It's amazing to see how much you've improved just over 2 models.
Good Job!
Something you also might want to consider, is to force align some of your UVs to perfect right angles, which will create more of an illusion of crispness when you paint in those details.
A few other steps you might want to try out:
Bake out the Ambient Occlusion to use as an overlay. for recessive shadow information.
Create a separate layer in photoshop to paint in your 'specular' light. (like, it would only be a small 100% white dot on the corners and edges, with bits of a smear.
Harry: I see what you mean now. Thanks for the example man.
Deathhead: Thanks for the interest, I hope to not disappoint.
Jox: Thanks for the encouragement and help. I will definitely try all the things you mentioned
I actually have been baking out AO, but I need to do it earlier on. It was an afterthought in these other two models really. I didn't see how powerful baking AO can be until I started making big improvements in my painting.
Keeping all this in mind should really help me though so thanks for sharing.
BTW, I voted for you in the GA: Wrath of the Death Knights Mini Comp. Congrats on making top seven although it should have been top 3 at least I think. You have a really crisp style of texturing that I really love.
So, I'm sure some may have noticed there haven't been a lot of updates here and I wanted this done in a week. I started another project that I have been working on for a mod (fist full of frags) and haven't had much time for this. So I'll probably squeeze in a little work here and there when I can. But still, I will be trying to get this done fast: as in hours worked on it.
The low poly is done, unless someone has a suggestion on how it could be improved:
Oh, and as far as deformation goes, I figured the legs wouldn't bend much except at the hip, or upper part of the leg. He probably wouldn't deform at the knee because his legs are so stumpy. So I didn't put the typical knee cuts in the geometry.
Here he is, looking like a fat mickey mouse at the moment, lol...
I think that your mesh matches your orthos very well, however i think that your approach to the character deviates from his appearance in the comics and movie a bit too much. I've drawn this guy countless times so i know what to look for in a good clown image/model, and i think with a few model tweaks you could have it be dead on, but until then to me he just looks like a short fat man.
But, you have a good solid mesh going on there. Keep it up, and look at some more reference, and tweak it accordingly and you'll be good. to go.
Indecom: Thanks for the advice. If you have any specific examples it would really help, because I have been looking at this model for a while now and can't think of what I should change.
I realize that one of the challenges here with this model will be converting him to a low budget mesh; when the comics have such a loose style of drawing to them. For example, in the comics there are a lot of curvy lines and asymmetry, which I simply cannot afford to implement with my budget.
I was actually able to come up with some small tweaks to the mesh I have here, but nothing highly noticeable. So please, feel free to give me suggestions.
Honestly, i don't see any asymmetry in the comics, other then a button on his jacket and the text on his tshirt.. and i think you should wiggle around a bit with the proportions more.. shoulders and arms seem bigger in the comic and the top of the head smaller.. and i think the jacket should be open more..
i'd seriously add some extra hairplanes too, right now its gonna be really flat, and at 500 tri's that's not neccesary.
Marcus turned out great though, the last version is very readable, i think the separate colourblocks helped a lot. it's a lot smoother too.
if you were to do anything more on him i'd look at his face mostly, he seems to have a somewhat blank stare, and Harry's right about the eyes
my biggest concerns are that your legs are too close together, pull them apart quite a bit, and move the chin up a bit to round out the face more and i think it will be much better.
Snader: When I said Asymmetry I meant mainly the loose drawing style. The lines from one side to the next, wrinkles in the cloths, hair, and pose; but that's not important here really. Your points are all very valid and thank very much for commenting. Also, I'm glad you like the re-worked version of Marcus and I might just go back and fix what Harry pointed out still.
Indecom: Thanks for clearing that up. Following your advice, I think he is looking better now.
Here is a small update: I optimized the mesh by the stomach area, so I could add some more hair planes. I made the top of the head smaller, and changed the eyes mouth, and rounded out the chin. Made the arms significantly larger, and seperated/adjusted the legs a bit. Here he is now:
I got a chance to work on the Violator Clown PSP character some more.
Right now he's all unwrapped, and I began texturing. I figure I'm about 60% through texturing, and for once I feel that its going pretty smoothly so far.
He's pretty much finished with the shadows and highlights phase, except for some fixes I'll have to make. As you will see, there is no color variation yet, besides the flat colors I layed down from the start.
