Centaur - Character WIP

Tully

I've been saying for the past few weeks that I'm gonna post this on the forums, but I keep on being lazy and second guessing myself that anybody else is gonna want to see it

I decided that I wanted to do my own next-gen sorta game character from start to finish without MoP doing the technical bits for me (he's handy that way certainly, but it's better to know how to do it yourself).

So I did a concept
I'll probably finish it later.


And I learned zbrush3.



And I did the low poly in max.


Now I'm gonna do his little pack things and then get to UVs and textures. He's 7830 triangles at the moment as you see him. A bit over 8000 with all his doodads. If I were super serious about this I'd probably pare that down, but I just want to make him a nice detailed piece of work that teaches me how to do this stuff, so ehhh... we'll see.

Any thoughts? I'll post updates as I go along if people are interested

animatr

wow! that's great!

ThatDon

I think you could stand to beef up the legs, they feel very weak and fragile right now, maybe just bigger hoofs would do the trick but that's just me. You do incredible work Tully.

Sa74n

thats very impressive, laurel. great work!
i agree with dons crit on the legs. they could be a tad beefier.
hope you're gonna add a weapon and maybe a shield for his left arm?
good work doing this all on your own without mop

rawkstar

is that all zbrush with mesh extracts or did you do the armor with subds and detailed in zbrush?

as for crits i'd say in the model the legs seem a bit frail, and the "shin" armor seems rather insubstantial compared to the concept, could probably use some slight beefing up.

and for the lowpoly, alot of the armor pieces don't contribute enough to the silhouette to warrant cutting them in, you can save alot of polys that way and spend them elsewhere, deformations and silhouette are the 2 main things to worry about, normal maps will take care of all the details on the inside.

with all that said looks pretty sweet

flaagan

Just a thought, if he's going for the warrior look, maybe put some armor and spikes on the back legs so he does some gruesome damage if he kicks with his back legs.

Snowfly

Pure class Keep the legs slender, it has a great feel that way.

Renaud Galand

awesome model Mrs Tully I really like the design of the armor but I'm not found of the head, I think you could push the horse/hybrid aspect a little bit further and detail it a bit more.

Anyway, the quality is there.

KEEP POSTING !

fritz

man....i love it all, right down to the simplistic strokes and bold contrast in the concept. nice work dude.

pliang

Interesting but for some reason from the pictures compared to the concept he seems to be almost two seperate entity somewhat forcibly merged together...besides adjusting the musculature and form of the legs..I'd say make the hoofs a little bigger as well.

The face as said could use more blended characteristics...maybe extend his ears a little bit so he would be more "attatched" the rest of his body.

Any more props going on him besides the javelin?

J Randall

Completely awesome I wanna see more plz, looks great liek a quick scout, the only thing is theres a dimple on the highpoly face in the middle at the top of his nose. Cheers!

EarthQuake

tully > mop!

vahl

that's looking greatawesome Tully.
Same crits as Rawkstar, but you still have an awesome model

Parnell

Ya seeing this makes me wonder...will the Tully/MoP team be no more?
Great work! The Zbrush stuff is really bad ass. Stylizing the hooves to a be a bit more "Clydesdale" in appearance might help balance out the character.
B

jgarland

Really awesome work, Tully. For someone who's "learning" to use ZBrush, you make me feel pretty small. Your knowledge of 2D mediums definitely shines through in your 3D work.

aesir

This is pretty kickass. Its really cool to see you venturing off into the gameart 3d side on your own. Im almost a little surprised your first one of these wasn't a dragon

I really like everything so far. If i were to give a crit, I'd say that the armour could use a little more volume. It seems a little thin right now.

Keep being amazing

Tully

thanks, henning I have to say right away though, that though Mop hasn't done anything *for* me on this, he's been an enormous help with learning this stuff. I'm pretty impatient when it comes to learning complex software, so I almost certainly wouldn't have sat down with it long enough to do this without him prodding me in the right direction!

