Oreo´s arena net art test
polycounter lvl 9
Ok, so I'm still doing my other studies, gave up on a few competitions. I noticed Arena net is offering an internship with just the prerequiste of one art test. So I'm trying my hands at it. I thought I´d knock out most of the details before I shared it so people can get a sense of things, hopfully I didn´t make too many fundamental mistakes but I don´t mind starting from scratch if I got some horribly wrong, so don´t be afriad to tell me. If I don´t get any major crits I'll move on to learning maya and retopo.
Replies
I'd take another look at the face, although it's not terribly clear in the concept you'll definitely want to take inspiration from nordic facial features. Thin out the nose and lips and reduce the angularity of the jaw.
The armour feels quite flimsy and weak at the moment as well and the edges are so sharp you're unlikely to get a decent bake from them. If you take a look at some other renditions of the test specifically this one by jinn15 you'll notice the armour is much thicker and has wider bevels.
Arms that low makes skinning harder.
Some other tips I can share from doing the test last year:
Make things as symmetrical as possible
Watch out for the horns they can be poly heavy if you aren't careful
Due to the 1-bit alpha it is best to use alpha only when you can't avoid it, it will take some doing but it is possible to make all of the curved plates geo and leave the alpha for just the fur.
If you have Guild Wars 2, I would recommend looking at how the armor was done in game, it might give you ideas on how to solve some parts
Make sure that armor that is supposed to have thickness looks like it's actually thick, accenting edges can help in both the normals and the diffuse.
To make parts look more believable think about how they would go together. In the concept the skirt and the neck piece aren't exactly clear on how they connect, figuring out your own interpretation will help solidify the design.
I hope this helps, keep at it!
So I've made a little bit of progress. I've widend and thickend the armour strips, I tried a even thicker version but it didn´t look quite right, I tried making the inner bevel on the armour thicker but didn´t look quite right, but as always I'm up for suggestions.
As for Alemja, I made her taller , thickend the lines on the helmet, made the horns bigger, flared out the back, and other tids bits you mentioned alemja. I'm still strugling to figure out how to do the straps.
I'm not sure what you meant push up the breasts, did you mean raise the lower point of breast shapes up, decreasing the size of the breats, or move the entire shape up, and if so how much? I'm willing to do it but its a bit hard becuase of all the subtools, So I want to avoid too much guess work. I'm still thinking of how to conect the forms that don´t make sense in the concept, I'm not a good concepter so its not easy for me, but I'll try. If I missed anything or didn´t do it well, feel free to point it out, sometimes my brain derps.
I've also softend the shoulders and worked on the face more, I'm not too happy with it, as even though its more feminine, its still not as attractive I want.
Again I'm willing to consider all suggestion and I'm thank for everyone who comments, I really want this one to look good.
So what I meant by pushing up the breasts: Breasts naturally look like what you have going on they hang a little bit lower and are , but when women wear bras, armor or anything that offers support they are pushed up. Because the breasts you have now are in the "natural" position in an armor that looks like it's supposed to be supportive, it looks like the breasts and/or armor are sagging a bit. I hope this makes more sense.
Keep at it!
Anyway, my wacom broke and I went to the states so i got a bit delayed in my progress, but i´m back in full force now.
Now, I´ve done some retopo work and tossed on normals to the low poly to see how it looks in marmoset, its NOT the final uv I just simply auto uv´d and applied normal maps to see how it would look in engine, I changed a few things and still can if anyone has any suggestions, its not too late for any major proportion or detail change.
now some important things to mention
right now the poly count is at 7496, and I havn´t even included the fur, so obviously its too high, i´m going to cut polies from the unseen areas (butt) and try to nibble away polies here and there, suggested areas are welcome
since I didn´t uv the whole thing and just used auto uv, each object has its own 1024 uv, so I think, not sure, the detail on the final uv set will be alot less sharp.
This is my first time building a full low poly model, so please forgive any glaring mistakes I make.
As I near the end of this project I see al the mistakes I made and didn´t correct, though i´m glad it ended up looking halfway decent, and i owe to you guys who gave advice, this would of looked awful with out.
Still its not done, and i´m open to suggestion, its too late for any major changes revolving around the proportions or highpoly detail, but i´m open to any suggestions on the texture, remember this is my first time doing a complete character.
Also I have a big question, in the page for the internship it says difuse, spec, norm, and reflective map, is that the same as a gloss map? If not i´m going to have to do alot of reworking
Anway way here it is