RAR! GROWL! SNAP!

whipSwitch

So, I thought it might be time to stop hiding in the sketchbook thread and post something already. Since I've solved my problem of "how the hell am I gonna bake these sculpts?", I'd actually like to get on with finishing a couple of them. Specifically, this guy. Ive hit a couple of walls and would appreciate any thoughts or ideas.

Next thing on my plate is reworking the belt, and making it feel like an actual belt, rather than a continuous strap.

<poof>

t4paN

Love werewolves, are you gonna put some fur on his arms and chest at all? Lower legs look a bit strange to me, but it looks great in general!

He looks like T-Bag from prison break with the goatee and sardonic smile, heh.

whipSwitch

Thanks a bunch man. What's strikes you as strange about the lower legs? There is something itching me about them also, but i can't put my finger on it. Lemonhead made a comment on the previous version about the lower legs being to thin, so I went back and beefed them up a bit to match the weight of the rest of the body, and they definitely look better, but I agree, there is still something off.

You talking about the tv show prison break? I don't think Ive ever seen an episode of it.

Microneezia

Great work!

I have a feeling it might be the combination of human calf to to dog calf. Its all sculpted really well but there might be a better design, Im talking specifically about the back calf splitting to the reverse knee/heel. A wolfs foot is also a lot smaller than that proportionally to his leg. The feet look almost like a large dino's foot. rather than a wolfs paw.

I havent seen the previous version, and dont want to ping pong you around, but I feel personally that a thin lower leg that is bulked up with hair alphas later might get you further to a werewolf feel? anotomically correct number of toes that are more stubby, in a paw formation, not long finger toes.... with better dog nails, like those high half moon nails that arch high and look like talons a bit.

Love the hands, perhaps the belt/shorts could match the shoulder arm setup a little more?

ru4it

the calf muscle is a little big, and there is very little to no muscle to the area just above the ankle. But thats just my thoughts.

also just an after thought i thought werewolves had four pads on there feet

tadpole3159

http://www.trinity3d.com/media/digital_tutors/maya_modeling_werewolves/maya_modeling_werewolves_detail1.jpg

most people who do werewolf's copy the wolfs legs. and wolfs don't have any muscles on that weird backwards facing bit

http://www.billybear4kids.com/animal/whose-toes/wolf/WolfStanding.jpg

|Buddy|

This guy looks like the early version of predator!

whipSwitch

@t4paN - I neglected to answer the question about the fur. There is fur on his arms, though his bracers cover most of it up. And i did toy with hair on his abdomen/chest, but was having a hard time getting enough topology to get it looking halfway decent without subdividing a ridiculous number of times.

@Microneezia & ru4it - thanks for the all the feedback about the legs. I completely agree with most it and have started working them in a new direction. After a fistfight with zBrush as to whether or not it was gonna let rebuild the topology for the feet (to get rid of the toes), I finally got around to reworking the lower legs/feet. I think after I get a bit of sleep, I'mm gonna add some fur to the feet, up the back of the lower leg.

@buddy - Thanks!, I think. I never saw any of the concepts for predator, but it's interesting to think about what he could have ended up looking like.

torontoanimator

i gotta say, i love him in the armor, but the arm and leg hair, to be honest it kinda looks like his skin is burned, not actual hair, thats the trouble with trying to zbrush hair :S im sure you could make the hair look great with the texturing though. Good job *thumbs up*

whipSwitch

Thanks man, I didn't ditch the armour, I just had it hidden while I was working and didn't think it was important to the update to worry about showing it. Your completely right about the fur, and I didnt take the time to refine the fur on the arms because the vast majority of it is hidden by the bracers, (this is was a post-fur design decision), but I had every intention of reworking the fur on the legs, after I worked out the larger issues.

spong

I hope that I'm not imposing by doing a quick sketch over the image, for me the leg issue is mostly concentrated on the fur at the front of the shin, it is spoiling the curves of the shin, and bulking the front of the leg beyond the kneecap. (a)

I think that you could also curve the lower leg slightly further if you wanted to add a little tension to the muscle groups, I have included a rough line of the sort of curve that I would hope to achieve. (b)

Sorry if a cause offence, my only real excuse is that I'm new here

whipSwitch

Thanks Spong, your advice helped greatly in getting the legs to a shape I'm happy(ier) with. They still needs some some adjustments, but i think they are much more on the right track now.

