@ Somber - Yeah you're right. I'll fatten him up a bit. Thanks!
Do you guys think it's too dense for a base mesh? I have read that you should keep your base mesh relatively low. I was just trying to keep the polys as square as possible.
Should be ok for a base mesh. It's probably a tad more dense than I'd usually start with, but by no means bad. Regular quads are good. I'd maybe remove a couple of loops from the lower part of the coat because the quads there are rectangular, if they were taller it'd be more even.
I don't know if you need that many polys in the feet. Also the back of the coat seems to have a bit of an odd distribution. Really dense around the upper/lower back, and then some long thin quads around his thighs on the coat, I think you could distribute those more evenly. Probably gonna be faster to just move/smudge them around in zbrush/mudbox.
I don't think he's too thin, he was always a little stylised to have a tight waist in the book if I remember right. Might wanna give his arms a bit more volume though, they are looking a little stick-like.
If you nail the cloth folds (since that's essentially all this guy is!) then you'll have a great model here.
If nothing else, it will be a masterclass and trial of your cloth sculpting abilities
hmm, he is thin but he's not *that thin http://www.watchmencomicmovie.com/photos/030608-rorschach-big.jpg
I'd puff him out a bit personally, but keep the waist tight as Mop says. the waist in your model slopes slowly towards the cord tie, but its more straight/baggy then sudden pinch with those coats
anyway, awesome subject, looking forward to seeing it in progress
It's still going to be used for your cage when normal mapping?
No, I make a 2nd optimized mesh and project the cage from that in Max or xNormal when I work in tangent space, which is very rare these days. Not sure how other people do it.
With objects space, you can bake and then optimize, so long as the UVs stay mostly the same.
@ Hawken & Ninjas - Once I have finished sculpting I'll create a new optimized mesh to more accurately fit my sculpt and capture that silhouette.
@ Rooster - Yeah I see what your saying and thanks for the ref! I'll make the top more puffy and fit around the waist more.
@ MoP - Yeah I've just been moving polys around to get a more even topology in zbrush. I think I'll make my base mesh a little lighter next time. While I was at it I made his arms a bit bigger as well. It should be good practice on clothe that is for sure!
Since this is a basemesh, you would be better off making the tie around his coat in thee or four sections with more native modeling for the knot. Sculpting the current setup in zbrush is gonna be a pain in the arse. You will have far better results if you model the loop, the knot, and the two stands as their own individual pieces. Use subtools and you can get so much more clean detail in there and probably less artifacting in your transfers.
It's still going to be used for your cage when normal mapping?
Doubt that. Wouldn't it be smarted to re-export the lowest subdivision level out of his sculpting package? That way it has whatever changes to the volume he makes.
Looking at some reference while you sculpt cloth, and anything for that matter, makes life so much easier man. Here's an image I found real quick that looks like it might help....it looks like a chick's coat but lots of information there for you to go from.
@ Firebert - Thanks for the tip! I'm still pretty new to zbrush so I appreciate it!
@ JesterBox - Rorschach pretending to be Kovacs.
@ NyneDown - Thanks for the reference! Yeah I last night when I was sculpting I was only using one monitor but I set up my other one today so I can have my ref right there.
And I was half-way through the graphic novel and everything.
Someone told me the whole ending before I read the novel, and it was still awesome so I think you'll be fine. Sorry for spoiling. And actually it's not irrelevant to the model.
Spoils maybe
His clothes are more straight laced, and after (insert dog/fire event here) they seem to be baggier and even coming apart at the straps and stuff.
More progress. Right now I'm getting all the big shapes in, not really finishing anything yet. I like to work on the entire model at once and not finish each piece one at a time. I'm going to start on the hands and feet next. I think I'm going to mirror the hands and feet. Any tips, suggestions, cirts or comments are appreciated.
Also I have a general understanding of shaders and I just downloaded shaderFx (http://www.lumonix.net/shaderfx.html) and was wondering how hard it would be to create an animated shader texture for his face? Thanks for any information.
Kees - Thanks for the reply. The face is constantly changing ink. his name comes from the rorschach inkblot test. I would like to set up a loop animation that will cycle on his face. I don't know if I can set morph targets and just have it transition through each one or if I would have to do it through code.
It uses the sample Rorschach jpg file you gave me, and that file isn't layout perfectly for this shader because it has borders etc around the image.
What you want in this case is a perfect 'animated sprite' where each Rorschach image is the same height and width as the others in the 'sprite' and no extra space.
Then I use 2 noise textures that allow you to randomly switch between one of the sprites in the Rorschach image.
The pixels in these noise textures have to point exactly to an image.
