Pectoral muscles are primarily used for pushing, actually, it's his back/shoulders that's going to be well developed for the wings.
That said, striking with his arms, fighting with a sword, etc -- those muscles should still be well developed. It's not going to read as strong or muscular if the area is flat. Look at the ref I sent, bodybuilders, muscle charts, ecorche, whatever it takes -- on a muscular character, especially a fighter, the musculature should bulge out, not depress in awkwardly.
The only thing I see that is "wrong" about the model is that the eyes are supposed to be same distance between the top of the head and the chin, right now he has a five head. Everything else is negligible. Pecs, thighs, abs, ass cheeks, and balls are different from person to person depending on their skeleton, nothing immediately caught my eye so that means nothing else is really distracting. Please move forward with your model and don't try to please everyone because when you do so you fail. Just keep going and work things out as you go.
Awesome work so far bro. Look forward to seeing more.
size of the pectorals is irrelevant as long as they're attached to the arms and not the wings. if he had wings instead of arms, then they would indeed need to be well developed, and he'd need a large keel bone/sternum for them to anchor to. But i imagine you just want a guy with wings on his back, so give him just a little bit extra back there and people will allow it.
[ QUOTE ]
I figured a big chest was needed to support the wings..
[/ QUOTE ]True, if he was using his arms for wings like a bird. But he has two sets of arms technically and the second set would need all of the support muscles arms normally use. The second set is located on his back which makes it really hard to actually figure out how a set of arms would work back there. The short answer is, it isn't physically possible, humans aren't made that way unless our arms turn into the wings and we spout little helper monkey arms out of our rib cage, which would actually have to fracture into two rib cages for the smaller shoulder to rotate correctly.
Anyway... His waist doesn't need to be so wide, and if you slim up his waist and pelvis, it will allow you more room for his lats which will help give credence to the back being able to support the wings. Like sectaurs said, just give him a little added back muscle and people will gloss right over it. You might be able to cover up where the wings meet the body with mechanical bits and turn it into a small back pack that has been grafted into his back.
wow thanks guys , well Tonight im gonna start changes to the model as far as adding in wing structure and stuff, so widning/ shrinknig/ reworking proportions up the wazoo, I just wanna get a idea on how to fix this thing.before I restructure him
Well hopefully morning time we will see a change or 2 thats more for the liking of everyone.
ok so I got really inspired last night , was looking at much reference pictures and got to a point of the sculpt I feel I could now take back to max to test out overlaying parts and try out polycruncher finally (Got good results for my itty bity laptop and all) so obviously still alot of things with the sculpt I need to do (hands, more details to the abs area, and the face area)
But other than that , Hopefully today I can figure out how I will model out those wings arch area.....still a big issue about sizing, oh yea I also resized this character alot tried to give that more fatty skin look to it alot of people were saying I werent having (I still need to do it more but I believe its a start.)
your anatomy is still very muddy and unfinished, which shows you are still sculpting too fast, the torso is WAY too wide though, but wouldn't make it as thin as vig suggests because that would make it look badly proportionned too (too thin)
really try to get ref pics into mud/z od whatever you use for sculpting, set that to 20% opacity and tweak your proportions there, also, PLEASE finish one level of subdivision before going to the next one, check your face anatomy too, the eyes are too low, face is too wide and the top of the cranium is too squarey.
keep it up though you're making a lot of progress, you just need to be a bit less in a hurry when you work, doesn't matter if you don't get the whole body done in 4 hours, take your time, check everything, polish each level, and you should be fine.
The sword on the leading edge of the wing idea is pretty cool. Though being a more practical minded person I would have attached the swords on the back between the wings running parallel vertically.
But the setup in your design should make for some interesting motions when drawing/sheathing the sword where he would bring the wings up for a semi-spread and the hands reach up and draw the sword on the opposing side, Right draws left, Left draws right.
vahl's nailed the crit as far as the last image is concerned. Looks like you're jumping to higher devisions without fully realizing the volumes at the lower levels.
