Judah - Realtime Character
polycounter lvl 4
Hey, Polycount!
Here's a character I'm working on. He's going to have kind of a cyberpunk style once I finish the rest of him, but for now I'm focusing on the head and hair. I'm planning on taking another pass cleaning up and refining the skin textures and adding more detail to the hair. I'd appreciate any feedback on the design so far - the hair in particular.
Replies
I did some more (a lot more) reworking on this character and I'm definitely getting closer to the idea I had in mind. I'm aiming more for a character in his late twenties-early thirties and the previous design was reading way too old for that. Something about the hair just isn't working yet. I think I may need to push it forward more rather than to the side. Any advice on how to improve the design?
Also: Tattoos!
It's been really fun coming up with style ideas for this particular brand of cyberpunk. I wanted to make some unique tattoo designs that felt 'cyberpunk' without feeling too generic. I came up with this paisley design that blends hard surface shapes with an organic pattern.
Thanks for taking a look! I'd appreciate any feedback.
Looking sweet as, love the texture of the hair-- it's spot on! Tatt is shaping up nice too. Sorry I don't have much feedback for you, only watch the skin texture's green channel, looks like it might be flipped and causing that seam down the back as well as inverted normals overall. 🤔 Maybe you already caught it but worth mentioning. Regarding the flow of the hair, you got any reference? At this length it might have a tendency to sort of stick up and out rather than having such a gentle wave-like curve in the front area, but it also depends. It didn't strike me as odd until you mentioned it!
I like the hair. The arms look a tad short imo.
BagelHero makes a good point about checking the normal map. Other than using correct green channel direction for your application, I recommend making sure the normal map is sampled correctly (not srgb because of the gamma correction).
Keep it up!
Thanks for the feedback!
@BagelHero These are some of the references I've been using for the hair - you're definitely right about it sticking up more at this length. I'll have to incorporate that more as I'm re-doing it. After thinking about it some more, I think a lot of the issue comes from a lack of transition along the sides. It's creating an eraser-head kind of effect lol
As for the normals... that's going to take some investigating. It looks fine in Substance, but nothing else. I think a Direct X procedural map might have slipped in there instead of OpenGL like the rest of it.
I appreciate the help. Thanks again!
Hey, this is looking great so far, i think you nailed the hair. good job!
After a few big setbacks, I've made some more progress! My Substance files corrupted and I had to start over from scratch. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, though. I got to make some big fixes that I had been avoiding including the mysterious skin normals. Still plenty of work to do before He's all done, but I'd appreciate any feedback on the design so far. Thanks again for the helpful comments, everyone! ♥️
Yes, the necklace covers up a nasty texture seem I am sorryAnother quick update:
I put some more work into the hair, and I'm pretty close to considering that part finished. I've had a few people ask for a breakdown of my hair process, so I made a quick guide going over it.
For hair work I use these plugins (Not affiliated)
Hair Tool:
Fibershop:
Both of these are AMAZING tools. They completely transformed the way I approach hair
the hair is reallyy pretty damn cool!
that being said, do you follow any reference here? i feel like you need to go a few steps back and work on the anatomy. it just feels all pretty off. facial but also body anatomy and the body has implications on the clothes. nothing sits right and it's mostly because the body feels really off
He's done! I took @Neox 's advice and took the project a few steps back to rethink the anatomy and clothing. I'm much happier with how the character looks now. This fells much more in line with my initial idea and looks way more realistic. Thank you again to everyone who provided feedback along the way!
I got to make a lot of helpful tools and shaders during this project that will speed up my process tremendously. Can't wait to start on the next character!
i like all the effort you put into these, at least you learned more and that is what matters to achieve your goal, nice to see someone tackle this topic.
feels a lot better!