Proportion and other questions. [mild nudity]

Slash

I needed a break from my hl2-lady project, and i started this one.. The aim is to make a normalmapped girl for doom3 (or atleast with doom3 specs) that would make Paul Steed proud. Im talking power armor, megaboots. silicon and leather, the works. Soo.. my first question is: Whats wrong with her proportions? I cant put my finger on it, i`ve probably stared at it for so long that i cant tell anymore. I would love to have some outside input on this. The nipples are one head down, the bellybutton two, the crotch 3, the knees 4.5, and the heels 6. adding the head, thats 7 heads total, witch should be acceptible. but still i feel that somethings off.

Second question: I`ve planning to make the armor in separate highpoly parts, then zbrush each of them, then project everything onto a lower rez version in max.. Is this an acceptable way of doing things? I have never done a normal map before, and im not sure on how all the nuts and bolts work.

And one last question: What would be an acceptible polycount for a d3 model? Personally, i feel that some of the doom3 models are a bit blocky, and i wonder how high i could go before its too much. (its about 3500 polies now, add armor and it will probably be around 4500.)

MoP

Proportions... well the arms look too short to me, try drawing an arc down to see how long they would be when lying at her sides, the hands should rest about halfway down the thigh - i don't think they do that at the moment.
Also the head looks too narrow in the front view, and too narrow in the side view, although the height of it seems fine.

I think the default Doom3 models are around 2000 polys, but 3000-4000 shouldn't be too taxing on the engine. I wouldn't go much higher than that though.

As for Zbrushing, I don't think you really need to bother when making armour, that's probably best just done with meshsmoothed polys in Max, unless you're going for a crazy demonic melty armour look. Mostly mechanical things look a lot better when just done with polys rather than any sculpting, it makes them look more "manufactured" than organically created. Just make highpoly models, make some low poly versions and bake the normalmaps with max's render to texture features.
That's how I'd do it anyway.

MoP

Slash

[ QUOTE ]

unless you're going for a crazy demonic melty armour look.
MoP

[/ QUOTE ]

Its like you could read my mind. Im planning on having this, as you put it, crazy demonic melty armour look, in the metallic skull style that id loves so much,(like the one on the d3 manual) mixed with elements from crash`s armor and hunters outfit. And some touches of my own, of course.

Thanks for the pointers, i`ll look into the things you mentioned.

(btw, i now realize that her face is way too high-poly. There`s not really that much facial animation going on in doom3 anyways.. ill ofcourse remove the nipples aswell.. so i think i might be able to clock it in just under 4000 polies without loosing any significant shapes.)

//edit: mistakes.

Slash

btw, feel free to point out any other mistakes i have made as well, like mesh flow, the lack of detail on joints and so forth. Any critique is appreciated.

snemmy

either her thighs are too wide or her shoulders are too narrow. makes it look like you used one reference for everything above the waist and another for below the waist. and her upper arm seems a bit skinny.

Thermidor

Is this for your high poly? if so why worry about the head count? if its the low poly for the game engine my only real crits are the 5 sided polys you have laying about in some areas , allthough this could be display problems.

as far as propotions go, the general mesh looks great , like has been said allready tho , it seems to be split into modules, the waist down dosnt seem to be the right proportions for the rest, so maybee narrow the hips and broaded the shoulders slightly and everything will fit nicely..

nice low poly bum you should curve that row of straight edges on the underside tho ....

really good work , keep it up

usagi

i dunno if someones said this already- if they have than ignore me - but the head is too tall adn skinny. i think this is throwing off the rest of your proportions. that and her belly really needs to be tighter, especially for the type of character youre going for

EarthQuake

Head is too skiny, legs are too long or arms are too short and the shoulders should match up width wise with the hips. I would add an extra loop to the elbows aswell.

Slash

Thanx guys, i`ve looked into a few of the issues you have pointed out. I broadened the shoulders a bit, fattened the head, and enlarged the boobies a bit. (Hey, the wide shoulders made them look smaller, and after all, there is a mandatory minimum breast size for stereotypical videogame girls.)Didnt do much to the hips, but i rounded the ass a bit more, giving i more of a pr0n-star look. (not sure i like it that way tho.. Not sure at all about the arm length, since i have checked a few proportion charts, and they vary a little bit from each other. The average is _slightly_ longer than what these are now, but if i make them longer they look to skinny, and if i beef them up i get this kind of slavic bodybuilder chick vibe. Ill experiment some more. Maybe if i shortened the legs a bit things will come together.

As for the 5-6 or more sided polies, im gonna remove them, they are just a result of fast, nasty and sloppy modeling techniques. Its probably too much to hope for, but is the existence of a script that highlights polygons with a certain number of sides unthinkable?




//edit: as i post, i see that there`s some verts under her arms that needs to be pulled out a bit, so dont bother mentioning those. :P

KDR_11k

I'd cull the ridge down the front for the lowpoly. Normalmaps make any polies not necessary for silhouette or deformation redundant. There is a lot of facial animation in Doom 3 singleplayer but the faces are incredibly lowpoly and of course there's no facial anim in MP. D3 doesn't use sphere eyes at all, there's a special controller for eye animation that somehow works with painted on eyes (that are on a separate texture map).

hawken

very nice hands, interesting technique too, I must try this.

the spine needs work, her head is too far back - think about how the spine curves, her neck should curve forward and her head might be half over the shoulders, half over her ribcage.

spider2cool

dude...her arms...she has 1: had too much spinich, or 2: is popeyes daughter...

Slash

Hehe, i`ve fixed the popeye issue. I also spent some time removing polies and fixing 5-or-more sided polies. I also removed a bunch in the face, without losing any shape at all.. just perhaps some animation possibilities.

I also threw her into zbrush and made a rough sketch on how the armour should look, just to test if it would look totally stupid. Apart from the fact that it looks like some monkey skull, i think the idea is cool enough. (the final armour wont look like that at all, i just tested the idea.)





//edit: im not looking forward to bringing this kind of model into max for normal map generation.. max brings my rig to its knees if i go above 2.5 million polies. Is there any way of using some lower-rez version of the model for positioning, then using the full-rez for generation? (its the moving around part that kills my computer.)