The lower stomach area looks most developed and convincing. The hips are too "fatty". Your design shows a lean lithe guy with wings. What you have now isn't very close to that. The face Vahl already covered. The upper arm is much too short, only about half the length of the forearms. Make them equal length and make small adjustments in either direction till you get something you like. Its very easy to misjudge the length of the forearm because of the wrist. Make sure you define the wrist, its a small but important part of the arm. The large pad that pulls the thumb to form the fist is a very substantial form on the hand but it only extends over the 1st segment of the thumb, there's a noticeble decrease in size in the 2nd and 3rd metacarpals of the thumb as they are just bones and tendons with some flesh on the pad of the 3rd metacarpal.
The legs proportions are better than the arms, though its still noticeble the lower leg is longer than the upper. Realistically the lower leg is shorter than the upper, but stylistically they're often the same length or the lower slightly longer. Again, its easy to misjudge the lengths because the upper leg overlaps with the hips somewhat.
There're alot of great crits and advices so far and you're making good progress. Just have some patience initially and things will get faster later.
This is your biggest improvement yet, great job! Listen to vahl and hito, their crits are great, I just wanted to make note of how much progress this is considering how critical I've been.
That armor is looking great, the anatomy is improving nice work!
Crits:
Copied form IM for posterity, yeah I'm cheap like that...
- The eyes and brows could be moved up the head. The face is sitting pretty low in the head and the nose looks kind of short.
- The space from the outer corner of the eyes to his ears seems kind of thick.
- The bridge of the nose could blend into the forehead smoother, the brow line is really straight and gives him a cave man appearance, if you arch the brows over the eyes a little bit you can get the same intense look but give him more of a modern man feel.
- The shoulders are kind of thick and the waste could be more hyperbolic (nuclear reactor shaped)
- The space between the legs is pretty wide, I know for modeling thats nice but, people with beefy legs, their thighs touch up by their crotch.
- The biceps seem short, it could be coming from the shoulders being overly developed or the forearms being too long?
Theres a few other things I put in the paint over that aren't coming to me right now. But studying them should help spot the differences. Side by side w/o armor
Now that I look at the paint overs, I think I might have gone a bit too thin on the waste, but given the armor it might work out. Maybe a happy medium...
Don't want to sound like a douchebag Vig but I think the proportions were better before the paintover. The sculpt showed more mass (in terms of, gravity *affecting* mass) while the paintover looks more like an idealized inflated mannekin to me...
Pior, thats why I do environmental work and animation. Feel free to chime in with your own kick ass paint over, I'll be sure to use it as my wallpaper. Love your stuff even if you are a douch =P
[ QUOTE ] Vig wrote:
Now that I look at the paint overs, I think I might have gone a bit too thin on the waste, but given the armor it might work out. Maybe a happy medium...
[/ QUOTE ]
I was looking at the reference of the wirey, winged samurai that shares the body type of a young Bruce lee and then looking at angry Steven Segal hes been working on. I clumsily painted over some of the shadows while smudging the details around to get the silhouette in the shape I wanted. I didn't paint back in that detail, which technically to make it a pretty picture I should have, but that wasn't the point.
I hope he keeps a lot of the shadowy areas that give the forms mass and show gravity, while making his rib cage and waist slimmer to fit the concept. My main point was on the silhouette not the muscle forms. He's modeled a bruiser when the concept calls for a light weight. Why use a hammer when the job calls for tweezers.
If he's happy with the SUV version, cool. I just hope he knows that when he gets a job and someone hands him a concept there might not be much room for free styling. It's hard to tell when people deviate from a concept because of personal taste or if its something they don't see.
Oh well yeah in that case I understand what you were pointing at - I just saw the gif and had to comment on the masses thing.
I think -and that's more of a general statement- that something to be very careful with, which shows in the latest flipanim you posted is the danger of overlaid guides. For instance I think the proportion checkpoints you marked on the chest are not entirely true because ... the feet are off level. See what I mean?
In any case I rarely do paintovers because of, well, just that - ie the risk of seeing the point I want to bring over being interpreted as something else :P Also I don't really feel comfortable enough to do image paintivers... I think it works well for technical Qs like edgeloops and stuff, but otherwise I dunno. Wast subject isn't it? Just like in art class ; it's cool when the professor adds pointers and missed construction lines on a student's sketch but not so cool if the teacher draws too much.
