awesome man!
I wonder if its worth when you sculpt a bit more, seperating out the eyelid flesh from the chitin? so it feels a little more like the eyes are nested in sockets protected by the surrounding plates
If you're going with blue, I'd actually like to see it more saturated. Take a look at blue lobsters - they're surprisingly bright and have a nice mottled texture to them, with some nice contrast as their extremities fade to white. I think the current colors you've slapped down muddy him up quite a bit.
rooster: Damn right, I was already considering that, will definitely push it further when I do some more sculpting.
LeoSluzz: If you haven't already, get Guruware's OBJ importer, it's way better than the default Max OBJ importer and I've never had it hang yet. If you are having freezes/crashes when using the Guruware importer then I don't think there's much I can do - you might need to get more RAM or you might just need to export lower-poly OBJs.
Love the character, but I think if you layered on some gear/clothing/weapons/whatever, you'll have a better opportunity to create a visual character that we can infer something from by just looking at it, besides the fact that it's a crab monster.
keep it up, I'm looking forward to how you handle eyes that big looking sweet in 3d
aesir, yeah... I totally agree, I have been wanting to give him some cool "gear" for a while now but I've tried several paintovers and I just can't find anything that fits!
He's got such a weird body shape that no clothing or regular armour makes much sense. He does have a staff that I've repeatedly failed to model. I will try again to make something fit, cos I really think he does need a little extra stuff to make him that extra bit cool, but it's really a matter of finding something that makes sense and just feels right, and so far nothing has
well, maybe stop thinking of it like you're trying to figure out what he looks good in, but more, where does this guy live, and what is the culture that he lives in, and what does he spend his days doing, and what is his goal for this war. Maybe he lives in giant floating bubble cities that orbit jupiter, and he needs some breathing gear for when he travels between the bubbles in space, or some propulsion system. Or he could live on a beach, but has trouble dealing with the sun so he needs some sort of apparatus that gives him shade. i dunno, create a backstory for him
hey mop thats a really cool design . Really hope you will put some extra work in the eyes, have a look at the vortigaunt from hl2:ep2 in the hl2 model viewer for awesome reference, they did some really cool shader tricks to make the iris look hollow and get a lens effect in front of it, which makes the eyes feel so much more real.
Quick update, slight change of direction. Aesir's advice (which spookily mirrored advice I have repeatedly given other people on many occasions!) was worth following, I think ... so now I have a small amount of backstory.
He's basically a guy from a fairly backwater swampy foggy world (think Dagobah from Star Wars, Yoda's planet!), so he needs a lot of big eyes to help him see through the murk. He also carries a lantern to this effect. His is a semi-aquatic civilisation and they mainly feed on fish and other animals which they catch using harpoons in the shallows.
Lantern still needs some work (missing the side handles) and I'll probably change the staff up a bit to make it more bulky and less twig-like (driftwood?) ... also need to do a proper net over his shells, this one is really hacky and not put together well.
I also swapped his arm teeth for a squid-like beak, I think this fits better and will be more interesting to texture the fleshy bits around it.
I didn't do much more on the sculpt unfortunately, I spent a good chunk of yesterday doing a full retopology on the upper body/torso/arms/claws. Now I can probably get a lot more detail and consistency out of the mesh. Hopefully it was time well spent.
wasn't expecting that but it suits it really well, kudos sir!
i really like the "dead sea" feel it has to it, maybe some moss here and there would be cool, to make him look ancient, or some suckerfish or those shell things that stick to rocks covering his shell.
Very nice work MoP, i love the fishnet on the shoulder/shield/thing and the big arm idea (looks like it could use it to go faster or scout small and dark places while hiding, it's really cool).
I agree with you, let's put some magic'domwar shit in that lantern !!
cool man- I really like that netting even if it is rough. only crit is one of an annoying - "what cass is this according to the rooooooolz" type of nag. I`m guessing this falls into the norm class, so magic using is probably this dudes key ability. maybe some sort of support asset would help, but you probably have this all figured out-
I agree about the more alien lamp. I don't think I've got strong enough design skills to make one that is recognisably a storm lantern and yet still an alien artifact though
I will have a few scribbles of PS overpainting on it though and see what I can come up with. I am gonna do a ZBrush pass on the lantern at some point anyway so maybe I will try to go a bit mental on it in there.
