Boo Kid

edwardE

Hey, there; this is my first post - just a little something I started working on about 45 minutes ago. Ran into a normals problem that took me way longer to fix than it should have, but things are okay now.



I didn't draw any concepts for this as it's just a little something to do aside from my other projects. I guess it's a sort of monster-like kid wearing a paper bag on his head. He has a little staff which I think will have a skull on top - the cards coming out from it will be feathers with alphas. He's also got a trick-or-treat pumpkin bucket. His dracula collar and the bottom of his shirt/cape will have alpha transparency, so they are fringed and spooky.

Probably inspired by Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates for Nintendo DS - it's an ultra-low poly fanboy's dream. But, I digress...

I'll try to work on this more tonight, provided something else doesn't steal my attention.

edwardE

Went through, enforced some triangulation, and UV'd him. I also managed to shave some triangles off.



I kept the staff on a separate map thinking that if this guy was in a game, he would always have his pumpkin bucket, but could wield different weapons.

Cody

You should make those other weapons and put them on the same map as the staff. And here's a quick paintover where you could save a few more tris:

edwardE

Thanks for your input, Cody. I couldn't reduce the part at the neck because it's already three-sided, and the horn silhouette takes a hit with the edge collapsing, but I did reduce the bottom part as you showed; barely changes the look at all, good call!

I also modeled a secondary nail board weapon. Although I shouldn't be making more weapons (neglecting other projects that actually need to get done), I couldn't resist it once you brought it up.

So here's Boo Kid so far - hopefully his attitude is coming through now that the textures have started. You can see the crappy black sketches are the guides I put on with Maya's 3D Paint tool. His clothes kind of look like a skirt, but I somewhat like it - Boo Kid doesn't really have to be a boy, or even a girl for that matter... Perhaps we'll never know.

LoTekK

Haha, love the texture so far, especially the "face". Proportions are definitely reminiscent of the crystal chronicles, among other things. Might want to add a couple edges to the elbows, though, since the way they're currently constructed, they'll collapse something fierce when bent.

one other thing for future models. I noticed that while your UVs are admirably well-packed, they're also broken up quite a bit. As I understand it, you ideally want to keep your UVs to as few pieces as possible for real-time apps.

@Cody: I can't understand why you'd suggest putting multiple weapons on a single sheet unless you're expecting them to always be onscreen together.

MLinderholm

Hehe, cool stuff. Did some lowpoly stuff in school last week, a tip is to render out an occlusion-map for the model, probably won't turn out great, but I found it to be a nice place to start when doing shadows.

Cody

Looks like a good start edwardE.

@LoTekK: I'll admit I don't know much about such things, I guess I was thinking about Gears of War/Army of Two style where extra weapons are strapped to boo kids back/side.

edwardE

Thanks for the replies!

LoTekk: You're definitely right about the elbows; I think the main issue was that this was really a 'spur of the moment' kind of thing, and I hadn't really thought of the functionality of the model beyond tri count - nothing 'insert edge loop' can't fix, though.

The section that's broken up a bit heavy is primarily just the head - a good deal of what appears to be broken shapes are actually folded back into themselves to achieve mirroring; I'm not saying that you're wrong and that it couldn't be better sewn, though - there are definitely areas that could be improved. Much appreciation for the tips and comments, bro! ( Nice work on your site, by the way (: )

MLinderholm: I'd definitely render out AO if I was dealing with a more complex model with less obsessive use of overlapping UVs; renderers tend to freak out with render-to-texture functions when polygons share the same UV space. Definitely good to use when you can, though. I stuck with using the 3D Paint tool in Maya to mark the orientations and colors of objects that may have been heavily rotated to avoid being lost when I throw the UVs into Photoshop; I don't know how many other people use it, but it's pretty handy for that.