So if the width of each image in the sprite is 100 and you have a bitmap that is 800 width (meaning you have 8 images horizontally) then a pixel in the noise bitmap has to be either :
0.0, 0.125, 0,25, ... 1.0
Sounds really complex, but basically we need to tell the shader by how much to offset the U and V coordinates to properly grab 1 image our of the many images in the sprite.
Basically the exact same way a animated sprite would work in code.
hope that gets you going.
There are other ways to do it, but somehow this seemed the easiest to setup for an artst
Wow thanks a ton. This is makes me want to finish my sculpt right now so I can really get working on this!
I'm pretty sure I understand everything but the thing that I want to do is not necessarily have it grab random images. I would rather it just play through the sprite. So I would have to change the noise textures because they are creating the randomness. Would I just use a gradient or is there a way I can eliminate using the noise textures because I don't need the randomness?
If it goes from one image to the next you could probably do it a lot easier then what I did
You should not need the noise texture at all.
But if you want to keep using it, you could make them a simple gradient.
But there are other ways without the noise.
Just move the uv's over by 'x and y' amount when time changes.
You might need to do it at a certain 'fps' so only change the UVs once every 1/30 of a second or at whatever speed you want it to animate on his face.
@ shaderfx - Yeah I'll have some time tomorrow to play around with it. I got it pretty much working today but it would snap slightly off the image each time so it looked really strange. Thanks for the help.
@ WayneAdams - If all else fails I will end up using an animated texture. Procedural for the mask is a good idea too! One thing that I was thinking about is that in the art there are several cases where the same image would appear on his face reflecting his emotions and I was considering replicating that. who knows though?
I made a rorschach model for The Specialists some years ago, he's real fun to model and easy to texture
One crit i'd make is that his shoulders are too broad. Rorschach to me always had a kind of lanky figure and maybe a comparitively weedy frame, This added to the awesomeness of his improvised kills. Plus his character is the picked-on guy with hidden awesomeness
This is pretty cool.
My main crits so far would be the folds on the pants look strangely formless (usually folds on trousers hang from key points like the knees and have a very distinguishable look), your folds seem to go under the knee which is strange.
Similarly the folds around the bottom of the coat look weird, I think it's because they're very flat and don't really look like folding cloth, they look more like clay applied to a flat plane.
The folds you have around the chest, and upper arms, are much better - they're defined well and follow decent correct fold lines, you should try to do the same style of folds around the bottom of the coat, and around the trousers.
Harry - yeah I went back and looked at the book and you're right. I'll move them down a bit. Thanks.
MoP - You're absolutely right. Tonight I'll redo the pants and and lower coat. I wasn't very happy with how they turned out but for some reason I just didn't fix them. Thanks for the crits.
Here's an image I rendered out last night following X-Convicts rendering tut.
Replies
Agreed
It's a base mesh
Do you guys think it's too dense for a base mesh? I have read that you should keep your base mesh relatively low. I was just trying to keep the polys as square as possible.
I don't know if you need that many polys in the feet. Also the back of the coat seems to have a bit of an odd distribution. Really dense around the upper/lower back, and then some long thin quads around his thighs on the coat, I think you could distribute those more evenly. Probably gonna be faster to just move/smudge them around in zbrush/mudbox.
I don't think he's too thin, he was always a little stylised to have a tight waist in the book if I remember right. Might wanna give his arms a bit more volume though, they are looking a little stick-like.
If you nail the cloth folds (since that's essentially all this guy is!) then you'll have a great model here.
If nothing else, it will be a masterclass and trial of your cloth sculpting abilities
http://www.watchmencomicmovie.com/photos/030608-rorschach-big.jpg
I'd puff him out a bit personally, but keep the waist tight as Mop says. the waist in your model slopes slowly towards the cord tie, but its more straight/baggy then sudden pinch with those coats
anyway, awesome subject, looking forward to seeing it in progress
It's still going to be used for your cage when normal mapping?
No, I make a 2nd optimized mesh and project the cage from that in Max or xNormal when I work in tangent space, which is very rare these days. Not sure how other people do it.
With objects space, you can bake and then optimize, so long as the UVs stay mostly the same.
@ Rooster - Yeah I see what your saying and thanks for the ref! I'll make the top more puffy and fit around the waist more.
@ MoP - Yeah I've just been moving polys around to get a more even topology in zbrush. I think I'll make my base mesh a little lighter next time.
Here's where I'm at. Let me know what you guys think. I'm not very good with clothe so this should be fun.
Doubt that. Wouldn't it be smarted to re-export the lowest subdivision level out of his sculpting package? That way it has whatever changes to the volume he makes.