So I decided to learn max and what better way to do that than try an actual project in it! The going has been a bit slow (hence the time between posts), but I thought I was at a point worth an update. So I kept some of the base armour that I liked, scrapped the rest, and I think it's much closer to what I had in mind in the first place.

Any thought are very much welcome.

Luke_Starkie

Woah looks great! But maybe put the legs more like this


Anyhow Great work!!

Rai

I'm a little confused with the legs.. They're digitigrade, but it looks as if you've stuck in one thigh, and two calves, whereas a real digitigrade actually has the original thighs and calves, but the metacarpals are extended, and they walk on their toes.

http://www.paleoart.com/russian_fossils/fossils_photo_gallery/russian-vertebrate-fossils/russian-pleistocene-wolf-skeleton.jpg

Keep it up. ^^

whipSwitch

Luke - I assumed you meant the armour bits in your image. It's been redone now, but thanks for feedback anyway

Rai - Thanks for the reference, it helped greatly and after reworking the legs one more time, I think they are where they need to be, albeit some tweaking, assuming I want to actually finish this guy...


I would like to bitch about how I haven't had much time to work on him, but considering the current economic situation, I'm thankful to be busy with work, even if it does detract from my free time... Anyway, I've modeled the armor and I'm just starting the zbrush pass..( as in, imported and separated...)

as always, any and all feedback is appreciated.

t4paN

It's back, yay! I suppose it's almost ready, but just in case, think about giving him some chest and shoulder hair. I really like how it came out though!

Luke_Starkie

Looks brilliant!

whipSwitch

thanks guys. I'm toying with the idea of some additional fur in places via alpha planes, but for now, Im just trying to get the armour finished and start on the low poly...

whipSwitch

so i got a bunch of projects out of the way and have curbed my distractions enough to make a good bit of progress on the low poly of this guy. I'm going to finish him if it kills me. Dammit. I've been staring at the topology long enough that i think im going cross-eyed. If anyone have any suggestions, feel free:

whipSwitch

so I *thought* i might have finished the LP, but I laid out the uvs and did a test bake, and there are some craptastic parts that need to be fixed, like the ear got completely gimped and the HP normals on the tooth are funked up. But, overall I think it's well on its way:

zee bake test:



zee geo:



all thoughts appreciated

anyone have any idea why parts of a projection cage explode out when applied through the RTT dialog? not a biggie, as it's fine when you apply the modifier manually, just curious...

crazyfingers

I'd suggest just hand painting out the issues you're having. Once you let go of the idea that a bake has to be "perfect" your workflow decreases big time.

So the ears are kinda funky? just paint 127 127 255 (numeric value of color) flat blue over them to fix it. If you want you can take a black and white image of fur and put it over the UV coordinates of the ears and do a hieght to normal bake in photoshop with xnormal (free download plug-in), overlay that with the rest of your normal maps and just fade it in with a mask so it covers the janky part only.

It sounds a little complicated but it's a lot better than dealing with cages and that nagging quest for the "perfect bake", which no one will know about other than you in the end anyway.

