Victor-Ryan Character Model - WIP
Hello Everyone, Let me start by introducing myself since I am new to the forums. I'm about to graduate and am working on assets for my Demo Reel. I would greatly appreciate your feedback and criticisms.
Victor-Ryan is a Character I'm currently working on. Ultimately I will texture, Rig, Animate, and Implement this character in engine (Virtools Dev) as a prototype for my portfolio.
Here is the original Concept piece for the model.
When modeling this piece, my target polycount was between 4000 and 5000 tris. I decided to spend a little extra on the Hair and also modeled the character's Sword. The final Count came to 5656 tris. This represents 12 hours of work.
Wires
I opted to model much of the base geometry for the character. Here are shots with superficial geometry hidden.
I still need to go through and properly set up my Smoothing Gruops. After that I will proceed to unwrap and texture the character. I'm planning on the character's textures space to be Two 512 Diffuse maps, one Normal Map, and One specularity Map.
Again, any comments or suggestions are welcomed and encouraged. ^_^
Victor-Ryan is a Character I'm currently working on. Ultimately I will texture, Rig, Animate, and Implement this character in engine (Virtools Dev) as a prototype for my portfolio.
Here is the original Concept piece for the model.
When modeling this piece, my target polycount was between 4000 and 5000 tris. I decided to spend a little extra on the Hair and also modeled the character's Sword. The final Count came to 5656 tris. This represents 12 hours of work.
Wires
I opted to model much of the base geometry for the character. Here are shots with superficial geometry hidden.
I still need to go through and properly set up my Smoothing Gruops. After that I will proceed to unwrap and texture the character. I'm planning on the character's textures space to be Two 512 Diffuse maps, one Normal Map, and One specularity Map.
Again, any comments or suggestions are welcomed and encouraged. ^_^
Replies
mmmmm, "cheractor"?
How many sides are there on the leg? I think I counted about 12, but it's hard to tell. To be honest, for the overal polygon density of the model, any more that 8 sides on a limb is probably overkill.
He might be a bit knockkneed.
One thing you will want to do is to creep the deltoids further down the arm - the actual muscle stops about 1/2way down the upper arm.
Why 2 diffuse maps and only 1 normal/spec map?
the edgeflow however is pretty nice, doesnt look detailed anough to be 5.5k to me.
again 2 diffuse and 1 of specular and normal seems kind of wierd, unless half of the model gets a normal map and spec and the other half doesnt, either that or just alot less detail. I would reccomend using just one big 1024x1024 diffuse, there seems to be alot of detail to be covered on the concept image.
@Ashat - yeah, that's a spelling bug that pops up for me from time to time, now fixed.
@Rick_Stirling - The Upper legs are 8 sided. The Calfs pick up 2 edges at the knee and are 10 sided. He is alittle knockneed but that was consistant with the leg referance I used. I'll bring those in alittle bit so they read beter. I will also move the Deltoid down as you suggested
@Oddmind - I'll play with taking out an edge or two from the lower legs and see if I'm still happy with the results.
As for my texture plans, I felt Normal maps for the objects that are Alpha Maped or otherwise not very visible (Hair, Geometry under Hair, bottom of shoes) don't really need a normal map so why include one? I want to get as much bang for my visual memory buck as possible so to speak. If at all possible I would like to keep his total texture space at or below 1024x1024 total. 2 diffuse, 1 normal and 1 spec at 512 do that (Although since spec is a gretscale image, I could probably cram an Occlusion and Paralax map into my other channels. That will depend on the functionality of the HLSL Shader I end up using.) This is just a personal limit so I could change it if I find it's just too limiting.
I'll post updates alittle later today, keep it commin' ^o^
I tried to cut down the edges in the legs, but they all effect the Silhouette quite a bit. I decided I would have to completely rebuild the lower legs to make it look right (which I don't think is worth the 16-30 polygons it would save.) I would like to do some poly optimization, but most of that will be in the face and hair, both of which are comparatively very detailed. Also note that the poly count includes the sword.
@ ComradeJ - His legs were shorter then his torso, the half/half ratio isn't a hard fast rule, there are exceptions (usually in short people who can have slightly shorter legs)Although I originally made his legs shorter to emphasize his upper body a bit, I opted to lengthen them in this update. Sometimes an idea or "Style" doesn't read the way you would like and I'm not afraid to ditch something that isnt working in a model. Let me know if you like the new Ratio Better.
Here is a much larger round of changes. Most of them are related to helping the character read as more masculine. Although it is supposed to be an effeminate man, I want to make sure he at least reads AS a man.
