No outline? Gotcha. The boobies were moved out slightly, but the eyes looked kinda odd when I did that, so I left them alone.
I moved her forehead a bit so it's not parallel to the lower face, but I can't post a shot right now cause something screwed up all of the textures... =_=
Lol..sorry my suggesstion screw up your texture..actually I'm not moving her forhead but instead her chin area in a bit.
Just save the edited image that I posted before and go through back and forth with the original one that you have. You can see which part that I actually edit. Her forehead looks ok to me..
No outline?..I kinda like the outline though heheh..how did you do that?..
Wow, just shot from the fist to the last page,... what a difference in quality! The texture look like loads of ambience, which makes me blink, maybe that is necessary for where they are going,.... nice stuff
Some quick notes on what I thought could use improvement:
- Keep the highlights on the hair under control. Beware that highlights create contrast which in turn attract attention, and you want to be careful where and how you attract attention to different areas (specifically referring to the highlights you had on the front hair bangs). Reshaped the hair a bit so that it didn't look so tight to the head in front view. Added some hair on the side of the face to help frame things better.
- The skin was kind of yellowish and jaundiced. Saturation in general could be increased.
- Reshaped the face to what I feel is more typical for anime-styled characters. The shape of the face is very important. Moved the eyes back slightly. Moved the ears forward and down a bit. Moved the whole face back a little (the underside of the chin was too long). Moved the mouth up and forward more. You should be careful with the chin as it should be fine and somewhat pointed, but you don't want to emphasize it too strongly.
- Adjusted the shape of the chest a bit and some other design details. In the case of armor breastplate, it might make more sense to simplify the shape of the chest instead of the individual breast cup look (at least for this kind of torso armor).
- I'm not sure exactly what kind of rendering style you're shooting for, but I think the model could use some more lighting and shadows painted in. The color scheme of the character in general could also be improved. Experiment with warmer or cooler variations of the colors you have now to try and find a better balance. When you paint a shadow or a highlight try to avoid simply picking a lighter or darker version of the base color. Think about how warm the shadow might be on the skin or how cool the highlights might be in other areas. Although I did not really demonstrate this here, doing this will help your model feel more natural and interesting.
Hope that helps. Of course, these are just ways I think you could bring your model more closely in line with conventional anime characters, but perhaps you had something different in mind. Regardless, you've made good progress already. Hope to see more updates on the texture.
I'm with you on the modifications to the side view, but I'm not feeling the front one. The designs aren't really supposed to be conventionally styled. Quite a nice critique, though.
Hi dude, good to see the ninja back! T have a suggestion about him: I think the symmetry on the hair and also on his mouth cover, the folding of the cloth is kinda weird you need to break up the symmetry..As for the hair its ok on the side view but in the front and back you need some variation on the length/ each on them point at a different direction/ etc. well again to break up the symmetry.
Having some weighting problems with the hair:
Some of them seem to be sticking together too much near the end. They're weighed thusly:
The strands closest to the bone are weighed at 100%, and the next is 75%, then 50%, and then 25%. What should I do?
Cool Thread. About the Weighting. Start with each strand at 100 percent per appropriate bone. Now with the lowest level bone (child) then at the bones joint blend it 40 to 50 percent into the parent of that bone.
The problem you are currently having appears to be because you have your bones blended with the bones next to them, which aren't part of the same hierarchy.
I'm about to begin animating them. If I'm going to give the hair/cape/coat ragdoll physics in the engine, I don't need to worry about animating those bits, right?
Well, I've gotta admit, came into this thread, was kinda "eugh" about the model, saw you taking advice, and goddamn.
You took her a long way from what you started with, and the fact that a simple character project like that is turning into a full fledged game project is awesome. Give whoever is doing the music a pat on the back. I'm liking where this is going.
Stunning improvement sir! The hair swoosh in the bangs is still a little strong IMO. What haikai said a while back is more in line with drawing the eye to the character's face rather than her hair. I think you could use a little bit more shadow under her shirt to help show the belly and give the cloth a bit more pop. I had to look 3x before I noticed that her skin was actually showing there. Her blue jeans blend in with the side leg armor pieces (whatever those are called). She just needs a bit of AO to help break the shadow tone in the armor with the blue ton of the pants. The dark tone at the part in the hair is a bit distracting as well. If you bring the shading up into the "top" section of the part it will really help to sell that and from the side view you should be able to remove the jarring line that shows up at the top of her head. I also liked the painting you had before for the long strands on the back of her head. Now you can see each individual chunk of geo and it looks kinda blah IMO.
Great looking though!
Edit: I see why the big change from the armor pieces...they are modular! haha, alright, if you add a darker crease to the edge of the armor pieces that will help to break it off the pants...since you can't very well darken under it once you remove the armor. How many different texture sheets are you using? size? Is there any reason you can't have 2 different diffuse sheets? One with armor on, one with armor off?
Thanks guys. I'll definitely take the suggestions and fix her up later on. I don't think it'd be a good idea to have another 1024 square texture for some shadows. I can totally make the edges of the armour more defined, though.
