The Human Construct(completed)

Irritant

(pic updated 12-20)

This is a model that is in the same "family" as this one

http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=8526&an=0&page=1#8526

He's a soldier that has been "experimented on" by Martians.





And the concept - done while watching CSI reruns:

FatAssasin

Looks sufficiently creepy. Proportions look good. Texture that bad boy.

poopinmymouth

For some reason your models always look kind of "wobbly", like you put some kind of 3d noise over it to move all the verts a bit out of place. I think that starting with primitives and moving things in rings and loops can help with this, or just try to keep everything lined up a bit more. It looks like a fun model though, and show us the texture when you are done.

adam

Very random look to this guy. W/out knowing his backstory I'd have to say its a little TOO random. He looks like everything on him is something different, IMO it takes away from the character. But judging by your concept I'd say the texture will bring some consistancy to his design. (I seem to be all about "consistancy" lately. *shrug*)

Also, his right arm (on our left) is very low poly when compared to the rest of the flow the model has. You could probably model in some more geometry and make that arm look more define.

His boots bother me a bit. They're rounded at the bottom, so if he ran he'd have a better chance of over-stepping and causing a tumble.

Don't get me wrong, the model is very nice and looks like you had fun making him. There's a few changes that I think could be made.

Irritant

Poop: I know what you mean. Part of it is because I make most of my models poly by poly(yeah I know, lol). The other part is exporting it to md2. I try to line things back up as much as possible but md2's with more than 1000 polys seem to distort slightly. Once it's in md2, I can usually get it straightened out, but yeah, it's still got some slight noise. (the game these are for uses md2. But that might change if I get on a code rampage again).

Adam: Random..yes...I was actually going for random to a degree. The texture I hope will bring it all together.

Skin started. Pic updated above. He's a little too clean at the moment. Need to damage him up a bit.

Irritant

Pic updated(12/15)

A few deviations from the concept, but hopefully for the better...

adam

Ah, the green is bringing consistancy to the model. Liking it more now... I'll crit the skin once it becomes more complete.

steady

SDK! looks like it would be fun to skin!

n00dles

Irritant

I think you definintly need to give the green parts a camoflauge texture.

I would take a layer of camoflauge and reduce the transparency or something.

MoP

It does look like it'd be fun to skin, yeah!
Pretty cool model, although imho the texture could be much improved - too many things to list in text so I'm gonna do a paintover when I get back from the shops - watch this space!

Ok, here we go. It's a really crappy paintover, nowhere near as good as I'd like it to look, but it only took a few minutes, so:



Basically I'm suggesting you should avoid the "all one colour" thing you have going on with the armour and the face. It looks like you use dodge/burn a lot, which tends to leave shading looking unrealistic and splotchy.
IMHO the green armour is too, well, green. The highlights and shadows are just lighter and darker versions of the same green. I tried making the highlights slightly yellowish here, with the shadows a kinda blue/grey/green. I reckon it makes it look less fake, more believeable.
Also you've got a lot of areas of pure black, which should definitely be seen too - also try to avoid defining edges in pure black, unless the area surrounding the edge is very dark already. Having a light coloured area with a narrow black line does not look very realistic, it should be a kinda midtone with maybe a slightly cooler colour.
Also I went over the face and put some more hues in there, made the eyes a bit smaller and less white too (IMHO looks more evil, although your original ones look pretty cool if you're going for a "scared/crazy" look, the whites just need to be more shaded).
Also generally tried to tighten up the existing shading - making straight lines perfectly straight, for instances - your lines look slightly ragged here and there, when I reckon they need to be pin-sharp (like for really bright metal edge highlights).
Also those "vents" on the shoulderpad look like they should both be the same shape - again the edges are a little ragged, and the shapes are just different enough to look like you were trying to get the same shape but didn't quite manage it - try using selections to mask off areas when painting vents like this, then you can just nudge the selection down 10-20 pixels and paint the same thing again (or copy/paste even! then paint over) to make it seem more regular.

There are also some instances where you have lit things as though there's a bright light coming from below the guy (the underside of the raised part on the chest armour) although no other parts of the texture indicate a light source in this position - basically try to pick one or two light sources (bright sky/sunlight from above, with orange/brown reflected light from the ground below is a nice scheme) and stick to them and bear in mind how they would affect the volume of the whole texture.

So yeah, less pure black, more consistent shading, tighter lines. I think that's a lot of the major points covered - keep workin' on it!
If you posted the flats I might be able to give a clearer paintover, if you'd like one.

[edit] Just noticed, when I painted over the right half of the chest piece, I actually got rid of a lot of the nice contrast you had going on - however it is still possible to bring that back without using pure black and white! (which do not occur very often in nature, except by goths)

MoP

Irritant

Wow MoP, thanks! That looks really good. I'll give some of that a shot.

Actually, I don't use dodge and burn at all, i shade with low opacity brushes and layers in greyscale. Which probably explains some of my one color shading, which I try to fix generally.

The vents I actually did it exactly that way, but I think the geometry of the model is skewing it slightly. Something I shall look into fixing.

I'll post an update with some of these things you mentioned.

As far as an SDK, sure, I might do that as soon as I finish my skin, as I'm finding UV things I need to tweak slightly as I go along.

MoP

Yeah I suspected it might have been greyscale work. Have you ever tried working straight into colour? I find it often gives more lifelike results faster. However many artists use greyscale a lot and end up with stuff that looks stunning, so I guess technique is up to you. I find it time-consuming to have to go in and paint highlights in grey, then make a new layer to give them colour - often it's hard for me to get a good mix of hue and saturation without going back and changing the value of the grey layer a bit - maybe I'm just not used to working that way, it just doesn't seem very natural.

Yeah the UV's must be a bit wonky if those parts are the same on the texture, then, because they definitely look different shapes to me (maybe that's just the angle of the render though).

Keep it up!

adam

Also, remember that just because his armour is green doesn't meant thats the only colour you'd see in it. Try using reds and blues in the metal to add to it. You can do this by painting the areas you'd like red/blue on a new layer in photoshop than setting it to multiply. Once done, fiddle with that new layers opacity until the difference is subtle but noticable.

Irritant

Pic updated (left side of it anyway)

Straightened out the lines as best I could. I need a wacom.

Fixed up the highlights, added some color variations, scuffed it up a bit more in places.

Haven't touched the face yet, but I feel the armour is much improved thanks to Mop's and Adam's suggestions.

Irritant

Pic updated - finished at last. Thanks for all of the help and input everyone!

If anybody is still interested in making a skin, let me know.

Couple of things wrong though. The back of the mechanical elbow I failed to unwrap, and didn't discover this until the skin was over half done. I tried to unwrap and update the map, but it kept shifting vertexes of the rest, ever so slightly, and was more trouble than it was worth since it's a very minor glitch. The other problem is for some stupid reason I overlayed the front and back of the bicep, which I guess isn't a big deal, but you learn from your mistakes. It doesn't look too "bad", but I shouldn't have done that.