Super Chunky Character Pack.

Muzzoid

Im going to be making a customizable character pack for the unity asset store, aiming at simulation/rts/mobile games.

Im aiming at ~1500 tris per char, and they will all share anims.

here is a rough concept i threw together.



Here are the first pass at the base meshes. I'm now going to aim for matching this concept in 3d, before I concept more.

Muzzoid

Decided to do high res source assets. So far the chest looks a bit creepy on a character like this, so i'll probably simplify it a lot.

Muzzoid

Muzzoid

Makkon

I think for this to work, you need to make it way less anatomical in key areas, like the back and chest and recently the face. Hard edges and strong silhouette will do more good for you than internal shapes and contour. Good start, though, you got the proportions really close. I'd make the hands a tiny smaller.

Muzzoid

Thanks man!

Certainly agree with you here. I'll try and simplify the shillouette like you say. though i am attached to the shoulderblades :P.

Muzzoid

Ok i got some great feedback from makkon, and fixed things up a bit.

Muzzoid

Ok i got MORE feedback from Makkon.

I think the face style is almost there for the girls.

Muzzoid

Neox

Getting there, but i think you still got some space for improvement

Not sure about the mouth, i think you need to play around with that some. right now it feels like what you picked is no real solution for the style you chose. Not sure, dont wanna say its half assed, but i think you shod experiment more

Something bugs me about the nose, i think its two parts the transition of the nose to the cheeks, something feels unbalanced there

And i think the nose holes should be more subtle not just straight poked in holes

I think the hair feels a lot like a wig, i would probably pull it down further, the hairline just makes her look a bit bald

Boot are obviously still blocked

But i feel like some balancing between the legs and the arms could take place

Sorry for being so vague, but i think what it needs most is some balancing and i usually solve that vy experimentation

Besides that there are the obvious ones, the shading looks too rubbery and samey. Eyes need some reflection, eyewhite feels too red, but those i would just assume are due to the stage it is in.

Muzzoid

Thanks Neox!

I think you are spot on with all your critiques, I feel like I'm stumbling around in the dark here a bit, where my intuition isn't necessarily leading me to the water.

I'll do another pass and try and hit all of those things.

Muzzoid

Ok here we go, next pass on the face. I put a simpler shader on it just so we can see the form better.



Also wireframes. Pretty simple.

Steve Schulze

You could probably pull some good reference from some of the stylised flash animation style cartoons that are about at the moment.

Take a look at something like Total Drama Island. I love the character design in this show. They're a bit different to what you're going for here, but you could probably pull some ideas about the rhythm of doing a simple, stylised character like this one.

There are plenty of other cartoons doing similar things. Worth doing some digging.

Muzzoid

Yeah i get what you are saying, it's not super practical for what im doing though.

When doing character designs that disparate, suddenly animations won't be generic, and i won't be able to mix and match assets. (unless you have any tech suggestions to do that?)

It would be awesome if i could though!

Muzzoid

First test mesh and bake. Nice and clean. 1660 triangles, just with a 1024 so far.

I'll still need to add some extra supporting loops to rig her though.

Muzzoid

Ok here we go!

hair and eyes here are placeholder, and the shirt is lacking a normal map, but it's starting to come together. Sitting at approx 2500 tris.



I'll probably take all these assets through the whole pipeline and make sure it all works, and then start on the male basemesh.

Still deciding if I'm going to try and do proper facial animations.

GabeC

Looks great! I like how clean and simple the shapes are, especially the outline of the eyes.

I have just a couple comments. In my opinion, it would look better with a flatter mouth. I think having the lips protrude makes it look a little too realistic. The breasts also seem a bit pointy given how soft everything else looks. Also, it seems like the nose is a bit too upturned in the most recent version.

Muzzoid

Thanks man!

Totally agree with both of your points, i think that it's mostly as i didn't have enough polygons on the chest on the low, so that is an easy fix.

I made better shoes, and tons of little tweaks here and there. So this is the first set of high poly clothing. Hair is still shitty.

Muzzoid

First pass on the male mesh.

Trying to make friends with blender, and moving over from 3dsmax.

Slow going >_>

lotet

Muzz wrote: »

First pass on the male mesh.

Trying to make friends with blender, and moving over from 3dsmax.

Slow going >_>

try Modo indie instead, I used 3ds max too, tried blender, hated it, then tried Modo, much easier transition.

Dan!

IMO it'd be cool to see the tri count doubled just to smooth everything out especially the feet and face. I feel like there could be some similarities to something like this
http://www.freelargeimages.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Pocoyo_images-7.jpg

Muzzoid

I really did not get along with Modo, tried it for about two months then gave up. I'm actually finding blender much easier. Go figure. If blender is good enough for Pior it's good enough for me.

Dan, sure if the point was to make eye candy, but I'm aiming for something that can be used for crowd assets, not so much a portfolio piece, I'm already worried the tri count is too high for that as it is. And besides the feet will 90% of the time be in shoes, though i might smooth out the silhouette of the feet a bit.

lotet

I think somewhere between 2k to 3,5k tris should work, maybe even 4k if you are shader and texture efficient.

what are you at now?

Muzzoid

Currently at 2500 tris. Putting in shoes should push it up to 3k easy. So i'm already at where i want to be.

I could cut it down majorly turning the fingers into mittens, but i'd rather avoid that.

lotet

dont think youl have to do that, I would be more worried about drawcalls tbh, I assume you are going to make several clothing assets that you can switch around right?

I would recommend having all of those, including the base body on the same texture sheet.

Muzzoid

I can setup scripts to auto atlas texture packs per character, which is a far smarter option than having all the clothing on the same sheet.

lotet

yeah I dindt mean you had to do it manually =P I simply ment you should worry more about texture rez and drawcals then polycount.