so anyway, I played WoW for about 2 years on and off and I was a Tauren. So I have decided to finally make a next gen tauren based off of the Blizzard style of a minotaur. Shooting for something like 10-12k tris. currently 5.5k Tris. Still in the early phases of modeling so any crits would be appreciated, even though there isn't a whole lot to crit.
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I really like the soft, bulky feel of the character and I think you should keep going with that.
I also think the hands are too human-like. I would imagine heavier more powerful hands and perhaps more clumsy. Take out a finger or two and distribute the mass on the remaining fingers. You do remember that the original wow tauren's only have 3 fingers?
The snout from the sideview appears a bit flat and your hips could be raised a little higher.
I think the horns is one area where you could make it more interesting. Right now they are leaning more towards realistic than wow. I think you should put your own spin on it and design some with more personality. A thicker base, perhaps, play with mass and curvyness. Find some cool horns on google for inspiration.
Nice work so far!
Before diving in to the sculpting I think you need to work on your shape and form. Taurens have much more dramatic porportions and thinking "oh I'll clean it up later when I sculpt is going to get you in trouble". If the base is off it doesn't matter what kind of normal map you apply the basic shape is going to wrong.
Take some time, dig up some images of taurens. Find out what proportions actually make a Tauren.
Right now, you have a blobby human roughly deformed into a generic minotaur shape but not a Tauren.
To call this a Tauren you need;
- Hooves that are as wide as they are deep. The length of each hoof is about correct but the width is too narrow.
- Hands should have 2 fingers and a thumb, and they should be massive. They aren't human hands, they are mutated hooves.
- The forearms and shoulders should be massive and impact the silhouette much more.
- The massive forearms should almost blend right into the hands. The wrists should be next to nonexistent, think popeye on cow hormone, but with biceps to match.
- The Head is too tiny and far away from the body, with Taurens the jaw sits almost right on the clavicle bones.
- The hump is more on the back, from the base of the spine and carries up to the just behind the head. What you have is a small bump sitting on his shoulders.
Now to clarify on this whole thing. This Tauren is not really suppossed to be a copy of the WoW Tauren. More like how they were in WC3. The Tauren Chieftan to be specific and the concept art I am using is from the Art of Warcraft books. Which in some, interestingly enough, had 5 fingers. which is why my original had five. The more upright position and shorter neck in WoW isnt as apealing to me. Large feet is another blizzard thing where everyone wears like size 16 shoes so I figured I would add my own style to a lot of this.
summary: I guess this isn't 100% Tauren but it is what I am basing my idea off of.
Not sure if I have made him too muscular now or not. I know initially he was much softer, so maybe I will go back and do a second edition with some more fat.
6394 tris
If you go on the technical talk section of this site you can read and learn a lot about how people get there normal maps. My way of doing this may not be the optimal way of doing it at a game studio, but I am still relatively new to all of this. I didnt know what Zbrush was until about a year ago