Was this an assignment?
As an artist looking to better yourself i really don't see any point in doing that. Make one of the other characters but hand paint the whole thing. Then when your done with that guy try another but hand paint them don't render to texture them.
Yeah. I actually skimmed this thread the first time and thought you'd hand painted that character. Until I took a 2nd look I assumed you just did a pretty fantastic job of painting a diffuse to look just like a rendered GOW model.
It would be a better exercise of your skills to paint from scratch, to be sure. That said, for what it is, and how it was made, this model looks fine. Move on, and give us a new low poly character, this time painted yourself. Maybe take some unused concept art from an existing or released game, and use that as your basis.
Anyways, I have been convinced to repaint this guy and to use a little more artistic flexibility. Since I am going to simply use the same model the proportions will remain the same.
However, this time around I will NOT use any pictures, what so ever to project or paste, manipulate etc. in Photoshop.
I am going to use any references I feel like, just not the previous texture itself (Note: I have been looking at the texture actually on the model in 3ds max to help with painting lighting see if the current texture I'm working on blows, and so fourth, but not the 2d texture itself).
Needless to say, it should be interesting to compare the two textures when finished I think.
It's going to take longer this time, so I will post as I go for C&C.
Here's where I am at so far, not sure if its any good cause I have been looking at it too long now. I think its too soft or blurred looking at the moment. Please let me know.
P.S. If anyone doubts me painting this from scratch I would be happy to send them the Photoshop file as proof that its hand painted. Of course, if it turns out shitty, this won't be an issue
-Fixed up the face some more
-Drew in lines for the basic shapes for the body
-Blocked in basic colors for the body
-Burned edges of blocked in areas (this will be more subtle later on) and erased the drawn lines on the body
-Painted in some basic textures and Overlayed them on the whole
Here is what I plan to do as a workflow to finish:
-Paint in shadows and highlights for the body
-Paint in some lighting and add in some gradients on the body
-Add in some more color variation and fine details for the whole
-Adjust levels, hue, etc. in Photoshop
-Clean up in Bodypaint (seams, sloppy edges etc.)
-Finished
Your doing this oh so wrong... In fact, looking at your work, its REALLY obvious you are just directly copying the diffuse texture of Marcus, thats what it looks so flat and looks like its waiting for normals.
Just paint at the actual res, take off texture filtering.
Hello Brad, I just want to say that the proportions look verry good now, and just pointing out that low poly models always need to be tweaked a bit in a cartoony way.
About the texturing, im not sure but I think that you need some more texture space to up the quality of the diffuse.
Holi: Thanks, I'm glad the proportions look better now the only thing have to worry about now is the texturing. I realize that he would benefit a lot from a bigger texture sheet size, that's really the challenge here.
odium: I hope you are not talking about the latest texture work I am doing, and only referring to the texture work from previously (like you didn't see the third page on this thread).
And, if you are indeed talking about the new texture I am working on NOW, I don't follow you at all. I am painting this from scratch, and going through great lengths to make sure that I am not using any of the gears of war textures or projecting anything in general.
If it looks flat now, hopefully that's simply because I haven't done any of the shading really or added lighting effects or a wide array of colors. Like I said, I have to do the shadows and highlights, lighting effects, color variation, adjust hue and levels and clean up the texture still. He's only 50% done right now!
Hey brad, looking better. Here's what you need to do if this is supposed to be a PSP character. I know you are using Max, so: Open the render window, go to the renderer tab, and change the filter to Catmull-Rom. Also turn off Antialiasing and Filter Maps. Now it will look low poly-tastic! These are the settings I actually use for all my renders, makes it a bit closer to what you would see in an engine I suppose.
Cody: Thanks for the info, I will certainly have those options setup for renders. I never played around with these setting actually, so I am pretty surprised at the difference.
Only problem is, these are all screen grabs. Meaning, I am not rendering just taking screen shot of my screen. Is there a way to set this up for the viewport (like without rendering)?
Oh, all screen grabs, huh? Well if you aren't using the Mathis shader, you should. The standard max material will always be a bit blurry in the viewport. And if you are using the Mathis shader, then paint with a hard brush in photoshop, no soft brushes in between armor parts, to get rid of blurriness.
