Small Robot Character WIP

AndyDaveRum

Hey I was hoping I could get some feedback for me to use towards my university project. I've set myself a task to create and rig a game character, with the character in question being a small, slightly awkward moving robot. Polycount is currently 21,556.

Model with basic Textures


Damage Textures


Topology


Known issues:
Weird bumps on the back of the head that I only noticed as I was posting this.

May need to change ankles, as animating changes in direction are quite tricky without being able to roll them so I was thinking a ball joint design.


Any other comments on general design, texturing and topology would be appreciated. I'll be making another post in the animation thread for the rigging side if you could check that out also, thanks!

Brian "Panda" Choi

How smooth is the robot's surface supposed to be? Like Eve smooth from "Wall-E?"

Maxilator

That topology is really overkill if you are going to use it in a game, I'm sure you can get it down to at least 3000 without any significant visual difference.

kanga

I am not sure the design is very appealing at the moment. It looks like stuck together pieces of dynamesh. You have bumps due to a bunch of poles being created by five point intersections of edges. You can get everything even by using clipping brushes in zbrush to flatten the problem areas. Once you have the surfaces flat you can retopo them to a very low value. Like I say though I think you shouyld revisit the design. Good cute bots maybe.

AndyDaveRum

Brian Panda Choi wrote: »

How smooth is the robot's surface supposed to be? Like Eve smooth from "Wall-E?"

Not quite as smooth and shiny as Eve, was looking for slightly more roughness like brushed metal. The model looks very bumpy from the max renders but looks much smoother in UE4 with extra maps.

Quick UE4 shots:

Maxilator wrote: »

That topology is really overkill if you are going to use it in a game, I'm sure you can get it down to at least 3000 without any significant visual difference.

Yeah topology definitely needs work.

kanga wrote: »

I am not sure the design is very appealing at the moment. It looks like stuck together pieces of dynamesh. You have bumps due to a bunch of poles being created by five point intersections of edges. You can get everything even by using clipping brushes in zbrush to flatten the problem areas. Once you have the surfaces flat you can retopo them to a very low value. Like I say though I think you shouyld revisit the design. Good cute bots maybe.

No idea how I didn't notice the poles were so bad before, cheers for the advice! I was going for a cute toy robot kind of design, but I get what you mean about the stuck together dynamesh feel.

kanga

The last ones look smoother

Bummer6

Still looks extremely lumpy. Just start off with a way, way, WAY lower polycount to block in the main shapes, then subdivide the mesh and you'll probably end up with a much more even surface. Even if the surface is rough, you don't want that kind of detail in the topology, but most likely in the texture and normal maps.

Mitchellangelo

I usually build hard-surface pieces in Maya, then I export them into ZBrush for texturing purposes. Maybe you can retopologize the body and head of this robot, bring it into Maya, and do any edgeloop work or any other work.

Deathstick

You could redo this way easier and cleaner if you rebuilt the shapes at a pretty low poly and used supporting edge loops to keep the hardness before you apply smoothing. Currently it looks like you have no support loops, causing the entire object to appear very soft and organic versus being a mechanical creation.