The Big Lebowski WIP

WipEout

Hi there. I figured I'd start a thread of a WIP of my current personal project, a kinda-cartoony version of the Big Lebowski. I'm hoping I can get feedback here if and when I run into problems with my stuff...

I want to make some low poly models of the Dude, Walter, Donnie, the Stranger, and maybe a Nihilist if I can get to them. I'm shooting for about 2000 polys each, no normal maps or anything super special like that... hi-poly ZBrush models can come later.

The Dude is first, because I already cartoonized him for a 2D class at the Academy of Art. Here are my 2D images:


*I realized after I scanned the rough turnarounds that I scanned them as line art, which messed up their viewing quality. Believe me, the originals are all there and a lot more readable...


This is coinciding with my environments class, where I plan on making a bowling alley in the same style.

Alright, I'm off to model the Dude! Wish me luck!

David M

EDIT-- K, so the images aren't posting-- any advice?

Mijit

I like the clean concepts, mine always seem to be an orgy of random lines.

As for the image tags, remove everything after the .jpg from your post.

Eg http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b153/DavidMann2097/the_Dude_Ruffs.jpg?t=1189817198

becomes

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b153/DavidMann2097/the_Dude_Ruffs.jpg

Then the tags will work.

WipEout

Fixed!

Thanks for the help, Mijit!

ghost-d

Hehe. Lebowski as a character to model is a really good material. Lots of style there. Good luck.

Where´s the money, Lebowski?!

Funky Bunnies

Oh man, sweet idea!

Rockin' concepts so far

WipEout

So I had to make dinner around 8pm so this is as far as I got last night:


I started this thread and the model around 6pm... two hours ain't so bad, I guess...

I'll finish the model up in the next couple hours, save the quaded version for a possible run in ZBrush, then optimize this one in case I'm over budget. I also plan on drawing out Walter today & texturing Dude tomorrow, if all goes as planned... I still need to make room for homework, as well...

Crits and suggestions are welcome, I'd really love to get some feedback as I work!

Ape.of.Gods

Doesn't seem hefty enough, The Dude didn't seem that skinny to me

WipEout

Another update on the Dude.

Taking a little longer than I planned, but hey, it's Saturday!

Anyway--


Detailing him now, he's at 2380 tris and I still have the head to flesh out. First is a quads model to muck with in ZBrush later, then it's optimizing time for the original goal of 2k tris. Should be done sometime tonight, although I remembered that we're going out to dinner tonight. Goody. That gives me 3 hours.

Ape-- you're right, Jeff Bridges probably is a bit heftier, but as a cartoon, I figure this was a good exaggeration. I kept the gut though, since Caucasians don't really help the figure....

Once again, any crits or more suggestions are greatly appreciated!

WipEout

So I was wondering if anyone has a nice human head modeled for a 2000 poly character, that I might compare mine with.

I am really having a hard time figuring whether I am on the right track, while using the Gnomon Game Head DVD. The problem is, if I follow his tut too closely I'm afraid the head will have WAY too much geometry, but I have yet to find a good image of a 2k tri wireframe that I could use for reference.
Here's a pic:


So, about how many tri's should I have in a completed head, on average, with an open mouth (for speech)?

And, what do you think of it so far?

I need to add a beard and long hair, but the hair will be one mass attached to the head, and I think the beard can be pulled from a low-poly cylinder or cube then attached to the chin.

Crits & comments NEEDED/welcome/appreciated

Thanks,

David M

WipEout

So I finished the beard for tonight. Still need to find polys to clear out and tweak verts a little more. It's at 718 tris right now.



Hair comes tomorrow after class. Or during class, maybe.... Time for bed now though.

Once again, crits/comments welcome!

David M

WipEout

Quick update-- here's Walter's concept:



Dude's almost done modeling, I'm still trying to find polys to delete. He's at just under 2700, shooting for 2500.

I'll post a pic after I've reduced him a little more.

Thanks for looking.

WipEout

Here's the dude, done modeling and optimizing, unless you guys can see anything else you think I could clear up.



On to UV mapping and texture layout-- I'm thinking a simple style in the vein of Team Fortress 2 (Minus all the extra shaders-- but a simple, colorful palette that would be in line with the simple art style.

C&C welcome, as always!

David M

EDIT-- you may have noticed, I keep changing the title of the thread a little bit-- I feel a little lonely in here... Just trying to grab people's attention...

dabu

He looks a tad off balance in the pose youve modeled him in. try moving his upper torso back a few scale inches. He looks ready to fall over forward.

