The Torcher
polycounter lvl 17
Hi All
Long time lurker, first time poster.
I have been to a couple talks by the Epic guys on their workflow of their wonderful models for the upcoming Gears of War game and it has truly inspired me to try to create a a model not only in that game's artistic direction but try to use their workflow as well. I have gathered a great deal of resource and will be creating a flame thrower character that I am hoping looks like it could fit into the game. I am happy to say I not only be creating a head, but an entire character this time :P
This will be a learning process for me and I hope others can learn from it as well.
Here goes.
C&C as always. I am doing most of this model from just a rough idea I have in mind and because of this I might go down some bad directions before I complete this.
The first part of the process, create a high poly model that you can then then use to create normal maps from.
Long time lurker, first time poster.
I have been to a couple talks by the Epic guys on their workflow of their wonderful models for the upcoming Gears of War game and it has truly inspired me to try to create a a model not only in that game's artistic direction but try to use their workflow as well. I have gathered a great deal of resource and will be creating a flame thrower character that I am hoping looks like it could fit into the game. I am happy to say I not only be creating a head, but an entire character this time :P
This will be a learning process for me and I hope others can learn from it as well.
Here goes.
C&C as always. I am doing most of this model from just a rough idea I have in mind and because of this I might go down some bad directions before I complete this.
The first part of the process, create a high poly model that you can then then use to create normal maps from.
Replies
The character's looking great, I'm also curious at the Gears of War workflow. I've been doing some next gen stuff...also been drooling over their work, it'd be nice to see how they go about it.
Looking cool!
Gav
Thus far it's looking very badass. I agree with AZ, the abundance of screws is really odd.
[/ QUOTE ]Plus the steep 90 degree edge drop-offs may cause problems come normalmap time
i look forward to seeing the rest
MoP - Thanks, me too.
eX - You are the first to comment on the eyes. I do see what you are saying though
Marine - Yeah I fear I have quickly deviated from GOW to Fallout.
G- Heyas man. You are everywhere. The workflow is rather straight forward. Create high poly model with the only concern is it makes a good normal map. Build low poly. Make normal. Do a happy dance.
Astro - Yeah I think I may have gone a little screw crazy. I have them on a single layer and all instanced so I can easily change them if need be.
ebagg - Thanks Screws noted
kat - I did some quick tests with the screws for normals and I think because I have a bevel on them they looked good. How large they end up being on the texture I am not sure. Like I said before this is a learning experience for me. They are all instanced so I can change the master to edit them all at once.
aniceto - Yeah. Thanks
I started working on the large harness the main portion of the chest armor will be attached to.
keep up the good work.
That said, good work, love the detail everywhere.
Sectaurs - Heh. Yeah I have gone a little nuts with them
ComradeJ - I appreciate your concerns. I am really not very good at unique design.
I decided to remove some and shrink some of the collar and start on the under armor.
I love the look of this guy, I think the eyeholes and helmet in general is kick-ass, but I don't like those screw heads at all. Those gots to go. They're just busying up the head, distracting from the shape and features of the helmet, and they made the collar look like an Erector set (glad you took them off of there).
Don't get married to an idea or design.
question: you started with the mask, did you make the head first? or start on the googles.
...or start on the googles.
[/ QUOTE ]
I don't think a search engine will look good on this model
Btw, even though the collar of now looks ok, but where did the coolness of that other one go?
I agree with whats been said about the eyes, im not too big a fan of that shape
As well as you were talking about using a workflow inspired from the epic modelers (<3) can you somewhat explain in your thoughts what makes their workflow so good for you, and perhaps briefly tell us a little about their workflow.
Thanks, and keep up the wonderful work! I think its awsome and it will really pimp out your portfolio!
respect
The fancy clasp that holds the gasmask pipes on the side of the cheek are really strong interesting forms that will generate very good normals , the giant neck/chest piece that forms into the torso however is weak and plain in comparison and as much as I know this could be early formative work, I have also found in the past that these kind of forms can trap you when trying to make things live up to the refinement of more flushed out areas like the head when you have gone too far with smaller polish details before taking care of the overal medium details.
When I focused more on texturing than 3d, I had a mantra of
'Big brush, medium brush, little brush' that served me well and savaged me whenever I ignored it.
The same has been true for me since I started to focus purely on 3d, these little details cause me to lose my way if I begin on them too early.
Other than that, this looks like very promising work, just try to keep to the correct workflow and remember that 1 soft curve nestled close to 1 tight curve produces far better results than 1 hundred flat bevels.
Looking forward to seeing more.
r.
Sounds like pretty sound advice, thanks for the insight.
I have a question for you: what exactly do you mean when you say "1 soft curve nestled close to 1 tight curve produces far better results than 1 hundred flat bevels." I'm not exactly sure I follow...
Think what he means is that a lively topology describes the surface better than dead linear topology does.. or something. >_>
Though it doesn't seem that you use that other type of bad method, but always something to have in mind. ~back to fumbling I go~
These read well ingame when the specularity hits them, when you push more than 2 or 3 bumps close together, you lose them all into noise though.
The slanted square with rectangle outcropping just in front of the neckline in the first image is a good example of flat extruded surfaces.
You see, you have essentially made the same shape underneath it, duplicated it up above, shrank it and then put 6 bolts there. That won't read well ingame and won't generate a good normal map.
A good normal map is one with lots of subtle undulating mixing of colour, flat bevels and tightly chamfered ww2 style panelling create normals with a lot of medium blue.
It is only the chamfered edge that generates some colour in the normal and ingame that translates to an off or on specularity effect as light moves over the form which will communicate the forms poorly.
When you have more curvy forms, there is always part of the curve that is brightly specular and part that is darkly shadowed which communicates form.
Flat surfaces just middle out and disappear.
Flat panelling was the king of design forms in FPS games in general in the past because they were the easiest to fake with more realism as you could never quite view it at an angle that would expose the trickery so blatantly.
That is not useful now that we need more interesting curved forms to make the normals pop more.
I hope that helps clarify what I meant.
r.