My changes should reflect the other feedback I've been getting from the various communities. Overall I have taken some of the "style" out of the model (especially the eyes which have been reduced in size significantly.
I'm also considering some design changes. The back felt very plain to me so I added the two pieces to the back, I would appreciate your opinions on these.
Once I'm really satisfied with the geometry, it will be texture time.
Any other feed back is of course greatly appreciated ^_^!
Anyway, I think he looks a little strange. Sorry, I dont mean to dishearten you after you've gotten some previously positive comments here, but there are many funky things about the model and there is eons of room for for improvement I think. Here's some stuff that grabs me:
The body is *very* rigid seeming overall, particularly in side view. Check out this model for some ideas on getting some somewhat more dynamic, interesting and aesthetically appealling forms in there: http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=125067&an=0&page=3#Post125067
The head is very strange. I understand that you're going for somewhat of a style here, but still that front and particularly that profile are pretty odd. It's a very triangular face for a man in the front view, and the side views mouth is a long way forward from the eyes. Check out some front and side views of human beings.
Also, the actual eye socket arrangement is really odd too. Are you putting eyeballs in there, or just painting them straight on? I really feel like a model of this resolution needs eye geometry, and beyond that, some kind of definition of eyelids. Right now, there are none. Just these sort of big smooth hollows. It looks a little spooky, and nothing like human eyes.
I feel like you're totally modeling from your head, and that stylized or no, checking out some human ref. could really help you out here. Keep at it!
You have a nice model going there, with some work it could be great
@ ComradeJ - His legs were shorter then his torso, the half/half ratio isn't a hard fast rule, there are exceptions (usually in short people who can have slightly shorter legs)Although I originally made his legs shorter to emphasize his upper body a bit, I opted to lengthen them in this update. Sometimes an idea or "Style" doesn't read the way you would like and I'm not afraid to ditch something that isnt working in a model. Let me know if you like the new Ratio Better.
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I think they're much better now. Still a bit short, but that can be read as style, where it used to be just weird.
Oh, and listen to Daz (as if you wouldn't), he makes valid points. The triangular shape of the face gives him that girlish-boy look, which seems to be what you're going for, so he might lose character if you do lose that. As a contrast though, you might want to widen up the nose, or something to make him more masculine.
The side profile does look odd. Try finding some reference, the eyebrows and chin usually just about line up.
That thing is a bit scary, Is it male , female? I dunno
There a gazzilion poly that dont develop the form at all,
Everything is too stiff, the hair! omg look like stairs.
The design itself is lacking a bit to, I dont see anything that realy get my eye
The sideview of the face is scary, I mean what happen there man, The eyes area is like way way back there, Doesnt realy make any sense, Anime or not, It need a good cleaning up poly wise, Some work on the form and overall Feel of it,
but hey, Im just saying, Thats me, and I hate everybody!
Goodluck!
@ Xalter - I don't know if I would say Anime in particular, but it's definitely an animation style.
@ ComradeJ - I played with the legs some more and tried to thicken them a bit, and moved them closer together. Sorry I didn't grab a picture without his skirt, but if you want I can post one up later. How does it read now?
@ Zhaboka - Thanks for the comments and welcome to the forums.
@ b1ll - Most of the polys are to ensure the Silhouette reads cleanly. I could probably get away without them but felt it was worth the extra polys to make it read well in rotation. I will admit I was fairly liberal in a few places but I don't think it was anything too ridiculous. Once the hair is mapped, it should read better. It also currently doesn't have smoothing groups assigned. About the design, any suggestions on what you think would improve it? Right now I'm planning to achieve most of my details in the mapping. I appreciate the comments, even if you have everybody ^o^
@almighty_gir - lol WTF?
The Face - Since everyone commented on it, here are my comments all together. Yes the lower part of the face was forward a bit too much. That should now be corrected. I could add eyes and eye geometry to the character but I was planning on just addressing that in the Normal Map. I can still make him blink with the geometry present, and he doesn't need to be able to "Look" at anything with his eyes so I didn't think making separate eye geometry was particularly important. It might be worth a few extra polys to add an eyelid and round the eye a bit though. I'll do that next and see how it looks.
In the mean time, here is an update with legs and another shot of the face. It looks better to me already, but tell me what you think.
yeah the hair might red whell when textured still it reads as "blocky" and isnt due to non existance of smoothing groups.
Here is a quick paint over (sorry, its a bad one.)
The legs are looking a lot better