His groin is too high up. Anatomically speaking, the torso and neck combined equal 3 heads in height. From shoulder-tip to shoulder-tip it is 2 heads in length.
Overall, he looks like a big-boned midget with huge muscles. If that's what you're aiming for, hey, by all means go for it.
nah im gonna be reworking alot of the sizing of this guy VIA building the armor back in max importing back to z-brush and begin retweaking sizing adjustments from there. Im trying to avoid that midget syndrom characters I usually are proned to acidentily making. I'll have some updates tommorrow if all goes well
well did alot of work last few days, armor is at a point I can say I can now go back to z-brush and begin my 2nd process of really fixing up this character and fixing his anatomy in and out.
vig thanks for the idea of the latch wing it really helped out.
face is too small, too low on the head, and his entire body is too wide. these have been long-standing problems.
his wrists are far too thin, as are his hands.
waist armor looks good, except for the back skirt. don't like the shape at all... I think it would look better split vertically like you did the front.
Also still need to fix hands and for-arms adressed sizing issues, seems more managable now.
Wings are a bitch I understand now why you dont see many game angel characters after doing it.
I still have no idea how I will move around pieces so I can bake them via x-normal and such since there so high poly in brush (6-7 sub ds to get the wings and I still have to go and touch them up)
anyway more updates and fixes to come, after this im gonna start studys of low poly stuff like johny and others suggested.
Sectaurs: Not to quote your quote, but god damnit I dont wanna try anything new and weird it hurts my hands
This may be a bit late to the game and I didn't see it mentioned already, but you may want to put a little extra thought into HOW those wings are attached to him. Right now, they just look like they are sitting on his shoulders. Something like that needs to look like it is a part of him or has been "bound" to him in some way, imo. Otherwise, the first time he takes flight, zooop! off they go! Either that or he better have some DAMN fine arm strength to hold them in place.
Good stuff, though. I really think you are going to get a lot more out of this thread than you realize right now. ;D Just make sure you think about how each part of the model works.
Feather stamp for the lose... Each feather has the same rough breaks in it at exactly the same place. Not to mention they look like feathers glued into place instead of actual wings which are made up of seperate sections of very different types of feathers. You have the right idea about layering the feathers. But you need to come up with separate stamp brushes for each layer because the feathers are shaped differently, have different lengths and even made of slightly more downy or course material.
ok because this is partially fustration and tiredness speaking, all I had were 6 different alpha feather brushes that I Was using last night via drag and stamp on alpha planes multiplied to create that effect.
I had got those feathers from the z-brush eagle feather tutorial I was reading. Is there ANY place to get alpha brushes of feathers. I really dont want to google hand paint feathers today @_@
it's always tempting to get pre-made assets when you're in a hurry or don't want to do something, but i think that sort of thing should be held off until you're confident [and proven] that you could make it on your own if you had the time.
making your own would also help you learn what feathers are needed where, their different shapes, etc.
[ QUOTE ]
it's always tempting to get pre-made assets when you're in a hurry or don't want to do something, but i think that sort of thing should be held off until you're confident [and proven] that you could make it on your own if you had the time.
making your own would also help you learn what feathers are needed where, their different shapes, etc.
[/ QUOTE ]
didnt we discuss the hurting my hands thing already ?
Ugh I really didnt wanna sit and paint them but I guess im going to have to....blah..
This is one of my favorite quotes from a really crappy movie, Scrooged. In the scene Earl Cross just finished telling his 4 year old son if he wants Christmas he'll have to go get a job.
[ QUOTE ]
Earl Cross: All day long I listen to people give me excuses why they can't work. My legs don't work. My back is broken. I'm only four (points at son). The sooner he learns life isn't handed to him on a silver platter, the better.
