Character Portfolio Dilemma

nGreenroad

Hey guys! I have a portfolio conundrum I need opinions on. What is the most effective way to present dynamically posed game ready assets? I've been modeling all of my characters in A or T pose and then rigging them to pose them, but it has been suggested to me that I should model them in a dynamic pose for the sake of the folio and work with it from there. What are your thoughts?

Chiffy

I think that would be a good idea if you didn't want to go through the trouble of rigging, and wanted to use transpose master in ZBrush or something to speed up the process of posing. Otherwise, a rig will still give you more flexibility, and modeling them in the A pose is best for that.

Brian "Panda" Choi

Find a quick rig from Creative Crash, suffer through the tutorial use of it, and then fix errors with Zbrush or in another 3D package.

BagelHero

If you're a game artist, modelling in-pose does nothing to help you. It just prevents you from altering stuff later on and proving that your topology can deform correctly for game use. I don't really know why you'd do that.

Unless they meant to model it like usual, but instead of rigging use transpose master/similar modelling tool to move it into place which if you find rigging tedious is a decent idea. By the sounds of it, you've been rigging your stuff for a little while anyways though.

Neox

don't listen to that suggestion.

ysalex

I agree with Neox, thats just a bad suggestion.

Bagel hero makes a good distinction though. Rigging introduces errors that can be hard to overcome in game-res models, like joint deformation. Posing in zbrush or something else offers the chance to fix these areas. Cheating a little bit, yeah, but the end product is going to be much nicer looking.

Actually I'm interested if others feel like this is cheating or good business.

antweiler

I agree that the best, but also more time consuming approach would be to do the modeling in A or T-pose (A better), and then show dynamic poses on a rigged character. Ideally, the character looks great without the "cheating" ysalex mentioned. Dont forget to mention, that you didnt "cheat", because you dont know how much care is put into the hiring process.
As a rigger, i hate having to fix topologies of great looking characters, (and the char artist hates me..) Having a character artist who has a basic understanding of the challenges of joint deformation, skinning and joint placement is a big plus, imho. Of course, nothing hinders you from creating a character posed in ZBrush additionally, with muscles and cloth folds matching the pose. (it could be a statue)