Frog Surfer Character

Ged

I saw pics of the red eyed tree frog and throught it would make a fun character model in a bright colourful stylised game. I drew a simple concept and then kept working on it until I had the coloured version with the cool scifi hover surfboard. I was also obviously inspired by overwatch stuff here and there. I'm not really a concept artist so I expect the concept to evolve a bit during making the game rez model.

I also did some quick sketches of facial expressions and the hand and foot so that I have a better understanding of the forms and I'm more prepared for the sculpt.

Ged

I'm just in the process of blocking out the characters forms, starting with his body of course. I'm using primitives and building the shapes like that, never tried this method before but it makes sense and the resulting shapes are nice and clean. I heard about it from Shane Olson (made Disney Infinity characters) and Leticia Gillet (makes Overwatch characters) who both seem to think this is a fantastic way to start making stylised characters. Definitely worth the effort, though this being the first time I've tried it it has taken me about 4 hours to get this far but I'm sure I will get much faster at this and find some good shortcuts.

bkost

Hey @Ged nice blockout so far. Yea I totally agree, I've began to build my base meshes with primitive shapes as separate tools. Way easier to manipulate the intersections/joints. I like the frog and clothing on the concept. I believe the shoulder piece and board could be elevated. 

I'm excited to see where you take this!

Ged

just a quick update, this project is still going been learning some marvelous designer this weekend. I just quickly zremeshed the frog dude sculpt to make it much lower poly and then quick rigged it in maya and threw it into marvelous designer as obj and it seemed to work. Was so glad it wasnt too hard to get it working in there. Just started on the jacket so its nowhere near done.

Ged

marvelous designer progress, its really cool software, I'm having fun making this silly character some clothes

Olingova

Going out lovely so far!

Ged

Thanks Olingova, busy working on more of the accessories  at the moment in maya. Marvelous designer export seems to have worked really well, just a few small bits that need some cleaning up.

jose.fuentes

your patterns are simulating nicely, great work so far 

Ged

thanks! I had to change the shorts a bit , they were crumpling up too much! haha

Ged

Latest update, been working on his anatomy, clothing and accessories. Still working on the highpoly. I reckon anatomy is like 75% there mostly the legs need some more work and the mouth/face needs some love, clothing is like 80% done - needs to be shapes to fit his figure more and have some cleanup in zbrush. Accesories are still work in progress probably about 65% done. Any crits are of course welcome Im doing all this to push myself, learn new techniques and try to make something a little original. I have a to do list that Im getting through slowly whenever I have time to work on this stuff.

Ged

pretty much done on the sculpt gonna start to retopo stuff now. By the lack of replies to this thread I'm guessing that nothing is too bad on this guy.

Ged

Retopo'd the frog dude body and tongue so far. I've tried to make it good for animation, please let me know if I've made some mistakes?

Ged

more retopo work done when I found a few hours this weekend. 

OutlawHue

Nice model,

 Looks like you have some serious hard cuts around the shoulder/bicep. Are you still working these areas? I like the triangles being placed where the cloth wrinkles will be most acute. Cool character!

Ged

OutlawHue said:

Nice model,

 Looks like you have some serious hard cuts around the shoulder/bicep. Are you still working these areas? I like the triangles being placed where the cloth wrinkles will be most acute. Cool character!

Oh yeah good point, still busy on the retopo so coming back to the shoulder is no problem, this should work fine right? 

Ged

starting to get materials ready. Lowpoly is mostly done, sitting at 32722 tris

Ged

started texturing in substance painter now, Ive got 3 materials with 2048 textures in each. Its fun so far!

Ged

more work on his skin today this is all viewport in substance painter

Olingova

Great!! I hope you can use a better shader for the skin when rendering that boiii; a bit of subsurface could be dope

peterpan03

I really enjoyed.

เว็บแทงบอล : po

Ged

Olingova said:

Great!! I hope you can use a better shader for the skin when rendering that boiii; a bit of subsurface could be dope

Thanks! Yup! I have the sss set up ready to go but the shader in substance painter seems rather limited. Im hoping to make a good shader for him in ue4 and do final beauty shots in there

Ged

this weekends work, jacket shorts and other accessories mostly textured now. Just got his surfboard to go. Might try some other colour variations on those shorts and maybe some extra tint on the jacket.

Ged

Got him in UE4  today! been working on SSS and materials.

Torch

This looks radical dewd Awesome work, love it - that surfboard is great too.

Ged

Torch said:

This looks radical dewd Awesome work, love it - that surfboard is great too.

Thanks so much! haha glad you picked up on the 90s cartoon vibe (ninja turtles, battle toads, street sharks etc) but hoping to give the final scene a bit of polish so it doesn't come across super cheesy but I'm really happy that some people like it. Busy working on the pose at the moment and the wave for him to ride!

akiratang

This turned out really well, got that battle toad vibe lol. 

Ged

Thanks a lot Akiratang! Nearly done heres a little preview shot, hopefully I will get time to put all the shots together well this weekend. Also did a fun little gif to show what its like in UE4 a bit better.

dGreenberg

He's looking awesome, @Ged! Those materials and the environment setup are crazy good! I'm a big fan of the look and presentation of the water in that final shot. Can't wait to see the last bit of stuff you're putting together for him!

Torch

Yo dude, this turned out great - presentation is awesome. The only thing I can say at this point is the background is a bit sparse, it would be cool to see some break up in the composition withy other objects e.g. Buoy, island trees, rocks, etc....although you already said it's a wip, so I'm sure you have that in mind

Ged

Torch said:

Yo dude, this turned out great - presentation is awesome. The only thing I can say at this point is the background is a bit sparse, it would be cool to see some break up in the composition withy other objects e.g. Buoy, island trees, rocks, etc....although you already said it's a wip, so I'm sure you have that in mind

Thanks so much dGreenbery and Torch! Oh wow those are great ideas, I didn't really think of putting those objects in the scene, I just wanted people to focus on the character and making the ocean environment was just an extra I decided to make. Maybe a bouy would be nice but I don't want to spend too much more time on this guy and the dof is pretty heavy so Im not sure you would see much detail, might have a go anyway.

Also big thanks to the polycount admin crew (Eric Chadwick) for getting my guy on the front page!

Torch

Get a stylized sun in there with shades  XD



Anyway its a badass piece - would be good to see a proper breakdown when he's added to your AS page. Nice one!

Ged

I quickly made a bouy today! It looks nice in the scene! thanks for the suggestion.

Torch

Bro, that was feckin quick! Lol, great job 

Ged

Torch said:

Bro, that was feckin quick! Lol, great job 

haha thanks! I was very pleased with how quick it was to make Simple shapes though so pretty easy to model and uv and then just baked it to itself because it was high poly enough, it is 2492 triangels with 2048 texture maps.

Ged

Hes done! woohoo! The character and surfboard are 32770 triangles and 3 sets of 2048 maps (1 for character body, 1 for clothes and accessories and 1 for the board). The ocean waves model is 1 set of 4096 textures and and 19938 triangles. The bouy is 1 set of 2048 textures and 2492 triangles. The water spray effects are 412 triangles and 1 set of 1024 map. The background islands are just a cylinder with a simple texture painted on it and alpha. I'm really happy with all I learned on this project, about Marvelous Designer and Unreal engine materials, post processing and how to get more of the results I'm after. I may still make a video moving through the scene at some point.






Some quick breakdown of the scene, I will probably do a post on artstation at some point with all the models and breakdown in more detail.
Here's the lit, detail lighting, mesh edges and unlit screens in unreal engine

Torch

Love it 🤘🤘🤘

Ged

Thanks Torch!

Ged

Ive just posted a big breakdown of all the assets and some of the materials on my artstation. Heres a few of the pics I uploaded but to see more go to my artstation https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rR93YJ