Art War - Opal Eater
hero character
I figured I would try to get as many eyes on this as possible, I'm currently working on my entry for Cubebrush's Art War!
Thread: https://forums.cubebrush.co/t/art-war-3d-opal-eater-alemja/2124
Concept:
Sculpt Blockout:
Ref Board:
A bit of lore for those who are into that:
Feedback and critiques are always appreciated!
Thread: https://forums.cubebrush.co/t/art-war-3d-opal-eater-alemja/2124
Concept:
Sculpt Blockout:
Ref Board:
A bit of lore for those who are into that:
On a distant desert-like planet, there exists a race of humanoid beings that have a close mystical tie to unique, liquid-bearing stones. These opal-like stones are believed to be the elixir of the stars and consuming the liquid can alter your perception of space, enabling you to see and manipulate illusions. The desert dwelling race, who’s name roughly translates to “Opal Eaters” used the illusionary power to build and shield their civilization, however technological travelers threaten to destroy what they have built and steal the stones for themselves. Normally passive, the Opal Eaters must now fight back if they wish to survive.
Feedback and critiques are always appreciated!
Replies
Current update is getting some of those wrinkles and leather designs in there and see how they are feeling. Plus I modified all of the geometry of the pieces so it will be extremely simple to work with once I get to the low poly phase, the less I have to manually retopo, the better.
The hair block out geometry has been replaced with tube chunks that will be translated into the final lowpoly version far more easily, I have also reduced the volume, I think it balances out with the headpiece a little better.
I'm not too sure how I feel about all of the hanging cloth pieces having the same design, I might simplify the ones coming off her lower back a little bit.
As always comments and crits appreciated!
@melli06 Do you have a thread? I would love to see what you come up with!
@artofmars Thanks! Will keep on going with this!
@9thKnight Thanks! So splines would actually take too much time for some of the things plus I wouldn't be able to as easily reuse and manipulate them, there are a loooot of pieces that where reused and reshaped to quickly create variations. I used a variety of techniques, mostly involving using modifiers to shell flat pieces, bend, edit poly, turbosmooth and FFD. I made sure I had quick zbrush sculpts as a guide to get a better idea of the shapes that I wanted. I will create a breakdown that has a little more depth this weekend.
So I pretty much have to call the sculpt done, I couldn't quite implement all the changes due to time, but I am overall happy with the design.
Quite happy with the hair:
Also here is the final full-body, a lot of the changes are minor in comparison to the previous render.
I also worked on a stage a little bit, I don't know if I'm going to have time to achieve the ideas I have for it or if I'll have the time to use it at all. We shall see!
Currently working on retopo, my hope is to have the final presentation in marmoset viewer.
@kenzeebyrne Thanks! I pulled from a lot of old school art nouveau palettes. I'm going to have to cut the stage and do something simpler, if only the deadline was farther away!
@erroldynamic Thanks for the support as always Errol!
Hair test in Marmoset and low poly is complete, sitting around 260K triangles. Since there is no limit in the contest I'm not too worried about it being so high.
UVs and bakes are next should have them done by the end of the week, I'm hoping to take the textures into substance. After that Rigging, skinning, posing and various neat effects to amp up the presentation more. Final stretch!
Definitely, looking forward to see the final result. One small thing that I would suggest is to move eyeballs a little upward and turn them until they look a little down, at the end it'll help to avoid always-surprised or always-looking-upward expression. Just my 2 cents.
Did you have the same feeling that something is off? To be honest I have.
1. I think head is too big, it seems she has got barely 7.5 head height.
2. eyebrows need adjustment, they're too close to each other( maybe too high ), also (on real humans) their inner halfs generally tend to roll a little inward.
3. maybe teeth need to go a little backward
4. lower lip is too wide
5. upperarm is too short in comparison with lowarm, while thigh and lowleg seem to be equal, I find it looks better when both are a little longer than lowarm and lowleg respectively.
6. I'd advise try some other color combinations too, I'm not sure if cyan / violet is the best one, but it's hard to tell when there's nothing to compare with.
7. face texture is too flat / monotonous
That cyan stripe going from breast to shoulder looks very nice!
Hope that wasn't too much of feedback.
Some of the proportion stuff I will do my best to address, since it's rather late in development and I want to have it done Monday, I'll see what I can do. I definitely agree on the head, will be touching that. Somebody else called out the upper arm as well, this is a mistake I tend to make, I'll see how much I can fix in the low poly. I will mess with the teeth and the lips as well.
The color scheme seems to get mixed opinions, I've always had that color scheme in mind but I do think it can be adjusted and balanced more.
Agree on the skin and eyebrows, they've been a bit of a struggle.
Thanks again!
Final renders for my entry! Thank you to everyone who gave me help along the way! You can also view the model in 3D on Artstation! https://www.artstation.com/artwork/13eOe
Cubebrush Thread: https://forums.cubebrush.co/t/art-war-3d-opal-eater-alemja/2124/46
I'm a complete and total amateur with VFX so I have no idea how correct or well it would work in a real game dev environment, but here is how I achieved those effects, if you want to see the wires of things you can check out the marmoset viewer files on my artstation, I think it might be easier to see that way:
For the modeling, there was a tooooooon of re-use everywhere, but here is how I achieved some of the main pieces everything else is in a similar vein. I tend to find splines a little slow, so I use a lot of poly modeling and the modifier stack to achieve the look I want. Normally I start with planes to keep it as simple to work with as possible and use shell to add thickness since it makes it more uniform throughout. I think the ring and the bracelets where the only thing that used the double turbosmooth trick, where you put smoothing groups on the mesh, turbosmooth 2 levels affecting smoothing groups and then another turbosmooth to soften the edges a bit. Everything else was made with control loops built in.