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Dominance War II - indian_boy

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  • rollin
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    rollin polycounter
    if you want to improve the sclupting reduce the blobby-muddiness on certain areas
    and if you want to add some stuff than look at some realy good sculptings (there are some entrys in this comp) and try to get what they do other than you:

    they have more sharp edges, they are more sculpting than rather painting some 3d onto the surface and they exaggerate the main structures bc through normalmapping you always loose some depth

    keep pushing until your pc says "no" wink.gif

    so on keep on smile.gif
  • indian_boy
    thanks for the suggestion rollin, from what i understand (correct me if im wrong) i have to "add" and "subtract" right next to each other in more places so i get a tighter, sharper edge in those places.
  • indian_boy
    well, thats what i've been doing for the last half-hour as well as adding some new stuff (very little). And after using "gauss-ian blur vision" on it, i noticed that i could pick up (see) the sharper edges even wit a 4 px blur.... is that wat the "squint-test" is all about?
    well, here it is... any further suggestion or advice is welcome:
    62d0dd18-Sliber.jpg

    once agani, all crits and comments are welcome
  • indian_boy
    waning interests? well i guess i haven't done much really....

    well anyways, trudging along at a real slow pace, something im not comfortable about at all). I just have no idea what to do..... and just a week left! argh!

    fd975fe4-Sliber.jpg
    any ideas would be helpful.
    thanks guys.
  • Cridder
    Well here's a morel boost. Your model has come along way with everyone giving their imput your skills as far as I can tell have improved greatly. You finally have harder less muddy surface comming through. The only parts I suggest spending more time on is the back, lower torso, and the feet. Give them more definition and structure so that they match the amount of detail compaired to the rest of the body. It is good to have less detailed areas on the body but only when it its balanced.

    Kick your ass into gear for no more then two more days of modeling and then spend the rest of your time texturing cause a texture and either make the model mind blowing, save it or destroy it.

    You can do it smile.gif Keep up the hard work.
  • indian_boy
    thanks cridder. moral boosts are what i need.... and i'll do some stuff with the chest/feet area..... the reason that the back is bear is that it'll be covered by the gun at any rate, so didn't see any reason to use up time on it.

    No update for now... i just woke up... but i've decided that today will be my last sculpting day, cuz as cridder rightfully said: a texture can make / break or save a model.

    One question i had, however:
    I had imported my low poly at 4k tris into mudbox. Now with all the new bits etc. i'll obviously crank up the tri count on my model. Problem is that, yesterday, when i tried to import the highpoly, Max crashed on me all 3 tries. SO, my question is that: after i modify my low poly and conform it to (say level 3 /4 instead of 5 of) my highpoly, can i send out the new lowpoly (wit UV template) to mudbox and project a normal map? Cuz sometimes when i try to import, it says "vertice numbers must match" or something.

    please help me...

    and once again, thanks.
    Update to come in a few hours.
  • Xaltar
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    Xaltar polycounter lvl 17
    What I did was export a lower sub version of my highpoly (one that didn't crash max) and conformed my low poly to that, then, once I had it all lined up properly I used the bake tool in mudbox to bake my normals. It's not perfect but for those of us with older PCs it seems to be the only option frown.gif

    Bare in mind I had my uv's set up before I even put the lowpoly into mudbox. As a result I have a bit of streaching but nothing noticeable..
  • indian_boy
    thanks xaltar. will try that. Hopefully it won't say something like "not enough memory to load high poly mesh" or something....

    ===
    well, okay, this update is a bit earlier than i expected. I suppose i'll be calling the highpoly done [even though i kinda don't want to]? cuz i want time with the textures (im slow at painting).
    hipolyfication12gs2.th.jpg
    i've added a belt across his chest on which 2 ammo thingies will be attached by magnet. I suppose it would look fairly good.
    Also, i wanted to show what i did to the feet. Added a bone piece to protect his 'achilles tendon' cuz i wanted to maintain a smooth surface over there, while still adding some detail.

    any thoughts or suggestions? don't hesitate to post!
    thanks again guys!
  • indian_boy
    Right well, since nobody yelled out "r u insane that looks like a crappy high-poly, u should do :this-and-this:", i've begun unwrapping my model. Given the extension, im feelin a little more calm about my pace... cuz that means ill be able to made a good texture.

    as of now, i have no update, just some questions:

    1) any general advice on making textures? (wait, that's not a question : Could you give me some general advice on making textures?)
    2) should i still be paniting in shadows in my diffuse tex? despite the normal map i mean
    3) any tips on rendering out a height map using mudbox? i want to use it as a "multiply" later on top of my spec map.
    4) are there alternatives to painting a spec map?
    5) i've already asked what a dirt map is. So now i'm wondering: how do i make a good dirtmap?
    6) Could u please explain how the Mudbox "Output texture" thing works? I get stretching and problems that i don't get when using 'projection' in max on lower sub-d levels of the mesh.

