Jason Lavoie - Area 51 (PSP)

JasonLavoie

Hey all, I needed to start on a newer project because my other model (Too Human model) is bringing me down a bit... so I said hey, why not go back to my roots, and do some low poly stuff. I defiantly need to work on my texture work, so again... this is more practice.

I was inspired by the 360 game that is being developed by Midway Studios (Austin) called Blacksite: Area 51, if anyone hasn't tried the demo yet, please go download it... it is quite fun, short but fun Anyways, I've decided to do a character fitting the Blacksite atmosphere for the PSP, and here's what I have:



http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/8939/blacksite1zn2.jpg - Higher Res.

Time to sleep

jgarland

Looking pretty nice so far. The mesh is really clean. I wasn't aware the triangle count could be so high on the PSP, though. Learning something new everyday.

I think a few things could be improved, though you're off to a great start. The boots look really clunky right now, but that's more of an issue of style than anything else. I also think you could lose a few tris in certain areas.

Keep it up. I'm looking forward to seeing the textured version.

JasonLavoie

Yeh the tri count is a bit high for psp I think (should be around 1400 right?) What areas need fixing? The face i'm still working on, hopefully get a better flow going.

jgarland

The face aside, I'd shave a few polygons off the chest, neck, and around the fingers. I'm only mentioning the fingers because I don't really think you would need to deform them much on the PSP, given their size in relation to the screen. You could also probably get away with removing the "belt" around his waist. It doesn't add much to the silhouette, and can easily be expressed with textures.

Emil Mujanovic

Yeah, I definitely agree about removing some of the loops in the fingers. I guess it also depends on the hands will be doing. If the character will always be carrying a gun or holding some type of weapon, possibly even go mit style hands or even model it as a fist.
You could easily optimize the face quite drastically without losing my shape that will be noticeable on a PSP screen.
Great looking model though, very clean mesh.

-caseyjones

zenarion

Mesh is very loveable. Simple, but everything is defined really well. Will be somewhat of a guideline for me :>

Steve Schulze

[ QUOTE ]
I wasn't aware the triangle count could be so high on the PSP, though.

[/ QUOTE ]
The PSP can push a surprisingly large number of polys. it certainly won't be slowed by a 1600 poly character, though as the others have mentioned if you've got details that are going to be invisible on the tiny, motion-blurry screen you might as well use the geometry elsewhere.

odium

I really would halve that polycount. I know it sounds bad, but trust me on this. The PSP is a god awful system to play games on. Period. Why? Because people think its a PS2, so they make PS2 quality games most of the time. This means the game may be quite good, but the frame rate makes it unplayable.

I would so rtaher have a hacked up, lower detail game with modeling shortcuts everywhere, compared to an ultra nice looking game, as long as it was smooth.

Take a look at Portable Ops. Man that game is so amazing, the detail in the models is fantastic. But the levels are boxes. No detail at all, they can afford to do it that way. Area 51 on 360 is one cool game, and it has big large open areas full of shooting, so you wouldn't be able to afford that detail.

Your looking more inbetween what you have now, and the Killzone model spec. Remember, all you need to do is be able to tell what is what, and as long as the frame rate is good, great stuff.

The model itself you have made is pretty damn solid, great detail, but its more of a ingame cinematic model

JasonLavoie

Whoa, thanks all for the great crits.

For the most part, I'm pretty settled on the tri count (I want to get closer to 1400k) What I could do though, is maybe make 2 versions... one, as Odium said, as a "PSP cinematic character" and the hacked up version as the game character. I've never done any sort of "lod" before, and this would be great practice.

I'm defiantly going to optimize the face, see what I can do about the hands (I did the hand as a practice though... so I may stick with it for the higher tri count character) and optimize from there. Next update should have his gun done as well

Again all, thanks for the crits!

Brice Vandemoortele

well, polycount means barely nothing anyway. Same model with different uvs, bones influences, texture size could be very efficient or very heavy. There's so much more constrains than polycount, rules are much more complex than "make character 1000K"

some are:
hard edges double the vertex count on the seam
uvs border double the vertex on the seam
you should use 1 or 2 bones weight per vertex
you should use 8kb uncompressed texture (128*128*4, or 128*64*8 for ex.)
you should regroup areas that are close on the same shader, so that the engine don't produce extra batches or invisible polys to make the connectione inbetween
I think number of bones should be a multiple of 7

Here are the rules I remember so far, don't hesitate to correct me people ^^

JasonLavoie

I've been working on the environment and the gun, and this is what I have so far:



http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/3001/blacksite2cd8.jpg - Higher Res

The next thing will be the Alien (one that looks like one of those bug things from Starship Troopers) and after that I'm going to rig it in a quick pose just to see how everything deforms, than spend 20 months on the texture

Thanks all for the crits

JasonLavoie

Alrighty, here is a quick update... Started the texturing process, and this is defiantly going to be an upward climb, but its well worth it



I have a question for you guys and gals, when texturing, do you focus on one part until it is done, or go between different parts at any given time. I've been working on this face for like, 2 hours (its embarrassing, but I'm not the best at texturing".

