My Very First 3d Game Character

AndreaCammarata

Hey Folks!
I've just approached to the character design world, and after watching and reading several tutorials, I've decided to do move forward trying to model my very first self-portrait 3d game character.
The final goal is to import this asset as the main character of my personal Unity + Oculus Rift project after the Sculpting, Retopology, UV Layout, Texturing, Rigging and Animation process.

You can watch some videos of the project here:
- [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGpW3n8CXZ0"]Gameplay[/ame]
- [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nV5QWT01PQ"]Main Menu[/ame]

The house of the game is a copy of my house.
I have spent several months measuring every inch and to recreate a good looking model of it.
The video shows only the living room, but the entire house is now 70% complete, but I will create a separate forum post for it with some screenshots and videos.

I saw many of your works on the PolyCount forum, and my work is far behind the quality of your models so this is why I really need your comments and critiques to help me become a better 3d artist.
You guys are amazing!!!

Going back to my 3d character, here's some screenshots of the sculpted and textured model (using Zbrush).
I'm now working on this from a couple of months on my free time, and I have plenty of screenshots and videos to post, so stay tuned .

I'm really looking forward for your feedback!!!

AndreaCammarata

Here's some more screenshots after going though the Retopology process in TopoGun2.
Now the model is 5808 Tris and should be ready for Rigging and animation.

What do you guys think of it, too many tris for an unclothes model?
Can you spot any bad Topology issue?

Lord Striker

Don't know why, but the head looks...odd. Just the shape from a side on perspective. The forehead appears to be smooth, and doesn't bump out nearly as much as it should. The topology looks nice and smooth, though, and the texture work is solid.

AndreaCammarata

Lord Striker wrote: »

Don't know why, but the head looks...odd. Just the shape from a side on perspective. The forehead appears to be smooth, and doesn't bump out nearly as much as it should. The topology looks nice and smooth, though, and the texture work is solid.

Thank you for your feedback Lord Striker, it was very much appreciated!
You are totally right, I didn't notice that, but now that you pointed out the problem I can see it too.
I will follow your suggestion and I will bump a bit the forehead.
What about the Tris count? Do you think it is good enough?

Shyralon

Really nice for a first character, the topology looks really good
Main thing that I noticed is (as already mentioned) the forehead.
Other than that maybe work a bit more on the eyelids, right now it looks like a hole with eyes, define both eyelids more and it will be nice
Texturing looks also good in my opinion.

AndreaCammarata

Shyralon wrote: »

Really nice for a first character, the topology looks really good
Main thing that I noticed is (as already mentioned) the forehead.
Other than that maybe work a bit more on the eyelids, right now it looks like a hole with eyes, define both eyelids more and it will be nice
Texturing looks also good in my opinion.

Thank you for you feedback Shyralon, that's a really good advice!
Do you suggest to add more polygons to the eyelids to define more that area or I am actually missing something I'm not able to see because of my unexperience?

Thanks again for your help!

AndreaCammarata

Here's another quick update about the character rigging.
This video was made before getting the community feedbacks on the 3d model improvements.
Thanks again for all your suggestions guys, I'll fix all the mentioned issues.

In this video you can also see that I've tried to create some very simple sport clothing using MD4 (But I've already started working on some new garments)..

At the end of the video instead, I've used FaceShift (in combination with the Kinect sensor) for a very short and simple facial capture animation.

I'm not very happy about the neck animation because it stretch way too much in my opinion, and I'm really struggling on painting vertex weights in the best way to avoid weird arms and knees deformations, but other than that I'm very happy with the result (to be the first try).

What do you guys think?

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYHyL-_edpQ"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYHyL-_edpQ[/ame]

Brian "Panda" Choi

I think it looks off because it lacks bony landmarks and defined, "sharper" areas.

If you compare the sculpt against, say, Roman head sculptures, your head and anatomy end up reading poofy and bubbly, Andrea. Most faces tend to have defined, sharper features along with the soft curves: zygomatic arches, the temple of the head, the nasal ridge, the brow.







Your model looks turbosmoothed from a low poly model as well. While this tool works well for high poly modeling, you're going to want to sculpt in more features. That and you can't effectively export out a low poly that stays turbosmoothed/smooth mesh previewed in a game engine.

Main issue is the quality of the sculpt. Get it looking more defined.

AndreaCammarata

Hi Brian, you are totally right, the model is turbosmoothed.
I usually smooth it before exporting it as a .fbx model that will be then imported in Unity, and the face count is something around 15k.
That's probably too much, right?

I perfectly agree with you, the sculpt is lacking of some important landmarks, but I didn't want to have too much polys on the face so I was planning to create normal and displacement maps in ZBrush to add more details to the model into the game engine.

Do you think that's a good approach?

Thanks again for your feedback.

Brian "Panda" Choi

15k is fine. Polycount is just dependent on platform and other technical factors.

Feel free to add details through normal map and displacement maps, but if it doesn't affect the forms and silhouette of the model, it won't be much help. As said before, the model looks puffy and ballooned without some serious changes to the silhouette and forms of the character.