Think of normals as you would any other texture, they can be painted over, tiled, moved, scaled etc in photoshop. Just don't rotate 'em . But you CAN rotate images before you bake them into normals with Xnormal if you're not generating the normal with a high poly bake. And if you are using a high poly bake just rotate the objects before the bake. You don't have to create 500 studs on the high poly, you just make one, and then duplicate it a ton in photoshop.
Will it look as kick ass in your portfolio? Not quite, you wont have that really nice finished high poly render that the layman thinks looks really pretty and shiny but has no actual real-world use, but you'll get the job done, and the model wont look any worse because of it.
So i guess the best of both worlds would be to create the cool looking high poly render for the portfolio but just do what dirty work needs to be done with normal manipulation to get the low poly working.
Normals are important, but not the end all be all, make sure they work where you put the most effort in, but in cases like this with the ears, just blast it away with blue and start from scratch in 2d.

hope this helps

whipSwitch

Thanks for the feedback CF. I wasn't so concerned with bake being perfect, just that the ear just outright failed, and the details in the armor got mudded up more than I expected. I thought I might soften (as in angle, not smoothing groups) some of the edges on the geo, and see if i can squeeze a bit more resolution out of the UVs. Also thought I might merge the belts on the waist to consoldate some room. If anyone has any thoughts about mergin or splitting parts of the model, that'd be most helpful.

Psyk0

Great work,

I just spotted an anatomy problem, the pectoralis major attaches under the deltoid, it doesnt run down the side of the pecs.

http://www.docmartin.at/Unfallchirurgie/Schulter/pectoralis.jpg

A bit late to fix it i guess.

whipSwitch

Thanks dude. Yea, I think I might be forced to put it in the "live and learn" pile. But thanks man, it's a good point and I'll be more careful of it in the future.

whipSwitch

so I rearranged some of the UVs(taking care to leave some room for fur planes this time), and re-baked. Fixed the errors and ZEE NORMALS ARE DONE!

stands at 8726 tris pre-fur and the diffuse and spec are in the works...

whipSwitch

started the diffuse, basic texture pass. trying to build some alpha planes for some additional fur, but i might have screwed myself....

stoofoo

You'd do well to light this a bit more appropriately.

The armor looked great in the high res, but it's been almost completely flattened with how you are lighting it here. I can't tell if you should be inflating some of your high res model bits a wee bit or not because of it. Maybe give it a little lighting love and repost?

whipSwitch

that's cool. mind explaining exactly what you mean by "appropriate"? Higher spec? Less ambient value?

I purposely lit it flatly because it was always easier to develop the diffuse without a bunch of other stuff in the way, but if you know a better way, I'm all sorts of open to suggestions. Also, I've been floundering with max's viewports shaders, trying to get the hang of them...

whipSwitch

ok, for the sake of not waiting till i get teh max viewport shaders under control, here's a marmoset grab, the normals are much more visible now.

stoofoo

Sent you an email, bud. Should help you not have to deal with the disaster that is max viewport shaders.

whipSwitch

@stoofoo - thanks for the help man with the shaders man.


Something funky is up with my model I think, I'm getting this strange alpha sorting problem....




see how the alpha shows up fine on the left leg, but shows the background on the right?? You can't see any of the mirrored bits through the alpha. Not just the mirrored parts, but most of the shoulder armour and some random faces on other not mirrored parts dont show up either....

It's happening in every directx shader I have and in marmoset, so I was thinkning there's something funked up with the model somewhere....

Anyone know what the hell this is??

stoofoo

It's likely just not sorting right and not your fault. But to be sure, reset xforms and check your vertex normals.

That shader does full alpha, it just doesnt always do it right.=)

stoofoo

side note: I disagree pretty strongly with normal mapped hair the way you have done it. At work we always try to do similar things with the big fluffy maned asshole monsters we end up doing, but as it turns out, we almost always end up flatening the normals out in exchange for a nice painterly hair. Style thing, I guess. It's just really hard to make hair not look...fake?

Zack Fowler

Maybe try making the alpha masked parts use a separate material from the solid stuff, both with all the same settings except whether alpha is enabled.

whipSwitch

@zackf - that did it. Works fine now. Thank ya much!