    Thanks guys. I'll see if i can get an update by tonight. I might only get my UV Template done...
  • rollin
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    rollin polycounter
    1) search the net

    2) you can .. but realy "shadow-parts" are very tiny (in my case) and mostly i only black-out the very-dark-parts in my spec-map

    3) don´t know .. but i would say... you don´t need it in your spec map wink.gif

    4) alternatives to what? its so easy.. i make the diffuse and spec map in ones .. painting stuff on the diffuse, copying it to the spec (just a folder in my diffuse-working file) adjust it to fit the needed brightness and color and than go on

    5)only dirtmap i know is the one from dawn of war.... paint it on the diffuse

    6) dont know it smile.gif

    hope this helps a bit
  • indian_boy
    thanks man! helps quite a bit (though i think there's a misunderstanding about the 'dirtmap'?)

    okay, so yesterday was partially wasted cuz we were trying to save a cow that got tangled in wires etc. so i didn't really get done with the UVW template. Still working on stuff, so since i had no image updates, i thought i'd ask a few (okay one) more questions:
    - how can i preview normal maps in Bodypaint 3d? i apply it as a bump map, but it reads like a simpe bump map, not normals map.

    oh, and the above questions still stand. wanna get in as many points of view(s?) as i can.
  • indian_boy
    okay... thanks.
    anyways, still working on unwrapping the model (yes, i art slow), and i just got this weird problem. There is a face who's verts i can't select. I can select its edges, i can select its edges, but i can't select/weld its verts. Any solution to this? thanks... (no restarting max / the computer didn't help).

    thanks guys...
  • Cridder
    The polygon maybe inverted. Try selecting it from inside your mesh. If this is true then you should have some command to invert it, unfortuanly I dont know it cause I never used Max before only XSI but there should be one if that is your problem.
  • indian_boy
    nope that didn't work out... well, ill just kinda turn the faces about a bit till i get it to look like the verts are overlapping... thankfully this problem is only at the inner thigh area and will hardly be noticed. thanks anyways.

    okay, still unwrapping, think ill be done by today, or by tomorrow morning (in case ur wondering, i have only 2 hrs a day on the project [cuz of exams])... meanwhile, another question:
    ambient occlusion map.. what is it? i know that it can be rendered with a 'skylight' and 'light tracer' during the 'bake to texture'... but where do i apply the AO map?... or does it go over the diffuse as a multiply or something? and what _exactly_ is its purpose? (in terms of real-time art models, not for movie quality models...).

    thanks....
    the unwrapping is a real pain...

    oh, and does 'relax' help in reducing stretching? how about the Deep UV 'relax'?

    thanks again!
  • Cridder
    From my understanding an AO map acts as a cheep reaplacement for a Final Gathering pass when done right. This helps save on render time and makes it so that they can have a fake FG in games (Though not as good imo).

    And when you make an AO map you apply it onto your diffuse texture in PhotoShop as an multiply layer over top your diffuse.

    Hope that helps, good luck on your exams smile.gif
  • indian_boy
    thanks for the explanation and the luck smile.gif.
    ---
    2 litres of coca cola, a few hours of Rammstein's music, and 20 minutes of studying french as the normal map renders (using xNormal), and here's what i got:
    487b9b0d-Sliber.jpg
    and then some rough colouring... just a few minutes to show the colour scheme:
    c17559ad-Sliber.jpg


    maintenant il faut que j'aille etudier le francais. Si j'etudais bien, je reussirais..... and i don't want that to become:
    si j'avais etudie bien, j'aurai reussit.
  • Cridder
    Well your normals seem to be working for you and the colour scheme doesn't look to bad. My only current suggestion is for the hand blade spend a polygon or two and make a vertiacl grid opposite of the current one. Then when you make a mask and texture and use it on both it will give more of a round glow illusion compaired to just one grid. You'll find this trick used in lots of lowpoly online games like WOW and EVE.

    Je ne sais pas... Tu es francais bien. (Gahh... I haven't used my french for over 3 years. Yours is pretty good though, but your right if you study good and hard you should do well... if you remember it and dont fall asleep on your keyboard. :P)
  • indian_boy
    hehe, lol, yeah it went pretty well....
    well thanks for the suggestion, will definately implement it, given that i have some spare polies...

    now then, no update today. just been blocking out some stuff.... nothing too impressive. so instead, i ask a question grin.gif:
    any advice on texturing gums and other gooey fleshy bits? i really can't do it well at the moment, so its looking nasty.

