Challenge #30 - SF Redesign - cyi - Ken

cyi

Hey everyone! This is my first post here after lurking your awesome forums for a bit. I was thinking about starting a project like this anyways, so when i saw this contest a couple days ago I had to go for it. Here's my concept for Ken...the idea is for a younger version of him not long after he's begun his training. He's more slender with younger features and I put him in kind of a preppy track suit since he's a rich boy Hopefully I didn't get started on him too late since I see a few are already well on their way with some awesome models. Ken has always been my favorite SF character, so I hope you don't mind that I'm also gonna take a crack at him caseyjones. Cheers.

Emil Mujanovic

Not at all dude. Doesn't state anywhere in the rules that a character can only be done by 1 person. So by all means go for it
I was going to do a younger Ken as well, but I might steer clear now and try something different.
Great start on the concept and will be keeping an eye out on this entry.

-caseyjones

cyi

Started roughing out the model...I'm going to use this as a base for zbrush. I know I've still got some 3 and 5 sided polys to deal with before throwing this into zbrush. I tend to make my characters' heads too big, so please let me know if it looks out of whack to you as well as anything else that looks horribly wrong. I need to check it against some anatomy reference before advancing much further. One question I have is since this is my first try at a zbrush/normal map model, should I model the clothes/props seperately and import them individually in zbrush, or do it all at once (if that even makes any sense)? Thanks for looking

cyi

Now that I look at it, his arms are wayyy too long

cyi

Some more progress...tweaked some proportions, worked more on the body and started modeling his gear. I still need to figure out how to approach his hair..for that, would it be beneficial to try and zbrush it or just use some regular old alpha planes? He's sitting at 3048 tris at the moment. Comments/crit very much appreeeeeeshed! Might have to take a break on this guy for the next couple days to finish up a couple other projects, but I'm itching to start zbrushing, so who knows.

cyi

Updates...worked on the face...started blocking in the hair and worked on the track suit. As always, comments/crit are very welcome. Thanks for looking!

Gav

Looking cool so far, pretty true to your concept. Not that it's neccessary or anything, but you could probably get by (in the poly limit) with modeling the toes individually.

Good work so far!
Gav

hawken

looking great. went a bit insane on the edgeloops for the mouth though

better spent on the back and hair IMO

cyi

Here's the high res sculpt of the head/chest...for some reason I am pretty sure I'm going about this ass-backwards. It's seeming like there is too much to figure out in order to finish this guy on time, so I don't know if I'm going to make the deadline. I have been making displacement maps out of this to preview how the normal map is going to look in maya (I don't know how to make normal maps yet), and it was working fine, but all of a sudden it won't let me export them at the highest division level...just gives me an error message. Maybe I can get normal maps extracted without this problem but I am unsure at this point. The ears look like crap...I'm thinking about scrapping this sculpt and starting anew. Any comments/ideas? I'm gonna hit up the zbrush forums for help.
*edit: I figured it out. That was easy I wonder why I still can't export it at the highest division level, though...I subdivided it 4 times but it will only let me export it at 3.

DeathByChris

i like how hes not super buff but really lean.
im diggin the track suit to, but not the colors im not to crazy about the blue.

fogmann

Looks nice, cyi, I like it, and it seems to be true to your concept, which is great. The face sculpt also looks nice, but ears seem to be too small and too high up, and could also use some more definition. I second what Hawken said about distribution of your polies: there are too many in the face and too few in the rest of the body. One thing I noticed is that you modeled him almost as if he had no clothes. I understand the track suit is tight, but it looks like he has to spray it on, and then scrape it off with razor blade. Give him some room to breathe and feel comfortable, like especially under armpits, where it would hurt if the shirt is too tight. On the other hand, I hope sculpting in some cloth folds will help.

By the way, you can use ZBrush to bake normals, don't need to import it to Maya and bake there. Don't waste time testing with displacement: normal mapped model would look just as your high poly, so worry about that once you get to generating normal maps. Use can use ZMapper for creating normalmaps, and if your lowest level model is not the same as the final low poly, you can also use ZMapper to transfer your normal map to the low poly model that has different topology.

cyi

gavimage: Thanks...I did some more work on the mesh including making individual toes, but in my haste to sort out zbrush stuff I forgot to post the update...I'll do that tonight.
hawken: This is true about the edgeloops on the mouth, but I intend to rig it for facial animation and all that when it's finished, so I'm thinking about keeping them. I've added more polys to the rest of the body, so hopefully it balances out this discrepancy.
deathbychris: Glad you like it. I'm finding the track suit kind of boring myself, so I'll play with the design/colors. I should be able to whip up a quick concept maybe this evening, but the clock is ticking
fogmann: Thanks for your analysis! As I mentioned before, I've realized the concept is a bit boring but I don't have the time to totally rework the thing so I'm doing my best to spice it up. You are totally right about the ears. I plan on resculpting the head entirely anyways since I want to make some changes to the base mesh, but at least I know what I'm doing now (sort of). Really good call on the track suit...I'm going to stretch it out a bit and hopefully when I sculpt the cloth it will look more natural. Also, thanks for the zbrush tips.

cyi

Haven't had much time to work on this...but, here's where I am with the normal map. I definitely need to tweak the hands. Comments/Crit welcome as always. Thanks for looking

cyi

Here's some progress on the normal map. I need to work on the cloth folds of the pants some more...I am losing a ton of detail, so I'm going to see if I can get some more of the high res detail packed in there. Still need to do the gloves and work on another prop that isn't pictured. Hopefully I can at least get the normal map done and start on the diffuse tonight after work...I appreciate your comments/crit. Thanks!