@stoofoo - yea I kinda thought it wasn't the shader, since it was happening with everything. About the hair, I'm inclined to agree with you. It's not really workin out so much.

To think of the about it, most of the good example's of sculped hair work because they are usually on very stylized characters..Add another piece to the live and learn pile...

stoofoo

Most good sculpted hair is just that--sculpted. I challenge you to show me a NICE sculpted semi-real looking final product. It's hard to look bad in the sculpt, but when you convert /paint it, it tends to look like hot garbage.=)

Also: Your face has lst some detail in the translation? Dont know, but your sculpt had some tude. Your low res looks like its not got the same thing going. What gives?

whipSwitch

It obviously lost some, but i think most of it is in tact. I kinda chalked it up to a lack texture development atm.



the bigger shapes aren't as deep, but I think most of them are there. The layout of the teeth is thinner in the LP, that could be part of to. I 'd planned on fixing that anyway to be a closer match the the sculpt

edit: it was the placement of the eye inside the head, i had accidentally moved it in front of the eye lid. look closer now.

whipSwitch

after bouncing back and forth between 100 different ways of trying to handle the fur and hair...I think I've come to a decent solution, so I did a real texture pass and worked the leather a good bit

Ajax

I really dig this model, great normals too.

killingpeople

loving the pink you've introduced to the hands and feet, he's looking great.

Luke_Starkie

Looking great man !

whipSwitch

thanks a ton guys. I'm gonna get back to the diffuse and see if I can get rid of the "eye pop". It's buggin the hell outta me..

And if anyone knows, is culling related to the particular shader in max? I'cant for the life of me turn it off with any of the dx shaders...

whipSwitch

and another pass on the textures... i think ive got the saturation in check now and im 98.436% with the armor and fur, gotta dig in on the nails, mouth elements, refine the skin some, and tweak the laces, then it's on to the spec.

poostayn

Really good dude. When you finally hit it with a spec map it's really gonna pop. Keep it up.

Thegodzero

I like the direction this is going. Great looking normals and textures so far.

For refinements, I think the hair could use some more clumping drawn into the diffuse. The metal bits need to be greatly darkened in the diffuse(think gun metal) so that the spec can do its job, and id push the spec up on the edges a bit more too.

stoofoo

I'd make that light and dark fur be two distinct types. Whitish one could be a bit longer or curly? brown stuff short hair. Right now it looks like just a fur overlay over the whole thing. If nothing else, just make the termination between the two look like its in varied texture. Dont let it flow together. I realize color patterns happen on furry things, but because you are faking fur it will help make it look more believable if they look seperated.

OTherwise I'm liking it bud. Keep it up.

whipSwitch

poostaym - thank ya.

thegodzero - thanks man. I don't have a new image to post atm, but i did drop the value on the metal plates, works much better.

stoofoo - Thank ya much. Yea, I reworked some of the fur on tgz's comment, and it's still not quite there. I've all but finished the spec (not shown yet), so maybe I'll go back and rework some of the normals for the lighter patches, since I've changed them around a bit too..

been in and out of town for the past week, and been trying to get this guy a weapon designed, but I'll post the current progress + fixes when i get a chance...

whipSwitch

still a handful of stuff I'd like to tweak, but it's a breath from finished...

stoofoo

The treatments of the leather and metal look dope. Id seperate the straps on the pads out a bit more, but i like the general tone.

The head/teeth are really letting this one down right now. The face has lost its form with that fur on it. And the teeth are in need of some grit or otherwise integrating them. They just stand right now.

Is this using the shader I sent you? If so, tweak the direct to like 1.2 and indirect to approx .4. That indirect is ambient lighting from the cube map and flatens it a bit.

Looking pretty damned good though my friend. *high five*

TheMadArtist

Damn this has really come far in the last few posts. Really looking fantastic now.

ghost-d

Wow, man! This is coming really nicely! I love the hair and the leather.