Thanks all in advance.

D4V1DC

Hey Jason,

I think it's looking pretty good for the amount of time, honestly.

Well when I am texturing I'm finding myself jumping around after I have done something that works well in one area that can be implemented into another. But it usually just varies one day I work on one part at a time another I'm jumping I can't really tell since I am in the zone with music and other things occupying my time.

C&C:
Nice clean flow and looks like the textures coming along nicely though, I have no valuable (PSP) information to share since I only work with DS games at the moment.

Would like to be doing some PSP games to upgrade from this DS stuff but I am enjoying myself either way.

Blaizer

Very good model . Be sure to do some deformation tests, specially for the knees, you may need a bit of detail there.

keep it up

JasonLavoie

Bah sorry for lack of updates all, but I am still working on this... I won't start a new project without finishing this bad boy... and hopefully it'll be a good portfolio piece



Right now I'm actually studying wrinkles etc. Because I am struggling really hard when it comes to the shirt and pants, I'm still messing around with the arm wrinkles, but I think they are getting closer to what looks right.

Feel free to do paintovers, I love paintovers!

JasonLavoie

Alritghy more updates. I'm still playing around with the colour, so what do you all think of this one?

ThatDon

Jason, this is a very solid character, I have been watching you grow for awhile now and I would saw that you should try to create something that is more unique for your next project, while this piece is "solid" it's very generic. So put your growing talents to use!

JasonLavoie

Ha ha thanks Don. Again, I'm still trying to learn the basics still... texturing wise I thought it would be easier going with something I see almost everyday in gaming, or the news etc. (soldier) and Also I was really inspired by Midways game Blacksite.

I think next project will be something I design, instead of using already created references. Maybe some sort of "next gen" platform character... I don't know though, what do you all think?

Thanks again Don.

ThatDon

No problem Jason, and congrats on a job well done !

I could easily see this guy as a standard enemy in a psp game. I await your future works!

JasonLavoie

Ha ha, not done yet Don Still gotta finish this guy + the scene.

JasonLavoie

Thanks for the great crits all.



http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/1912/payne1va7.jpg - Higher Resolution

I've finished up the "first run" through the texture, again, just trying to get the base texture done. I'm going to switch over to the gun and get that done, then move back over to the character to iron out more areas you guys suggested.

I was playing around with the eyes, and I still like em where they are now. The wrinkles I'm gonna have to play around with (thats gonna be a nightmare) as well as the shoulder pads and the face in general.

Hopefully this is ok for now.

Again all, thanks for the crits... KEEP THEM COMING!

Jesse Moody

Jason: Very nice man. One thing that does stick out to me though is it looks like he is wearing snowboard boots. His ankles are huge

JasonLavoie

Ha ha... I have this nasty habit to make the feet bigger, more stylized. I'll defiantly fix that up

Thanks Jesse

Wells

I'm really not a fan of the sharp highlight immediately beneath the shading below the cheekbone. I've noticed thats done a LOT on facial textures, though I never see it in real people's faces. Some people can do it so it looks badass, if overly 'video-gamey' but I don't think its working on yours just yet.

Is it supposed to be defining the jaw muscles? Seems in the wrong place, if so.

Anyhow, I'd take it down a notch.

And yeah, them cankles be thick.

Dennispls

What texturesize is on this model rihgt now?

Joao Sapiro

The texture has a mix of stilyzed with attempts at realism, mixing both its a bit weird , the bone structure seems a bit weird, those hard creases are a bit misplaced, like per128 said subtelty sometimes work

keep it up man, you have been evolving really good ! i like the mesh too

JasonLavoie

Alritghy here is the flat here. The texture size is 512 x 512 right now (should I shrink it?)



I agree fully with the face, obvisouly I was trying to go for the cool stylized look, but as Sec said, its just not working right now. I'll fix it up. Should I move it back some? (the muscle line)

Hey Johny, was just wondering where it shows more stylized, than more realistic. I think a lot of it has t do with my lack of knowledge when it comes to the texturing phase, I've been trying to study alot of reference material for this guy, but I'm probably doing something wrong here ha ha.

Thanks all, you guys (and girls?) have been really helpful!

Brice Vandemoortele

Imagine you reduce this map to 8 bits (256 colors), the minimum to keep enought palette entries for the different tones you used. If you keep the 512² ratio the psp texture cache will be filled 32 times for each triangle of your model, roughly 31 times more than what would be optimum
Still, this means 262Ko of uncompressed texture for each character, about 1/8th of the available vram on a PS2 system (not sure about psp, depends on buffer size etc)

lkraan

Very nice model and texture job!

