And another scenery of my iOS project is finally done! It's not much polished (stock images *coff coff*), but my deadline is near and I don't have other time to work more on the graphics. I'm still enough satisfied with the final result. Now it's time to get back on the code, there are many things to be done before the final release. I'm keeping a development blog of this game, if you're just curious.
Hey everyone. I'm new to Polycount, though I've been lurking for a while. I'm a complete beginner when it comes to 3D modelling but I'm excited to learn and grow. I have a project to model a character in less than 600 tris and this is my first attempt.
I would love some feedback or advice!
Here is my Concept and Orthographic
And this is what I have so far.
(It's been a while since I've posted images on a forum, I hope it works!)
Right now she looks really boxy, try to work a bit more with triangulated shapes. Look into a geosphere-esque shape for the head. I can also suggest rotating the legs 45 degrees so (topdown) they look like <> <> instead of [] [], this will reduce blockiness a lot.
I think you need to cut three or so loops from the legs. Personally I'd also add 1 extra side to the upper leg, because it's thicker than the rest of the limb.
I can't seem to get her looking not boxy without going over the tri limit, which is fustrating. The leg position has helped however. Thanks for the reply. I'll keep trying.
Spizami - It would be nice, and it would probably help you to see the whole mirrored model in order to check that everything is well proportioned. Right now I think that the legs and specially the lower legs are too fat when compared with the reference you provided. also, they are too wide when seen from the side. I would give her a little thinner ankle. I would make the arms thinner too. I can't really tell as it's not mirrored, but i'm kinda guessing that her torso is a bit wide.
Now these are some minor details: the nose could be pointing a bit more upwards and maybe putting an extra quad or tri to the chin would make it a little less pointy. finally, the shoulder is pointing too low. Also the neck could be longer (pushing the clavicle down, would fix it).
I think the design is pretty nice, and your model is looking cool. just check if those suggestions make sense.
Made a hand after watching a youtube tutorial. 720 tris
Looks pretty good I think, Ive never tried making a hand before. The topology wont work for animation so its kinda useless.
Spizami; cool design, but yeah, keep experimenting with that mesh. You're losing her dynamic. Think more about form, and less about if it's possible to animate - that is my advice. Break the rules you know from quad modelling.
Gosh that is cute, osman.
It kind of does, Delko. Not every bone needs to have anything assigned (or something assigned at both ends). But you probably actually already knew that :B
Assign the tip of the finger+joint verts to the outermost finger bone (distal phalanx idunno), assign the innermost finger section+joint to the innermost bone. Don't assign the middle part of the finger to the middle bone (well ok, you have one ring there you need to assign, but if it was simpler)... the middle section is now the deformation zone between the other two, and there is no blending - it animates alright.
It's probably common knowledge, but it was a bit of a revelation to me, honestly.
It kind of does, Delko. Not every bone needs to have anything assigned (or something assigned at both ends). But you probably actually already knew that :B
Assign the tip of the finger+joint verts to the outermost finger bone (distal phalanx idunno), assign the innermost finger section+joint to the innermost bone. Don't assign the middle part of the finger to the middle bone (well ok, you have one ring there you need to assign, but if it was simpler)... the middle section is now the deformation zone between the other two, and there is no blending - it animates alright.
It's probably common knowledge, but it was a bit of a revelation to me, honestly.
I'm back. I think I've improved the body a bit. Ignore the head, I'm still working on that one!
Thanks for all the advice, I'm still applying some of it to the model. I have a ways to go yet but I've got time!
(I've got work in an hour and all I wanna do is work on my model! )
@GabrielP Animated? Could ya show them animations please? Seeing that your model lacks any extra joint loops whatsoever, I doubt this model will animate too well. Also, add more definition to his hands, they are like a pair of planks now – very fugly, tbh. And also the texture could benefit from extra contrast and detail. Add more, you know, fur to it.
@Orangeknight Oops thanks for the heads up, its fixed now
@9skulls
Yeah, my budget was 500 tries so I was already going over that, but the client wanted the bell ect. I would have liked to do more with the hand if I could have. The animations didnt end up being drastic enough to be seriously effected by the lack of anim loops around the arm pits, shoulders, and legs. Ill get some gifs up of those anims later on. Thanks guys
It is just for preview here but the texture could be lowered at anytime if needed
I dont know how importing it is but i have learn that its better to work on the same resulution your going to use so you cane see easier what will be seen and what that just would be like noise, anyone else that agree on this point and have learnd and/or do it this way?
I dont know how importing it is but i have learn that its better to work on the same resulution your going to use so you cane see easier what will be seen and what that just would be like noise, anyone else that agree on this point and have learnd and/or do it this way?
