Soul Edge
polycounter lvl 17
An original Soul Edge I've been making
He's for this guy, who I'll be updating in time.
I'll need some help with texturing the blade, and making the flesh stand out more.
He's for this guy, who I'll be updating in time.
I'll need some help with texturing the blade, and making the flesh stand out more.
Replies
...blink...
For inspiration, check out this texture by Barry Collins:
It's somewhat similar to yours in that it uses blue metal, but it does so much more convincingly. Don't focus on the blue metal, though, as it actually has very little shading. Yours would need a lot more highlighted edges (as you can see on other parts of the texture I posted)
You need to study how metal responds to light. It doesn't have a velvety sheen with soft highlights. It actually has very concentrated highlights on top of softer shading, and the nature of metal means it's hard to have perfectly soft bends and such.
Then, the flesh:
It has -much like the rest of the texture, really) hardly any lighting, and what lighting is present doesn't have much of a unified lightsource. This goes for the body as well as the organics on the sword. You need to stop randomly detailing, and start thinking about where these tendrils attach, where they bulge, which forces pull at it and where they'd be tense.
You can find a good example of something similar to what you're doing with the flesh in here:
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=53960
Also, are your uv's stretched? On the character, the texture seems very wobbly, and it's not helping any.
I hope this helps, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with it!
i use overlay an overlay layer seperatly for both these effects, specular is quite simple just imagine a render with a generic (from above) highlight and paint those in, do it roughly at first then smudge to get a better shape, dont use this a s final though, i will use this as a base, maybe take it down to 50% op hen use that as a mask on another layer where i add more precise bits (use the pencil and layer it up)
with reflections, obiviously you dont want anything too sharpe as it wont move. i start by making a block of gradient usually in blues, greys and whites with a few bands in. take that and copy/paste deform it to the shapes you have again as overlay layers (make a group with an overlay filter and just keep pasting into this)
what your also missing is micro detail, little dents etc in the armour, you can acheive this with another overlay layer, just select the base colour and darken it by half then paint this in to the dark sides of the dent, do the same with the highlights but make this half lighter and possibly less saturated (depends on the material)
Basemesh so far.
Any tips on modelling elbows correctly?
yeah man, remove those highlights and add a spec map.
add some larger shaddow gradients to the diffuse. don't be afraid of making areas darker.
play with your spec to get the surface looking like steel, then add grunge, dust, dirt, scratches, blood, greese, dents, etc. here and there.
Shep's advice is good, go for it
About colours in shadow: it depends on the environment, so you'll need to have a virtual environment in mind as you texture him.
This tutorial gets posted a lot, that's for a good reason: http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm
It's really good, and tackles the subject of shadow-colour, among many others.
when you have dynamic lighting like you will have in the jka engine, being able to have specularity of an object adapt to that lightning is much better than painting in static spec for your object.
it's also a handy skill to know.
if your model were to go into dawn of war, like that thousand sons texture. then spec maps would be useless, and painting in the spec would be very useful.
This looks like a spine, right?
-Forgot the concepting I did today.
how..... how fucking dare you??
Marshal Banana -- i would say no broad highlights. like Pea suggested, it's a good idea to take a super-thin brush and hit the edges of your metal with like bright friggin white, and then go back and break up those highlights a bit with the eraser. if you get a good specmap with some nice contrast in it, you should get some very interesting highlights appearing on your metal. if you DO want to try that, post your maps when you've got something and i'll do an adjustment to them, if you'd like.
oh. no soft selection in maya. well, push the lower back in somehow.
Rawrg, horns.
Alright, I'll fix that.
Good. Nightmare's only 5' 6", after all.
Do the legs look right now, Rooster?
The t-pose leg wise looks also a little bit odd- maybe a to big angle,- also the knees could use a slight bend. Right now the legs look like metal pipes. Same for the arms- a slight bend to the front would give it a little bit more natural pose/ look.
i would have to agree, unfortunately. that whole torso is way too thick.
i like the base colors. i'm really hoping this thing turns out awesome dude.
Awesome... well lemme have a quick look at your model...
You have said that you were modelling after Nightmare from Soul Calibre right? Well if so, 5.6ft is correct, so the legs to start with are perhaps a tad short, just a little bit, perhaps a small increase by about 15% should be fine (I know he's only 5.6, however if you have him exactly 5.6 and you have set the units up right then okay leave them)
Not sure how Maya works, but stick a Smoothing Group on (if you can) or a mesh smooth, i'm interested to see what it looks like.
i wish i had your inspiration
I hope it looks okay, i don't texture models at all, merely because they look bad.
Good Work either way! keep it up.
More
Need opinions on the metal. And can I remove the areas of the basemesh that are under the armor and still weigh him correctly?
if not, then you need to work a lot harder on it.
you can remove anything you want.
I like the way you've done the eyes... i REALLY need some inspiration.
As for the texture, it's an improvement over the earlier one, and now looks much like metal. It still needs more texture, contrast and wear, but you're getting there. It still looks a bit like satin at this point, you know?
On a side note he kind of reminds me of a now cinematised boss in resident evil 2
edit: I'm an idiot. Didnt realise there was a second page, now i look like a nagging dickhead. I still reckon it looks stocky though.