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Hello Polycount! and a model for viewing

Hello everyone,

I am very new here, just registered moments ago after being referred to here by a friend. In brief, I'm an artist, a fresh grad with a BA in digital animation, hoping to make it into the CG business some day. Just wanted to get to know people in the field, get some critiques, and check out some of the cool art people are making. For starters, I'm currently working on a character, a heroic female for a next gen type video game. I plan to keep the count a decent level (10,000 right now, trying to knock it down more) and the mesh generic for now to use in future projects. I do plan to use the mesh in Zbrush so some of the tris and face density changes were causing me some concern...

Anyway, here are some screen caps:

rhCap01.jpg
rhCap02.jpgrhCap03.jpg
rhCap04.jpg

I thank you guys in advance for critiques!

Replies

  • BradMyers82
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    BradMyers82 interpolator
    Hey nice to see another new grad here. Anyways, I don't think 10,000 tri's is "reasonable" for a character as you have her right now. Unless you are intending it for the next, top of the line gaming company, or possibly a cinematic character model all together. As it stands, you still don't have clothes on her and at this rate she will be like 20,000 tri's when you are done, which is absurd for an in game character.

    I see simply too many areas to mention where you can take the count down, but try to just start going through and removing loops everywhere. Really small loops like around the nipple are way overkill and I am not even sure if they help.

    Tri count aside, the transition from the bottom of the eye socket and around the eyes in general are off. It looks like she doesn't have eyelids at the moment. The butt area is okay if it is like that to fit in jeans or something, but as a nude model there isn't any real crack area. I'm not sure what's going on with the hands or feet, I can't see them so well. the meshflow on the knee is weird. It doesn't really make it look like a knee ATM. Also, the way the eyeballs are set right now they appear to be facing outward in either direction.

    As a second thought, using this as a base mesh for sculpting might be fine, but you will have to make sure you convert it entirely to all quads.

    Is this a cartoon and/or stylized character? Right now, her proportions are very exaggerated more like a Barbie doll than a real life human.

    The good:

    What I really like though is how you set up the hair from the start. I see people all the time not put hair on there female models which makes them look horrible most the time. Also, you definitely have a very feminine look going. If you were trying to make her look appealing, you certainly were successful there. Your overall mesh flow is quite good. If you used less tri's, however; you would probably find it way more manageable, and making it all quads easier as well.

    All in all, its a really good start, I hope you don't take any of the advice as a harsh crit because you really want to get these sort of things out of the way in the beginning phases.

    Some workflow advice:
    I would suggest you convert this model to all quads and work on a high poly sculpt. When you have her looking the way you want, take her back into your 3d app. and build a proper low poly. Shoot for around 4-6 thousand tri's if she is nude, and you should have more than enough polys to play with. Just focus on the silhouette and add a extra loop or two on areas that would bend and deform when she is animated.

    You could check out Ben Mathis's Delilah series tutorials if you have any concerns about sticking to that tri count, or any question in general. It's pretty much the go to place for free and awesome tutorials.

    Keep us updated with your progress, and welcome to Polycount!
  • dolemite
    I think the poly flow around the knees is strange, but I'm not into hi poly sculpting so I don't know for sure. It seems to be at an angle, when it should be more straight. I could be wrong though.
  • rdramsay1121
    Thanks BradMyers82 and dolemite for the tips! One thing I did want to mention though, yeah the eye area is a bit hard to see in the caps but she has extruded faces coming outward from the socket as planes for eye lashes (it's a non-manifold geo, but I have done this in the past and it seems to deform fine when the eyelids close). Otherwise, there are several loops from around the socket. And yeah, she's supposed to be an idealized, "breasts on stilts" type of character, so pardon the barbie proportions, heh
  • woogity
    hey man again good to see another new grad woot spring 08...ok now to the gritty stuff u need to bring this pcount down seriously lots of the loops in the midsection and the spacing of the loops is no good for sculpting. whats going to happen if you take this as is into zbrush is that all of the geo you subdivide is going to be inbetween your boobs, in your wrists and around your other joints. what your aiming for for you export skin is evenly spaced quads as square as you can get them. otherwise you will find yourself in zbrush fighting your own mesh.


    ok little proportion aid, your torso needs to be bigger in every direction, legs are too long even for a comic book "heroic" type character as is. also the arms are too bulky for a female even a jacked one, especially considering the torso your character wouldn't be able to hold them up. the face isnt exactly average either, but its within the realm of possibility for a real person so it dosnt bother me much.


    also try and avoid modeling in T pose on future models, it causes tricky to paint shoulder deformations if your gonna skin and animate this.

    if you want to upload the mesh file i use maya also i could tweak some stuff and send it back to ya. Gl on your next stages! will be following


    -Woog
  • rdramsay1121
    Hey guys, thanks again for your tips, thank you woog for taking a look at my mesh. I updated the mesh, knocked down her count to 5773 (body, eyes, hair, teeth, tongue). Here she is (I've included some questions / notes on the caps as well):
    rhCap22.jpgrhCap23.jpgrhCap24.jpgrhCap25.jpgrhCap26.jpgrhCap27.jpgrhCap28.jpg
    rhCap21.jpg

    Some additional questions I had in response to the crits:
    1. Is it a better practice to create two versions of the mesh, one for the actual rigging / animation and another optimized for hi-poly sculpt apps? I suppose I can get by with an even lower count but that would generate more tris and uneven faces, so maybe better to have a sculpt app friendly version as well (provided that you have the UV's done already, which is the case for this model)

    2. Are density differences in parts of the mesh that bad? I've noticed certain areas of meshes inevitably become dense to maintain its silhouette (in my example, the face, particularly the nose and mouth / zygomatic loop area), and I have noticed that this does cause odd artifacts in sculpt apps. I've dealt with this by hiking up the division level in the sculpt app; is this a bad practice?

    apologizes in advance if some of these sculpt app questions are newbie, I never got formal training in Zbrush and pretty much learned it on my own.
  • JohnnyRaptor
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    JohnnyRaptor polycounter lvl 15
    the proportions wont matter in zbrush, BUT everything youv marked "bad" is indeed bad for sculpting in zbrush because it will cause pinching and uneven surface, its better to have a triangle than a loop like that.

    PS, try to have an even spread of loops and subdivisions, ideal would to have each face equally sized, that way, all detail will be....equally detailed.
  • almighty_gir
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    almighty_gir ngon master
    you can even have 5 sided polygons when you import into zbrush, like... if you can't think of a "safe" way to loop it, you can just end an edgeloop (like the knuckles) on any other edge, and it'll subdivide fine in zbrush (i've found anyway).
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