For lowpoly textures, this is what I learned too. Plus it just looks better to manually optimize your texture (while you paint it) than to size down the image in photoshop.
Thanks @lean, @badcogg and @tigerfeet for your excellent feedback and tips for my last model, I now pretty much get asymmetrical texturing! So I had another idea for a character and would love a couple pointers for some techniques which are currently witchcraft to me.
I've done a sketch of this little mage dude, want to 3D him up. In the little spheres there are supposed to be little beetle models that sit there as if frozen in amber.
I plan on making a little beetle model, but how to I get the effect (cheaply and easily) of them being in a transparent sphere? Is it a case of having a poly sphere with a 50% opacity texture? Any way to make it look nice and glowy? I've not worked with alpha channels on textures yet, hoping it's not crazy complicated!
@Mr_Drayton From a design point of view, your UI is way too busy with colors. Your bg color is orange, your main buttons are orange, labels are orange. That makes it really, really difficult for your eyes to catch on the actual point of interest. See how the "race results" screen looks much more pleasant to your eyes than the actual main menu screen? I'd change the bg completelly and use the orange only for the really important stuff, like interactive elements such as those buttons you got. And even then it'd demand more refining in how to differentiate active and selected objects from non-active ones.
@Mr_Drayton Have to agree with 9skulls there, nothing stands out - the go button needs to scream, "Touch me!". Check out this blog crammed with mobile GUI designs http://playpeep.tumblr.com/
The common themes among the better ones are contrast and a clear hierarchy of what you want the player to interact with and in what order. Hope it helps!
Mr Drayton, get more neutral colours in your background and brighter keep the bright colours for buttons/logo, also the white text with black stroke is hard to read so I would recommend just black writing for most stuff that rests on those bright colours. ui on ios can be a pain in the ass.
You can do alpha in the alpha channel, or another texture pass. But one tex is easiest, PNG is a good way to go and just give the sphere uv area a grey color (darker is more transparent) and everything solid white).
For a good glow you need an illum stage. Basically another texture with your alpha channel would work.
You can also paint some glow onto surrounding materials so they are catching the light. But it would really only effect the hat a little, so you definitely need an illum mask.
You may even want to just have a seperate texture for the globs. Then you don't need a mask for the glow, in 3d or game engine you can just make that material illuminated.
I'd just do a sphere. But if yoou wanted a glass bowl effect you can just use a smaller sphere inside the outside one with same tex, and invert the normals to give you the 'inside of the glass'.
i built a small casual game - its pretty simple acutally. more an exercise to code something and finishing it than reinventing the wheel and i did graphics too
its quite not finished - playermodel is still placeholder, need of a proper introduction screen, maybe give a try at gamecenter/openfeint etc.
gameplay is really simple - the coin with the faces has to stay in the screen - while all the blocks move upwards all the time. difficulty increases over time (speed increases and different blocks appear too) once the playercoin is out of screen, gameover. try again.
@9Skulls@Leisure_Centaur@Ged
This is for sure precious help and feedback! Thanks guys!
I admit, the GUI style I have now is the same identical GUI style I used at the very beginning of the project. I liked it before, I still like it somehow, but you are right on all the points: it doesn't stand out... And shame on me, I'm noticing it only now!
Looking at that PlayPeep website makes me want to redesign the whole GUI from the scratch. And probably I will do it, my GUI is way below the average!
Wow, I just read that the original Crash Bandicoot model was as much as 512 tris total and was animated purely with vertices instead of bones. Also the original game engine was able to show around 1800 tris per frame.
What does this have to do with anything? Absolutely nothing. Carry on. Great stuff here!
@Leisure Centaur Might I suggest a geodesic sphere? I think you'll get a more regular round look with that even if you have to cut polies enough that you get some sharp edges in the silhouette.
Also if you REALLY want to save polies you could not model the scarab at all, just put a couple planes in there with the scarab on as an alpha texture.
Also if you REALLY want to save polies you could not model the scarab at all, just put a couple planes in there with the scarab on as an alpha texture.
Or if you can afford the extra texture space instead, you could make the "orb" of just a plane with circular alpha map and spend all the extra tris in the critter inside. You would then make the "orb" plane face the camera at all times so that it'd appear as an actual orb.
Though you really need to sacrifice big chunk of your texture for the orb just to make sure the orb's edges won't look all jagged up when viewed at close range. And to make sure that the critter won't clip through the plane.
I guess it all depends on how close will the viewer get to the orb. It'd also require the orb to be a perfect circle all around.. And it might still end up looking horrible.