animatr: thanks!
ThatDon: I can see your point.. the anatomy reference I used for the horse parts of this guy were from an Akhal Teke (which is a really wiry, slim breed of horse). I didn't want to make him big and bulky like most centaurs you see out there, though I think he could stand to have a bit more bulk in the front-leg armour that other people have mentioned.
Rawkstar: Agreed, I think bulking up the pauldron there would add a lot more to the silhoutte, and be more like the concept too.
I did the entire high poly in zbrush (with the exception of his sword, spear, and tassles, which I started in max but you can't see here anyway...), but for the extras I used the topology tool. Handy thing, that!
flagaan: Point taken... though I think armour on his hind-quarters would be difficult to achieve the way you're talking about. Mostly because of a horse's anatomy, it's not feasible to put armour there unless it's attached to the front end, and I didn't really want to make him super-heavily armoured that way. I'm planning a couple changes, so
Snowfly: Thanks, I think I will
Renaud Gauland: Thanks! Gotcha on the head... I quite like it myself, but I have in my head what it'll look like when it's textured. I wanted to keep him refined and intelligent-looking. I'm planning things with skin texture and the look of his eyes to be a lot more horse-like, so I think it might work to the end you're talking about.
fritz: thanks
pliang: I think you've got a point here, though I balk at the notion of giving him pointy ears (he's not an elf!). A lot of the integration in the concept comes with the colours, which will be a lot more evident when he's textured, but I have an idea that I think will make his front end and back end mesh a lot better. I'll post here when done
JRandall: Thanks
EarthQuake: Thanks, but I still really couldn't have got this far without him!
Vahl: Thanks!
Modeling_man: Naah, I'm sure we'll do more stuff together I get what you're saying about the hooves, but I really don't want to make him bulky... I think the angle these shots are taken at make the legs look a bit smaller than they are (a side-on shot looks much better, imo), so I might post different ones later.
jgarland: Don't feel small! I've used mudbox a fair bit before this, so zbrush wasn't a huge leap. If you've already got the anatomy/proportion stuff down, the sculpting isn't far removed from that.
Aesir: Thanks! I haven't done any dragons in a fair while I was considering it though. Agreed about the armour.. I have a plan for that.

spacemonkey

Its really good! excellent work on the detailing of the harnesses and armour

xysdf

great work! the armour design is something special. thinking about small tweaks: the eyes. make use of a sphere for the eyes and wrap the lids around the form.

Hito

really awesome! great designs all over.

Wells

I think the over-all bulkiness and muscle mass of his human half is contradicting the type of build you've given the horse. Judging by the meat on his forearm and the thickness of his wrist, I'd expect his ankles to match, or vice versa. I think that might have been what Modeling_Man was getting at... right now the piece suffers from what a lot of centaurs tend to - seems like disparate pieces jammed together. I'd like to either see all of him lean and sinewy, or all of him strongly muscled.

the modeling is awesome.

Spark

Wow Tully, just wow..... I have to agree that with EQ, Tully>Mop:), and now I have to think of what I can do to bribe you away from only doing competitions with Mop so I might have a chance of winning something:) As Rockstar pointed out I think you have alot of polys that can be redistributed to the silhouette areas and let the normal handle some of the finer details. Alot of the times I reduce once I have my normal casted onto my lowpoly and watch to see what I can take away without a visible difference to my mesh. Maybe also try to give the legs a bit more bulk, as now they seem very slim for holding up his mass. Great work all around, and really looking forward to your treatment on the textures.

Spark

_Shimmer

Awesome! welcome on the boards once again with this nice piece of zbrush work.

I think artistically this piece is very well done in terms of silhouette, shapes, scale, sense of weight, etc.
I like you take on this overdone subject. Very nice shapes and lines going on giving away a very delicate and aesthetic rather then the usual mean and big-ass muscles portrayed look.

Technically it needs a little work. However I do say that you'll learn these things naturally as you go on with the process, but right now, what I can see is pretty well done.

maybe some of the polygons that could have been easily saved out but the be honest, polygons is the less you should be worried about. lets see for the textures Really looking forward to them...

Pseudo

Looking good Tully, thanks for sharing.

It's good to see that your concepting skills transferred to sculpting, but it's also very nice to see such a well layed out base mesh.
A lot of the painters and concept artists that pick up 3d have really great sculpts and then their low poly mesh looks like absolute shit, but I think you did a great job with it.

Mop you better hit the fast track on your concept skills because Tully is going to start keeping the good concepts for herself now

Thegodzero

Very very well done! Its good to see you making the models too. I can't wait to see this guy textured.

The Umbrella Man

The face is just awesome. I love how you combined aspects of the horses face to the human face, most people wouldn't have thought of that. The armor pieces are just badass too.

Joao Sapiro

i really like the sculpt tully, congrats ! i would just make the details on the armour a tad sharper and bring out more his facial features love it !

almighty_gir

lol, mop's been injecting you with way too much uhh.... talent xD

it looks awsome, but the hind legs thigh muscle looks really weird... and the lower legs, front and back, look awfully skinny

other than that, it's awsome

stimpack

thats fresh. any crit i had has been covered at the moment by others.

keep chugn at it

Tully

I'm going away for a week (MoP and I are going to Paris! ) so I thought I might post an update of sorts.... as in not an actual update, but something I didn't post before. Nude sculpt on its own. I haven't had the chance to implement most of what people have said (though I am working on that), but just for something else to look at.




Thanks to everybody giving feedback It's been very helpful!

killingpeople

he's pretty fucking fantastic.

pliang

Paris eh? Have fun...

Looking better. I think the legs are OK considering it compared to the guy's musculature.

Mit Gas

That's simply amazing. AMAZING.