Xal's Practice thread

Xaltar

I realised with a bump the other day that I still have SOOO much to learn so I am going to be doing a lot more practice work. I'm hoping to create enough models for a personal game project later on down the line. But for now I'm just going to get as much work done as I can.

This guy is the result of a lowpolly made in MAX and then about 20mins of mudbox (I'mn still working on it in mudbox). All just procedural textures ATM, he's not ready to unwrap yet. Basicly I need to be torn a new one crit wise. If I'm ever going to get out of the rut I'm in I'll need some brutal pushing.

Hope you guys don't mind

[edit] update

http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/192/head01or0.jpg

indian_boy

it looks pretty sweet. though he seems angry? i think his eyebrows are giving the impression of anger [or is it just me?] i can't say much otherwise. i'm not much in terms of anatomy myself.

Lord McMutton

His eyes look too big. For the proportions, I think, you should be able to fit five eyes across his head

Quaggs

I'm going to agree with what Banana said, those eyes look incredibly too big, especially width wise. Five eyes is indeed the proportional width of a face, although with people you will get some deviation. But in your characters case, the eyes are too wide even for a really distorted human face.

Xaltar

Thanks, I think I've been watching too much anime hehe

Here, I think the eyes are right now and I've included my base mesh for your viewing displesure

http://img54.imageshack.us/img54/6507/head01px6.jpg

Wells

eyes are too far apart. move 'em in a bit

are you using reference?

Xaltar

I'm using a few yes but I made the mistake of not looking at them once I got to the tweaking phase I have a lot of bad habits to break and thats one of the main ones. Thanks for all the crits guys. I'll do my best to keep refferencing as I go.

Wells

Wasn't an accusation of not using them...
was just curious. are you using one particular face that you're trying to emulate, or just using them for proportions, etc?

Xaltar

Just for proportions, I want to get my anatomy down before I try going for likenesses. The concept for this guy is a typical trenchcoated, long haired vampire with a kitana. The long hair is so I can work on doing some more detailed hair, something I havn't really tried before. I just wish I could draw well enough to do a decent concept, I'm practicing a lot but I'm nowhere near good enough to do a proper concept sketch So its mostly photo reff atm.

Xaltar

This better? The eyes are still a little bigger than 5 eyes across but I think they are within the realms of realisim now though, correct me if I'm wrong...

[edit] Image updated at the top of the page.

notman

He's looking a bit like Cristopher Reeves right now... but the eyes are still a little too far apart IMO. The eye shape itself seems a bit off to me too. Like the shape is too symmetrical.
For example, the eye here: http://www.terrapinphoto.com/jmdavis/eye%20SM5K.jpg
The inside corners(near the nose) don't come to a point.

Xaltar

Thanks, I tweaked them a little, they now look almost exactly like my own eyes so that will have to do lol.

Heres the normal mapped low poly with a procedural texture (no detail at all yet). I plan on finishing up the whole model before texturing so I can make everyting flow nicely.

http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/1559/head01pl0.jpg

The seam on the forehead will be hidden by the hair when I get there...

Wells

still too far apart, too large.

shape looks fine, though.

whole head looks a bit too wide.
cheekbones seem to stick out farther than the ears.
noise bump looks more like plaster than skin.

Xaltar

Cool, thanks dude, I'll get on that in the morning.

I picked up a cool book today: A foundation course in drawing by Peter Stanyer and Terry Rosenburg so I'll be getting to work improving my 2d aswell

Xaltar

Ok, did my best to adress the issues Sectaurs pointed out and fixed up a few things I spotted on my own

C&C would be great

http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/6375/head01xz4.jpg

notman

Much better. I like the new eyes They could use some more details in the white parts, but I'm guessing you're not as concerned about the texture right now

Xaltar

hehe yeah the eyes are just to give me a better idea of how that area looks. I'll be doing some freaky eyes for him when I get to texturing

Xaltar

http://img114.imageshack.us/img114/4828/head01pa6.jpg

Started getting the lowpoly body ready for mudbox.

Xaltar

Little more though something looks off to me and I just can't seem to figure out what, I think its the face with the hair but I'm not sure what exactly is wrong...

http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/4199/head01bn9.jpg

(UT voice ) Headshot

http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/7746/head02av4.jpg

I can't seem to find any good free tutorials on poly modeled hair, I looked at the Varga tuto but I can't get it to work for the style I'm going for Anyone know any good hair tutos?

