WIP - Kazuhira Miller - Critique Required

Ahsan55

The purpose of this project is to create a game-ready character to showcase on my portfolio. This is my first 3d project but I have been learning 3d for a while now.
The reason I'm making this post is because I'm self taught and I occasionally find myself facing challenges I need help with and because I feel it will be very beneficial to receive input while I work on the character.

The character I am working on is Kazuhira Miller from Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker. This is what I have so far I will send in more detailed images and wireframes as I progress.
Clothes (other than belt) simulated in marvelous designer, the hair is just to visualize (it is not going to be used later on)

 PureRef board (Incase you are not familiar with the character)
 Honest feedback no matter how harsh is appreciated.

Ahsan55

So Currently I'm in the process of making hair
this is what I had so far but I feel the hair strands look weird (too flat i guess)
I tried to change the color of some of the hair but it still doesn't look like his hair from the reference (where he has lighter and darker hairs)
 (comparing new hair strand coloring method to old single hair strand color) 
so any tips on how to texture blonde hair (i don't have access to xgen cause i cant afford maya/3ds)

Edit: removed some images to make this post/ discussion easier to view

pxgeek

Hair can be tricky.

Something that may help is to establish a scalp and block in the hairline first. Currently your hairline isn't clearly defined and is a bit off.

Vertrucio

As noted above, you may have jumped too far ahead of yourself and started making hair before you sculpted the character's face and body. Get the face and head sculpted, it will inform how the hair is placed as hair styles are often effected by face shape. Just use a hair block in for now and don't shy away from doing the face and head, hair cards are usually the last thing done.

You've also used marvelous designer to generate the cloth, but without the control so it just looks haphazard. Take a step back, and handle the fundamentals first. Look at the concept and the final model from the game. The 3D artist has kept the cloth and folds flowing in ways indicated by the concept, and they've kept the strong folds in areas that would have them, and kept lighter folds in other areas.

Ahsan55

Thank you for the replies sorry it has been so long since my last post,

So i worked on the head as suggested and heres what i got

Head

Topology

with hair and glasses block outs

A quick sculpt I did (which i think mimics the style of mgs characters although I'm not sure if I should go with this style)

Arm topology

Teeth

Ahsan55

Also about the hair sorry about the confusion but my main intention wasn't to place hair cards I was asking for help with ideas on making the diffuse texture of the hair cards, the hair card placement I did was to show that the texture looks too flat.

iam717

This (click) guy talks about the diffusion of the hair  (click) - have to echo the previous responders, they are helping make this overall more appealing, ignoring it or brute forcing the process doesn't make this better, everything takes time and if people do not have the time to do it they shouldn't be doing it.  If you want more about hair and following directions of the hair "flow", this is helpful (imho)  But we all got the cool tools/toys click go made a thing, now i am just like you, situation going on now a days or soon, not to you op, specifically but a heads up situation might look like this one.

Ahsan55

iam717 said:

This (click) guy talks about the diffusion of the hair  (click) - have to echo the previous responders, they are helping make this overall more appealing, ignoring it or brute forcing the process doesn't make this better, everything takes time and if people do not have the time to do it they shouldn't be doing it.  If you want more about hair and following directions of the hair "flow", this is helpful (imho)  But we all got the cool tools/toys click go made a thing, now i am just like you, situation going on now a days or soon, not to you op, specifically but a heads up situation might look like this one.

Thanks I know about the method you have linked (using an id map to randomize hair color) but it does not generate the kind of results I want. I guess I'll have to figure out my own work around but thanks for linking this (I probably will use an id map but instead of randomly selecting hair I'll have to manually assign the id textures to each individual hair strand to get the kind of result I'm looking for which I think is gonna be a pain). ( Also I have no idea what you mean by some of the other stuff you have typed perhaps its some kind of language barrier? lack of context? in any case I hope you will be patient with me since I cannot understand you. )

pxgeek

Once you get the hair in a renderer/engine you should be able to better judge what it needs for the look you're going for. In your initial pass the textures looked fine, albeit just missing some ao, spec, anisotropy etc... Combined with the fact that there's only a few cards in your example could be what you're describing as looking flat.

The head sculpt needs to be developed further. In the reference he's got much stronger facial features overall (more squared off jaw and chin, more defined cheekbone and jaw muscle, lots of volume around his lips/mouth area)
It would help to establish a real life head reference that you can use to help inform your sculpt. You don't necessarily need to use it to get an exact likeness, but it will provide you with some specificity so that it won't be too generic. (Dolph Lundgren immediately came to mind).
You can do it in whatever style you like, but it should still retain some feeling of your original references. Currently he's got more of a Star-lord from Eidos' guardians of the galaxy vibe than MGS.
Keep at it!

Ahsan55

Here's a little update ( also have high-polys of the pistol For sculpting details like knurling and the grip on the slide)
MSF patch And M1911 
re simulated the marvelous designer clothes

And finally the head

Also thank you Pxgeek for the last critique on the head I found it very helpful (though I'm not sure if I implemented it very well)

Ahsan55

Decided to post an update since its been awhile since my last post.
Wristwatch

Belt Holster (not finished yet) this one gave me alot of trouble 

Boots (not finished yet)

brought everything together in Zbrush to see how it looks (done a bit hastily and subdivided alot which is why the head and arms lost some detail) (I'm not using this for anything just showing my progress)

after I finish making/finalizing a few more of his accessories and make some changes to the clothes I'll move on to detailing in Zbrush and reattempting hair cards.
Also please let me know how how I could take better screenshots in blender.

Ahsan55

When I setup a project in substance and add my normal map it gives me these weird shading issues: (not sure why the lines are happening they didn't appear the first time I imported to substance)

You can see this in blender as well but it goes away once the normal map is added

It also appears on the top lip of the head model but you can only see the issue in blender if the head is viewed from a certain angle 

I have tried shading auto smooth which weird lines on the normal map where the shading changes and adding more geo but that needs like 3 or more loops to get decent shading. Tried looking this issue up but honestly don't know what to search.

Edit: Just learned about weighted normals and that seems to have fixed alot of the shading issues on the model but some areas look like they still have the issue. I'll have to re bake all my maps to see if the issue is still there.
also I think the substance painter issue might be because of me using the wrong type of normal map (openGL/ DirectX).
Am I Doing this right? What is the standard practice to prepare these kind of models for baking? shade auto smooth (soften/harden edges in maya i think) then triangulate and apply weighted normals?

Fabi_G

Hi! Regarding the issue you describe: is the normal maps y-direction consistent between applications? As far I know Blender uses OpenGL normal maps, Painter projects can be configured to use either OpenGL or DirectX. When using DirectX normal maps in Blender, y-channel could be flipped in the shader.

Another thing to pay attention to is that the normal map is sampled correctly, without gamma correction (no sRGB).

Of course the shading of the mesh the NM is used with, needs to match the shading of the mesh that the tangent based NM baked was originally baked with.

Keep it up!

Ahsan55

Fabi_G said:

Hi! Regarding the issue you describe: is the normal maps y-direction consistent between applications? As far I know Blender uses OpenGL normal maps, Painter projects can be configured to use either OpenGL or DirectX. When using DirectX normal maps in Blender, y-channel could be flipped in the shader.

Thanks for replying! Yeah that was the issue switching to OpenGL fixed it. Can't believe I was stuck on this since I've seen videos mention this