So I still have to:
-Adjust colors
-Add color variation
-Add more detail
-Make final adjustments
I realize he is looking really saturated at the moment, I'm going to work on that. Also, I wasn't sure how to handle the hair / Opacity map, but I'm pretty happy with how its looking ATM. Lastly, I have the shading and highlights both overlayed on seperate layers, so I am going to play around with the color of the shadow and highlights so they arn't so black and white.
Hey Brad .. so this is what you've been up to eh? That paint job on violator looks nice man! And looks like youve improved soo much through this thread. One thing tho, I think the muscle defintion you painted on the back of the arms are a bit too harsh.. try toning it down a bit. Keep at it, I cant wait to see more.
One thing I noticed tho, is that even if you are packing your UV's in a small texture here, the UV layout is still very 'not so portable'. You could reuse a lot if things texture wise, by just adding a few geo cuts where needed. For instance you could just cut the edge outline of the striped tshirt in the geometry itself, and thus simply use a stripe pattern on that area. This would get rid of the unnecessary stretching/diagonal painting and will let you pack your texture much more.
Don't want to hijack the thread, but this is the kind of stuff I am talking about. http://pioroberson.com/images/3d_pior_twisted.png
Obvioulsy I did not pack the texture as much as it could have been since it was a freestyle model and texture, but you get the idea. (whole jacket textured over a simple red texture area)
I think that many areas of your model could be textured with a simple clean gradient stretched to fit.
clee101: Yeah, I have been bouncing around working on different projects, but this has been my main focus, particularly with the painting.
Also, I am not too happy with the arm definition either as you mentioned. I am going to give him a detail pass soon, and hopefully iron that out.
Pior: Thanks for the link to the image and the great feedback. And yes, that image does make it clear what you are talking about, and I have not considered optimizing to that level until you showed me this, really well done!
I'm going to have to keep these tricks in mind for the next project.
So... I haven't had time to work on violator any more since my last post, but I will definitely work on him tomorrow and post for feedback soon. Thanks.
Snader: Yeah, I woke up the next morning and was wondering the same thing. Especially since I set myself a specific tri count (500 tris) I don't think its worth making the extra cuts in the geometry anyways. However, if your working on a project for a studio where its all about optimization, maybe the extra geometry would warrant the more optimized maps?
woogity: Much appreciated man.
Well, I think I am done with the texturing. Here is what I ended up with. I'm not crazy about the arm hair, but I think its the best I can do with the current map resolution, unless anyone has suggestions.
So I am going to rig and pose him now, and hopefully post a final presentations sheet here later today.
though i love the color variation and material definition, i think you overdid the saturation of the skin shadows. in some areas it's also a bit grainy.
great stuff though!
Japhir: Thanks for the imput man. I desaturated the texture a little and I think it looks better now. I am guessing the grainyness you are talking about is due to having uneven texture resolution sizes (for different uvw chunks). In other words, your probably talking about the front of the pants area; and how the texture space I gave it is lower causing it to look pixelated.
I set up my uv's this way so I could maximize space for areas of importance, but in hindsight, I wish I had a little more resolution for the front pant area. But if I did want the uvws normalized its really easy to do with MOP's 3ds max script .
I have him all posed now, so I'm going to post the presentation sheets soon.
haha hey Brad, that came out nice man! Arms look alot better and your texturing came out pretty tight. Only thing maybe is the feet? I cant really tell what kind of shoes hes wearing...
Replies
Good Job!
Something you also might want to consider, is to force align some of your UVs to perfect right angles, which will create more of an illusion of crispness when you paint in those details.
A few other steps you might want to try out:
Bake out the Ambient Occlusion to use as an overlay. for recessive shadow information.
Create a separate layer in photoshop to paint in your 'specular' light. (like, it would only be a small 100% white dot on the corners and edges, with bits of a smear.
Deathhead: Thanks for the interest, I hope to not disappoint.
Jox: Thanks for the encouragement and help. I will definitely try all the things you mentioned
I actually have been baking out AO, but I need to do it earlier on. It was an afterthought in these other two models really. I didn't see how powerful baking AO can be until I started making big improvements in my painting.
Keeping all this in mind should really help me though so thanks for sharing.
BTW, I voted for you in the GA: Wrath of the Death Knights Mini Comp. Congrats on making top seven although it should have been top 3 at least I think. You have a really crisp style of texturing that I really love.
So, I'm sure some may have noticed there haven't been a lot of updates here and I wanted this done in a week. I started another project that I have been working on for a mod (fist full of frags) and haven't had much time for this. So I'll probably squeeze in a little work here and there when I can. But still, I will be trying to get this done fast: as in hours worked on it.