Cody: Yeah, I tried Mathis's shader but it really just made for a fancy lighting setup, but had no effect on the clarity of the texture. I'm actually using the same setup Mathis uses, I think (I set the material up as he does in one of his tutorials) where I have 100% self illumination, so all you see is flat texture color and no shading. My viewport could be different then his though, cause I am running max2009 now and he must have had some older version at the time.
Either way, I think the real solution is to use a hard brush like you mentioned. I haven't really been paying attention to the softness or hardness, and I think its been on the softest setting all along. I'll play around with the brushes a bit and see how it works out. Thanks man.
Turn off filtering in the viewport. Customize -> preferences -> viewports panel -> Configure driver on the bottom. Change the bottom settings for texel lookup to nearest. Turn off mipmapping if you want as well. googogogogogo
About the texturing, im not sure but I think that you need some more texture space to up the quality of the diffuse.
You don't need a lot of resolution to paint a texture that appears crisp. The key is to not paint fine lines and subtle gradients of shading, instead, focus on capturing the larger planes with starker shading.
SupRore: Thanks for the encouragement. It can be tough to stay positive with hard crits, this helps.
stoofoo: Thanks, man! Probably would have taken me forever to figure that one out.
DemonPrincess: Thanks for following along, I appreciate all the help thus far.
Okay, I struggled quite a bit with the painting here, but finally feel I have something now that I can post and not be terribly embarrassed about.
Again, this is 100% hand painted, no pasting photos for textures, no projecting, and definitely no gears of war texture rips.
Its my first time doing this sort of low spec work, so I learned a lot in the process particularly, in regards to painting this. I think I probably went overboard with painting the spec and lighting though.
Probably some minor stuff to fix still, but if anyone sees any eye sores, or obvious errors, by all means please let me know.
As you will see, I included screen grabs both with and without texture filtering (like stoofoo explained), as I am still not sure what everyone prefers.
Yeah, there blue in the game. I made them purple because the original concept had purple glowing lights and I thought I would stick with the concept, over the final in game character. I don't think I like the purple that much either; just kinda went against my own judgment and stuck to the concept on this one.
Huge step forward man, if anything a bit too busy -- i'd go blue on the glowing bits too, too much going on to compete for the eye's attention with this many colors.
the arms and legs aren't quite up to the par of the torso either.
cool stuff. you should photoshop a render onto a picture of a PSP. ahah or at least scale down some renders to see it PSP size. i agree with suprore on the busy-ness. try some bigger pieces of armor to simplify it maybe. looking really good.
Think you have to paint more shadows in the texture. Almost like outlines. Since its going to be much smaller ingame, most of the details with blend together and make it look dull.
I also think that you should add some stronger shadows to the face. Another thing that you could do is to make his eyes squint. This will make them more visible than open eyes because at this resulotion, they will look either too bland or too cartoony.
Look at ranger from Quake : http://www.supaquake.com/bots_files/ranger.gif
Made a quick paint-over:
It looks really good though! Really pushed the texture's resolution!
good job! I agree with what corv and cody said, some dark colors should help. Also, from the front view, the legs seem a bit thin, push those maybe like a 10-15% extra on the sides it might help.
SupRore: I agree with you, I will definitely change the color of the glowing bits to blue, thanks.
Cody: Yeah, your method is probably the closest this character will ever be to actually being on the PSP, heh. I could always just screen grab from far away.
corv: Thanks for taking the time to do a paint over, and the link to the character. I think I might play with the face some more like you mentioned.
However, since this character I made here will literally never really be on the PSP but will likely be something I throw in my portfolio; I am not sure about going with the outline look for the armor.
Like you said, it looks better far away, but as a portfolio piece; I will likely have close-ups like shown here on Polycount. I actually had the outline look earlier like you did with your paintover, and worked away from it because I felt it was making it look more "cartoony". But actually, it would be really simple to do. Just a matter of me un-hiding a layer in Photohshop where I had already painted the black outlines.
Hey, nice to see you did a pretty nice job on your own. I wouldn't say it's a huge improvement over the copy-paste one yet, but it should be easy to improve it now. Corv's suggestion is a great one, and will make your texture much better suited for the psp's screensize, although there's a second element to that: highlights. Recesses need to be dark and contrasting, and the key to that is only partly the 1-pixel black lines; The other part is 1-pixel highlighted lines right next to the black ones on things like metal panels etc...
