heh cool stuff, i like how the face is progressing.
nrek's paintover with the bag is exactly what i was trying to suggest originally, I think it'd really help give it some "weight" instead of just looking like it's floating at his side.
WOW. major props man. this looks absolutely beautiful. so much detail ZOMG. i especially love the straps under his jaw. very good. very inspirational.
ah yea, congrats on placing in the unearthly. to be honest, i thought your guys' stuff looked way better than ours and was expecting you to place somewhere in top 3.
Man, that looks great. My only crit so far would be that I think the details in the mustache could be more crisp. Its still wip I know, you probably just haven't gotten to it yet.
I'm really enjoying your progress here.
Yeah, the seam is xnormal doing the funky dance, not really a seam there, actually Im gonna polish it up and post the complete bake soon, hopefully, cheers!
Just two things:
1. There's a seam in the middle of his head... probably due to unwelded UVs, insufficient dilation pixels or unclamped [0,1] UVs.
2. Are you using the vector displacement mapping feature or is your model planned for a normal mapped engine? The VDM could give you more detail for the mustache, etc... but you'll need to place the seams very well.
I know about the seam, I get that alot in xnormal... doesnt show anywhere else though, not in game engines, other 3d-programs or anything... no one else get that problem? Its not because of the dilation pixels
I'm using normalmapping. The moustache will get more detail from the texture and the normalmap I will derive from that, if that is not enough in the end, I'll go back and add in extra detail in the highpoly mesh
Its a mip-mapping issue. By default i think xnormal uses like the worst possible mipping. Try going into your 3d card settings, and forcing on anisotropic filtering, at like 2x or 4x or something, should fix the problem.
Padding should also help, its not enough to just have it set to like 2 or something, if its getting mipped from 1024 down to 128 or lower, you need a lot more padding. i usually do 12-16 for my padding. because hey, you can never have too much padding.
Sweet progress! Agreed the facial details look a little too smooth but textures can sharpen all that up. Absolutely love the design of back of the head, how many poly's are you at so far?
Here's some fast texturework :] Haha, I actually copypasted tom sellecks moustashe to his face for fun, it fitted perfectly! ^^ haha Anyway, this is the direction I was thinking of with the textures.
The polycount is abit high at the moment, the baking-version is not fully optimised, when Im done with all the tweaks im gonna pull it down as far as I can without loosing too much shape. Right now its 19 k, im gonna pull it down to 16k, I think.
I'd probably say make the red on the ear piece a bit deeper in shade and maybe integrate the red and yellow of the helmet into other parts of the clothing.
Great stuff! Color really did it, good choices. With all the crispy detail put in everywhere else though, I keep waiting for that mustache to not be so darn smooth - just overlaying fine strands to the normalmap would do it I think. Goggles look like mini aquariums Awaiting spec-map!
This is looking sweet. You just need to dirty him up and work on the materials a bit... especially the cloth shader. Maybe a bit of a dusty falloff. The leather straps should have some wear on the edges as well. Also if he's a desert wanderer then he may be sunburned or have skin blemishes and freckles or leather like skin from years of sun exposure. I know its not finished and all I'm just throwing it out there.
Yeah, right now I'm still laying out base materials, but I totally agree about the wear and tear. I'm working my way down, so to speak Also I have a tendency to do the face last, haha, but that moustache needs some love ASAP ^^ Thanks for the feedback
Random Thought: You might want to put the cups upside down on his belt, or give them a cover, if he's traveling the wasteland, there'll end up being blown sand in there in no time...
This is looking really cool Snefer! There's a lot of nice detail going on right now, the thing that is bothering me about the textures so far is how brown the entire palette is currently leaning towards. If you just do an 'auto color' in PS on the renders I feel going more in that direction makes it easier to look at, and if you go back in and emphasize certain areas they will stand out more. Just my opinion, but it's looking good.
i think the colors are pushing a little too brown as well,- is it a byproduct of your lighting maybe?
right now, it just looks like the diffuse is the specular, which may be the case. this guy is lookin sweet though! Try popping the different surfaces a little more by dropping color into your spec.
oh yeah, and kill that aliasing junk, this isnt low-poly shit! smooth edges!
Yeah, I also noticed its a bit too brown atm. I just got his legs in, and I'm playing around with the colours a bit. I want to keep the color of the glove and helmet, so I try to break it off by changing the color of his sleeves. And I promise I will use AA next time, haha
X-Convict: yeah, i see what you mean. I'm gonna try to make him pop more with stuff like small decals etc to break it up. Get some more red in there.
LEGS! And some optimisation. He's 18k tris now, the gear adds quite alot of polys, unfortunately. Gonna try to pull it down as far as I can withour ruining anything ^^ Still working on the profile of the legs to make them less boring, and the texture there needs alot of improvement :] I played around with the colours a bit. Less brown clothes.
Jeezus...you sure did crank out some textures pretty quick! Nice work man and I agree, the boots are crying for some sort of addition. Compared to the rest of the model, it seems a bit bare down there. That's a nit pick though ;-)
finally a render with the legs that was bugging me for quite a while (it was obvious each time). Colors are nice though strong contrast (but that seems to be your style) - strong yellow/orange tint (propably the light).
The box at his hips are imo. a design break in the flow - its edgy, low poly and plain texture deisgn wise.