[/ QUOTE ]And I'm off to finish animating your character...
haha nice vig, well with that said ive done some google searches for varations of bird feathers (eagle/hawk/vulture) but is there like some sort of bird feather database online anywhere? Im not finding alot of good feather results as I wish to.(I think I can make do with what I got but I figure to build a quick library to test with tonight if anything)
This is starting to shape up really well! There are still anatomical issues but you've improved him way beyond my expectations as I've watched this thread. Keep it up man
honestly, find me a picture of a person that has anatomy like that, even just delts and bicepts like that and i will toss praise all over this piece. The anatomy is so off its distracting from the other really nice features of this piece.
well just wanted to show I took the wings thing into account and did some fixes to it, 2nd pass at wings, still need to do clean ups fix arms/biceps/and hands and all
Ive been building his armor and such low poly for normal mapping, so atleast got that out of the way
anyway after this guy is done im hitting to some low poly modeling again. getting forms and such in big blocks etc etc
[ QUOTE ]
honestly, find me a picture of a person that has anatomy like that, even just delts and bicepts like that and i will toss praise all over this piece. The anatomy is so off its distracting from the other really nice features of this piece.
[/ QUOTE ]
Sure, the anatomy is off but the fact is that it looks like it represents a human being. That means he's on the right track, and that's the important thing. If the viewer can't tell if it's supposed to be a human or an alien, that's when there's a problem..
Wouldnt it be better so just do the feathers with the diffuse/color map and skip the normalmap on them? from my experience feathers don't have that much volume. Your are looking very thick atm. Just my opinion. Great improvement on the body btw, not quite there yet but lightyears better than the first versions
still working on this guy, sorry for the lack of updates but I hate posting individual normal map tests....anyway using xnormal still having many issues getting it to bake some things correctly..... but other than that good to go
just going to resculpt and re align the model a bit and bake the final char map
jesus this felt like a challenge to get all this put together, gonna redo the wings naturally to be more spreaded and such once I get the alpha channel flowing but yea all 1 map woooo!
[ QUOTE ]
Those scars dont look right at all, I'm going to agree with Likewise and say you should remove them.
Congrats on finaly getting xnormal to finaly work btw, I know it's been driving you mad the last couple of days.
[/ QUOTE ]
many babies and puppys were kicked and punched to achieve xnormal to work
and yea the scars were ment to be more of a street fighter hoomage//sagat style scar. Yea looking at them today I realize I hate them and need to rework them
Replies
Im still gonna touch up that sculpt alot I was just trying to get a idea how to fix him for the wings was all
I figured a big chest was needed to support the wings..
That said, striking with his arms, fighting with a sword, etc -- those muscles should still be well developed. It's not going to read as strong or muscular if the area is flat. Look at the ref I sent, bodybuilders, muscle charts, ecorche, whatever it takes -- on a muscular character, especially a fighter, the musculature should bulge out, not depress in awkwardly.
Awesome work so far bro. Look forward to seeing more.
And please no more penises...
I figured a big chest was needed to support the wings..
[/ QUOTE ]True, if he was using his arms for wings like a bird. But he has two sets of arms technically and the second set would need all of the support muscles arms normally use. The second set is located on his back which makes it really hard to actually figure out how a set of arms would work back there. The short answer is, it isn't physically possible, humans aren't made that way unless our arms turn into the wings and we spout little helper monkey arms out of our rib cage, which would actually have to fracture into two rib cages for the smaller shoulder to rotate correctly.
Anyway... His waist doesn't need to be so wide, and if you slim up his waist and pelvis, it will allow you more room for his lats which will help give credence to the back being able to support the wings. Like sectaurs said, just give him a little added back muscle and people will gloss right over it. You might be able to cover up where the wings meet the body with mechanical bits and turn it into a small back pack that has been grafted into his back.
Well hopefully morning time we will see a change or 2 thats more for the liking of everyone.
But other than that , Hopefully today I can figure out how I will model out those wings arch area.....still a big issue about sizing, oh yea I also resized this character alot tried to give that more fatty skin look to it alot of people were saying I werent having (I still need to do it more but I believe its a start.)
anyway usual crits are welcomed
really try to get ref pics into mud/z od whatever you use for sculpting, set that to 20% opacity and tweak your proportions there, also, PLEASE finish one level of subdivision before going to the next one, check your face anatomy too, the eyes are too low, face is too wide and the top of the cranium is too squarey.
keep it up though you're making a lot of progress, you just need to be a bit less in a hurry when you work, doesn't matter if you don't get the whole body done in 4 hours, take your time, check everything, polish each level, and you should be fine.