Once you understand that, you'll be able to improve upon your texture in a matter of minutes. A tip for your next lowres texture though: simplify from the beginning. You've put a lot of subtle detailing in now that you'll basically how to throw out, and in my opinion it's best to just start simple with these sort of things.
Oh, if you haven't yet: use the pencil tool. Hold the mouse-cursor on the brush-button in photoshop and select the pencil from the dropdown box (or press shift-b multiple times to rotate through all brush-tools)
MightyPea: Thanks a ton for the info, I will certainly go back and play around with it now that I understand what you guys mean. And I haven't been using the pencil but I will try it now. Most of the painting was actually done in Body Paint though. Much appreciated!
I followed the crits to the best of my ability, and I think I have come up with something significantly better than the last rendition.
As always, let me know what you guys think.
Oh, and I left texture filtering ON, because I do prefer how it looks; but if you guys would like, I'll start posting only with texture filtering OFF (still not sure if more like it on or off).
In the meantime, I am going to get to working on the gun.
What you might want to do is grab the pencil tool and define the edges some more, pencil tool is not anti-aliased and will result in a more crisp texture on lower resolutions.
Also you might want to up the contrast on the face , you can hardly distinguish the eyes and mouth from the rest.
DUDE! The small scale one looks KICK ASS! You should only show renders on that scale, and show us texture flats at full resolution instead of these shots where he is too big.
GREAT JOB!
Hey guys, small update here. Because Leviathan mentioned, I went over the guy one more time with a black pencil tool to define the edges more. I also re-worked the eyes, and added a very slight red hue to the lips to make them stand out more.
I'll probably chalk this guy up as painted, and finish texturing the gun. So pretty soon I will post the gun with the texture I painted for crits, then finally pose the character with the gun and re-post.
Looks much much betterthan the first try. The only thing I can say really is that the eye's just arn't reading very well compared to the rest, although that may be more resolution based than anything.
Looks great But cant help but feel that the color scheme is slightly off compared to the original Fenix? Maybe thats what you're aiming for. Looks awesome anyway
It's definitely coming along nicely and working well when the model is nearer to the size it would be on the PSP. I'd reccomend the lighting tips that have been pointed out with the stronger shadows- take a look at the Quake 3 character textures as they had just the right amount of lighting applied to them so the volumes really popped out as well as recesses and edges and in some cases did hide the low poly nature of the meshes.
Also, check out bobo's vertex light baking tutorial on his site, if it's still there- again, this will help with the overall lighting for the main volumes you have and then just pop the extra added volumes of the texture over the top of it
Another thing to think about are the straps on his legs- at the moment they're blending in with the leggings, making it look muddy- either put some stronger 1px outlines to define it or changing the colour so they pop a bit more- it would be a shame to lose seeing the smaller details like that
GJ with this though, it is heading in the right direction
The face is an improvement in the last version. Still, I think some more definition in the facial features is needed, especially around the eyes.
Instead of a dark line under the eye that fades into the shadows of his eyesockets, try a light line to define the under eyelid. Also, the shading can be much darker along the top and the inner eye corner. Lastly, I think the nose could look better with some cleaning up along the edges.
I can't guarantee that this will look good on the model, but here's a quick overpaint to illustrate:
Odium: Thanks, and yeah; the eye color is comprised of two pixels, not sure if I can do much more with them.
PixelGoat: Thanks, and yes he is supposed to be different. More like the original concept Dave linked me to on the first page here.
Chunkey: I appreciate the critique, I actually followed Bobo's tutorial starting to work on this model, but it wasn't really helping much when overlaying the lighting. I'll definitely go back and work on the areas you mentioned some more though.
DemonPrincess: Thanks for the help once again. Really cool of you to take the time to do the paint over. Unfortunately, The actual texture map you have done doesn't work on the model, but looks great on the texture sheet itself. Nevertheless, I'll see if I can make the changes you illustrated with your paint over.
The only difficult thing is at this point I am kind of using averages between two colors to show detail due to lack of texture space. It's kind of a trade off. Simplify and have crisper textures, or try and push the detail and possibly muddy up the textures. I hope this makes sense.
Anyways, I repainted the gun from scratch, again, no copy paste, projection etc.; but the concept is basically the same as the regular gears of war gun. Here it is...
nice! looks better than the ripped version imo .
oh, and when you render low rez stuff like this, you'll want to turn off anti aliasing and filter maps, and turn on the catmul-rom filter. (if your using max that is).