I'm digging it so far MoP.. I thik I would literally crap myself if I ran into this thing at night. I can picture him hunting in a bog, or swap'ish area at night time... like he's a nocturnal creature.
So I've been getting into the habit of doing quick, clean unwraps on my source meshes before sending them to ZBrush, and I think this is going to pay off now:
This is the highpoly staff rendered in Max using textures 100% polypainted in ZBrush and baked to texture.
It was literally a 10-15 minute job, so it's not amazing quality, but it's 100% seamless and I didn't even try any custom brushes or alphas yet, simply used Standard brush with the Cavity masking brush options open and tweaking all the time. Really fast to fill in base colours - if I had another level of subdivision I could probably texture the whole thing inside ZBrush (need to get ZAppLink too and give that a try, will probably help).
Either way, I think this will make a very nice base for my textures, if I can do all my highpolys like this then I think I can save quite a lot of time in the texturing stage - I can literally make a lowpoly, unwrap, and then bake everything, the only thing left to do after that would be final details in Photoshop and any extra specular / other maps.
damn dude, you are crazy! Nice work, especially for 10-15 mins. Having UVs before you go into the war zone that is ZBrush certainly does help -- and this is the proof. Can't wait to see where this method brings you.
Polypaint sure is fun :P You can always reimport your lvl 1 mesh with uv's if you forgot to do that before you started sculpting(I tend to do this because i'm LAZY) :P
Another thing you can do (if you don't set any UVs before going into Z) is do your polypainting, and then save out that texture using ZBrush generated UV's.
Then export a mid sub division level version of your ZBrush model (with the ZBrush generated UVs), and import it into Max.
Apply your texture to this model in Max, and bake the diffuse from the Z model to your UVd lowpoly model.. viola!
yea good stuff, be fun to see him blink in sequence,,,or see one eye after another open in the dark, heh cool, but you could kick his ass with a hand full of salt. and great wood texture. keep it up this will be a fun one
r
So I finally got around to installing ZAppLink tonight... damn, this rocks.
I just subdivided my mesh an extra level in ZBrush purely to get more detail on the polypainting for a better texture bake - I didn't export this highest level geometry since I didn't sculpt any more detail.
However I think this texturing method really works. It was very fast to produce the texture, and the end result in Max is seamless.
Here's the highpoly in Max with the texture applied to the staff (and a new, detailed rope):
Now here's the WIP lowpoly in Max with normals, diffuse and AO baked:
And the resulting textures (no Photoshop work at all, pure bake):
The mesh/UVs are obviously WIP and will be better later. Also I will probably increase the resolution - currently it's just using up about half of a 1024x256 (1/32 of total overall budget!) so I can safely increase that. Also there's no specular yet - I will have to do that in PS, I think. Still, the bake really helps as a starting point - I can refine and tweak quickly in PS now.
Replies
I wonder if its worth when you sculpt a bit more, seperating out the eyelid flesh from the chitin? so it feels a little more like the eyes are nested in sockets protected by the surrounding plates
nice update anyway
Gav
Hey MoP, this is great stuff! I only wonder, can something be done also to deal with max hanging up when importing big polycounts from obj's?
This issue is really causing a great deal of frustration...
oh look, I did a google search for you http://kodiak.asap.um.maine.edu/lobster/photoofmonth/leslie%20ricker%20blue%20lobster2.jpg
you can even see some red at the very ends of his claw.
Model's coming along well, dude!
LeoSluzz: If you haven't already, get Guruware's OBJ importer, it's way better than the default Max OBJ importer and I've never had it hang yet. If you are having freezes/crashes when using the Guruware importer then I don't think there's much I can do - you might need to get more RAM or you might just need to export lower-poly OBJs.
Sectaurs: Cheers, that's a good idea.
Thanks a bunch, it takes it seconds to import files that would have the native max importer hang up!!!
keep it up, I'm looking forward to how you handle eyes that big looking sweet in 3d
He's got such a weird body shape that no clothing or regular armour makes much sense. He does have a staff that I've repeatedly failed to model. I will try again to make something fit, cos I really think he does need a little extra stuff to make him that extra bit cool, but it's really a matter of finding something that makes sense and just feels right, and so far nothing has
Edit: yea i know, totally concepting 101
PS: for some reason your last image doesnt show up anymore?