    Thanks.

    oh, and now its science, so i won't be typing in a 'foreign language'... well... science in itself is foreign to me... and i dont understand it, so how can i speak it!
  • indian_boy
    okay, well, update time:
    [lit with one omni, and rendered with standard scanline]
    e431189c-Sliber.jpg

    nothing much, but still... wanted to put it up to get some crits. thanks to cridder (thank u cridder), i now know how to make blood (in theory, not practice) so i hope to get some nasty looking blood on his jaw and retractable blades' tusks.

    Oh, and anybody now how to make ground look like its cracking up and revealing magma / lava underneath? i want to try something along those lines for his stand.

    anyways... all crits and comments are welcome. go ahead and tear me apart!
  • Xaltar
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    Xaltar polycounter lvl 17
    Looking good. Heres a texturing tuto that is helping me a lot at the moment, figure we nonPros should stick together wink.gif

    http://www.3dtutorials.sk/index.php?software=3&tutorials=11&id=30&page=1

    Come on dude, get this badboy done cool.gif
  • Cridder
    You'll only be able to get some of the wet look through the diffuse, you will have to rely on your Spec and Reflection maps to get the hole feeling. I suggest looking for pictures on google for referance and try to paint from life.

    Hope that helps smile.gif Xaltar's suggested site also has other useful tuts. You may want to take so time searching if you really get stuck, they may have something smile.gif
  • indian_boy
    thanks for the link Xaltar. and yes, we must stick togethergrin.gif... hoping that this guy _does_ get done.

    cridder - okay, so its clear taht i need diffuse and spec to give the wet look, but do i really need a reflection map? saliva wouldn't reflect too much afaik. as for reference hunting, did a bit of that to help me on my way (some nasty results came up for 'decaying teeth' that made me nearly lose my breakfast btw.)

    UPDATE:

    alright, bit more texturing done, added a spec map to this guy, and the inner mouth is moving closer to what i want it to look like. i've even prepared this guy's rig, and applied "skin" to it, so i'm gonna be ready to pose him immediately after tex is done.
    coloured03qv5.th.jpg
    any crits are welcome, along with a few answers if poosible:D :
    1) my viewport rendering is going uber-slow. It takes ages to rotate the camera etc. unless i have "wireframe only" on. Any suggestions to speed up viewport rendering?

    hmm wait... only one question?

    okay, once again, any and all crits are welcome. feel free to simply comment too...
  • Joao Sapiro
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    Joao Sapiro sublime tool
    the normals are uber muddy and you have seams everywhere i would first tweak the normal map before even doing difuse wink.gif
  • indian_boy
    the problem is that i don't have enough time to set aside that 'normals now, diffuse now, spec now' time table. Don't take it as a dissmissal of ur advice, just that right now im kinda' doing everything at the same time. Expect the seams to be invisible at the end. grin.gif hopefully...

    as of now, did some bloodying up of the tex. His hands and mouth are Guilty Of CGChat-slaughter... smile.gif.
    coloured04wp3.th.jpg
    lit using an orange and a white light. And yes, that's the gun on his back.
    still have alot of work to do, im thinking of doing more on the gun as the first priority for tomorrow. Speaking of tomorrow, i'll be studying the rest of today for tomorrow! oh noes! me hates science!
  • indian_boy
    Alright, here we go:
    prefinal01zp5.jpg
    posed him just to test my rig. This might even end up being his victory or beauty pose with the words "Mission Accomplished" being projected by his hologram displayer.
    Alright, what else... worked on the texture and a stand (clearly)which doesn't look too neat.

    Overall, not a very good performance by me. i shoulda, woulda, coulda spent more time on it had it not been for the exams. But meh... at least i can say "at least i tried"

    Any crits that can boost me on the last day (tomorrow) and might even give something nice to my composition is what i need. Absolutely anything. Other than that, any comments are welcome too. Even if u say: "eew! that sux butt" smile.gif
    comment away! (please lol)
  • Snowfly
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    Snowfly polycounter lvl 18
    For some reason I'm beaming like a proud daddy just seeing your finished entry. *wipes tears* Are your exams over? Ready to move on to your next model?
  • indian_boy
    ahh thanks Snowfly. Glad u liked it, glad ur proud smile.gif
    exams aint over till the 28th, but i've got an idea for the next model... well, thread... it's a bit different really.....
    thanks again!