Nice Gabriel, maybe you should high light some more parts that are supposed to have shadows, but i'm not the best person to criticize, he looks really good ^^
Here's the guy i'm praticing hand painting on, still wip
1000 tris - 512 texture, Sorry if the image is too big, i don't know how to size down here on polycount.
@Seyhk Is he a moblin? That silhouette looks really familiar. I like the trick you did with the skulls, modeling two and putting the other two on the texture. I'l have to remember that!
@GabrielP I agree with Seyhk, I think the texture (specifically in the hoodie) needs more contrast, more highs and lows. Right now it all kind of blends together into a blob. That evil face, is that just a replacement texture or is it extra geometry that you bring forward? Either way, I like it, reminds me of Annie in LoL
Thanks guys for the complements! Ill start playing with contrasting it more now. @Tigerfeet The evil face is just a plane behind the head, the head and the hood/plane have two separate bones rigged to them, so the head can sink back into the darkness to reveal the evil face.
GabrielP, I think it desperately needs some ambient occlusion or at least some contrast and color variation. I can barely read her facial features, and it's really popping even though it's under a big hood.
@GabrielP Hmm, I'll have to be completely honest here, IMHO it looks worse. By painting light and shadow in what looks like cloth folds you kinda killed the flat style you had going on. I think you can enhance it without worrying about small details at all.
This is a quick paint over with a suggestion of what I mean, I don't know if it differs much from the style you're aiming but whatever.
All I did was add some levels/brightness/contrast/curves adjustment layers, pain in some highlights in the eyes (some blue in the normal eyes and some oranges in the evil eyes), add in some fake ambient occlusion (which I tinted purple, you don't wanna just add black shadows, it'll look dull) and that was it.
Baking an AO from your low poly is easy no matter the program you're using and there are plenty of tutorials out there, I can help ya if you can't find any. Just add the AO bake in a layer on top of it all in Multiply mode, colorize it with a hue/saturation adjustment toa nice purpleish tint or something and you've got yourself a good starting point.
Wow, I had done some stuff with AO maps before but I had no idea the effect it could have on a low poly models texture. Thanks so much felipefrango for the heads up. Here is what she came out as.
Personally Im a fan of the bit more detail I added with the wrinkles so I decided to keep that
Replies
Looking good Mr! Keep on it, don't give in
I would love some feedback or advice!
Here is my Concept and Orthographic
And this is what I have so far.
(It's been a while since I've posted images on a forum, I hope it works!)
I think you need to cut three or so loops from the legs. Personally I'd also add 1 extra side to the upper leg, because it's thicker than the rest of the limb.
looking very awsome
Now these are some minor details: the nose could be pointing a bit more upwards and maybe putting an extra quad or tri to the chin would make it a little less pointy. finally, the shoulder is pointing too low. Also the neck could be longer (pushing the clavicle down, would fix it).
I think the design is pretty nice, and your model is looking cool. just check if those suggestions make sense.
Made a hand after watching a youtube tutorial. 720 tris
Looks pretty good I think, Ive never tried making a hand before. The topology wont work for animation so its kinda useless.
Replaced my character model with a proper one. Got tired with the blockout one.
Gosh that is cute, osman.
It kind of does, Delko. Not every bone needs to have anything assigned (or something assigned at both ends). But you probably actually already knew that :B
Assign the tip of the finger+joint verts to the outermost finger bone (distal phalanx idunno), assign the innermost finger section+joint to the innermost bone. Don't assign the middle part of the finger to the middle bone (well ok, you have one ring there you need to assign, but if it was simpler)... the middle section is now the deformation zone between the other two, and there is no blending - it animates alright.
It's probably common knowledge, but it was a bit of a revelation to me, honestly.
Keep up the awesomeness guys.
no man that's totally off ...
http://itunes.apple.com/app/ibath/id486196001?mt=8
now heaps faster and new camera views:
Thanks for all the advice, I'm still applying some of it to the model. I have a ways to go yet but I've got time!
(I've got work in an hour and all I wanna do is work on my model!
Otherwise the topo is pretty good to my eyes.
@9skulls
Yeah, my budget was 500 tries so I was already going over that, but the client wanted the bell ect. I would have liked to do more with the hand if I could have. The animations didnt end up being drastic enough to be seriously effected by the lack of anim loops around the arm pits, shoulders, and legs. Ill get some gifs up of those anims later on. Thanks guys
It is just for preview here but the texture could be lowered at anytime if needed
For lowpoly textures, this is what I learned too. Plus it just looks better to manually optimize your texture (while you paint it) than to size down the image in photoshop.
@osman: the new character model is absolutely lovely!