Japhir: Much appreciated. Seems like half the people here like without texture filtering and the other half prefer it on. I Can't please everyone I guess, so I have been just going with my own personal preference, having texture filtering ON.
Here's a workflow question:
To pose such a low poly character (about 500 tri's), is it worth while making a full rig, or should I just move the polys by hand where I need them?
Anyone have a really quick solution for simply posing a character?
If you are learning then do it properly with a full rig. Vert posing shouldn't be easier than rigging, if it is you need to work on your rigging. Something I really need to work on :S
yes absolutly rig it even a basic skeleton is better than moving clusters or polys, will be faster and easier. If i find out you rotated cluster groups i will find u and bite you! >:(
( looks good for gears of war RTS...do i dare dream it?)
o since the last post wasnt really helpful at all, if u are using maya for low poly with a simple skeleton it may well be easier to do a rigid bind as opposed to a smooth one if your just doing poses, rigid bind allows you to colorze your verts based on what bones influence them, this is a real pain with anything over 1k polys but should be easy for 500, u also will want to use flexors for the joints, kinda like a lattuce, but more comprehensive.
ps:also there is a secondary flexor that allows you to creat some simple muscle deformation, but that wouldnt apply here since he is armored.
Xaltar, Woogity: Yeah, I figured I would need to do a full rig, just wanted to make sure that I wasn't missing out on any tricks to speed up the process. Also, I use 3ds max, but thanks for the tip Woogity.
So, I just did a standard rig with Biped in 3ds max and the Skin modifier; of course adjusting the individual vert weights as needed.
Here is a pose that I liked. As you will see, I am showing both with and without texture filtering on.
One thing I should mention is that I have rendered this with the default lighting and self illumination turned to 90% to slightly darken the edges facing away from the viewport. Also it is rendered from an orthographic view because the perspective didn't look as good for some reason to me.
My Question: Is this okay, rendering with default lighting in this circumstance. Like, in a hand held game you wouldn't have the fancy lighting setup would you? Also, I went through the trouble to paint in the lighting on the diffuse texture itself, so I shouldn't use any special lighting setup right?
Please let me know if I rendered this out okay, and/or what you guys think.
P.S. I will still make some of the modifications mentioned to the diffuse, just wanted to get this sorted out first.
Your right Pixel Goat, thanks for pointing that out.
I fixed it just now (hopfully it looks better) and over wrote the previous images I had posted. So to everyone who sees the above images at this time, they should look correct.
i love how those shinpads turned out, the bottom half looks really good in the side view. (the gun also). But i'm not too fond of the chest piece yet, it lacks quality compared to the rest of him IMO. goes for both back and front. both seem sortof monotone.
keep it up! your improving with heaps!
Replies
As an artist looking to better yourself i really don't see any point in doing that. Make one of the other characters but hand paint the whole thing. Then when your done with that guy try another but hand paint them don't render to texture them.
It would be a better exercise of your skills to paint from scratch, to be sure. That said, for what it is, and how it was made, this model looks fine. Move on, and give us a new low poly character, this time painted yourself. Maybe take some unused concept art from an existing or released game, and use that as your basis.
Anyways, I have been convinced to repaint this guy and to use a little more artistic flexibility. Since I am going to simply use the same model the proportions will remain the same.
However, this time around I will NOT use any pictures, what so ever to project or paste, manipulate etc. in Photoshop.
I am going to use any references I feel like, just not the previous texture itself (Note: I have been looking at the texture actually on the model in 3ds max to help with painting lighting see if the current texture I'm working on blows, and so fourth, but not the 2d texture itself).
Needless to say, it should be interesting to compare the two textures when finished I think.
It's going to take longer this time, so I will post as I go for C&C.
Also, I took a step back and have watched and skimmed through Mathis's tutorials (www.poopinmymouth.com) and this one here: http://www.pig-brain.com/tut01/tut01_01.htm
Here's where I am at so far, not sure if its any good cause I have been looking at it too long now. I think its too soft or blurred looking at the moment. Please let me know.
P.S. If anyone doubts me painting this from scratch I would be happy to send them the Photoshop file as proof that its hand painted. Of course, if it turns out shitty, this won't be an issue
this clown has the best painted difuse textures i know for human faces , youll learn alot from his step by step.