You want the bind pose to feel a tad more dynamic.

Japhir

looks sweet! love the head and legs!

Pedro Amorim

its the dude!! duderino!

WipEout

So I got a couple new updates after a while... sorry, I've been kinda busy with school. I think I'm almost done texturing the Dude's head/hands/teeth-- what do you guys think?





And the texture flat:




I'm going to start on his clothes soon, once I get little details like teeth and fingernails finished.

Also, I got Walter's head... umm... fleshed out... just needs some tweaking, but I'm not really sure where:




Sobchek's beard & 'stache will be in the textures, since this is also a 2500tri model. I still need to model his sunglasses, and the body-- those will be done by Wednesday night.


Any suggestions/tips/critiques?

Thanks in advance.

Slaught

Looks great!
Maybe put a bit more contrast in the hair.

WipEout

Another quick update-- started blocking out the environment (bowling alley). Here's the ball return:



I'm gonna model 2 lanes, the score table, and seats behind it, then group them all with this and duplicate across the bowling alley.

Everything is low poly, I'm planning on 50k polys for the whole scene including the 3 characters and bar.

I was wondering, though-- I'm going for PS2 specs, and I'm not sure if the PS2 can handle specular? ie, should I create a specular map or paint the shininess/reflections into the diffuse? The ball return is a really shiny molded plastic, with a brushed-metal rail/roundabout-thing. Like this:



So I'd rather be able to see the reflections move with the camera, instead of painting them into the textures-- is that possible with PS2 specs?

WipEout

[ QUOTE ]
Looks great!
Maybe put a bit more contrast in the hair.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks! Do you mean more contrast like add more dark hair to the shaded areas, or lighter hairs in the highlights? Because looking at it, I can see how the shadows don't look shaded enough...

I appreciate the feedback!

Everyone keep 'em coming!

dabu

dude, nice work. Hard to tell whats up with walter til you start texturing, but I agree, something is lacking from your concept in the final model.

I wouldn't stress the spec maps, but if you have time, its nice practice to throw them on. I thought you were going for more of a whimsical flat shaded look?

TheFrog4u

loving the head texture!

WipEout

dabu-- the overall look is kind of flat-shaded cartoony, but I was wondering how to put across the plastic/molded look of the Googie style bowling alley in a cartoon-- I just figured the things like the ball return would be better off with a spec map so the viewer could tell immediately the plasticity of some objects. Overall, I want a more Team Fortress 2 style, but something that can still show that my textures aren't just flat painted colors (with multiple shaders, which is beyond the reaches of my little mind right now), like TF2's. Here's an example of the TF2 texture maps. Or just the Albedo (or diffuse, or color, or...), of the Sniper from TF2:


Once I realized that the actual color maps were THAT simple and all the coolness factor comes basically from the 7 or 8 shaders they render in the game , I figured I should throw in a bit more detail than that...

Frog4u-- thanks, man! I always freak when I'm working on my stuff-- I never feel it's done or worthy of sharing, so I keep it to myself and constantly tweak, always afraid of harsh criticism. Luckily I haven't received any flak on here, which is kick-ass!

dejawolf

its the eyes, they are an eyesore.
he just stares blankly into the void of nothingness.
you need to put more work into them.
it seems like you mixed 2 styles, a semi-realistic and cartoony style.

aesir

I like your style, but I think the texture for the skin could use a few more colors. RIght now, its only one color with different values. Try throwing more blue into the shadows and more red into the nose and cheeks and yellow in other places.

Looks cool though.

Miguelito

Nice one! Make a TF2 map out of it!

WipEout

another update for you-- Walter's almost done, just need to optimize and get him under 2500 polys. Right now he's at about 2600 polys.







As always, C&C more than welcome!

CheeseOnToast

Once you've got these bad boys done, I can help you get them into Source with all the updated shader stuff if you like. You'll need a normal map with the spec map in the alpha channel as a bare minimum (the normal map can be completely flat, just a fill with 128, 128, 255 is fine), and the diffuse map as well. You can also make a gloss (exponent) map if you like, or just have a single gloss value for the whole model.

WipEout

That'd be cool-- we'll see what happens. Im in my last leg of school, so I'll be looking for a job, and right now I'm damn near inundated with modeling and prototyping board games. After this Christmas, though, I'll see what we can do!

Thanks!