Xaltar

hehe, bump

No one know any hair tutos?

souler

i did some google for you
try this:
[url="http:////www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/tutorials/modeling/ndex.html"]//www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/tutorials/modeling/ndex.html[/url]
its for lightwave but still may be helpfull

Xaltar

Thanks I'll take a look

Goofing around with getting a nice dead look on the face, just messing about but any tips on getting a good vampire look appreciated anyway.

http://img482.imageshack.us/img482/1484/head01cp5.jpg

Xaltar

Been working on the shirt, this is the LP with baked normals and some procedural materials. Please ignore the textures, they are not going to be used on the final model. I'll paint proper ones when all the geo is done and everything is unwrapped properly.

http://img77.imageshack.us/img77/7904/head01ap9.jpg

Feel free to be brutal.

PixelGoat

Time for revenge! hehe jk
Looks very nice... though something with the neck bothers me. it comes out with a too sharp angle from the head, if that makes any sense. Should be more straight down I think.
Keep it up

fogmann

The cloth folds could use some more work, methinks. They don't look too well defined. I'd go back and spend some more time on the high poly. Also, if you are not forced to mirror the UVs, I'd give both sides unique detail, because cloth never looks good when it folds identically on both sides. Just get some good reference and try to replicate the cloth folds, it will help a great deal to achieve better realism. Also, the hair looks kind of blobby - either try to have more smooth / better controlled strokes as you sculpt it, or create it with subd in 3D app, because right now it looks like you wanted to make it look wavy, but that didn't turn out quite right. And also, if possible, get rid of mirroring down the center line on the hair as well.
Otherwise, great progress so far, keep at it!

Xaltar

Thanks Fogmann, I'll try and get some cleaner folds into the shirt, I really didn't spend as much time as I should have on them. I think I'll have a go at subd modeling the hair in Max, without a tablet I have a hard time making clean strokes in mudbox.

Likewise - I think I messed up the neck when I was tweaking the facial proportions. I don't know how I missed it lol. Thanks for the spot

Xaltar

This any better guys? I did the best I could with the tools I have and still had to do a lot of touching up in PS I really need to save some cash for a tablet..

http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/7867/head01pc4.jpg

Xaltar

OK, I used the hair and fur system to make the eyebrows I am quite pleased with the result. I converted to mesh then baked it to a diffuse and normal map then used photoshop to overly the resulting maps over my existing maps. C&C welcome.

http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/6076/head01pa4.jpg

Xaltar

Long time no update here, been busy with other non art stuff sadly so I haven't had time to do much on this guy of late. Still I think I'm making progress on the hair image planes. Still need a lot of work on the alphas before texturing and the top of the head texture was just a very quick doodle so I wouldn't be looking at skin color when testing my alphas.



C&C would be great seeing as I am wading through uncharted territory for me here.

Xaltar

OK, I think I'm finaly getting this hehe. Heres my, for now, final hair. I need to get to work on improving my normal mapps on the shirt, hands, pants and shoes now. I think I'm happy with the head for the time being but please point out errors as you see them.

http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/8105/head01fx8.jpg

Hair texture was done using a render of a hair and fur modifier in max 9 that I tweaked till I got how I wanted it C&C would be awesome.

I will be making the fringe alpha better a little later on, this is good enough for now seeing as all I really needed was to be able to see where my hair was going to sit

Xaltar

http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/9382/head01wz9.jpg

Couldn't resist some more tweaking

PixelGoat

I kinda liked the shorter hair better, but that's just me

Xaltar

Haha, so did I lol, heres one with shorter hair.

http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/6852/head01tk9.jpg

Xaltar

Update

Maddness

i like the guy, he looks like a skinner jimmy smitts. but the hair is weirding me out. i guess because he's got that otacon look to him, and i want to punch that guy! hehe.


i would say though about the hair. it looks (the look of it) nice, but it's just weird to me how the hair sort of levitates around the guys neck line. if you could have gravity affect it more, i think it would really seal the deal.

Xaltar

Update, redone the head cuz I have a tablet now

Xaltar

My new female base mesh, still WIP but its almost done in regards to modeling. I made it to compliment Arsh's base male so I have a female to throw into MB for practice too

If anyone wants it in OBJ format let me know.



