cd_6 by Pavel Proskurin
Latter-day by Lclszzx
Feast by Ketka
Good luck and have fun!
The Monthly CHARACTER ART Challenge | April 2016
polycounter lvl 2
Welcome to the Monthly Character Art Challenge - April 2016
If you think that anything should be changed, tell me.
This time you'll have two months to complete this challenge
How it works
- You're free to approach any of the concepts however you like, as long as you stay true to the essence of the original theme.
- You have until the end of May 2016 to complete The challenge.
Guidelines
- Leave at least one critique per post. Being able to effectively receive, and give constructive criticism is an invaluable skill as any type of artist.
- There are no software restrictions; you're welcome to use as little, or as many different software packages as you like.
- Post your work in progress in the thread. You're welcome to cross post on different sites (Artstation, Facebook, etc.)
- Before starting your character, break down the concept and plan your work accordingly. Being able to effectively estimate how long it will take to complete a project is an important skill, especially for freelance artists.
- Your final presentation should be posed and rendered in any real time engine. (Marmoset, UE4, Cryengine, Unity, etc.)
- Don't be afraid to ask questions, but don't hesitate to find the answer on your own - chances are, the answer to your problem has already been answered within these forums
- We're all here to grow as artists. Learn as much as you can, and share what you've learned.
Resources
- Polycount Character Wiki (link)
- Polycount Tutorial List (link)
- Monthly Character Art Challenge Pinterest Boards (link)
Challenges
Replies
Thanks for starting up a new challenge, Tripl3m!
cheers!
@jarsef welcome back
I`ll start working on the old guy as well starting next week after exams
Great to see that the challenge has started up again. I have being a lurker for awhile and thought i should start entering to the challenge. I have never done a challenge before so I don't know if I will get the character done in the time period. But if not I will continue on with it after the challenge. I thinking of doing the Golem character for this month. So here is a rough breakdown of the elements in the character concept art and what I think the head proportions are for the character. Feedback on any is welcome. Currently get reference for the character and hope to start the rough base sculpt tomorrow or next week.
Good luck to everyone that does the challenge.
Spend 4 hours in blender for this.
I started working on the Golem and will post pics soon
I am going to take this one. It's a really current design. I really like the proportions and it will be a great test for MD. I might test out sPainter on it as well. I aim to hold a record of the work time too. Plus this will be a good one for the folio. Thanks to Lclszzx for allowing us to use the concept and thanks to TRIPL3M for organizing this challenge.
See you guys in the soup!
Cheerio
Cool work tho.
Ah ok its back up.
Cheerio
Edit: https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/449304500302529614/ Was it intended to have all these golems ?.
Marvelous designer seems to work pretty well for a fabric base. Think it needs a retopo though. Seems you can import your base model easily and the simulation is fantastic allowing you to change the structure of the pattern and resimulate strait away to see the changes.
Cheerio
Kinda funny though that (in general) clothing made by MD is insta-recognizable by the folds.
I think i will do it (if i have time).
Cheers
Had another crack at MD. The more I use it the more I like it. Still needs cleaning and secondary folds.
Some grenades using Proboolean in Max.
Cheerio
Apart from cloth seams/stiches etc, looks like you are almost ready for the bake down/LP?
Alot of stuff is just block in still, like the hair and most of the bags. Like you say the cloth needs to be retopoed and the seams need attention. There is still loads to do
Cheerio
Great progress there lad! Boots are always a nightmare of mine. Do you have some tips on how should I go at them? I am not that good at making the shape in 3Ds Max so I sculpt a rough shape (which is easier for me but kinda lame) in Zbrush and retopo them to get a better shape (I have to retopo again at the end though). It's such a pain, laces are hell too. Any advice?
Thanks in advance!
Cheers~
Boots are difficult, I think because the foot is a difficult shape. I drew polys on the base form of the figure I sent back to max from ZBrush as a template (decimated) using polydraw. The boots were half the polycount you see below.
I used the shell modifier to give the poly planes thickness and then divided the boots once with nurms smooth and turned off isoline display and then converted the mesh to an editable poly. That holds the smoothed shape and it allowed me to tighten up corners and run extra loops around the boarders of the pieces. I sent that model to ZBrush to tweak the overall form with a google image page of army boots on my second monitor as a guide.
I sent the boot back to Max at the form I wanted to lastly put on the laces. The laces are just a single spline I drew on the boot using face snapping so the verts would be roughly in place. The spline looks like junk but you can mess with the verts and change their bezier type to fit the model, also using the handles on the spline verts lets you fit the laces exactly, The laces are just the spline rendered as a tube in the viewport you can find under the modifier panel. You can adjust the resolution here and under the interpolation menu below the render menu. The ringlets are just lowpoly half toruses that are sitting on top of the piece that overlaps the boot tongue. I drill holes through that piece when I do the leather and damage detail in the end.
Hope that helps.
Cheerio
PS. I see the top part of the boot is bending the wrong way! Will have to fix that.
Oh you magnificent beast, thanks for taking the time to reply!
It's funny how small things I don't know can speed up the creation of specific parts so much.
Splines for laces never occured to me, such a dummy.
Hope it's okey if I ask some follow up questions. I had never heard of polydraw, looked it up and it seems like a retopo tool in 3Ds Max, I assume it does the same as topogun?
Also, never heard of Nurms smooth either, why don't you use Turbosmooth, or even better what's the difference?
Thanks once again for your time and sorry for the trouble!
EDIT: Hope it's okey that I am asking all these in this thread, don't want to bother everyone else with these posts.
