DAoC: Catacombs headmodels
polycounter lvl 19
Dark Age of Camelot: Catacombs just recently went gold and will be going live this December. This is the second expansion pack I've worked on for Mythic. I was lucky enough to be part of a team that redesigned and recreated much of the player character art for the game. We took 3 years worth of older artwork and remade it in less than one year, although not entirely from scratch. Many of the armor textures didn't get changed much at all. In addition, we added a lot of new customization options for the players that hadn't been in the game before. Players can select from one of 18 races, male and female, and then customize their face texture, skin color, eye color, morph 4 different facial features, select a hair style and a hair color.
Poop and Arshlevon came on with Mythic right when this project went into crunch along with a couple other guys and did a kick ass job making sure a lot of the stuff got in and looked good.
Shown below are 4 of the 36 different head models I did for the game (18 races, male and female). These redesigns were challenging because we were replacing characters that our players had spent up to 3 years with and become very emotionally attached to. We could not stray too far from the original flavor of each race. Also note that there is a huge variety of potential looks for any given race due to the customization options available.
The textures on the characters are generally pretty flat, which is done on purpose for three reasons. First, the morphing of the facial features for character creation fights with the facial features painted onto the textures unless you give up some of the power of the painted texture and rely on the vertex lighting in the engine to show those features (such as the jawline). Second, the shader that tinted the different skin colors responded better with flatter textures. Third, the older human characters were relatively stylized and cartoony so we chose not to paint too much character into the human faces. I had about 2 hours a piece to do the concepts since I had to do so many. I sketched them in pencil before scanning them in and coloring in photoshop.
There's a lot more to show, but these are my favs and part of the small bit of art that I worked on alone
Poop and Arshlevon came on with Mythic right when this project went into crunch along with a couple other guys and did a kick ass job making sure a lot of the stuff got in and looked good.
Shown below are 4 of the 36 different head models I did for the game (18 races, male and female). These redesigns were challenging because we were replacing characters that our players had spent up to 3 years with and become very emotionally attached to. We could not stray too far from the original flavor of each race. Also note that there is a huge variety of potential looks for any given race due to the customization options available.
The textures on the characters are generally pretty flat, which is done on purpose for three reasons. First, the morphing of the facial features for character creation fights with the facial features painted onto the textures unless you give up some of the power of the painted texture and rely on the vertex lighting in the engine to show those features (such as the jawline). Second, the shader that tinted the different skin colors responded better with flatter textures. Third, the older human characters were relatively stylized and cartoony so we chose not to paint too much character into the human faces. I had about 2 hours a piece to do the concepts since I had to do so many. I sketched them in pencil before scanning them in and coloring in photoshop.
There's a lot more to show, but these are my favs and part of the small bit of art that I worked on alone
Replies
I almost feel bad for the artist who did the "before" models, as by comparison that work looks very poor.
Although, its possible that was due to a more conservative resource budget..
As for the character faces here. Lucas you did a great job on all of them. I am glad I got to play a small part in bringing these characters up to date. Top notch work. Now I have to make some screenies of all the hairs and hats I made.
ive been playin the game for close to 2.5 years now and part of what keeps me going is the amazing artwork. Toa was impressive as hell and this expansion looks even better.
Love the eyes of the blue-skinned guy, although I'm not such a fan of the proportions.
Solid work, and fast too!
MoP
those look awesome man,
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Exactly my thought
This is one of these few rare occasions where I am unable to find anything to critizise
Well done.
the new faces are gorgeous, and make the old ones just look... well, silly.
lol well its because today i was making trees at work and during my lunch hour while i played i wondered how they were done.
also why the teeth? new models lip sync abled?
J0420 - I paint kind of like Bobo the Seal, he's got plenty of tutorials on his site if you want to check them out.
My fave is definitly the dryad heads. The wood grain looks real nice, and worn too.
In particular I like the male woodsprite. The female one's circular folds on forehead spell out the mirrored nature the shading probably because I make gameart also though I doubt the average gamer would have any problem
Good to see you post again, its been a while
The dedication everyone put into this project was something else and everyone did some really fantastic work. I pretty much got to see Arsh and Poop and another arty savant that doesnt appear on these boards (and he should) toil away to make some truly kickass content.
in honor of my fellow coworkers, i have made gold statues (well, cheez-wiz statues to be honest) in their likeness and worship them accordingly.
ROCK ON!!!
these are great rob!
the woodsprite i guess is everyone's favorite... mine too
wonderful job on that one man
a little thing u might wonna consider
ur shading around the eyes and brow is great, its detailed and deep (like volumatric). but i feel like u dont get that same level of rendering on the rest of the face. the reason may be because the orbits r very dark, and thus enhance the contrast, however other areas of the faces lack that defining, contrasting darkness, and therefore look more flat.
do u see what im saying?
just a thought
keep up the good work
very nice
Great work. They're all awesome, especially the tree people.
Can we see more?
my favorites are the tree people and the last wolf looking dude... I love all the little details... the tree people are actually hands down awesome.
I just typed up a big ass crit on the human face and then decided "hey I should probably read what the post sais...maybe there's a reason why he did it that way" lol so yeah man I see its all good. you should post some ingame shots of these so we can see what the final result looks like in the game.
cheers
Shading, colouring and the whole feel of the characters are great. I really dig that you compared the old one with the new ones. Its like seeing retro stuff from a game (anyone remember the old HL 1 screenshots, har har).
Fantastic work. Crits: The proportions are a bit off, and maybe some more contrast on some parts would effect much.
Comparison shots are awesome, love the new versions, kick arse stuff.