@ Firebert - Thanks for the tip! I'm still pretty new to zbrush so I appreciate it!
@ JesterBox - Rorschach pretending to be Kovacs.
@ NyneDown - Thanks for the reference! Yeah I last night when I was sculpting I was only using one monitor but I set up my other one today so I can have my ref right there.
Wanna watch the irrelevant spoilers? Jesus.
And I was half-way through the graphic novel and everything.
here's some progress on the coat. It's still very wip and a lot of stuff needs to be changed.
Someone told me the whole ending before I read the novel, and it was still awesome so I think you'll be fine. Sorry for spoiling. And actually it's not irrelevant to the model.
Spoils maybe
His clothes are more straight laced, and after (insert dog/fire event here) they seem to be baggier and even coming apart at the straps and stuff.
End spoils maybe
Coming along nicely.
IT WAS HIS TWIN ALL ALONG! - gotcha
More progress. Right now I'm getting all the big shapes in, not really finishing anything yet. I like to work on the entire model at once and not finish each piece one at a time. I'm going to start on the hands and feet next. I think I'm going to mirror the hands and feet. Any tips, suggestions, cirts or comments are appreciated.
Also I have a general understanding of shaders and I just downloaded shaderFx (http://www.lumonix.net/shaderfx.html) and was wondering how hard it would be to create an animated shader texture for his face? Thanks for any information.
How is his face suppose to animate?
-Kees
Here are some images so you can better visualize.
http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/296/rorschach1.gif
http://www.sheepish.org/itp/rorschach/images/rorschach.jpg
I've put a sample shaderFX shader here:
http://www.lumonix.net/ForumImages/rorschach_ShaderFX.zip
It uses the sample Rorschach jpg file you gave me, and that file isn't layout perfectly for this shader because it has borders etc around the image.
What you want in this case is a perfect 'animated sprite' where each Rorschach image is the same height and width as the others in the 'sprite' and no extra space.
Then I use 2 noise textures that allow you to randomly switch between one of the sprites in the Rorschach image.
The pixels in these noise textures have to point exactly to an image.
So if the width of each image in the sprite is 100 and you have a bitmap that is 800 width (meaning you have 8 images horizontally) then a pixel in the noise bitmap has to be either :
0.0, 0.125, 0,25, ... 1.0
Sounds really complex, but basically we need to tell the shader by how much to offset the U and V coordinates to properly grab 1 image our of the many images in the sprite.
Basically the exact same way a animated sprite would work in code.
hope that gets you going.
There are other ways to do it, but somehow this seemed the easiest to setup for an artst
I'm pretty sure I understand everything but the thing that I want to do is not necessarily have it grab random images. I would rather it just play through the sprite. So I would have to change the noise textures because they are creating the randomness. Would I just use a gradient or is there a way I can eliminate using the noise textures because I don't need the randomness?
Thanks again for the help!
You should not need the noise texture at all.
But if you want to keep using it, you could make them a simple gradient.
But there are other ways without the noise.
Just move the uv's over by 'x and y' amount when time changes.
You might need to do it at a certain 'fps' so only change the UVs once every 1/30 of a second or at whatever speed you want it to animate on his face.
Lots of options...
@ WayneAdams - If all else fails I will end up using an animated texture. Procedural for the mask is a good idea too! One thing that I was thinking about is that in the art there are several cases where the same image would appear on his face reflecting his emotions and I was considering replicating that. who knows though?
Boot and Hand wip. I'm not very satisfied with the hand. Feedback is appreciated.
Finished the high poly. Sorry for the crappy render I just wanted to get something up. I'll put some time into more renders later tonight.
One crit i'd make is that his shoulders are too broad. Rorschach to me always had a kind of lanky figure and maybe a comparitively weedy frame, This added to the awesomeness of his improvised kills. Plus his character is the picked-on guy with hidden awesomeness
My main crits so far would be the folds on the pants look strangely formless (usually folds on trousers hang from key points like the knees and have a very distinguishable look), your folds seem to go under the knee which is strange.
Similarly the folds around the bottom of the coat look weird, I think it's because they're very flat and don't really look like folding cloth, they look more like clay applied to a flat plane.
The folds you have around the chest, and upper arms, are much better - they're defined well and follow decent correct fold lines, you should try to do the same style of folds around the bottom of the coat, and around the trousers.
MoP - You're absolutely right. Tonight I'll redo the pants and and lower coat. I wasn't very happy with how they turned out but for some reason I just didn't fix them. Thanks for the crits.
Here's an image I rendered out last night following X-Convicts rendering tut.