The low poly is done, unless someone has a suggestion on how it could be improved:
Oh, and as far as deformation goes, I figured the legs wouldn't bend much except at the hip, or upper part of the leg. He probably wouldn't deform at the knee because his legs are so stumpy. So I didn't put the typical knee cuts in the geometry.
Here he is, looking like a fat mickey mouse at the moment, lol...
Here's the orthos again:
But, you have a good solid mesh going on there. Keep it up, and look at some more reference, and tweak it accordingly and you'll be good. to go.
I realize that one of the challenges here with this model will be converting him to a low budget mesh; when the comics have such a loose style of drawing to them. For example, in the comics there are a lot of curvy lines and asymmetry, which I simply cannot afford to implement with my budget.
I was actually able to come up with some small tweaks to the mesh I have here, but nothing highly noticeable. So please, feel free to give me suggestions.
i'd seriously add some extra hairplanes too, right now its gonna be really flat, and at 500 tri's that's not neccesary.
Marcus turned out great though, the last version is very readable, i think the separate colourblocks helped a lot. it's a lot smoother too.
if you were to do anything more on him i'd look at his face mostly, he seems to have a somewhat blank stare, and Harry's right about the eyes
good luck on the shorter deadline
Indecom: Thanks for clearing that up. Following your advice, I think he is looking better now.
Here is a small update: I optimized the mesh by the stomach area, so I could add some more hair planes. I made the top of the head smaller, and changed the eyes mouth, and rounded out the chin. Made the arms significantly larger, and seperated/adjusted the legs a bit. Here he is now:
Right now he's all unwrapped, and I began texturing. I figure I'm about 60% through texturing, and for once I feel that its going pretty smoothly so far.
He's pretty much finished with the shadows and highlights phase, except for some fixes I'll have to make. As you will see, there is no color variation yet, besides the flat colors I layed down from the start.
So I still have to:
-Adjust colors
-Add color variation
-Add more detail
-Make final adjustments
I realize he is looking really saturated at the moment, I'm going to work on that. Also, I wasn't sure how to handle the hair / Opacity map, but I'm pretty happy with how its looking ATM. Lastly, I have the shading and highlights both overlayed on seperate layers, so I am going to play around with the color of the shadow and highlights so they arn't so black and white.
As always any critiques or comments are welcome.
Full Size Diffuse Texture:
One thing I noticed tho, is that even if you are packing your UV's in a small texture here, the UV layout is still very 'not so portable'. You could reuse a lot if things texture wise, by just adding a few geo cuts where needed. For instance you could just cut the edge outline of the striped tshirt in the geometry itself, and thus simply use a stripe pattern on that area. This would get rid of the unnecessary stretching/diagonal painting and will let you pack your texture much more.
Don't want to hijack the thread, but this is the kind of stuff I am talking about.
http://pioroberson.com/images/3d_pior_twisted.png
Obvioulsy I did not pack the texture as much as it could have been since it was a freestyle model and texture, but you get the idea. (whole jacket textured over a simple red texture area)
I think that many areas of your model could be textured with a simple clean gradient stretched to fit.
Good luck!
clee101: Yeah, I have been bouncing around working on different projects, but this has been my main focus, particularly with the painting.
Also, I am not too happy with the arm definition either as you mentioned. I am going to give him a detail pass soon, and hopefully iron that out.
Pior: Thanks for the link to the image and the great feedback. And yes, that image does make it clear what you are talking about, and I have not considered optimizing to that level until you showed me this, really well done!
I'm going to have to keep these tricks in mind for the next project.
So... I haven't had time to work on violator any more since my last post, but I will definitely work on him tomorrow and post for feedback soon. Thanks.
for instance how would you go about shading the boobies on Violator?
-Woog
woogity: Much appreciated man.
Well, I think I am done with the texturing. Here is what I ended up with. I'm not crazy about the arm hair, but I think its the best I can do with the current map resolution, unless anyone has suggestions.
So I am going to rig and pose him now, and hopefully post a final presentations sheet here later today.
Full size textures:
Diffuse:
Opacity:
great stuff though!
I set up my uv's this way so I could maximize space for areas of importance, but in hindsight, I wish I had a little more resolution for the front pant area. But if I did want the uvws normalized its really easy to do with MOP's 3ds max script
I have him all posed now, so I'm going to post the presentation sheets soon.
Thanks to those that helped me along the way.
Of course comments and crtiques are still welcome.
Filtered Presentation Sheet:
UnFiltered Presentation Sheet:
Animated Gif 360: