MUSKET KNIGHT (character art WIP)

Lou_

Hey guys this is my new character project, the Musket Knight! A bit late on the posting this guy been fiddling in my free time with it. 
Any thoughts/Critique? would be great to hear it! 




Based on the concept by Ariel Perez: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/aOkgz 

Lou_

My aim is to present this in Unreal Engine 4 

bkost

Ooh, looking like a great start. I'm excited to follow your progress. One note: the torso looks a tad stretched. 

I'm curious how you will manage all the HP to LP retopo and bakes for this intricate of a model. That is what has always been so daunting to me.

@Lou_

Lou_

@bkost
Ay cheers man 
I found the chest piece a hard piece to interpret, the problem of one angle.  I changed the pattern on it a bit . Also about trying to make it work with the anatomy

Lou_

@bkost
for baking it is really just planning your texture sets.

The rope and certain belts are going to be trim sheets to keep that sweet res

bkost

Hey Lou, I like the proportions much better now. His forearm and hand may be a little too long as well or crotch is too low. Something still looks a bit off. When you swing his arms do the wrists line up with the bottom of his pelvis?

Any resources about incorporating trim sheets into a character model? Never heard of that workflow except for use on buildings and environments
@Lou_

 

Lou_

@bkost
The forearms will look longer since the gloves are scaled about 15% bigger. For a nice videogame reads of hands are better if they are a bit bigger than realistic.
I did move the gloves further up the arm after your crit. 
I do not know of any direct trim sheet tuts or resources aim for character. However, its one of those videogame workflows, that sacrifices a beautiful high poly for a better in engine result. 

You would just want another material which is trim sheet dedicated or a trim texture in your UV space of your existing materials. So touching the boarder of the UV area. Then you will have much more res and juicy detail. 
Any place you think you can repeat detail might be worth considering. 

Hope that was helpful.

Lou_

Got ride of my block out cloth with a pass in Marvelous designer using morph targets on some clothes I had set up earlier. 

Lou_

There is some issues of clipping initially.
Solve by using pins, collision distance, dropping second layer, adjusting morph targets ztools. Then if all that fails sculpt the fix in zbrush

ChrisFraser

There definitely seems to be a proportion issue in there. I feel like its in his arms, they are much too long. Either that or his legs are too short and his head is too small. The proportions feel weird for sure.

Lou_

Hey man, I have been working on a male scan so I really doubt that the proportions are too far out. As I said though I have scaled the gloves up as it is a nice trick for a good read. I mean even Michelangelo David used this trick. 
@ChrisFraser

ChrisFraser

Ya, I don't think its the hand size throwing it off. I'm just saying what I see, just like the other guy who mentioned it. Just trying to be helpful since its the first thing that jumped out at me. I really like the work.

bkost

May we see a few angles of just the anatomy?

jaysonmtl

Lou_ said:

@bkost
for baking it is really just planning your texture sets.

The rope and certain belts are going to be trim sheets to keep that sweet res


What are trim sheets? 
Maybe I would make the lower part (everything under the belt)a little bigger or wider, 
Great work so far tho

Lou_

@ChrisFraser
Hey thanks for the feedback man, I think I going to play around with the proportions a bit so it was helpful in the end! 

@bkosy
https://gyazo.com/0950d8d6856032c69363323c97a6436f 
Go nuts XD

@jaysonmtl
I would recommend looking at how environment artist use them for a better explanation.
Existential it a tilling texture (hits the UV borders). So you can reuse it for more than one thing, saving UV space. It is a material efficiency technique. 

jaysonmtl

@Lou_

Ah I see will it be this technique that I saw from the order 1886? 

Lou_

@jaysonmtl
 Oh dude that is awesome I didn't know there was reference of that, good find! Yeah I'll literally be doing that, down the line. 

bkost

Hey Lou I found your issue, your head is much too small. Just scale it up a bit to be in proportion. And looks like when you rotated out the arms the Pectoralis Major line from origin to insertion became skewed. 



Thank you for that link jayson! It now gives me an idea of what can be accomplished. I definately want to incorporate texture sheets into my next project. Building a library of these would be amazing. Where did you find the breakdown? I'd love to see more

@Lou_
@jaysonmtl

jaysonmtl

@bkost

found some info here: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?193491-The-Order-1886-Team-Post

and here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/03x6w

Really cool stuff

Lou_

Yeah Jason I have been oogaling the order for a couple of days now haha. Some really sweet reference there.  Might have to try and write a breakdown when I am down with this!
@jaysonmtl

Ay that is some decent crit, I will get around to fixing that. Should of been a bit more conscious of my scan! Yeah with the head especially I need to rethink the helmet design.  
@bkost
 

Lou_

Oh lil tip for scaling a subtool with layers. Example my head with lots of pore detail. 

• If you want to scale do it on a layer. 

• Make sure that layer is at the bottom of the stack. 

This will mean it is first priority layer. Anything above it will apply after the first priority layer. 

• If you don't do this and scale, every time you go to edit. It will flip back to the scale of the subtool prior to you scaling it. 

Lou_

Just some work on the aiguillete. The main part of the rope was a made using a tiling alpha I created in zbrush, which has baked to tile. 

