[WIP] 3D Desert-punk Sci-fi Character
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After getting the okay from the original concept artist Nick Bray I've recently started tackling making a 3D model based on the concept piece they made titled Mechanical Assistance starting with the helmet.
It's still mostly in the general blockout to high poly phase of even the helmet design so far but any advice, even this early in, on general approach or just how closely you think it's currently aligned to the concept I'm basing it on would be appreciated. General areas you feel might could use improvement or resizing/adjustment. As well as any similar examples in real life or fiction in regard to clothes or armor you think might be good references. I've found several I'm working off of or planning to work off of but the more the merrier I feel.
sci-fi aesthetic and hard surface models are something I've felt I've been lacking in or haven't focused on enough thus far so I am taking this as a chance to challenge myself in that venue, as well as in weapon prop production for characters.
It's still mostly in the general blockout to high poly phase of even the helmet design so far but any advice, even this early in, on general approach or just how closely you think it's currently aligned to the concept I'm basing it on would be appreciated. General areas you feel might could use improvement or resizing/adjustment. As well as any similar examples in real life or fiction in regard to clothes or armor you think might be good references. I've found several I'm working off of or planning to work off of but the more the merrier I feel.
sci-fi aesthetic and hard surface models are something I've felt I've been lacking in or haven't focused on enough thus far so I am taking this as a chance to challenge myself in that venue, as well as in weapon prop production for characters.
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Right now, I'm working on the shoes which according to the artist himself are basically modified Doc Martens 1490s which helps a lot in designing them since if gives me a lot of references to work from.
Hoping to finish them and the glove high polys soon so I can start working on either the backpack or the poncho. Currently have some ideas on how I'll approach the poncho but any advice from anyone who's done a similar poncho/clothes design is more than welcome.
Next major problem area will have to be the poncho, but after that it's back to hard surface modeling for the pack and weapons before moving into the low poly step.
Found myself having to do a lot of trial and error with the cloak's detail repetition and making sure I can bake the details to the hood properly before pushing it down like the concept through sculpting or simulation later, but my current major hang-up is trying to get satisfactory details with the robotic arm and making sure everything will rest properly before committing and moving to low poly later.
I've got something of a back-view to the concept that gives more info on the hand design but it's far more quickly made and hastily detailed when compared to details up to this point so I've afraid I'm going to have to be doing more guesswork with this one.
Great work so far! I really like the concept too. In terms of adhering to it, I see some differences in proportions, but I actually prefer your rendition for 3D. The super skinny legs and small helmet / head are more stylized in the concept art, whereas yours feels more grounded in reality.
On the modelling side, generally I would suggest making any separate pieces as separate objects. It's hard to tell, but it looks to me like the gloves, and their wristband, as well as those knuckle studs are all sculpted out of one mesh. Not sure but seems like the padded parts on the suit and that rim that goes around them as well? I would separate them not just for convenience while sculpting, but it also saves a lot of headaches when color coding and baking.
On the helmet, as you're sculpting this in Blender, I understand that you can't go super high in density, but those very thin panel separations would be better off left for painting in Substance (or whatever texturing package you plan on using). Right now they are a bit jagged when viewed up close as the geometry just isn't enough for them to be smooth, and that won't look great when baked, especially on a shiny metal material. Either that, or do it with polymodeling but that would be much more work and more difficult to retain the smooth sphere shape. In any case, I'd also make those panel gaps wider and more beveled for better readability from a distance, like they're in the concept art.
The boots are modelled very well, but be mindful about how they'll bake later. Right now the belts and other parts are very thin and it looks like there are small gaps between the objects. Those would cause some trouble / won't look as nice when baked.
What kind of triangle count do you plan on having for this character?
Anyway, awesome stuff.
Yeah, differing sizes are definitely something I'd noticed while designing the helmet. Admittedly, I did want to fall pretty close to the concept, but I also wanted it to lend more towards realism than stylization and was thus using a head and neck under the head armor as a guide. Realistically, they'd probably want to be even bigger to fit the head more comfortably inside but I felt being too big might look ridiculous and I didn't want to diverge too much from the concept. If I end up wanting to make it look even closer to the concept before final renders it should thankfully be an easy enough thing to do when the time comes since they're separate meshes from the body.