But the setup in your design should make for some interesting motions when drawing/sheathing the sword where he would bring the wings up for a semi-spread and the hands reach up and draw the sword on the opposing side, Right draws left, Left draws right.
vahl's nailed the crit as far as the last image is concerned. Looks like you're jumping to higher devisions without fully realizing the volumes at the lower levels.
The lower stomach area looks most developed and convincing. The hips are too "fatty". Your design shows a lean lithe guy with wings. What you have now isn't very close to that. The face Vahl already covered. The upper arm is much too short, only about half the length of the forearms. Make them equal length and make small adjustments in either direction till you get something you like. Its very easy to misjudge the length of the forearm because of the wrist. Make sure you define the wrist, its a small but important part of the arm. The large pad that pulls the thumb to form the fist is a very substantial form on the hand but it only extends over the 1st segment of the thumb, there's a noticeble decrease in size in the 2nd and 3rd metacarpals of the thumb as they are just bones and tendons with some flesh on the pad of the 3rd metacarpal.
The legs proportions are better than the arms, though its still noticeble the lower leg is longer than the upper. Realistically the lower leg is shorter than the upper, but stylistically they're often the same length or the lower slightly longer. Again, its easy to misjudge the lengths because the upper leg overlaps with the hips somewhat.
There're alot of great crits and advices so far and you're making good progress. Just have some patience initially and things will get faster later.
Crits:
Copied form IM for posterity, yeah I'm cheap like that...
- The eyes and brows could be moved up the head. The face is sitting pretty low in the head and the nose looks kind of short.
- The space from the outer corner of the eyes to his ears seems kind of thick.
- The bridge of the nose could blend into the forehead smoother, the brow line is really straight and gives him a cave man appearance, if you arch the brows over the eyes a little bit you can get the same intense look but give him more of a modern man feel.
- The shoulders are kind of thick and the waste could be more hyperbolic (nuclear reactor shaped)
- The space between the legs is pretty wide, I know for modeling thats nice but, people with beefy legs, their thighs touch up by their crotch.
- The biceps seem short, it could be coming from the shoulders being overly developed or the forearms being too long?
Theres a few other things I put in the paint over that aren't coming to me right now. But studying them should help spot the differences.
Side by side w/o armor
Now that I look at the paint overs, I think I might have gone a bit too thin on the waste, but given the armor it might work out. Maybe a happy medium...
[ QUOTE ]
Vig wrote:
Now that I look at the paint overs, I think I might have gone a bit too thin on the waste, but given the armor it might work out. Maybe a happy medium...
[/ QUOTE ]
I was looking at the reference of the wirey, winged samurai that shares the body type of a young Bruce lee and then looking at angry Steven Segal hes been working on. I clumsily painted over some of the shadows while smudging the details around to get the silhouette in the shape I wanted. I didn't paint back in that detail, which technically to make it a pretty picture I should have, but that wasn't the point.
I hope he keeps a lot of the shadowy areas that give the forms mass and show gravity, while making his rib cage and waist slimmer to fit the concept. My main point was on the silhouette not the muscle forms. He's modeled a bruiser when the concept calls for a light weight. Why use a hammer when the job calls for tweezers.
If he's happy with the SUV version, cool. I just hope he knows that when he gets a job and someone hands him a concept there might not be much room for free styling. It's hard to tell when people deviate from a concept because of personal taste or if its something they don't see.
I think -and that's more of a general statement- that something to be very careful with, which shows in the latest flipanim you posted is the danger of overlaid guides. For instance I think the proportion checkpoints you marked on the chest are not entirely true because ... the feet are off level. See what I mean?
In any case I rarely do paintovers because of, well, just that - ie the risk of seeing the point I want to bring over being interpreted as something else :P Also I don't really feel comfortable enough to do image paintivers... I think it works well for technical Qs like edgeloops and stuff, but otherwise I dunno. Wast subject isn't it? Just like in art class ; it's cool when the professor adds pointers and missed construction lines on a student's sketch but not so cool if the teacher draws too much.
