without shaders to rely on? Did another pass on the face, she was looking a bit nuclear before - also thanks Daew, you're right about that, do they still look a bit bright?
Haven't touched the bag or flower yet, also I think the cuff of her sleeves needs to be the same colour as the collar.
Critique greatly appreciated, really not sure what I'm doing! Please let me know if anything looks weird.
You're almost at the finish line! Good luck
This will definitely be amazing so please finish it!
Here's a paintover with adjustment layers.
(After staring at it for a while I'm not sure if it is an improvement or if it is too slight to tell :P)
edit: it definitely wass too slight...removed image to not clog up the thread and i'll just leave this >_>. Taken from the dota 2 character art guide
Also when adding highlight i use colour dodge instead of screen, i think screen washes out colour too much
polymator - thanks! Yeah I wasn't sure about that texture either, I'll have a play with it and see if I can make it work, maybe just a subtle noise instead?
sukotto - I'll thicken up the highlights!
Daew - Ah yeah I see what you mean, I have the gradient on another layer atm so I'll turn that on and hopefully will ground her a bit more
charles - aaa thank you for this! I like the bigger ears and really love the pink in the hair, might try add this as a gradient just on the hair alone. The thicker stripes work really well! With you on low intensity colour dodge, screen looked bad!
Thanks again guys, got some extra crit from a friend at work today so lots more changes to make tonight, plus the posing..!
Avoid pure white, specially for the highlight. use a lighter color, do bigger strike, don't forget that in game it will be really small, so if you paint the hair to small, it won't read well either.
Bahhh it looks like I haven't done that much even though I've been working on it for hours! Still not had time to implement everyones crits, I did scale up the ears and bow though.
Still need to make that bow look less shit. So much polish to do gahh.
Lots of the details are still too small, but I wanted to keep some of the Ahri-esque elements!
Also, her furry necktie bit is in a really unfortunate place, hopefully when I pose that up it will read as its supposed to..!
Hope you can finish this in time. also don't forget to check it from game view and the bell might be a bit to saturated