Sketchbook: Noel Cower
polycounter lvl 18
Woo, a place to spam my shit.
Just for the sake of following the rules: if you have crits, please post 'em! Seriously, I would greatly appreciate it.
Some old Quake 3 skins I've been working on:
Ranger
Biker
I like having teeth in skins lately.
Mynx
Just for the sake of following the rules: if you have crits, please post 'em! Seriously, I would greatly appreciate it.
Some old Quake 3 skins I've been working on:
Ranger
Biker
I like having teeth in skins lately.
Mynx
Replies
All excellent work, noel. The only complaint i have is a really minor one, everything looks a little bit too universally soft and smooth. I'd go over and sharpen up the blending and gradients in some areas to create a little bit more contrast between forms.
paintover gif from irc.
Looks better to me, at least. Thanks mucho sup.
Edit: Because I won't post twice in a row, mooooore:
Fun stuff this is.
In the same vein as the armor, though, i have a paintover of the face.
Take this worth a grain of salt, some of it is just style, but universally i personally think you rely a bit too much on dark shadows. You have deep red shadowing all over the face, almost doing the work of lineart. Slightly more subtle use of midtones and highlights would let you render the same forms in imo a more believable way.
Anyway, bad paintover -
My biggest concern is Ranger's Triceps, they seem to be slumped right down to his elbow with a bicep growing above them... Shoulda given the pants more UV space
Fuse also mentioned the arms were too bright, so I'm gonna see if I can get that fixed later. Plus splotchy pants (rube).
Edit: Oh, and I did adjust the face, just didn't feel like posting it too.
Anyhow, tried to tweak the arms and pants a bit, also starting on the back (backs are confusing, never know what to put there, especially when it's flat). I like the gore on the arm a little more now, but I think I might remove it. On the one hand, it cuts me some slack on details on the hand (no pun intended), downside being that it does look pretty goofy, especially going that far up his arm. Dunno, thinking thinking. Probably will remove it in favor of either a hand or some sort of glove. Hard to decide, since these old models aren't exactly easy to work with. Still not happy with the arm either. Rambling done, here's the picture:
Old Image
Edit/Update:
Man this shit goes fast.
Really loving that new surface tool, totally speeds up stuff.
The untouched feet pull at the eye, but their contrast (with the rest of the sculpt) show you're getting more out of the sub-d level you're at than with the earlier sculpt. Getting the most out of each level of division is important versus blobbiness -- a good sign that this will continue to turn out well.
Tried to do something about the brows, so hopefully it's better now.
Anyhow, slightly more 'done' (I guess?).
Sort of gotten the hang of this, I think, but damn it can get hard.
(Also: probably table breaking if you're using the fixed-width forum)
keep it up!
Anyhow, I think I'm done fiddling with this model. Getting to the point where it's a real pain in the arse working with this model since it's not very good for this (as far as I'm concerned). Great model for texturing, not so much for this stuff.
Anyhow, picture and then I'll probably wander around the house for a while trying to figure out what to do next. :poly132:
Normals were done with xnormal, btw. That program is fucking awesome.
Normals look sweet, diffuse and, naturally, spec, needs work. Break up those highlights as much as possible.
The only problem is right now there are a few issues rendering the normals (there's a reason I keep showing him from that angle), which zmapper more or less solves because, and I don't know how, it renders really nice normal maps. Problem is it doesn't really fix seams with UVs from what I've seen. Don't know, I'm still learning this stuff. In addition to that, the diffuse and specular maps make the seams rather obvious, so I'm trying to work out what I'll do about that next. The projection painting thing in ZBrush is completely useless for mirrored stuff from what I can see- it's at least acted very useless, plus you can't paint mirrored stuff from what I can see, so I need to mess with that.
Anyhow, was toying with my ghoulie dude up there a bit:
For the diffuse and spec; you could reUV the problem area, and put the fix back into your original map. Tutorial for Max: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20061019/kojesta_01.shtml I think you can do the same with Silo, using xNormal to replace the RTT.
Painting in ZB; Have you tried Polypainting? That has a much better painting feel then Projection Master, and you get a decent map to start with (the details you paint across seams will burn out into the map etc). It'll need clean up in PS to get what you want, but it is a great jump-start.
Anywho, picture:
High poly stuff isn't exactly my specialty, so I'm still learning a lot about it.
Old Image (See next post)
This shit's still fun to do, don't see why I haven't seen more people doing it. Maybe they're chicken.
Also think I'll try modeling one of the creatures from either BLAME or Biomega some time... not sure which I'd choose, they're both just so fucking awesome and chock-full of cool monsters.
Edit: 2nd page! Bwahahaha.
I actually like the way the teeth turned out. They looked pretty stupid just against black, so I decided to see if I could give them some more depth by putting the tops of the teeth into the inner mouth texture. Gigantic pain in the ass, but it looks nice. >_>
what alpha do you use for the clay brush? i played with it today and still need to figure out the "correct"(e.g. working) options.
your diffuse-only is improving quickly!
EDIT: found the model
Well, you got the link to the model (I think, you may have gotten the UT2k4 one by accident, but it's pretty easy to read filenames..). The tutorial can be downloaded from here. It almost goes back to when I first joined (and it was a big help for me back then), so I don't know how much it applies to current work anymore.
As for the clay brush, I just use the default stuff and turn down the intensity a bit. I turn it down way more for clay tubes, since it has a pretty big effect with the default setting.
looks fine in zbrush but shit in max
And for reference, this is the old one.
Did you consider using that kind of q3-esque asset, then go back to the model to add cuts where needed aso to make it much smoother and dense? With such a nicely crafted texture it would look kickass...
(You can use Max's 'preserve UVs' for that or Maya's implementation of it in the recent bonus tool pack- be sure to doanload the 'christmas update' for it tho, they forgot to put the actual preserve UV code in the original BT release... )
Anyway, I hadn't thought of that, but it might be neat. I don't have Max (anymore) or Maya, so I couldn't really do much about the UVs getting all messed up (although Silo seems to handle changes to UV'd models pretty well, I don't think it's adequate). In the end, I think it would be easier to paint the texture I'd want to see in UVs and then bend the UVs to my will. I've done this for a few things before, since I enjoy texturing far more than modeling usually, so I might try that for whatever my next little thing will be.
Everything looks soo purdy
Still need work, but that's about what they'll look like. Needs more use of their respective colors though.
Edit: Yeah, break those tables, baby. MMMM.
That's pretty much done until I get pissed off and remodel the things. As soon as a model format I can work with is supported. Man, it'd be awesome if I could just load Silo models directly...
Edit: And flat-chested women:
(psst: it's a set of dildos)
Then I changed the coloring on the ammo packs since I guess they weren't noticeable enough at a distance. I don't think I have any pictures of that right now..
Also made a flag pole for Q2W:
Edit: Just removed that spike at the bottom of the pole 'cause it's stupid.
I still hate painting this dude's nose.
Hands are now very cold...
Think I'm done with the head. Thinking about doing the body- maybe tomorrow. Requires a bit more planning than the head to do that.