Polycount - Generals - [Justin_Meisse]

Justin Meisse

I've got some scratches down on paper but no scanner close by, seriously!

CHEMICAL WARFARE!
hulking, hunchbacked guy in a ratty trenchcoat (WWII german style) with a kind of improvised gasmask (just a sack over the head with goggles and a tube coming out). Oh yeah, he's going to have a big alligator tail as well (damn them mutations)

His weapon is going to be some sort of gas gun, haven't figured out the design yet.

Justin Meisse

link
going to see if my brother wants to collaborate on the concept

Valandar

Looks a lot like one of the Neo-Soviet Chemsprayer troops from the short-lived tabletop wargame, VOR...

Justin Meisse

well after some fighting me and my brother came up with this:
link

Emil Mujanovic

I like the one on the bottom left, it definately has potential to be developed into one bad ass general.
The original concept looks good, but doesn't come across as a General, same as the big dude in the second concept. Maybe clothed or developed a little more I could be wrong, but you have my vote on the dude in the bottom left!
Keep it up!

-caseyjones

Justin Meisse

thanks man, here's an update, clothes will come once I get the body solid
link

Justin Meisse

I started with the plan to do it all in Maya but I'm not that good at hi-poly stuff so I'm going to clean it up a bit and z-brush the guy (after I put some arms on)

Justin Meisse

zbrushisms

legs will be thickened considerably as well as general thickening of the whole body.

Justin Meisse

zbrush is so awesome!

Justin Meisse

He's in Maya now, I had more detail on him in zbrush but it seems like anything over 800,000 polygons was crashing maya
I could fiddle with it all week but I gotta get my ass in gear. Time to model his gear and other bits.

rooster

I have that same problem.. how to detail in zbrush and add bits in max.. the high detail export just freezes max, so im thinking of taking it all back into zbrush after adding the max stuff to do some final touch ups and using zmapper for normals.
Model is coming on great, I wonder if you could make him a bit more powerful by thinning the waist and butt, and beefing up the upper body and thighs. Keep it up!

RE3456

I think with the model you have right there, you can easily get the same shape with 300000~40000 polys.

Justin Meisse

Rooster: well I started working on his gear so I don't want to change his body, thanks for the suggestions though.

RE3456: yeah, he's around 400,000 right now

Here's some of the gear, I plan on putting some pouches and stuff on the harness, maybe zbrush them a bit, I dunno.

Justin Meisse

Almost done with the hi-poly model, just need to give him some toe-nails.



update: I just did a quick paint over to show that he isn't naked!

Justin Meisse

I cooked hamburgers tonight, they were delicious

aesir

definitely coming along well. I'd like to see you throw in some scales and bumpiness if you can though to give the skin a little high level of detail.

Justin Meisse

awesome, I was able to split the model up so I can subdivide the pieces more (maya would crash when importing parts in excess of 1 million polygons). Here's some goofing around, I'm new to the projection master.

rooster

I never even thought of splitting up the model.. good call

Justin Meisse

rooster: I just found out something really cool, zbrush will only export geometry that is visible, so you can mask an area, hide it, then export without deleting the hidden geometry.

dammit, I just had an idea for a cooler general but it's a little too late to start over

Justin Meisse

originally I was going to have his mouth kind of sealed over the breather but then I thought "how did he get so burly if he can't open his mouth?" I zbrushed some teeth in, basically this guy is a sort of amphibious lizard that clamps the breather in his mouth when he's on land.

I got some extra alphas, the nice material, and lighting setup from this thread

Justin Meisse

YES!! It's just a test but it is my first normal mapped character!!!

edit:here's a link to the normal map

rooster

Nice one! feels good dont it

Blyss

This one is promising

aesir

nice job, normals turned out well!

Justin Meisse

Thanks guys, there is a problem, his simple sillouette means the whole model is still under about 2,000 polygons
Good thing we got that extension, I really don't want to modify the character design. What should I do with those exra polies?

Wells

make him a twin, only tiny, and make it ride on his shoulders with a harness and whip.

Justin Meisse

How about a mudpuppy assistant carrying a golf bag of harpoons (general will have a harpoon gun)

Wells

haha. yes. make a big barrel strapped to his back filled with harpoons. give it full gimp-wear with a leash!

Cubik

Maybe a cleaner bird/fish as a sidekick?

Justin Meisse

lol, my next model will be a gimp, dedicated to Sectaurs.
I did some z-doddling with a modified version of the general's mesh, I'm not sure about the head but since he's going to have alot of hardware covering his shoulders and neck I can swap heads out easily.

Wells

Hooray! I'd actually leave the head the same, like he's enslaving one of his own. Makes it seem eviler.

Justin Meisse

Working on the sidekick's body a bit:

Justin Meisse

High poly sidekick is done, I'll add more detail to the normal maps in photoshop (rivets, doodads, etc...)


Here's the low poly version of the general with a silhouette of the sidekick for size reference.


Oh yeah, I'm starting to panic now
update: ok, I went too crazy on the detail I keep getting memory exception errors trying bake the normal maps I'm going to try and do it one piece at a time and combine in photoshop.

Justin Meisse

ok, zbrushed parts came out perfect, the high poly armor I modeled in maya, eh, not so good. I'm going to work on it and try not to freak out.

vahl

really weird...did you delete the history and froze transformations ? (random guess, I just know these two things can be quite bitchy, just never rendered normals with maya)

maybe try another renderer...or export it as obj then re-import it...

Justin Meisse

turns out alot of the problems were reversed normals on alot of my highpoly armor, I always forget to check my normals!
Anyways, working on the weapon, I'm going to be cutting this one really close!

Justin Meisse

still awake

Justin Meisse

this thing is kicking my ass

Justin Meisse

well almost there the normal map generating really screwed me

Justin Meisse

I finished with minutes to spare, ugh, this contest really put me through the ringer, I pulled an all nighter. I gotta thanks Chris Holden for all his support, encouragement, and ass-kickings to get this thing done.

beauty
flats
concept
wire

he's way under the 5,000 budget but I had to finish him

cholden

Glad you finished, Justin. You made the all important final step that what-may-be over a hundred people couldn't. Now, let's see that environments wip thread.

Justin Meisse

thanks to this thread, I was able to knock out a slightly nicer looking mental ray render