For the PSP I think that the detail in both the model and texture is a bit too high.
Keep in mind that the screen is only 480x272. If your character is fully shown with a little bit of distance from the camera than it would consume around +/-100x215 pixels.

This would not even justify a 256x256 texture which would also still not be ideal for the PSP's video memory assuming there are more characters and a textured environment.

Making renders with the resolution of your target platform gives you a good idea of the relation between screen- and texture space.

JasonLavoie

Thanks Brice (talking to you right now, but thanks again)

I honestly didn't even give it to much thought about how many pixels this character would take up on screen, and it definatly puts it in context about what you said Ikraan.

Only thing that confuses me right now (well... a lot of it does, but this is one of the issues) is that recently Chris Holden had shown me Jon Jone's portfolio, and it had some characters from the PSP game Daxter. Now I can't recall the exact size of the texture sheets, but I could have SWORN they were like 512 x 512, or 256 x 256. Do they usually shrink the texture sheets once they are done?

I thought that by doing this (shrinking the flats) that you lose alot of the finer detail. Maybe just take one last pass at them when they are the smaller size to help save some of the compressed details.

Thanks all, and sorry for so many questions, but I am an inquiring mind

JasonLavoie

Alritghy I'm gonna call it a night... tonight. Gotta work in the morning (oh noz!)

But not before I post another update.



To all the gun lovers out there, sorry I didn't get everything spot on, I'm not a big fan of guns, but I did have a great reference, so hopefully this is ok

I'm gonna dirty it up some more... although I don't think it will make a difference if shown on a psp screen, but its practice non the less.

Joao Sapiro

if you REALLY aim 100% for handheld consoles i would try to use the exact same specs as they really use , small textures, etc...nice gun man !

JasonLavoie

Yeh, i've re-sized everything down to see what its like, I lose some detail (just fix it up afterwards) but it looks good. I'll resize everything when I am done, but again, this model is really for texturing practice, and right now I am more comfortable with "bigger" texture maps.

Thanks Johny

Pavel

Super-duper, Jason!!!!!

JasonLavoie

Thanks Pavel, I just checked out your portfolio as well, you got some really nice work on there

JasonLavoie

Been awhile since I have posted anything here, but I am still working on this piece. "I think I can... I think I can... I think I can..."

Just getting the pose done... slowly but surely this guy will get done.

poopinmymouth

Looking nice dude. I'm digging the pose and the colors.

KICKER

killer model, the only thing thats bugging me is the stubbiness of the feet. You know what they say about guys with small feet

pretty minor, but that's all I got.

Nice work!

JasonLavoie

Yup, they have small shoes... or in this case BOOTS!

The smaller "big" type feet I usually do on a lot of my personal characters, I do enjoy more stylized work, and I think some of that was carried over to this guy.

Thanks Ben

StJoris

Great work man, I like it a lot.

JasonLavoie

Hopefully this is looking ok, I've never done an enviroment piece before, really enjoyed it, but I defiantly need a lot of practice.

hobodactyl

Very cool! Only thing that I notice right off the bat is the texture repeat on the concrete in on the biggest shot (the two slop stains or whatever). Otherwise I think it looks great.

Eclipse

Very very nice Jason. I really like the character style and the stand, it looks great.

hobo, I think thats supposed to be the number 11.

JasonLavoie

Yeh suppose to be 11... something like a parking lot number pole thingy.

Does it look like slop though? if so I defiantly need to fix that, ha ha.

Thanks all.

aesir

Im lovin all this work. The face on your soldier kicks ass especially. I like the enviro piece, but it seems like a grittier style than the soldier.

JasonLavoie

I totally agree aesir. My soldier was all hand painted, where as the enviroment consists of mostly photo sourced + hand painting, and it shows Any idea of how I could bring it more together?

ThatDon

Hey Jason, I'm glad to see you finally finish this piece! It turned out very nice. One thing that bothers me is the transition between the stubble/facial hair and the ear.

Keep up the good work man!

JasonLavoie

Thanks Don, not completely done yet, but it's nice to see some hard work paying off.

I've gotten a lot of crits about the transition from the face "stubble" to the ear, and I'll defiantly fix that.

Nice portfolio pieces as well Don, that fire guy is killer

Thanks again all.

mikebart

This is looking very cool jason, thats clever the way you've stylized the column to fit the scale of the scene, even though the rebar would look too large in real life and the soldier looks awesome too

Sayanora

Wow, top work Jason! I'm no anatomy expert, so I don't feel qualified to crit in that regard.

As far as bringing your stand together, (which looks very cool) why not just paint over the photo stuff to match the character's style? Either way, it looks good. Keep it up

culturedbum

Very nice man...I love every bit of information being fed through my pupils.