Its a little poly heavy at 5000+ tris but I have tried to give it good poly distobution for sculpting purposes.

C&C welcome

Joao Sapiro

looks a tad like a man with boobs :S did you make it from scratch or using arsh basemesh ?

MoP

The shoulders are enormous. Like, uncannily huge. Hips seem a tad narrow for a woman, and you could probably stand to make the legs a bit more shapely.

Xaltar

Thanks for the comments I'll get to work sorting out the shoulders, hips and legs.

I used my wifes build as reff and she has broad shoulders (me likes that lol) but I think I over did it a bit lol. I started out with Arsh's base then ended up remodeling most of it with the exception of the shoulder area, guess I should have redone that too lol.

Xaltar

Better? I'll upload the obj when I have the mesh up to standard. I also added Arsh's model's head for proportion checking.

Keep the comments comming

Xaltar

Decided to get back to my Vampire dude. Been a long time since my last update. Redone the head and completely replaced all the remnants of Arsh's base body that I had been using as placeholders (hands and feet).

I am hoping to get good enough to actually be competative in this years Dom Wars so please feel free to be harsh with me, I really need some tough lovin here.


Just a very basic texture atm, I'll be hand painting a new texture for the head using AncientPig's awesome tuto. The shirt is textured but I may still redo the color map for it the rest is all just materials in max.

http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/7152/bdywo0.jpg
C&C would be great.

Jaco

Good progress. The hands look funny though, try enlarging the palm maybe and pulling the fingers down a bit, notice that the thumb almost makes a right angle with the palm.
Do you have a texture on the body/head? If you do, it's not doing much, it's also very pale. Try getting some more color variation going, like the color zones of the faces, tanned skin etc.

Keep it up!

Xaltar

Thanks for the reply Jaco, I've been having issues getting the hands to look right, I'll give your suggestions a go, hopfully that will make them look right.

The only thing that is textured properly atm is the shirt, its just a basic black shirt I painted it in dark greys and some dark blues but I have no idea what else I can do to make it pop better. My painting skills are very weak I'm afraid, I've been practicing 2d drawing and shading a lot lately but I'm still very poor at it.

If anyone knows any good tutos on painting textures for normal mapped chars please let me know, all I have atm are tutos on regular diffuse only maps.

conte

Johny said: "did you make it from scratch or using arsh basemesh ?"
you know answer, everyone doing humanoid models from arsh's base these days. That's norm already, lol.

Xaltar

lol yeah, it does make a great starting point. There is nothing left of the mesh now though, I just didn't feel right making something using it then calling it my own. Besides, I won't learn anything by using someone elses mesh but using it as reff did teach me a lot. If you're reading this Arsh, thanks again for sharing.

Xaltar

Here's the head texture so far, I used a baked oclusion map to get the lines in the right places then faded it out a lot and tweaked the colors and shading a fair bit to get things looking how I want them. Still wip.

http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/1309/bdytv4.jpg

C&C would be great.

_Eclipse_

wow, a lot of improvements!

don't know what software you're using but that hair tut is one the best http://www.paultosca.com/varga_hair.html (and also well know here in polycount :P )

Xaltar

Yeah, I've had that bookmarked since the day he put it up lol. Problem is, I don't have the skill to pull it off, yet. I'm working on it though, this model is more of a learning piece than anything else. Its taken me months so far because I keep redoing bits of it. Fix this then that looks bad lol. Anyway, thanks all for the encouraging words and tips, much appreciated.

Been messing with the head texture and the eyes. I put them on the same sheet now to use up some of the wasted space on the map. Added some more color variation to the face and tweaked a few things I wasn't happy with.

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/6006/faceavv6.jpg

Working on the hair atm but it looks too bad to show atm, just some blocking out.

Any advice / crits welcome.

Xaltar

Well, got the hair blocked in now. It more or less looks like what I had in mind. I'm not sure wether I sould do a highpoly for it or just use alpha and rely on transparency to do the work.

http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/9084/faceayh0.jpg

Jaco

The face is looking great. The collar looks too thin though, have you tried using the shell modifier on it?
If you go for transparency you're going to need some more hair planes. You should also add a hairline to the skin texture, the border between skin and hair is very sharp at the moment.
Keep it up, this dude's looking better with each post.