Anyways! I want to see them wings now :P
Overall, he looks like a big-boned midget with huge muscles. If that's what you're aiming for, hey, by all means go for it.
vig thanks for the idea of the latch wing it really helped out.
anyway its z-brush time now!
his wrists are far too thin, as are his hands.
waist armor looks good, except for the back skirt. don't like the shape at all... I think it would look better split vertically like you did the front.
Also still need to fix hands and for-arms adressed sizing issues, seems more managable now.
Wings are a bitch I understand now why you dont see many game angel characters after doing it.
I still have no idea how I will move around pieces so I can bake them via x-normal and such since there so high poly in brush (6-7 sub ds to get the wings and I still have to go and touch them up)
anyway more updates and fixes to come, after this im gonna start studys of low poly stuff like johny and others suggested.
Sectaurs: Not to quote your quote, but god damnit I dont wanna try anything new and weird it hurts my hands
i dont see much need to model the feathers (!!!) i would simply make planes on the lowpoly and use alphatest .simple
[/ QUOTE ]
you know I have that on stock for you right?
Good stuff, though. I really think you are going to get a lot more out of this thread than you realize right now. ;D Just make sure you think about how each part of the model works.
This might help design the different sets of wing feathers.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/BirdWingFeatherSketch.png
Also the wings need to look like they will provide lift. A bird doesn't fly just because it has feathers, their wing thickness is structured in a way that provides lift.
http://www.funpaperairplanes.com/Artwork/Lift%20Animation/Lift_animation2.gif
Also read up on trimming a birds wings, it will give you great insight into what feathers actually provide propulsion.
I had got those feathers from the z-brush eagle feather tutorial I was reading. Is there ANY place to get alpha brushes of feathers. I really dont want to google hand paint feathers today @_@
making your own would also help you learn what feathers are needed where, their different shapes, etc.
it's always tempting to get pre-made assets when you're in a hurry or don't want to do something, but i think that sort of thing should be held off until you're confident [and proven] that you could make it on your own if you had the time.
making your own would also help you learn what feathers are needed where, their different shapes, etc.
[/ QUOTE ]
didnt we discuss the hurting my hands thing already ?
Ugh I really didnt wanna sit and paint them but I guess im going to have to....blah..
[ QUOTE ]
Earl Cross: All day long I listen to people give me excuses why they can't work. My legs don't work. My back is broken. I'm only four (points at son). The sooner he learns life isn't handed to him on a silver platter, the better.
[/ QUOTE ]And I'm off to finish animating your character...
maybe thats why the results I have arent that good.
I took them and arranged them into a wing using the reference as a guide of where to overlap the feathers etc
well just wanted to show I took the wings thing into account and did some fixes to it, 2nd pass at wings, still need to do clean ups fix arms/biceps/and hands and all
Ive been building his armor and such low poly for normal mapping, so atleast got that out of the way
anyway after this guy is done im hitting to some low poly modeling again. getting forms and such in big blocks etc etc
anyway cant make everyone happy
honestly, find me a picture of a person that has anatomy like that, even just delts and bicepts like that and i will toss praise all over this piece. The anatomy is so off its distracting from the other really nice features of this piece.
[/ QUOTE ]
Sure, the anatomy is off but the fact is that it looks like it represents a human being. That means he's on the right track, and that's the important thing. If the viewer can't tell if it's supposed to be a human or an alien, that's when there's a problem..
And yea man Zephir: Thanks for the honest good words makes me glad I went from blobby crap to semi blobby semi human crap
just going to resculpt and re align the model a bit and bake the final char map
jesus this felt like a challenge to get all this put together, gonna redo the wings naturally to be more spreaded and such once I get the alpha channel flowing but yea all 1 map woooo!
Congrats on finaly getting xnormal to finaly work btw, I know it's been driving you mad the last couple of days.
Those scars dont look right at all, I'm going to agree with Likewise and say you should remove them.
Congrats on finaly getting xnormal to finaly work btw, I know it's been driving you mad the last couple of days.
[/ QUOTE ]
many babies and puppys were kicked and punched to achieve xnormal to work
and yea the scars were ment to be more of a street fighter hoomage//sagat style scar. Yea looking at them today I realize I hate them and need to rework them