Is that Alex from A Clockwork Orange?
Thanks @lean, @badcogg and @tigerfeet for your excellent feedback and tips for my last model, I now pretty much get asymmetrical texturing! So I had another idea for a character and would love a couple pointers for some techniques which are currently witchcraft to me.
I've done a sketch of this little mage dude, want to 3D him up. In the little spheres there are supposed to be little beetle models that sit there as if frozen in amber.
I plan on making a little beetle model, but how to I get the effect (cheaply and easily) of them being in a transparent sphere? Is it a case of having a poly sphere with a 50% opacity texture? Any way to make it look nice and glowy? I've not worked with alpha channels on textures yet, hoping it's not crazy complicated!
Looking forward to see updates on that
The common themes among the better ones are contrast and a clear hierarchy of what you want the player to interact with and in what order. Hope it helps!
You can do alpha in the alpha channel, or another texture pass. But one tex is easiest, PNG is a good way to go and just give the sphere uv area a grey color (darker is more transparent) and everything solid white).
For a good glow you need an illum stage. Basically another texture with your alpha channel would work.
You can also paint some glow onto surrounding materials so they are catching the light. But it would really only effect the hat a little, so you definitely need an illum mask.
You may even want to just have a seperate texture for the globs. Then you don't need a mask for the glow, in 3d or game engine you can just make that material illuminated.
I'd just do a sphere. But if yoou wanted a glass bowl effect you can just use a smaller sphere inside the outside one with same tex, and invert the normals to give you the 'inside of the glass'.
its quite not finished - playermodel is still placeholder, need of a proper introduction screen, maybe give a try at gamecenter/openfeint etc.
gameplay is really simple - the coin with the faces has to stay in the screen - while all the blocks move upwards all the time. difficulty increases over time (speed increases and different blocks appear too) once the playercoin is out of screen, gameover. try again.
This is for sure precious help and feedback! Thanks guys!
I admit, the GUI style I have now is the same identical GUI style I used at the very beginning of the project. I liked it before, I still like it somehow, but you are right on all the points: it doesn't stand out... And shame on me, I'm noticing it only now!
Looking at that PlayPeep website makes me want to redesign the whole GUI from the scratch. And probably I will do it, my GUI is way below the average!
@Kio
Hey, it looks lovely!
Seriously, thanks so much, I feel like you should be getting a consultancy fee here, so helpful!
I shall look into getting the orbs nice and glassy, minimum number of tris for a lowpoly sphere?
I wouldn't say there's any set number, just make it look even with your model.
What does this have to do with anything? Absolutely nothing. Carry on. Great stuff here!
Also if you REALLY want to save polies you could not model the scarab at all, just put a couple planes in there with the scarab on as an alpha texture.
Though you really need to sacrifice big chunk of your texture for the orb just to make sure the orb's edges won't look all jagged up when viewed at close range. And to make sure that the critter won't clip through the plane.
I guess it all depends on how close will the viewer get to the orb. It'd also require the orb to be a perfect circle all around.. And it might still end up looking horrible.
Meh, just follow what Tiger said :baby:
This guy looks like so much f-ing fun congrats, if I were you I'd expand on this idea.
Awesome work everyone!:thumbup:
Anyways here is my good friend, Nibbles:
thoughts?
Here's the guy i'm praticing hand painting on, still wip
1000 tris - 512 texture, Sorry if the image is too big, i don't know how to size down here on polycount.
@GabrielP I agree with Seyhk, I think the texture (specifically in the hoodie) needs more contrast, more highs and lows. Right now it all kind of blends together into a blob. That evil face, is that just a replacement texture or is it extra geometry that you bring forward? Either way, I like it, reminds me of Annie in LoL
@Tigerfeet The evil face is just a plane behind the head, the head and the hood/plane have two separate bones rigged to them, so the head can sink back into the darkness to reveal the evil face.
I miss my zelda games..
This is a quick paint over with a suggestion of what I mean, I don't know if it differs much from the style you're aiming but whatever.
All I did was add some levels/brightness/contrast/curves adjustment layers, pain in some highlights in the eyes (some blue in the normal eyes and some oranges in the evil eyes), add in some fake ambient occlusion (which I tinted purple, you don't wanna just add black shadows, it'll look dull) and that was it.
Baking an AO from your low poly is easy no matter the program you're using and there are plenty of tutorials out there, I can help ya if you can't find any. Just add the AO bake in a layer on top of it all in Multiply mode, colorize it with a hue/saturation adjustment toa nice purpleish tint or something and you've got yourself a good starting point.
Personally Im a fan of the bit more detail I added with the wrinkles so I decided to keep that