-Fixed up the face some more
-Drew in lines for the basic shapes for the body
-Blocked in basic colors for the body
-Burned edges of blocked in areas (this will be more subtle later on) and erased the drawn lines on the body
-Painted in some basic textures and Overlayed them on the whole
Here is what I plan to do as a workflow to finish:
-Paint in shadows and highlights for the body
-Paint in some lighting and add in some gradients on the body
-Add in some more color variation and fine details for the whole
-Adjust levels, hue, etc. in Photoshop
-Clean up in Bodypaint (seams, sloppy edges etc.)
-Finished
As you will see, I am now using mainly the concept art for reference as was suggested by Dave.
http://www.hawkprey.com/Gears.htm
Please feel free to C&C on my workflow or current progress.
P.S. I used the number "8" just so it can handle the symmetry running down the center of the mesh.
Just paint at the actual res, take off texture filtering.
About the texturing, im not sure but I think that you need some more texture space to up the quality of the diffuse.
Good work dude
odium: I hope you are not talking about the latest texture work I am doing, and only referring to the texture work from previously (like you didn't see the third page on this thread).
And, if you are indeed talking about the new texture I am working on NOW, I don't follow you at all. I am painting this from scratch, and going through great lengths to make sure that I am not using any of the gears of war textures or projecting anything in general.
If it looks flat now, hopefully that's simply because I haven't done any of the shading really or added lighting effects or a wide array of colors. Like I said, I have to do the shadows and highlights, lighting effects, color variation, adjust hue and levels and clean up the texture still. He's only 50% done right now!
Only problem is, these are all screen grabs. Meaning, I am not rendering just taking screen shot of my screen. Is there a way to set this up for the viewport (like without rendering)?
Either way, I think the real solution is to use a hard brush like you mentioned. I haven't really been paying attention to the softness or hardness, and I think its been on the softest setting all along. I'll play around with the brushes a bit and see how it works out. Thanks man.
@odium: seriously, have you ever contributed a useful post to this forum?
You don't need a lot of resolution to paint a texture that appears crisp. The key is to not paint fine lines and subtle gradients of shading, instead, focus on capturing the larger planes with starker shading.
stoofoo: Thanks, man! Probably would have taken me forever to figure that one out.
DemonPrincess: Thanks for following along, I appreciate all the help thus far.
Okay, I struggled quite a bit with the painting here, but finally feel I have something now that I can post and not be terribly embarrassed about.
Again, this is 100% hand painted, no pasting photos for textures, no projecting, and definitely no gears of war texture rips.
Its my first time doing this sort of low spec work, so I learned a lot in the process particularly, in regards to painting this. I think I probably went overboard with painting the spec and lighting though.
Probably some minor stuff to fix still, but if anyone sees any eye sores, or obvious errors, by all means please let me know.
As you will see, I included screen grabs both with and without texture filtering (like stoofoo explained), as I am still not sure what everyone prefers.
the arms and legs aren't quite up to the par of the torso either.
I also think that you should add some stronger shadows to the face. Another thing that you could do is to make his eyes squint. This will make them more visible than open eyes because at this resulotion, they will look either too bland or too cartoony.
Look at ranger from Quake : http://www.supaquake.com/bots_files/ranger.gif
Made a quick paint-over:
It looks really good though! Really pushed the texture's resolution!
SupRore: I agree with you, I will definitely change the color of the glowing bits to blue, thanks.
Cody: Yeah, your method is probably the closest this character will ever be to actually being on the PSP, heh. I could always just screen grab from far away.
corv: Thanks for taking the time to do a paint over, and the link to the character. I think I might play with the face some more like you mentioned.
However, since this character I made here will literally never really be on the PSP but will likely be something I throw in my portfolio; I am not sure about going with the outline look for the armor.
Like you said, it looks better far away, but as a portfolio piece; I will likely have close-ups like shown here on Polycount. I actually had the outline look earlier like you did with your paintover, and worked away from it because I felt it was making it look more "cartoony". But actually, it would be really simple to do. Just a matter of me un-hiding a layer in Photohshop where I had already painted the black outlines.