Quick update, slight change of direction. Aesir's advice (which spookily mirrored advice I have repeatedly given other people on many occasions!) was worth following, I think ... so now I have a small amount of backstory.
He's basically a guy from a fairly backwater swampy foggy world (think Dagobah from Star Wars, Yoda's planet!), so he needs a lot of big eyes to help him see through the murk. He also carries a lantern to this effect. His is a semi-aquatic civilisation and they mainly feed on fish and other animals which they catch using harpoons in the shallows.
Lantern still needs some work (missing the side handles) and I'll probably change the staff up a bit to make it more bulky and less twig-like (driftwood?) ... also need to do a proper net over his shells, this one is really hacky and not put together well.
I also swapped his arm teeth for a squid-like beak, I think this fits better and will be more interesting to texture the fleshy bits around it.
I didn't do much more on the sculpt unfortunately, I spent a good chunk of yesterday doing a full retopology on the upper body/torso/arms/claws. Now I can probably get a lot more detail and consistency out of the mesh. Hopefully it was time well spent.
wasn't expecting that but it suits it really well, kudos sir!
i really like the "dead sea" feel it has to it, maybe some moss here and there would be cool, to make him look ancient, or some suckerfish or those shell things that stick to rocks covering his shell.
looking forward to seeing it textured :P
-Woog
what about use one of it´s little arms to carry the staff, and let the big one free for weapons?
Very nice work MoP, i love the fishnet on the shoulder/shield/thing and the big arm idea (looks like it could use it to go faster or scout small and dark places while hiding, it's really cool).
I agree with you, let's put some magic'domwar shit in that lantern !!
That would be funny if he had
his fingers moving on the ground like paws.
Can't wait to see more.
it magically attracts all manner of creatures towards it so he can harpoon them IN THE FACE
nice ungainly proportions too... i like it
I will have a few scribbles of PS overpainting on it though and see what I can come up with. I am gonna do a ZBrush pass on the lantern at some point anyway so maybe I will try to go a bit mental on it in there.
Just for fun, since my brain is fried right now:
Looking forward to updates
Might suit his 'Dagobah' style world more. Although not really an artifact clearly lol. :P
So I've been getting into the habit of doing quick, clean unwraps on my source meshes before sending them to ZBrush, and I think this is going to pay off now:
This is the highpoly staff rendered in Max using textures 100% polypainted in ZBrush and baked to texture.
It was literally a 10-15 minute job, so it's not amazing quality, but it's 100% seamless and I didn't even try any custom brushes or alphas yet, simply used Standard brush with the Cavity masking brush options open and tweaking all the time. Really fast to fill in base colours - if I had another level of subdivision I could probably texture the whole thing inside ZBrush (need to get ZAppLink too and give that a try, will probably help).
Either way, I think this will make a very nice base for my textures, if I can do all my highpolys like this then I think I can save quite a lot of time in the texturing stage - I can literally make a lowpoly, unwrap, and then bake everything, the only thing left to do after that would be final details in Photoshop and any extra specular / other maps.
Interesting!
Another thing you can do (if you don't set any UVs before going into Z) is do your polypainting, and then save out that texture using ZBrush generated UV's.
Then export a mid sub division level version of your ZBrush model (with the ZBrush generated UVs), and import it into Max.
Apply your texture to this model in Max, and bake the diffuse from the Z model to your UVd lowpoly model.. viola!
- BoBo
Keep it up...hope to see this one finished!
r
I just subdivided my mesh an extra level in ZBrush purely to get more detail on the polypainting for a better texture bake - I didn't export this highest level geometry since I didn't sculpt any more detail.
However I think this texturing method really works. It was very fast to produce the texture, and the end result in Max is seamless.
Here's the highpoly in Max with the texture applied to the staff (and a new, detailed rope):
Now here's the WIP lowpoly in Max with normals, diffuse and AO baked:
And the resulting textures (no Photoshop work at all, pure bake):
The mesh/UVs are obviously WIP and will be better later. Also I will probably increase the resolution - currently it's just using up about half of a 1024x256 (1/32 of total overall budget!) so I can safely increase that. Also there's no specular yet - I will have to do that in PS, I think. Still, the bake really helps as a starting point - I can refine and tweak quickly in PS now.