Lou_

Got some decent feedback from guys on this thread and Jesse Sandifer. https://www.artstation.com/sandpiper/store/d5OY/private-feedback-session-10-minutes.

Hopefully the proportions look a bit better. Here are all the things I changed. 

• Shrunk the crainium 
• Scaled up the Head
• Thicked the neck
• Scaled up the upper body 
• Shrank Hands 

ChrisFraser

Dude, its like night and day! nice work

Domslice

ChrisFraser said:

Dude, its like night and day! nice work

Like...KNIGHT and day?

@Lou_

Thank you for this thread, not only is your piece coming along great, but all of the feedback and reference it's gathering has been great to study!

bkost

Hey Lou, nice update. Never have I seen someone offer 10 min critique sessions, sounds interesting. So regarding the proportion changes.. did you scale or shrink the face? o.O

• Shrunk the crainium 
• Scaled up the Head

I understand that the armor is making him look clunkier and bigger, but I believe the proportions are still thrown off. 


https://imgur.com/ccq9Oy9

Lou_

@ChrisFraser
 Ay hopefully better :DDDDD
@Domslice
Man that joke,  I literally groaned out loud
@bkost
When I mean I shrunk the Crainium I am referring to the posterior of the skull, which I reduced. (Occipitus) sorry a little unclear there! 
Cool Gif by the way 


Damn I need to scale up the head even more. Thanks for shouting that out. When I was making the gorget I squeezed the neck together so I should of brang the original scan in earlier. I keep getting surprised how big the head is. 

Probably something to do with the neck length

Lou_

Small update messed with the helmet a lil bit. 
Been busy with uni and been ill for a bit hence slow progress 

Lou_

Changed a few secondary forms 

Lou_

musket knight with a musket

Lou_

cleaned up the rifle

Lou_

Had to take a bit of time the musket knight to make a few game characters for my Uni game thought I would share 

Lou_

Revisited the ace for some work on the secondary forms 

bkost

Looking great @Lou_ ! There a couple minor crits i have regarding the face anatomy. One being the ear anatomy. The anthelix and helix connection is too sharp. And the lower anti tragus, lobe and helix doesn't have that sharp of a crease. 



The last minor critique is that the edges of the upper lip seem too sharp. I'm still practicing face anatomy, so this could be entirely erroneous. 

Cheers

Lou_

@bkost
ay cheers for the crit man I'll get around to messing with the ear. 
edge of the upper lip is where the skin rolls in so I'll try and convey that better. 

Been doing a bunch of work on the face with the secondary forms recently 

Lou_

retop time!! 

musashidan

Great thread and character. Looking forward to more. No crits. I think the other posters have helped you iron out some of your earlier issues.

Maybe the musket barrel looks too short, but hard to gauge when it's isolated from the character. 

Lou_

texturing so far working with some of the colours, trying to fill in the gaps of the concept. 
Also the trim texture, musket and bandoleer are not added yet. 

Lou_

This is the trim texture I have made for the knight. IT tiles on the rope, Armour guiding, and the rolled edge of the armour. It looks really nice for those up close shots. This is presented in marmoset, however I'll be presenting this dude in unreal. 

Lou_

Musket Knight now with Musket! 

Lou_

Wanted to produce some quickie renders in marmoset. Still a lot of refinement to do on the texture side. Final rendering will be done in Unreal Engine 4. 

Lou_

Lou_

So guys im finshed with this piece thanks for all the love and suppport! 

https://www.artstation.com/squary101 check it out here if you like

bkost

Happy to see it finished! Great work Lou! Is that the normal size of a musket, it looks rather large.

Looks like your face texturing could use some SSS and some more loving. But what's best is that you completed a whole character. Onto the next! Good stuff dude

Also your eye shader is a quite off. This marmoset breakdown is a great look into nice realtime skin and eye shading. It helped me a lot 
(edit: although you rendered in ue4, the principles still apply)

Lou_

@bkost
Oh totally agree with the critique I think my next project will be portrait focused to hammer the face/eye theory, get it picture perfect, that kind of set up.  

Acually choose to render in marmoset in end, just because all the set up was way too much and I wanted to get this one finished.

Definitely looking forward to the next one! thanks for all of your crit Blake super useful!!! 

frodin

Hey man, awesome work, I loved the high poly and the end result overall, cool choice of the concept, Ariel is badass doing his stuff,

 I would love to see him with the pose more like in the concept, there is somthing strange in yours, looks like the character has a problem on his stomach and the face looks a bit odd like he is afraid or in pain of something, might be some subtle changes to his pose/ face emotion  would be benefitial more like he is ready for the battle, face looks fantastic but I would love to see him with his helmet on, is a nice piece of geo that could help a lot to your final image and silhouette of the character on your final render I think.

 About the materials, they look nice but a thing that I would add would be more contrast to the textures, more color variations in general, and some more dirts/grim specially where pieces join together, this is nice character but i think still can be improved a lot on the textures and lightning , for the render you can add some rim lights that also helps a lot to the final image

Lou_

@frodin

Yeah this is all really good crit. I think this is the kind of thinking/  planning I will bring to my next project. This ones scope got pretty out of control so something a bit more manageable to really push my rendering, lighting and texture comp. 
Thanks though man this is some amazing critque!