The legs would be a different story though. Like you said, the concept is clearly a lot skinnier and stylized compared to what I'm attempting. Probably a bit longer than normal as well when considering how much leg is still visible despite how tall the boots are in the concept, but that could also be a perspective thing.
I figured the design was close enough to realism that I'd lean into that when transferring it to 3D, but for a stylized approach I'd definitely want to exaggerate proportions in certain ways, but I've got potential concepts I had my eye on I felt would be a better place for that since they lean far more heavily into stylization.
No definite plan for the character as of yet regarding tris count, though I probably planned to focus on the middle to high poly range for the character simply by virtue of all the details and wanting to have good renders. Ideally, I'd like to probably still stick to the 50k - 100k range as a maximum with all assets altogether, but I don't know if that's too much even when accounting for all the assets that come with it. I might also be able to go much lower due to no facial details and the majority of under-clothes being skin-tight.
If you have an estimate for what you think would be a good tri count to shoot for when including the character, their boots, the poncho, back machine, and gun that would actually be really appreciated since I don't usually make characters with this many accompanying assets at once.
As for the helmets separating points, they're actually currently being applied through booleans to later be either baked onto the retopo or, failing that, redoing them within Substance like you said treating this more as a guide. Though since they're booleans I can also reduce how jagged they are now if need be through smoothing. I've been trying to avoid sculpting entirely for anything hard-surface, even simpler shapes like the round helmet.
The gloves are, for the most part, one mesh as you said, excluding the knuckle studs and the rectangular portion of the strap. Not the pads on the under amor though, those are all separate objects adhering to the body contours using curves, same with the rims visible on the arm and leg sleeves. Unless you meant the quilted pattern on the poncho, in which case that is sculpted on details. Not the rims and outer designs on the two sides of it though. Based on the concept and some similar gloves in real life it seems stuff like that is usually one shape, but if it becomes a problem later I could probably try splitting certain parts through maxing and attempting the bake again.
Current plan is to focus on retopology and texture work for the poncho asset so I can apply the bake and then adjust stuff like the hood and making the back part of the poncho pressed in more so the fastening of the machine on her back will make more sense before working on the fastening asset itself.
For the gloves and similar parts - yes you can make the highpoly one piece just fine (although personally I still prefer working on separate meshes in most cases), I meant that having separate pieces may be very beneficial later because you can bake a clean ID pass that will help you in the texturing phase.
Tri count can be anything you like, really. Around 100 sounds like a good target, but I wouldn't be worried about going over. Current gen AAA characters can go over 200k, but that's a lot of work for it to be fun
Honestly, more than the gloves I wish I'd made the poncho's hood a separate object and hid that with the high poly bake since I've been running into some trouble during the retopo of it, though I'm making progress.
I did something similar at the request of someone who was helping with the rig and animation portion of a stylized character, where they wanted the head to be split from everything else when retopo and just hiding the split with the high poly bake that wasn't separate. Probably would have saved the headache of manually adjusting the hood to be down like in the concept later, since my plan had been to have the hood up so the details could bake before putting the hood in the proper position after baking the details on in substance.
Major things I'm worrying about is if the end result's topology and final result will look good when viewed by potential studios when I apply, since I'm very much still trying to get to the point where I can even get my first foot in the door. Being something I can enjoy working on it is obviously a big part of it too though.
Since the final batch of materials for the main body and some accompanying assets will need some time to start, I've been trying to get the render pose set up to replicate the pose of the original concept and am also planning to tackle creating the scene itself soon. The current plan is to create a desert or wasteland scene to compliment the desert-punk design of the character itself while also being something that can be largely done with less need for a lot of different borrowed and kit-bashed assets for now.
While there's a lot of elements to this character I'm very happy with at this point, I'm hoping to really focus on better optimization and material work for my next project.