Kind regards~
I've been using Polydraw for a while now, it was a plugin before it got intergrated into Max. Yeah it does the same thing as topogun pretty much. I tried topogun out a few times and it was just quicker to use polydraw because I am used to the modelling tools in Max and there is no need to import and export models. Poly Draw is under Freeform in the graphite tools menu and becomes available when you have an editable poly selected. You can open Poly Draw and choose New Object and pick a surface, grid or selection to draw polys on. You can also dial in the height you want those vertexes to be from your chosen surface. Works great and has become really stable in later versions of Max.
The way I understand it Nurms smooth is an older sub division function and I use it while modelling. I have it mapped to a hotkey and I can toggel it on and off. Its really useful for a quick preview of what subdivision does to the model and its also a great mesh check because you can see if verts are connected properly, plus there are times when you make a flowing shape and need to hold that form while at the same time modelling a shape into that form, like defining the boarders of the boot parts or putting holes into the model without disturbing the flow. It comes with a cage that you can also toggel on and off and is great for tweaking your mesh when the model is subdivided. You can bake the sub division into your model by reconverting the model into an editable poly but make sure isoline display is off.
Turbosmooth is a modifier you can put in the stack and it is more efficient and stable than Nurms smooth. Turbosmooth has the advantage that you can select several meshes and apply one Turbosmooth modifier to them meaning you can globally switch smoothing on and off with one click. This is great for high res animation because when you are animating too many polys makes things slow down. Turning off subdivisions for animations and back on for rendering works well. If I have to animate a high res character it always has its own Turbosmooth modifier. If the character has displacement maps as well as normal and difuse maps you want to be able to turn all that stuff off while animating. You can also bake the Turbosmooth sub ds into the mesh if you want. Since great game engines became available I lost my interest in linear animation and am smitten by realtime, so I hardly ever use Turbosmooth anymore, only for some freelance work and teaching animation students.
Cheerio
Wow, thank you so much for all that mate, I totally got all the answers I need.
So glad to be part of this helpful community.
I got informed of the monthly challenges kind of late therefore I'll pick the Golem to do for the 2 weeks remaining. Hope you can lend me your knowledge along the way if you see something wrong with the progress
Have a good day mate!
I chose to do the Golem as I think this is the one i can do within the time limit.
I've decided to block out the rough shapes in 3Ds max using spheres and then merging them in Zbrush.
Now, I've got a couple of issues that i hope I can get some insight from you guys.
First of is that, I usually sculpt my characters in t-pose and then pose them when they're done. With this beautiful guy here I think I shouldn't do that. In fact I think I should make his arms and legs a different mesh and rotate them when I need to pose him. What do you guys think? Is that okey or should I go at it with a different mindset?
I currently plan to go ahead and sculpt him at this awkward pose.
Lastly, while I am not even near to the point of worrying about the cloth and little fur thingies at the end, I'd like to know what I should do from the start. I was going to use planes for the cloth [1] and a patch of 'hair' cards for the fur at the end [2]. Do you think that's a good idea? Should I give the cloth planes thickness or it's unnecessary?
That's all of now! I'll be keeping you updated. I really value everyone's opinion so thanks in advance!
Kind regards,
-Dan
One of the things I like to consider is how will this game be used in a production scenario, as in how would you create it so it can work in-game? I think it is very possible to have this character in a T-Pose and here is why: It's joints look very much like a ball-in-socket joint which is very rig friendly and very easy to manipulate into the pose you want. Another factor to consider is the amount of extra work you would have to do if you create him already posed, all of his large forms of symmetrical so therefore it makes sense to make it in a symmetrical matter
Regarding the cloth, I sometimes find cloth with thickness easier to manipulate in zbrush, but it's not always necessary to do it that. For the fur I would sculpt it as a solid clump and then later in the low poly make some alpha planes to give it more volume, you can easily get away with this look because it is a stylized character already.
I hope this answers your questions!
Like has been said, ZBrush doesn't like plane edges. Things like the ribbons hanging from his hands I'd model as boxes and the reduce those to a front and back plane with an alpha channel for the torn out bits. If someone else has another approach to the cloth it would be great to hear ir.
Cheerio
@Alemja
Yeah surely I am not going for an already posed sculpt and certainly this is what i meant by
That I would sculpt him symmetrically and make the arms/legs seperate meshes like balls in sockets and pose in the end.
As for the a-pose, did you mean something like this?
Finally about my 2nd question, yes certainly I am going to sculpt the cloth in Zbrush with thickness but I was asking about the final LP version, if it should be just planes or not.
@Alemja So if i got that occrent, for the fur you say have both "solid" mesh AND some alpha cards for the extra volume? Actually sounds great!
Thanks for the help guys, I really appreciate it!
I will keep you updated, have a greay day~
The cloth can be two planes on the lopoly, an outside and an inside, that seems to still be the most efficient way to do it.
Cheerio
hello guys, I've been posted my work on facebook group.
Cheers!
Edit: Speaking of the cloth thingies, how do you suggest I go at them? (Speaking about the ones wrapped around the arm/legs, not the ones hanging freely.
I would use the curve tube/strap or some variation of it and then sculpt "lines" on them so it seems like they are twirtly and with wrinkles but I don't want it to seem too random. Same goes with the knots. Do you guys have an idea apart from what I have in mind? Thanks in advance!
For the time being here's the Low poly version of the sculpt, i am keeping it up!
I still have to do some stuff like change the lighting and put up some atmosphereric things. I am disliking the metal parts but i always had issues with rendering metal material in marmoset, any tips on that?
Cheers!
Thanks dude! I really appreciate it
I think that's it for me! I changed his lighting a bit and here it goes!
More angles on Artstation and also a 3D preview here
More angles on Artstation and also a 3D preview here
More angles on Artstation and also a 3D preview here