I like his legs though I think that the safari rings on top of his boots are odd and do not match the overal style its distracting when looking from the back (front not so noticeable).
his hat would propably on the other side assuming that his hand is more flexinle as his robotic arm. I assume the hat would be the most switched item in real life if he really is living in a hot area or he likes to cover his identity personal wise.
Some bottles and cups in his crotch area would be seriosly in the way when walking or moving his legs so placing them more in the chest area might be the best place (the area with no less movement in the whole body)
some dirt on his boots (mud, dried sand, smal rocks) would add some realism perhaps some soaked or wet places as well or some oil tints/ drips
i agree with RenderHjs the boots look like they haven't interacted with the environment he is in at all. But again, you probably just haven't gotten to it yet.
I'm really digging your texture work, amazing work man!
Yeah, his legs are kind of bare right now, but as you already figured out, its just base textures down there, the boots will be more worn and dirty as I proceed with the texturing.
As for the hat, I wanted it to hang on that side because that is his "heavy" side, he will be walking with a walking stick, and I wanted a more interesting profile, so I ended up putting all the heavy stuff on one side, so that he will be leaning slightly against his stick. I agree about the box, its kind of ofputting right now, I'm gonna texture it and see how it looks, if it doesnt work out I'll have to figure out something else.
as for spurs, maybe, maybe not... hmmm, have to think about that ^^ thanks for the feedback, its appreciated
Lowpoly! A bit under 18 k, gonna try to pull it down to 17, don't want to loose too much of the shapes in the face etc, and the glove, equipment and helmet eat alot of polys. Not entirely final, but kinda close.
cool stuff. What's your texture sizes? Whatre you rendering out of?
I noticed you integrated a lot of the topology of your equipment into the body while others stayed separate. Looks like the bag for example is a bit of half and half. What's your thoughts on how you wanted to bake down all of this stuff for normal mapping?
The texture sizes are 2*2048. I'm rendering in lightwave atm
Basically I want to keep the mesh in as few pieces as possible. The bag was built like that because I didn't want to make the entire strap around his body, that would cost alot of polys and not look very smooth, but I still wanted the bag to have some cool bounce and be animatable. Makes baking a lot more painful, but its worth it ^^
Replies
nrek: thanks alot for the paintover, I'll definately have another go at it later today
and oh yeah, Ive started working on the legs now, finally ^^
nrek's paintover with the bag is exactly what i was trying to suggest originally, I think it'd really help give it some "weight" instead of just looking like it's floating at his side.
ah yea, congrats on placing in the unearthly. to be honest, i thought your guys' stuff looked way better than ours and was expecting you to place somewhere in top 3.
I'm really enjoying your progress here.
looks awesome
sexy.
Just two things:
1. There's a seam in the middle of his head... probably due to unwelded UVs, insufficient dilation pixels or unclamped [0,1] UVs.
2. Are you using the vector displacement mapping feature or is your model planned for a normal mapped engine? The VDM could give you more detail for the mustache, etc... but you'll need to place the seams very well.
I'm using normalmapping.
Padding should also help, its not enough to just have it set to like 2 or something, if its getting mipped from 1024 down to 128 or lower, you need a lot more padding. i usually do 12-16 for my padding. because hey, you can never have too much padding.
Yeah, I usually have the padding set to 8 or something, as much as the UVmap allows for
right now, it just looks like the diffuse is the specular, which may be the case. this guy is lookin sweet though! Try popping the different surfaces a little more by dropping color into your spec.
oh yeah, and kill that aliasing junk, this isnt low-poly shit!
X-Convict: yeah, i see what you mean. I'm gonna try to make him pop more with stuff like small decals etc to break it up. Get some more red in there.
The box at his hips are imo. a design break in the flow - its edgy, low poly and plain texture deisgn wise.
I like his legs though I think that the safari rings on top of his boots are odd and do not match the overal style its distracting when looking from the back (front not so noticeable).
his hat would propably on the other side assuming that his hand is more flexinle as his robotic arm. I assume the hat would be the most switched item in real life if he really is living in a hot area or he likes to cover his identity personal wise.
Some bottles and cups in his crotch area would be seriosly in the way when walking or moving his legs so placing them more in the chest area might be the best place (the area with no less movement in the whole body)
some dirt on his boots (mud, dried sand, smal rocks) would add some realism perhaps some soaked or wet places as well or some oil tints/ drips
I'm really digging your texture work, amazing work man!
As for the hat, I wanted it to hang on that side because that is his "heavy" side, he will be walking with a walking stick, and I wanted a more interesting profile, so I ended up putting all the heavy stuff on one side, so that he will be leaning slightly against his stick. I agree about the box, its kind of ofputting right now, I'm gonna texture it and see how it looks, if it doesnt work out I'll have to figure out something else.
as for spurs, maybe, maybe not... hmmm, have to think about that ^^ thanks for the feedback, its appreciated
I noticed you integrated a lot of the topology of your equipment into the body while others stayed separate. Looks like the bag for example is a bit of half and half. What's your thoughts on how you wanted to bake down all of this stuff for normal mapping?
Basically I want to keep the mesh in as few pieces as possible. The bag was built like that because I didn't want to make the entire strap around his body, that would cost alot of polys and not look very smooth, but I still wanted the bag to have some cool bounce and be animatable. Makes baking a lot more painful, but its worth it ^^
like it!