WIP - Female Character help?

ssurfy

I'm currently working on a female character, the realism i'm aiming for is similar to that in Skate 2.

I used Poser Pro to model, and is heavily tweaked in Maya for lower polys.. though something's off.

Any tips constructive critique would be helpful.

Enlighter

just wanted to say thanks to Poly Counts own Peggy Chung for the character sheet, she worked with our project lead hand in hand to get that done in a matter of hours, and was EXTREMELY budget aware. Thanks again Peggy, sorry we don't have the $$ to move forward on anymore sheets.

As for the image, there seems to be a disconnect between the character sheet and the model, think maybe in the proportions, or maybe in that the model might have been smoothed over one to many times.

Hopefully some of the industry peeps will be able to talk to this a bit. Thanks in advance, this community is just incredible.

JohnnyRaptor

hey mate,
well as it is right now, it doesnt look like you have followed the concept. A lot of your proportions are off. Overlay your concept with the model and tweak the silhouettes to start with.

woogity

heya im with Johnney on this one, the model dosnt seem to follow the form of the panels very closely at all. also, it might help with the overal form and how natural it looks to you if there was she wasnt leaning forward so far as she is now. the panels you have anrt terrible id follow them more closely.
Gl with the revisions.


-woog

jacob07777

The proportions seem good and the height to head ratio is working. The main thing I'd say you have to work on are the muscle forms. She has no definition in her body, it looks like she could barely lift a donut lol. Like everyone else said, just use the reference a bit more and really try to push that silhoette. It's always better to exagerate the forms first and then you can cut back a little from there once you start seeing the shapes coming out more. Good luck on this one man and I can't wait to see more

Enlighter

Jacob,

Yeh we will be posting up more as we develop it. Pretty exciting project to be working on. Game seems super promising.

schadenfreude

I'm really not one to critique as I'm much a n00b as anyone else, but on the character sheet, is it right that your character sheet's sideview proportions are not aligned with the rest? On the front/back view, the bottom to the boob is on the line, and the sideview it's a 1/3rd of the way up (similar thing going on the shoulder, but the boobs are more noticable - no pun intended)

Enlighter

wanted to link to Peggy's Job posting here to give her some love.

http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=62929

She is an incredible artist and does incredible work. Would highly recommend her to anyone who needs some concept art/char sheets.

ssurfy

Fair point, though the character is mostly going to be covered up with clothing, so you wont ever see any muscle definition. Would it matter not including too much definition in that case?

jacob07777 wrote: »

The proportions seem good and the height to head ratio is working. The main thing I'd say you have to work on are the muscle forms. She has no definition in her body, it looks like she could barely lift a donut lol. Like everyone else said, just use the reference a bit more and really try to push that silhoette. It's always better to exagerate the forms first and then you can cut back a little from there once you start seeing the shapes coming out more. Good luck on this one man and I can't wait to see more

Enlighter

I think the closer you can get it to the character sheets the better, because as others have said, she looks like she would struggle with lifting a wet noodle, and that will definitely transfer over.

Remember they are going to be able to declothe down to underwear, so def need some definition.

Snader

there's clearly a big difference between the concept sheet and the model.

most obviously she needs more curve and shape. mainly the waist area being more petite, while having larger/thicker hips,bums, and chest. you can see that the legs in the concept are more curvy and show more fluctuation in thickness. same goes for the arms (but thats not visible in this pic)

you can also see that the head in the concept is considerably larger, and the boobs hang lower

lastly you might want to change the position of your model a bit as it seems really stiff. not to make it look identical to the concept (arms all down) but just to relax the torso and limbs a bit

ericdigital

Muscle definition doesn't have to mean, defining anatomy in the sense you may be thinking but in the transition between major forms in regards to silhouette. As posted by Snader, you haven't given any definition between upper torso, stomach, to hips, you just have this subtle S curve instead of really defining and pushing those areas that make a woman a woman. Just use constant reference and keep at it!

ssurfy

Cheers for the help, working on those improvements at the moment

ssurfy

Ok here's tweaking to the character sheet.
Top left view is in Maya's "smooth view" mode. The rest is low poly edge smoothing.



Though I also have a question. Maya's edge smoothing isn't smooth smooth. I don't want to apply smoothing as it sends the poly's high. Is there any tips on smoothing these lines out within Maya? How much can you get away with once they're put into a game?

I've added a close up showing what i'm after. It gives a semi soft edge.

jacob07777

That is looking tons better already, nice work. Not much you can really do about that besides throwing in a few more poly's, but she already looks incredibly low poly so the easiest way to fix that would be to throw another edge loop in there. Just add one in a little ways under the one you already have and expand it out abit so the transition between the angles doesnt look so harsh. Add a couple poly's to her butt too lol, I know I wouldn't want a butt that pointy.

Great work though man, much better indeed

ssurfy

Haha yeah the butt will be refined, was just waiting to see if there was any useful smoothing tips first instead of manually adding more loops or slices :P

RickFX

can i use the same ressource image for my character modelling practice?

Enlighter

Rick,

please contact me via pm. Currently that piece is licensed to my studio and we have already had some legal issues regarding it.

-Ben

ssurfy

Also q for anyone dealing with physics:
Maya 08 and 8.5 has a smooth view.. accessible by the num pad. #1 is low poly - #3 is smoothed... though in 8.5 and 08 it dramatically increases the poly count but wont render it smoothed unless you actually smooth the object, or use a script.
Maya 09 - The smooth feature doesn't increase polycount at all, and can be rendered with Mental ray smoothed without the extra 'smoothing' polys.
I just want to know how things are put into the physics engine... are they exported as objects or anything, or scripted to run from Maya and rendered out?

Is it possible to have the objects rendered into the Neo Axis physics engine from Maya with the low poly smoothing? If so how?

Hope this makes sense.

Paulewog

Hey Ssurfy whats up. I like the concept turnarounds, but one thing i would suggest would be to get yourself some premo photo references. Do you have any anatomy books that you could look at while you are drawing, or hell just draw over. In the world of 3d modelling and concept art you the designer should be taking advantage of EVERAY resource you can get you hands on to make a better finished product. dont worry if some call it cheating, its will only make your work look better in the end and also many design studios encourage you to used techniques like that. looking good so far though, it definately has potential.

Peace,
Paul