The Man of Steel - model w/questions

Painreliever

This is kind of a pre-pimp as I mainly have a question about what would be best to do in the case of my model. I was going through my portfolio of stuff and found that one of my models was just not very good and decided to redo him. Anyway, you may or may not know the character, Steel, who came about from the death of Superman plotline a long time ago. I am not really looking for a critique of the modeling so far as I am still tweaking things here and there unless you see something really out of place(haven't really started flushing out facial features and the smoothing groups are temporary). The main thing I wanted your take on, is when you have organic shapes, like musculature, with details like armor, gadgets, cybernetic implants, etc. is it preferred to make the mesh a continuous single piece of geometry or would you simply let the non organic parts overlap and delete the faces that would never show? So would I create edges in the muscular at the places where the two intersect and join them or is overlapping okay? I would think its a trade off between several things like whether the model is lit with vertex lighting, polys saved or a need for better deformation when animating. What is the correct answer?

The pic shows the armor details that intersect my musculature.

MisterGoid

im curious about this too.

cholden

There's probably a better answer, but based on the way your character looks, I'd say one contiguous mesh. Also, your character's legs look really stubby, might want to check your anatomy on this, as it's a common mistake.

Painreliever

I have him proportioned as 8 heads high and have basically made one unit a head height, but I think my knees might sit a tad too low on the legs, I'll play with that area some and see if it looks right moving them up. Do you think that is the issue or do the legs just need to be lengthened in general?

cholden

front/back and wires helps a lot when asking for this type of advice. Maybe your camera's perspectice is crazy high, but I count somewhere between 6-7 heads tall.

Painreliever

Here is a pic of the front/back/side with wireframe on shaded showing. You can see the grid in the pics too. Again, have only just started the face, and haven't messed with the knee yet.

Sage

Make him 8 and a half heads high to 9 heads tall. If you make if be nine heads tall he will look more like a super hero though. If you were looking for super hero look make his shoulders be wider than his hips, make his head a bit smaller and his hands bigger. The upper part of the thighs and the shins are usually the same height, but yeah right now your knees are a bit low. I might be a bit off with the leg advice though.

Heh I just read your first post. Steel was an interesting character indeed, but DC sort of made a big deal out of that when they brought Superman back and then almost killed him again, talk about overkill. Grrr. Rant over. I guess the problem I have with your mesh is that it doesn't remind of that character at all. Since you are making Steel you need to make this bad boy have his waist be thinner than his hips, at least nine and a half heads tall. Since your polycount is so high model his Superman shield on his chest. The five sided thing not the S itself. Have the hammer in there. The armor seems off to me, especially the boots. I say start from scratch so you gain more experience and speed. Also place close attention to how Steel's nose was drawn as well as his chin. Hope to see this done. Later.

Alex

Painreliever

Sage: Thanks for the crits and comments. At this point the model is definitely not done. I basically started by modeling a base figure of musculature then have been going back in and adding the armor. I have spent probably about 15 minutes on the face so far, so it is in no way final. I also am planning to add more detail to the armor pieces, but I haven't spent a whole lot of time on those either.

I really posted mainly to get feedback on whether people thought I should connect the armor pieces with the musculature or whether it was okay to leave them intersecting.

This is actually the second time I have modeled Steel from Scratch. The first time was my the first time I ever made a model over 500 polys. Here's a pic:

Reference for this model was this pic mainly:


With this model I am basically trying to outdo that one in every way. It had a lot of issues, most of which you could probably see for yourself, but mainly it just wasn't very good. So I wanted to redo him and see how much better I could make him now that I have some experience.

I have been using a book called Drawing Cutting Edge Comics, by Christopher Hart as a basic reference for my proportions, so I thought he would look okay if I stuck to those guidelines, but he only says that comic book guys are around 8 heads high.

With my model as is,(unfinished really), I still have work to do on all the armor pieces, the knees, the head and face, still need to model the cape, and I thought about modeling the S into his chest, but I was considering doing it with a texture to save on polies. But the model is definitely not finished and I am going to keep tweaking things until he is definitely recognizable as Steel. Having the face finalized, the cape added, and some more details in the armor should help a bit, but the hands could stand to be larger and fixing proportions will help too. Probably not going to have time to fix any of that till Monday though.

Here is the pic I am working from this time:

Painreliever

I have made some modifications to the model. I have been mainly working at getting the face to get into character, but I also made the hands larger, the waist thinner, moved the knees up, and have started working on the cape. He's at 3470 right now, but I haven't deleted hidden faces yet. I am trying to go no higher than 3500 total as that was the original limit for my first Steel model. I may exceed the 3500 when I model his hammer though, we'll see though. I still have details to add in the armor and I am probably going to rework the chest area armor. Here's the newest pics with my attempt at global illumination.

Mark Dygert

I think you are off to a good start but he needs some work. I am glad to see you reworked the head a bit, he had a bit of a childs head before. Big craieum, little face, low on the head.

You made some great improvements, BUT I think his face is still a little low on his head and the eys and nose need to go up so his jaw is more pronouced and not so "old man without his teeth in"
I think I brought the eyes and nose up a bit to high, but the point I am trying to make is with the jaw/teeth/lips/chin area. it is important that superhero's have strong jaws/chins

Painreliever

Thanks for the input! I'll give that a try and see how it looks. I thought I'd throw together my main face references so you can see what I am shooting for. I am basically trying to average them all together. It seems to me the forehead is unusually high on Steel in most the pics I have of him, but the rest of my facial features could probably stand getting moved up to help with the jaw definition. I have been trying to get that hard jawed look and haven't found what I was looking for yet.