    UPDATE:
    okay, i got 10 hours left. So im tensed. Here are two shots. One beauty, one winning.... but im not sure which is which.
    prefinal02ec5.jpg
    i prefer the roar (the left one) for winning but i'll turn the blade off.... and the other for beauty. Any thoughts? I've got soo much more to do. Any suggestions in general for the whole texture and stuff? Please guys, im counting on some last minute crits to give me a focussed direction....

    thanks in advance... as of know, lunch, and then,
    9hours of work!

    please help, thanks!
  • fogmann
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    fogmann polycounter lvl 17
    Hey, I think you have over a day and a half left and not only few hours (that is, if nothing is stopping you to continue working on this). Deadline is Monday night at 11:59pm GMT -5, which means that is Tuesday morning for you!.
    If you plan to go back to the textures, I would suggest adding some color variation to the skin, it looks like a solid color all the way through. If you need to quickly add some skin details, try this textured brushes pack, there are some skin and animal fur brushes that you can use to add skin detail very quickly. Also, I'm not seeing the specular, if you have it in there, maybe make it a bit brighter and up the contrast?
    I like the roar pose for the winning shot, Yeah! And some glow on the green bits, you can't miss that laugh.gif
  • Xaltar
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    Xaltar polycounter lvl 17
    looking good dude. I like the howling pose, nice stuff smile.gif
  • indian_boy
    @fogmann : yeah u've got a point there... the only problem is that i gotta study for the last of my exams... which is on the 28th... gotta give meself some time to study! laugh.gif But i will be keeping at it till into the night tonight... will definately do more to the textures... so thanks for the brush sets smile.gif
    @Xaltar - thanks for the vote of confidence man!

    Alright, so it seems that the roar is the more proper winning pose? as of now, here's what i got:
    winningtest01wp2.jpgbeautytest01qz3.jpg
    higher contrasts on the spec lvl map, and i also added a light that affects 'specuar only'. Also, i fixed up some errors that were no the last shots. Will be submitting it tonight, so i have my "template" ready as u can see, with the black bar at the bottom. And the "beauty pose" is the idea i was aiming for... tell me what u guys think.

    PS: the sizes are 800x900, but i'm gonna havta reduce the quality cuz its at 400k right now.
    PPS: do we _have_ to include the high res model in the construction shot? or is it only the normals map on the tex sheet that's compulsary?

    once again, all suggestions / comments / crits are welcome!
  • indian_boy
    oh my! wats this?! Im done???
    okay, honestly, i've submitted in all the final stuff. Reason being simple: it's about time! grin.gif I woulda loved to have more time to work on it... and i probably will work on it later on. I guess i'm kinda loosing steam on this project right now. All the excitement i had started with slowly eroded away... I may not (most definately will not) win anything... but i was never in it to win. I just wanted to particiapte... get my name 'out there,'... 'k, so without further a doo-doo:

    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    Winning Pose
    32-game-3d-art-153-1174848357-winning.jpg
    Beauty Shot
    32-game-3d-art-153-1174848626-beauty.jpg
    Texture Sheet
    32-game-3d-art-153-1174886767-texSheets.jpg
    Construction
    32-game-3d-art-153-1174848712-construction.jpg
    Concept
    32-game-3d-art-153-1174887182-conceptcopy.jpg
    entry notes:
    NAME: Kanchchh Igliks
    SPECIALITY: Infiltration and Assassination
    EQUIPMENT: Day-vision / thermal vision Goggles, Retractable plasma blade, Holographic projector, Hydrogen Ion Thruster (HIT) Gun.

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    tadaaaa!

    now, a sincere thanks to everybody who helped, with paragraph long constructive crits, or two sentence confidence boosts.... i'll thank you equally... just to show how serious i am:
    Thank you -
    CaseyJones; Gauss; Gavku; Shady-D; Oglemeanimations; Dave_Hingley; Vig; Cridder; Dread_Reaper; Spacemonkey; Sectaurs; Rooster; Johny; Rollin; Snowfly; Fogmann; Nacire
    .... i think thats all of u? this was off the top of my head

    once again, any names i forgot; im sorry (nets going slow so i can't sift through all the pages)... but THANK YOU ALL!
    I've learned alot about what i wanted to in this contest. Now i know what i do wrong (everything) and what i do right (dustball floats across the screen). My next post will be up and running soon... hope to see u guys there!
  • rollin
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    rollin polycounter
    nice to see you finishing this smile.gif

    yes you need a concept.. bc you can´t submit your entry if you don´t upload a concept.. you need all 5 pics
  • Cridder
    Good to see that you have pulled through indian_boy, and thanks for the kind words smile.gif

    Like rollin said, you need all 5 pics to submitt your entry. That inclues your concept sheet and texture flats. If you don't know what I am talking about check my last post out on my thred.

    Good luck on your final exams.
  • Joao Sapiro
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    Joao Sapiro sublime tool
    the winning pose is actually pretty good !
  • indian_boy
    "he stared. This was his moment... what he'd been waiting for. After such a long struggle, he was now where he'd wanted to be. Holding his breath, he put forth his hand, and he clicketh upon the 'submit finals,' as the gods sang out in chorus: "dude pretty good!" The war had ended for Abhishek-opeles.... and now, Igliks was the one who'd have to prove his worth...."
    and its all done

    thanks u guys for the kindness. Glad u like the winning pose Johny, and thanks for the luck cridder, and glad for the encouragement rollin.

    and my new thread has already begun:
    Help me improve
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