Cody: Glad you like it. Subconsciously I was thinking Boo Kid would use more of an inventory style approach and pull his weapons out from his tiny pockets - the single map approach could still work if the hypothetical game he was in only had a few weapons to use, though.

edwardE

Okay, so I basically went all out on this for about 3 1/2 hours; finished the UVs for the weapons, finished the textures for everything, rigged Boo Kid and his items, and posed them. I fit the weapons on the same texture for simplicity's sake.



I'm pretty much done with this. If you notice anything glaring, I'd still appreciate your input, though! I might make a little environment for these guys some time later.

Yes, there's a little homage to Polycount in there - in the short time I've been here I've gotten more feedback than any other CG forum, so I'm super grateful for that; I look forward to staying here. And, yes, Bukkit's cigarette is rigged so it can bob around when he talks. (:

Many thanks for the input on this; hope you like it! I know I had a blast making it.

LoTekK

Hahaha hot!
Personally I think it could do with more shadow on the diffuse, though; really push the volumes, especially on his clothes. Other than that, it looks awesome.

Michael Knubben

I think it could definitely do with some more volume, as well as being darker overall. It's as if there was a white ambient in there that was killing the shadows, and by extension making the colours less saturated than I'd like. I like the character though, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with your next character!

edwardE

LoTekK & MightyPea: I just may revisit this at a later date, perhaps to make a little environment (I think I've fallen in love with this character that took 2 minutes and intoxication to come up with) - in which case, I'll probably go back and tighten up the textures more. (:

LoTekK: I went in and added the elbow edges; I appreciate your input through the process.

SUNCHIRP

Hi,

On a side note, if your going for complete optimisation, you have too many bones in your rig, take a look at the following paintover edit : -



I've marked crosses where you do not need these joints, the hilighted areas should be the joints that handle rotations, etc for the appendages on your model, remember that a joint is 1 circle in your rig, whereas drawing from A to B represents 2 joints, the less the processor has to worry about the better, so knocking out the redundant joints would benefit the rig a lot. The processor will look at each joint and calculate what's skinned to each joint in turn and similarly what's not skinned to that particular joint, the less joints it has to worry about the faster it can calculate this, hope I'm making this sound clear here ?

MLinderholm

Then on the other hand keeping a nub joint (the unnessecary one in the end) makes it a bit easier to see whats going where and so on.

SUNCHIRP

Visual feedback over optimal performance, I know which one I'd choose!

Moreso when developing for handheld. I suppose it's down to the individual and the 'programming' team!

edwardE

SUNCHIRP: Hey; thanks for that - I'm pretty new to rigs, and I initially learned on 3ds Max, so I didn't realize the bone didn't require the diamond-shaped bone piece to exist, if that makes sense; the end nubs didn't have any weights anyway. Easy fix, too, but now I feel silly. Thanks!

I do want to keep Bukkit's cigarette rigged, in the spirit of humor, though. (;

SUNCHIRP

Hi,

No problem.

What you need to remember though is that the processor will still calculate for each joint regardless of whether it is weighted or not.

Let's say for example, your whole model has 1000 vertices, and you have, say, 12 weighted to a foot bone, the processor will calculate this first, then calculate the vertices which 'aren't' weighted to that bone, it then performs this for each and every joint, calculating both what is weighted and what is 'not' weighted to each joint. EDIT : To simplify this further, imagine 1000 vertices and 10 joints in your rig, each vertex will need to calculate 10 times ( per joint ) so overall, each frame the processor has to calculate 10 x 1000 verts for each frame of animation, even when the character / object is not in motion.

Regards

edwardE

Yeah, that makes sense; I wasn't really sure whether or not those end bones even counted as bones, as they didn't have the diamond joint thing that connects them - I initially learned rigging on 3ds Max, where the joint IS the diamond, with no spheres - now I realize the spheres are the joints in Maya and the diamonds just represent the connections.

Very handy to know - especially now that I understand why I was getting pretty confused assigning the vertices to the bones; hah.

Thanks, again.

HonkyPunch

really like the texture, good job