I'll try to have another update later tonight or tomorrow morning.

Thegodzero

Dont average, use the first one on the left, its got the greatest dynamic to it and its front view.

Painreliever

Real quick update on the head...here is a perspective shot.
Tried to make the face conform to the first head shot. Still needs some touching up. Whatcha think? Need other pics to tell?

Thegodzero

A front iew would have been nice, but even with out hers my help.

remember there is a black man under that tincan, and seteriotypes are how we design people. so his nose should be shorter and wider. his jaw like we said before needs to be stronger and stronger = less curve. That with the fact that hes covered with mettal and should have harder edges. He needs ears which i added in my paintover.

hope this helps some.

Painreliever

Okay update time!

I think I am getting close to being done. I am pretty happy with how the face is now. I have combined the main armor and musculature into one piece of geometry and deleted the hidden faces. I have redone the chest area to make it more like my reference pics of that style suit. I have cut the poly count back down to 3350. I still need to model some ears, tweak the back of the cape, add small details to the leg and arm armor, and I haven't merged the arm bands with the rest of the mesh so I can probably get 50-100 polies back there too. So I might just be able to squeak in the hammer under budget. Overall I am really pleased with the way he is turning out. I really appreciate all the help and advice you guys have given me. Here is the latest pics, with a head closeup(wireframe) and a color test. Further crits welcome and appreciated.

King-Vitaman

Looks much better, almost there, but his posture is not-balanced, he would fall forward if he were real. I would make his feet bigger too. His lower-legs also look really small where they go into the boots, they are juxtaposed against the thick thighs and the big boots he is wearing, it is especially apparent in the colored pic, so it will be just as apparent when he is skinned. I would bulk up the calves a bit, but leave the knee as thin as it is.

Painreliever

Thanks for pointing that out, I had noticed that when I was adjusting the knee height earlier but forgot to make the calves bigger at the time. With the posture thing, do you think that making the feet larger is enough or should I shift everything south of the knee forward a bit to compensate also? I really haven't touched the feet and calves area since day one of modeling so they're due up for some loving here and I finally have a decent idea how many extra polys I can flush them out with. I will try to get some new shots up this afternoon with some more tweakage. Thanks for the crits!

Mark Dygert

wow the face looks a lot better! NICE WORK! I look at it now and it looks to me, like steel. Great jaw definition. The only suggestion I would make would be to give him more of an intense look, which could be done without changing the model and just doing some nice skin work.

King-Vitaman

I meant his posture mostly when I said the off-balanced thing, his body weight is centered too far forward, but thats not a huge concern since its only a little bit and that could be fixed in the animation. I am confusing and doubting myself in the matter though, so don't worry much about it.

Painreliever

Thanks for the the kind words Vig! Sorry about taking so long to get back to this, got busy here lately and wanted to get things squared away before I posted again.

King-Vitamin: I didn't really mess with his posture, but it seems I could fix it after rigging him. Thanks for pointing it out though.

I am going to try to get that intense look in the texture...hopefully my skills are up to the task. I think I am finally done with the model. He winds up 3498 polies. I couldn't find a place to put the other 2 in the budget...oh well. Overall I am very pleased with the way he has turned out and I think he kicks the crap out of the one I modeled before.

Updates on this version: Deleted backfaces behind arm bands. Added the ears. Fixed the width of the calves as the enter the boots. Detailed the right armband to make it more accurate. Added some detailing to the shin armor/boots. Tweaked the hands and fingers a bit.

I think I have everything set up so that I can UV map it tonight or tommorrow. I plan on mirroring the face, main body armor, arms legs and feet. The chest insignia, arm bands and potentially the whole cape will not have mirrored UVs to accomodate the superman symbols, and non symmetrical geometry.

Please excuse the hard edge running down the center of the model...that won't be there once I have the UV mapping finished.

Heres the pics of the final model:

cholden

Some more quick crits here:
You could smooth most of those hard edges, mostly in the face. While you should use some, using this many hard edges, and on the organic sections, is overkill. Ears are tiny. Character has no traps, making his cape seems to come out of his shoulders. Feet and lower legs seem small. Bulgy calf armor seems odd. No need to render that cape in the back view, it just hides your model. Crotch is thick at bottom. Chest armor seems paper thin with all that bulk under it. Post wires again, I'm wondering where you're burning away all those polygons.

Still, the overall proportions of this character bother me. Maybe a good pose could fix it. Right now, he seems off in a way I can't really explain.

Painreliever

I usually don't finalize my hard edges until I have the texture done, so its pretty safe to say there wont be so many in the final textured version, they just seem to help define the character better when rendering the model(at least to me).

Ears are tiny because in most of the picture references I have for Steel his ears are disproportionately small for his head.

Here's wireframes:

Painreliever

Welp... I think I am pretty much done. Thank you for all your crits and comments. I appreciate all the feedback and though I did not get it all into this model I will attempt to do better in the enxt one. There are some things I could probably make a little more detailed but I am satisfied with its comic book look I guess. Overall I think its turned out pretty decent especially compared to my first version.