WIP: Game Model presented by newbie

M3anBONE_sj_

Hello, everyone. I'm new Polycount and I just wanna say it's great to see some awesome talent right off the bat on this website. I'm basically someone who is trying very to hard to break into the game industry as a 3D artist; i'd like to some day produce in-game models for games, PC or console. And with that said, here's something i'm currently working on.










I named this character "Ghyslain", after my favorite StarWars Jedi Knight. (http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/swk.php)

He has 4300polys with swords and armor, 2800(without), also (5) 512x512 texture maps. It's still WIP. His textures are about 90% complete - I should have it all completely done by the end of the month if things don't get too busy around the household.

Advice and comments are welcome and encouraged. I really want to get better at this so your suggestions are valuable to me.

Thanks everyone.

CheapAlert

Looks good but what bugs me is that his face is flat/squarish.

Daz

Hey man and welcome to pc.

This guy looks pretty good! Some crits:

I agree with Cheap about the head. It somehow feels a little wide.
I would reconsider where you are placing the hi-lights in the face. It's best to assume a light source from front and above. Right now it feels like your light source is bouncing off his head from either side of it if that makes sense. And If anything make them subtler. You've perhaps gone overboard with the specular I think.

The area under the nose/nostrils feels a bit strange. Perhaps because you have that line painted that defines where it meets the face in your texture. I would knock that back somewhat.

The render feels a little dark. Like everything just shades to black?

Looking at your website your oil painting and drawing is really very good.

M3anBONE_sj_

Yea, I figure the head still needed some work. When I was creating a look for him, I looked at a few people from Hollywood - namely Toshiro Mifune, Ken Watanabe, and Hiroyuki Sanada. I looked at them closely and I wanted to see what made them look fierce as warriors. For my model, I tried to achieve that fierce-look using broad shapes; his jaw bone, cheeks, and upper eyebrows were key points and so I directed more focus there.

As for his pose, I just used the default lighting Maya provided. I didn't render him but merely did a print screen, cropped out his figure on Photoshop, then put him in front of a simple background. I beefed-up the contrast a bit but I guess that didn't work out. Here is another pose shot without the contrast adjustment:


I'm still exploring Maya. I don't know how to produce a better screenshot for this model but hopefully i'll come across some good turorials on that.

Thanks a bunch guys for your input.

MoP

Pretty cool, I thought "Hiroyuki Sanada!" as soon as I saw his face, actually.
Personally I reckon it's only the jaw that's too wide, under the ears. I like the rest of the shape of his head.

The mesh seems pretty well-built, I'm not sure if you have enough defining geometry around the elbows and shoulders to provide good deformation, though.

The sword texture is really not working for me, it's very blurry and undefined. In fact all the textures could do with more even lighting (as Daz says, imagine a light source above and slightly in front of the character, and paint shading accordingly), and they would also benefit from more sharpness.
Judging by your paintings on your site, you already understand light, volume and form very well, you just need to apply this knowledge to your textures - it's a bit of a different workflow, but I'm sure if you devote a little more time to these textures, you can really bring this guy to life.
All of the colours seem a bit muddy and blurred at the moment, you'd be amazed what some brighter colours and sharpness can do!

I think this will be a great looking finished piece if you just spend more time on the texturing.
Keep up the good work!

MoP

M3anBONE_sj_

Hello, MoP. Thank you for comments. You are absolutely right about the sword textures not working. I've been working on the handle texture, trying to create the same kind of weaving pattern with ornaments you'd find on some real swords. I created some sketches of these patterns and plan to implement them soon.

As for the colors, I think the soiled appearance on some of the textures may blame their look on some dirt and grime painted onto the base textures. I didn't want a completely clean looking model - I wanted him to look at though he's been in battle. Defining his armor patterns should help a little more. I'll try brightening up some areas which will hopefully produce a more vivid look.

Again, thank you everyone for your comments and also, thank you for visiting my website.

MoP

Hey, I hope you don't mind, I did a quick paint-over of what I think would improve your texture (especially the face)...

I understand you wanting a battle-worn and grimey look, but I think the main problem is you're using very desaturated highlights for everything, almost white in places, which doesn't really happen in real life... there's always more colour and saturation there, and different hues in shadows and highlights, as I'm sure you're aware, since your traditional paintings show this pretty well.



Basically I just tried to sharpen up areas with dark/light contrasts, paint more "volume" and define lighting source, mainly on the face. Most of the clothing was already fine, just needed some colour variation and saturation tweaking.
I really don't know what's going on with those metal ankle-pads, they should have some sort of design painted on the texture, i think, even if it's just trimming or rivets. They look really "blah" at the moment, and you're using a lot of texture space up, considering they're not adding any detail at all.

Oh, and the eye should not be white, the eye white never is, really, except on the brightest highlight, it should fade to a kinda fleshy red darker tone at the edges to fake the shading. Your eyes here at the moment look very cartoony, which is conflicting with the rest of the look of the texture.

Hope you understand what I mean, give it another pass on the texture, make this look really excellent

MoP

M3anBONE_sj_

Great advice! I'll keep in mind everything you've mentioned here - i'm sure it will come in handy as I progress through the texture maps.

Badge

i just wanna say awesome job on the hair man.

i dont have time to read all the posts so excuse me if its been stated:

how many texture maps? 4? thats probably not a good thing any time. im curious at the poly count too. and im short on time but i believe i agree with a few points made prior.

looks great, but could be tweaked.

Badge

and wheres the texture for the thigh and shouler gaurds?

M3anBONE_sj_

Hello, Badge.

This model has 2800polys without armor, 4300 with both swords and armor. His textures are spread out through 5 panels right now but that can be changed later. I'm still working on his textures so an update will be posted later.

Thx for posting!

M3anBONE_sj_

Here is the sword and armor textures.
You'll notice a dragon figure on the texture panel - On the model, it use to rest on the left shoulder; I decided to pull that out because it seemed a little tacky.

M3anBONE_sj_

Here is an update to my model's head texture. I first took off a few pounds from his jaw, narrowing his jawbone slightly. I then added age lines around the cheeks and deepened the cheekbones a little.

EarthQuake

Face texture needs lots of work, the odd highlights and green color is really bothering me, take a look at mop's paintover. The blade dosent look like a blade at all because it dosent have any hard lines, only soft ones making it look melted or blured or something. Too much soft brush usage in general it looks like, try painting more with hard brushes.

M3anBONE_sj_

Hello EarthQuake and thank you for posting.

The sword is still being worked on - i've cropped out a sample of the sword from its texture panel to show its progress. The highlights on the face are something i'm toying with since i'm not rendering the model with positioned light sources - so for now, i'm just creating highlights that help define details here and there on the face. I am aware of the color line on the neck and the grey coloration on the center brow area - all of these will be cleaned up as well as the rest of the textures.

M3anBONE_sj_

Updates. First time i've used Maya's rendering engine -- pretty cool. I fixed the head texture, hopefully it's about right. PLease comment if it looks a little off.

poopinmymouth

Looking really nice and has a great distinctive face. I think the texture is what needs the most work. Try having the leg armor shadow on the pants, and the face could just use some smoothing out. Less saturation overall, and more contrast using hard edged brushes so it isn't so mushy looking.

Nice character, coming along great. Just push your texture work.