Once you understand that, you'll be able to improve upon your texture in a matter of minutes. A tip for your next lowres texture though: simplify from the beginning. You've put a lot of subtle detailing in now that you'll basically how to throw out, and in my opinion it's best to just start simple with these sort of things.
Oh, if you haven't yet: use the pencil tool. Hold the mouse-cursor on the brush-button in photoshop and select the pencil from the dropdown box (or press shift-b multiple times to rotate through all brush-tools)
As always, let me know what you guys think.
Oh, and I left texture filtering ON, because I do prefer how it looks; but if you guys would like, I'll start posting only with texture filtering OFF (still not sure if more like it on or off).
In the meantime, I am going to get to working on the gun.
Also you might want to up the contrast on the face , you can hardly distinguish the eyes and mouth from the rest.
GREAT JOB!
Hey guys, small update here. Because Leviathan mentioned, I went over the guy one more time with a black pencil tool to define the edges more. I also re-worked the eyes, and added a very slight red hue to the lips to make them stand out more.
I'll probably chalk this guy up as painted, and finish texturing the gun. So pretty soon I will post the gun with the texture I painted for crits, then finally pose the character with the gun and re-post.
Also, check out bobo's vertex light baking tutorial on his site, if it's still there- again, this will help with the overall lighting for the main volumes you have and then just pop the extra added volumes of the texture over the top of it
Another thing to think about are the straps on his legs- at the moment they're blending in with the leggings, making it look muddy- either put some stronger 1px outlines to define it or changing the colour so they pop a bit more- it would be a shame to lose seeing the smaller details like that
GJ with this though, it is heading in the right direction
Instead of a dark line under the eye that fades into the shadows of his eyesockets, try a light line to define the under eyelid. Also, the shading can be much darker along the top and the inner eye corner. Lastly, I think the nose could look better with some cleaning up along the edges.
I can't guarantee that this will look good on the model, but here's a quick overpaint to illustrate:
PixelGoat: Thanks, and yes he is supposed to be different. More like the original concept Dave linked me to on the first page here.
Chunkey: I appreciate the critique, I actually followed Bobo's tutorial starting to work on this model, but it wasn't really helping much when overlaying the lighting. I'll definitely go back and work on the areas you mentioned some more though.
DemonPrincess: Thanks for the help once again. Really cool of you to take the time to do the paint over. Unfortunately, The actual texture map you have done doesn't work on the model, but looks great on the texture sheet itself. Nevertheless, I'll see if I can make the changes you illustrated with your paint over.
The only difficult thing is at this point I am kind of using averages between two colors to show detail due to lack of texture space. It's kind of a trade off. Simplify and have crisper textures, or try and push the detail and possibly muddy up the textures. I hope this makes sense.
Anyways, I repainted the gun from scratch, again, no copy paste, projection etc.; but the concept is basically the same as the regular gears of war gun. Here it is...
oh, and when you render low rez stuff like this, you'll want to turn off anti aliasing and filter maps, and turn on the catmul-rom filter. (if your using max that is).
Here's a workflow question:
To pose such a low poly character (about 500 tri's), is it worth while making a full rig, or should I just move the polys by hand where I need them?
Anyone have a really quick solution for simply posing a character?
( looks good for gears of war RTS...do i dare dream it?)
-Woog
ps:also there is a secondary flexor that allows you to creat some simple muscle deformation, but that wouldnt apply here since he is armored.
-Woog
So, I just did a standard rig with Biped in 3ds max and the Skin modifier; of course adjusting the individual vert weights as needed.
Here is a pose that I liked. As you will see, I am showing both with and without texture filtering on.
One thing I should mention is that I have rendered this with the default lighting and self illumination turned to 90% to slightly darken the edges facing away from the viewport. Also it is rendered from an orthographic view because the perspective didn't look as good for some reason to me.
My Question: Is this okay, rendering with default lighting in this circumstance. Like, in a hand held game you wouldn't have the fancy lighting setup would you? Also, I went through the trouble to paint in the lighting on the diffuse texture itself, so I shouldn't use any special lighting setup right?
Please let me know if I rendered this out okay, and/or what you guys think.
P.S. I will still make some of the modifications mentioned to the diffuse, just wanted to get this sorted out first.
I fixed it just now (hopfully it looks better) and over wrote the previous images I had posted. So to everyone who sees the above images at this time, they should look correct.
keep it up! your improving with heaps!