Ammon Jerro (NWN2)

Lirana

So, I've been lurking a long time, a bit timid to post. I suppose with the war going on (which I plan on participating in for Polycount), I should let everyone know who I am. So, this is the character I finished last week. I recreated Ammon Jerro from Neverwinter Nights 2 using this image and this image as my reference. This is only my third finished full-bodied character, so any crits would be extremely beneficial to me. I may be a girl, but I can take the critiques just as well as the next man. Oh, and the funkiness in his left wrist is due to my lackluster rigging.

Daz

Cool, welcome to pc and good luck with DW2.

In terms of accuracy to the character, I think his arms feel a little on the bulky side, particularly the shoulder muscle, and his skin a little dark compared with the ref.

As for more general critique, his hands feel quite small and feminine, particularly with those big arms, the whites of his eyes too stark (eye whites are never actually white. You could also try a shadow on the top of the eyeball, underneath the upper lid to negate that stark eyed look). I'd tend to lower the spec value on the cloth too, but I'm not fully sure what material you're going for. Generally you could probably afford to put a little more form and shading into your colour map too. A little fake shadowing or AO here and there always helps to punch things out. Good poly distribution and topology.

commander_keen

I like it . Im not a character expert, and havent played the game, so im sure other people could give better critiques. The thing that stand out most to me are the arms. They seem much too large compared to the rest of the body, especially the hands. Textures are nice, but you have greyscale spec maps. Did you make them in greyscale or did you make a specular color map and then convert to greyscale? You should always make you specular maps in full color, then you can always convert to greyscale of you have memory limits.

FightingChance

Is it possible to post a wire of the character in a default A or T pose? The chest/shoulder area seems kind of over square from the posed angle.

If I recall correctly, even if a character is wearing clothes that obscure their legs, there should still be additional loops for their knees to assist in deformation of the cloth when animated.

The presentation of the character on the pedestal and the graphic design is excellent.

erik!

The only critique I have to offer is to maybe add a little more color variation to your diffuse. I know you're following an established character, but I think a little artistic license could do this fellow some good. I noticed in the the concept you linked to had some nice deep reds. As of right now you're colors are more like varying hues of brown which are really apparent in your third image. A little more color and you'll be a-ok.

Lirana

Thanks so much for all of the helpful replies so far. I appreciate it very much.

Daz I totally agree with you about the hands. It's a constant struggle of mine to model manly hands. I'll also work on my shading a bit more in my diffuse map. I'll lower the spec on the cloth as well. I was going for a heavy wool type of cloth.
[ QUOTE ]
A little fake shadowing or AO here and there always helps to punch things out.

[/ QUOTE ]
What is AO?

commander_keen I did make color spec maps. Is it better to show them instead of the spec light maps? Also, I was looking over at rawkstar's winning entry from last year's war, and I noticed that his spec map is very dark in most areas, and that the skin spec areas are a sort of dark grey/blue color. My spec color looks nothing like that. It's mostly just a super-saturated/contrasted version of the diffuse, which I'm now assuming is wrong. So, what is the proper way to do a color spec?

FightingChance Ask and you shall receive:



I did not know there should be additional loops in the knees on skirts. Should the extra loops go the whole way around the skirt, or just in the front?

erik! I feel like I'm yelling at you with that exclamation point in your name. It's funny that you mentioned that about the diffuse because a friend and I were comparing my version to the in-game version at school yesterday, and the thing that was most noticeable to him was that their texturing had a little more work to it. I'll work on that today.

Thanks again for all of the help (and compliments) you have given me so far. If anyone else has any more useful tidbits, I'm open for more suggestions.

commander_keen

there is really no right way to make a specular map, because the color, contrast, and brightness depend on the material. Using a blueish specular color on flesh has been accepted as the right thing to do because blue is a complement to yellow/orange, which gives a nice contrast when you get specular highlights. Many other materials will not use complement colors, instead they will use some color that is close to the diffuse color on the color wheel. such as the dark metal and bronze color areas on rawkstar's entry. There are some nice spec maps on Jordan Walker's site.

oobersli

AO= ambient occlusion