Sharkman - ms3d feb2k5 contest entry

nkoste

The contest is over so here's my contest entry for the ms3d feb2k5 contest. Texture maps are 50/50 photohacking and original artwork. I did this in 12 hours total, which is really fast for me as this is only my third completed character model.

Renders are made in Pov-Ray. Wish I'd figured out how to make a good specular rendering of the minigun barrels.

I won the contest btw, but there were only two finished entries so I'm not going to brag about that achievement. Anyways I thought I'd show it here so humor me or give me some C&C, but it is a finished model so I won't be working on it anymore

/cheers


Theme:
Animal soldier max 1500 polygons.

Model trianglecount Total: 1286

Sharkman renders from Pov-Ray






Wireframes from ms3d






Minigun - 350 polygons




Texture maps

johnwoo

Nice work nkoste..totally diggin the skin textures especially the head texture, the textures are very clean imho which works well for the style you've concluded...1 area tho' that does sort of scream at me tho' is the back area where the texture detail is quite vague, the poly count is astonishingly good for the result you've got...to be quite honest those smaller textures could've fit onto the larger textures with minimal loss of quality tho'...damn nice work man!...
btw...is this character rigged and weighted?...
Oh and btw..nothing wrong with using photoref, I reckon it will have it's place in the Next-Gen of software titles..realism will be even more closer to accomplish given technical capabilities of Next-Gen hardware...

flachdrache

me likes the shark skin pretty much, great work on the arms and jaws. But he doesnt looks very agressive/not like a soldier - why the massive swimmsuit_armor w/o any zip or something .

nkoste

Thanks fellas

Way I saw it was that the expression could be either two things: agressive or a lifeless empty stare. One would be cartoonish the other realistic. I went with the last one, but you're right I could have tried something similar to the "Finding Nemo" sharks. The photohacking just made i easier to go for the icecold killer.
Overall I could have done more details like zippers and stuff. I tried to make sort of an old school FPS model like the ones that would fit in in games like Duke Nuk'Em or Serious Sam.
@johnwoo: thanks for the nice crits. The model isn't rigged or weighted. Since I'm a milkshape user I can only really do the first. I modeled him in an ordinary character pose for rigging, but made the pose by twisting the verts.
I kept the weapon an body textures seperate cause you never know if you find a use for the model later and maybe I would want to equip him with other weapons so I took some precautions. I could have merged the non-transparent textures into one though you're right about that.
The photoref thing was really funny because I usually handcraft a whole lot more. Initially I was going for a 100% photoskin look, but I changed my mind later on.

Thanks again

...and I can reveal that I've got one more thread comming up soon which also features sharks...*jaws theme playing*

johnwoo

"I kept the weapon an body textures seperate"..that's cool..although, to have made things simpler..you could've included the yellow,grey,steel and the 2 alpha'd textures onto 1 page say, and then in total there could've been just 2 textures to work with instead of 6...making things simpler and getting either the same or better result is possible, and better still it's should still be flexible enough to change...I guess it's a workflow thing amongst others....btw.. I'll look forward to your upcoming post on the Jaws theme...sounds cool man...

poopinmymouth

The geometry is really good, I like the volume he has. I think the texture work is nice, I really like the photosource usage, it's not blaringly obvious. Most of your hand painted stuff matches up well. I would say the boots and the body are the weakest and don't quite hold up to the overal realism look.

Interesting character nonetheless. Goodjob.

nkoste

Thanks

Nice to have a couple of pros looking over my work. @johnwoo: I'm a webdesigner and there's nothing I like more than optimizing also when it comes to modeling. Due to the work pace on this model I forced myself for once to put less effort into optimization and it has suffered a bit under it. What you say makes perfect sense. I'm generally too big a perfectionist which causes me to get my results very slowly (I mean very slowly).. So it was also a good experience to just try and model something fast without too much effort into unwrapping and stuff. I need practice and not just sit and dwell over a model for months

@poop: I love his boots. ...but yeah you're not the first one who's told me.

Oh yeah almost forgot: The other Shark Thread is up in case you haven't noticed.