TorQue[MoD]

These rule man!
The Big Lebowski is one of the best movies ever! Love your Walter model, it looks just like John Goodman.

labrat

About 2 years ago I was working on a shortlived attempt to release a commercial bowling game themed around the Big Lebowski. As far as I know, a game called Black Market Bowling on the PS2 is the closest anyone has come, but a "Dude" knockoff character is as far as they went. As for handling reflections, I just flipped the geometry, drastically reduced the polycount, and varied the floor transparency using vertex alpha. This was the result:



This was done on the PSP, btw, and the shadow polys used vertex alpha, too, and weren't really black squares like they are in the top pic. The PS2 could easily handle higher poly counts and environment maps on things like the ball returns if you want to fake a bit of reflectivity.

WipEout

TorQue-- thanks! I was worried how much the model would resemble Goodman before the texture-- I really wanted the silhouette to come across as Walter without the Texture doing all that work...

Labrat-- thanks for the advice (and the ref images!) It's a great help in visualizing my final environment!

I've UV'd Walter and started drawing some sketches of Donny-- I'll show them a little later today, maybe tomorrow, if I have time. Right now I'm doing the homework for the alley, since there's a ton of stuff for it due Monday. I need to get back to finishing the Dude's texture so I can start on Walter's texture and start modeling Donny, but I have a lot of other work on my plate right now...

WipEout

So a bit of an update on the environment--

I feel kind of lost at this point-- never really messed with environment stuff, so I'm not sure if this is "industry standard" or not. Any tips, critiques, comments?





-- you might notice wires peeking through on the last image-- that's Maya's clipping plane, it always gets screwy when the geometry is so much bigger than the grid...

My main concern is building in the details of the environment overall-- how much should be extruded/added to one solid piece? How much is actually free-floating geometry?

According to the class assignment, I need to define the LODs according to the cameras' viewpoints-- determine what'll be furthest away, what needs more resolution for textures, etc. My concern is tiling textures-- how do I go about tiling a set of textures across one quad? I heard I can adjust the UV space for that particular poly, but doesn't that just make the single texture map repeat? Or will I be layering shaders to tile the textures across one poly...? Why is the sky blue? Am I making any sense?

*catches breath*

Anyway, here are some props for the lanes-- score table, benches, ball return, and the lanes themselves. I laid out all their UVs onto one map, I figure a 512x512 should be good to fit all of them, since a certain lack of detail would lend to the kind-of cartoony style I'm looking for...




Once again, C&C is more than welcome!

Thanks guys!

WipEout

Alright I'm back and I'm not freaking out anymore...

I wanted to post my concept of Donny:


I think I got the lankiness and scrawny look of Donny, but something's up with the face that I can't quite place... Any suggestions?

Today I'm all about finishing the Dude's texture-- I've put it off long enough (that and other classes got in the way). EA is coming to my school in a few weeks so I want to get these guys ready for that-- that's 3 weeks to texture Walter, model and texture Donny, and throw 'em all in a reel. The environment is arbitrary at this point, it's more for a class than this project, although once I'm done with it I have plans for them all .

I'll post pics of the Dude in a while-- I want to finish his jellies then look for some crits on here.

Later, all.

pliang

3 weeks? Hmmm...that's kind of tight for both character and the entire environment but since you're aiming for the characters that's OK. About fitting that many objects on one 512 image it may be a little more blurry than you expect so I might use two for details.

And those props when you get to it you should soften edges on the legs and so forth...there's no reason cartoony objects should be blocky.

WipEout

thanks for the advice Pliang. I actually decided to change up the maps a bit for the props-- giving each it's own 128. After talking to Dabu and a couple other people I think this would be a better route for the props.

And I'll definitely be softening a lot of the edges-- I just wanted them in there for class-- nothing's really final yet .

WipEout

Here's an update on the dude:






So I got the jellies close to done, and I'm working on the plaid. After those two are cleared up, I figure a quick "messy" pass of stains and all-around lazy-dudeness and the Duderino will be finished!

Any suggestions, comments, or critiques are welcome, as always!

Zephir62

I'm really loving the style you've got going on. The environment work looks decent... Your textures will make or break the scene.

pliang

Not bad, just referring back to what has been said it'd be nice to heighten up the highlights on the hair.

You already painted some in but it will bring it out a little bit more since it's still a little hard to see it from that distance plus lazy looking people tend to have greasy hair.

dabu

Darken the shoes, they are too close to the skin tone.

And make the soles darker than the tops...

