Martian Astronaut WIP

BrodyB

Working on the base mesh for an astronaut based loosely on the Martian soldier concept by Nick Constantine for the mod Badge of Blood.







Current tri count is 8,568. My goal is 10,000 tris with a 2048 defuse/normal/specular. Comments and criticism greatly appreciated.

AsylumSeaker

I think the helmet shape is a bit off.

BrodyB

Yeah, I'm not totally happy with the look of the helmet, so I'm going to redo it.

BrodyB

UPDATE: Basically done with the base mesh now. Redid the helmet, gave him a bit more shape, and added more details to the backpack/vest. Hit 10,000 and I'm going to start on the hi-res.

BrodyB

Oh my GAWD, this took forever to normal map. Modo was having problems mixing vector displacement and pieces of hi-res modeling. Learned a ton, though, as this is my first normal-mapped character.







Again any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Kawe

let's say... the normal map looks totally wacky. gotta work some more on that hires I think. the folds don't look like folds at all tbh.

and you shouldn't need all those 10k tris. lots of places with "unused" geometry. like the helmet I think is a big waste of polys. you could probably cut it in half without anyone ever noticing anything. there's plenty more.

J Randall

and fill out his butt, good effort man, almost done.

Wokky

If you want any additional reference, I've still got some old pics of the original model created for the project here and here.

Not my work mind you.

BrodyB

Wow, thanks, Wokky!

Yeah, I'm pretty new to 3D, and I'm beginning to get slightly frustrated by the results I'm getting with my normals. With a 2048 map on the body and a separate 1024 on the vest/backpack, I'd think I'd be getting much cleaner results. I suppose I'll just redo the vector displacement I did to get the folds looking better and keep adding stuff to the hi-res bits.

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

MLinderholm

Yeah, normal map looks a bit wack tbh. What program are you using? Soft/hard edges on the low poly? If you are using modo for normal map tracing you could try xNormal. There is more to the strange results than just resolution imho.

BrodyB

Yeah, I'm doing everything inside of modo. First, I built up the base mesh, then took every bit that I wanted to have hard edge details on, and copied them into another mesh item to do extra modeling on.



Then I applied a vector displacement map on the low-poly mesh item for all the parts where I wanted to do cloth folds or bulging. Then, I'd bake the hi-res onto a normal map, and the vector displacement onto a separate normal map, and composite them in Photoshop. Smoothing angles on the body and vest materials are at 180 degrees, btw.

I spent the day reworking some of the normals. Added detail onto the hi-res, redid the vector displacement to make better folds on the arms and legs. I'm doing this as a school assignment, so I'm going to have to get to colors at some point, whether I can get this looking 'right' in the next week or not.

Kawe

looks a lot better. if it is a 2k normal map then uhm... I don't think it is as good as it should though. folds still look a little blocky but the actual normal map looks a lot better. but yeah.. overall it is a million times better. personally I think a 90 degree smoothing angle should suffice but people like using 180 so Im just going to ask if you tried different? like.. look at his pockets on his torso. they look so rounded.

yeah.. I was wondering how to do normal mapping in modo cause I always had troubles with hipoly + vector displacement since you can't bake both at the same time it seems. I guess compositing it is the way to go. heh.

might want to try sharpen unmask on your hipoly normal map?

BrodyB

Update! Found out one thing that was wrong with the normal map: I didn't have a light on in the viewport, and apparently normal maps look better with light. Who knew?



Also started on my diffuse maps.



Body ( 2048 )


Vest (1024)

Armanguy

If you want a good portfolio piece i would start over. the normal map looks really bad! it looks like you spent 3 seconds on it. and then applied it to your model the helmet just looks silly, does this guy and a dome head?

heres some ref to help you but i strongly suggest starting over:

http://www.badgeofblood.com/media/mdf_soldier.jpg

yeah thats the same ref your using they dont even look like there the same.

http://www.hlfallout.net/images/content/image_34759.jpg

thats what you should aim for a little.

timwiese

With the amount of detail you put into your diffuse textures, you could get away with textures that are 512x512 or less.

Apophis3d

The helmets still way to puffy

BrodyB

Yeah, the more I look at this, the less I'm liking how it's turning out. I'm going to finish this version (it's a school assignment) and reboot it once finals pass. At the very least, I learned a fuckton getting this thing assembled.