WipEout

update on the dude:


Darkened the shadows on the shins, added a little more shininess to the hair, finished the plaid, added shadows to the jellies as well as darkened the shoes a bit (darkened the soles too, Dabu), but I wanted to keep their clear-blue plastic look.

Now I'm starting on Walter's texture, but I want to come back to the Dude and maybe rework the folds in his sleeves, as well as touch some other bits up once I get a better hang of BodyPaint. And now that I look at the Dude, I notice there's nothing really keeping his shorts up Guess I should add some elastic to the waistband...

As always, Comments and Critiques are more than welcome!

stimpack

the face skin is far more interesting than the rest of the skin. give those legs some love! this model is doooope!

pliang

Yeah I almost forgot...the legs could use a little bit slight definitions on the muscle as it looks slightly plain.

WipEout

So here's more Walter:


and the head texture:


Here's the full body:



Just started fixing the shadows and blocking in the colors.

I noticed a slight issue with the color in his ear-- the shadow kind of encroaches on the hilights at the top of the ea-- I'll fix it in a bit...

Still got his glasses, as well as folds and details on the clothes.

Also touched up the Dude's legs-- I can't really do fine leg hair since A) the Dude's leg hair is almost non-existent or blonde, and the texture is so low rez that I can't really draw fine hairs. So I started hilighting and defining muscle shapes like you guys suggested (and thanks for the feedback). I'll edit this post with the pics in a bit, but for now I need to get away from the monitor for a while...

Any crits are welcomed as always.

fogmann

I'd say that maybe baking an occlusion on your low poly could help you with the shadows, specifically with the pockets on Walter's vest. I understand you're going with the cartoony style, but it isn't sitting quite right with me yet. You could probably add some more flare to it, if not definition in terms of shading, because frankly, Dude's texture looks unfinished and somewhat dull to me, and the wrinkles on the sleeves look like you just painted in the squiggly lines to add some shading. In other words, those lines should read as wrinkles, but looking at the model I'm instantly recognizing them as painted lines instead - hope that makes sense.

Other than that, I like the models, and Donny's concept is really cool!

WipEout

fogmann-- you're absolutely right on the Dude's sleeves. It was something I was trying out and haven't gotten around to repairing yet-- but the sleeve "folds" are on a separate layer already, just so I can try out different things.

Both models have ambient occlusion maps, maybe the Dude's is just too light right now-- I think I dropped the opacity on it a little too much. Walter's is probably just too blurred, I'll mess with them and see what I can come up with. I think I'm gonna rearrange Walter's UV map too, because the pockets' occlusions just aren't turning out quite right (they're separate objects attached to the main body).

Thanks for the comments!

WipEout

Quick update on Walter before I take a break and eat dinner:





working out details, reworked the UVs in some places, etc etc. Goofed around a little too much today, but I'm kinda sick and having a hard time concentrating... meh.

Let me know what you guys think of the creases/folds on his back-- I'm not too partial to them honestly, but I'd like some other opinions/ideas if you could help.

Incomitatum

In my opinion, Goodman's face is not round enough. It is rather cylindrical with the side of his head. I love the concept thumbnail on your site, how his cheeks are rounded; that images really sells your style.

WipEout

Incomitatum-- I agree, so I plumped up his cheeks a little bit-- not too much though, otherwise it would have blown out the meshflow and made other bits of the head look weird.

So I think I'm pretty much done with Walter, I just need to take him into Bodypaint and fix some texture seams on his arms and legs. I wish I could figure out what I'm doing to the ambient occlusion maps that by the time the model has color and shadow, there's always a glaring seam down the inside thigh or forearm... Oh well, I can fix in BP.




And Here's the body:




The main maps are @ 256x256, the glasses are 64x64. I'm going to reduce the textures to 128^2 after I've cleaned up the few little things I have left-- but I'm going to work on Donny now so I don't get bogged down in the details. I only have a week to finish the models/textures/basic rigs for poses so I can throw them into a reel and get a job next week when a couple companies come to my school. Wish me luck...


As always, C&C welcome!

t4paN

You got them spot on man. They do look like cartooney versions of the real characters, can't wait to see Donny! I'm diggin!

WipEout

Quick Update:

Donny!! (WIP)



Yeah-- Work In Progress, although not for long, trying to complete these guys by Monday morning.

C&C always welcome

Jeremy Lindstrom

I know you've been busting your ass on these and they look great, but you gotta do da jesus..