I'm planning on releasing it for the PC, hopefully via Steam.
And speaking of the Shroomster, I've made two more:
The bomb flower one is basically a Kamikaze: they'll run up and explode on ye. The Shroomsters run up and attempt a weak dive tackle. The cacti don't do much. They're pretty much plastered all the time:
Great work so far man, the only crit I have is the feet, the just feel to small to actually be able to balance the bodies properly but that might just be a design thing ^^ I'd try to make em a tad longer just to see how looks.
Whoa! I was not too impressed with the models on the first page, but I noticed that you had a good attitude towards criticism so I was interested in seeing if you improved. I was not disappointed! This is explosive growth dude, keep it up!
Great work, I think you're over defining the boobs in the texture though, if you play them down with less or even no shadowing, they will look more realistic to the style. Nowhere else do you have such harsh shadows, currently they conflict with having the armpits at fullbright.
As everyone else has said, you've made some massive improvements on these models.
Mostly referring to the pink haired girl, here is some criticism on the way you've exaggerated the features: Her elbows look a bit too high, the seem look really chunky for a slender character, her neck looks thicker than the collar, I'd do more texture painting (especially the pants), her feet still seem too small to me, and her legs are stiff.
The way her pants/boots are designed, I would think that the leather band between the pants and boots wraps around her knee. Because of the way that the boots are shaped, it makes me think that the calf muscles (gastrocnemius) are below that band. I don't know if that's the bottom of the pants or the top of the boots, but if thats where the knees are, it seems 1)anatomically too low, even for a cartoon and 2)not comfortable.
I also think that it would look better if her shirt was another color, even red, as its sort of clashing with her hair. Her breasts seem to be individually defined. I once made the same mistake on a model when I was in school. Google "Cat Woman". Unless the top is specifically designed with individual cups, it shouldn't look like that.
Great work, I think you're over defining the boobs in the texture though, if you play them down with less or even no shadowing, they will look more realistic to the style. Nowhere else do you have such harsh shadows, currently they conflict with having the armpits at fullbright.
I was about to say this same thing and then saw hawken beat me to it, so I'll just say I second the above.
Yeeeah, I like boobs too much. I'll be fixing those when I get back on this project... Did I mention I'm putting KoE on hold? The reason is so that I can work on another game project(Badass Zombie Slayer), which I'll be able to finish far sooner and sell, enabling me to escape from my crappy job that's hogging all of my time.
But yeah, I'll get back on this and act on the critiques whenever I pick it up again. Thanks, guys!
Replies
No outline? Gotcha. The boobies were moved out slightly, but the eyes looked kinda odd when I did that, so I left them alone.
I moved her forehead a bit so it's not parallel to the lower face, but I can't post a shot right now cause something screwed up all of the textures... =_=
Just save the edited image that I posted before and go through back and forth with the original one that you have. You can see which part that I actually edit. Her forehead looks ok to me..
No outline?..I kinda like the outline though heheh..how did you do that?..
_Revel
Also, Polycount, what's your opinion of making the hair move via ragdolling rather than animating?
Some quick notes on what I thought could use improvement:
- Keep the highlights on the hair under control. Beware that highlights create contrast which in turn attract attention, and you want to be careful where and how you attract attention to different areas (specifically referring to the highlights you had on the front hair bangs). Reshaped the hair a bit so that it didn't look so tight to the head in front view. Added some hair on the side of the face to help frame things better.
- The skin was kind of yellowish and jaundiced. Saturation in general could be increased.
- Reshaped the face to what I feel is more typical for anime-styled characters. The shape of the face is very important. Moved the eyes back slightly. Moved the ears forward and down a bit. Moved the whole face back a little (the underside of the chin was too long). Moved the mouth up and forward more. You should be careful with the chin as it should be fine and somewhat pointed, but you don't want to emphasize it too strongly.
- Adjusted the shape of the chest a bit and some other design details. In the case of armor breastplate, it might make more sense to simplify the shape of the chest instead of the individual breast cup look (at least for this kind of torso armor).
- I'm not sure exactly what kind of rendering style you're shooting for, but I think the model could use some more lighting and shadows painted in. The color scheme of the character in general could also be improved. Experiment with warmer or cooler variations of the colors you have now to try and find a better balance. When you paint a shadow or a highlight try to avoid simply picking a lighter or darker version of the base color. Think about how warm the shadow might be on the skin or how cool the highlights might be in other areas. Although I did not really demonstrate this here, doing this will help your model feel more natural and interesting.
Hope that helps. Of course, these are just ways I think you could bring your model more closely in line with conventional anime characters, but perhaps you had something different in mind. Regardless, you've made good progress already. Hope to see more updates on the texture.
New version of Van, the ninja
_Revel
Rawrg pose
Some of them seem to be sticking together too much near the end. They're weighed thusly:
The strands closest to the bone are weighed at 100%, and the next is 75%, then 50%, and then 25%. What should I do?
Gil
The problem you are currently having appears to be because you have your bones blended with the bones next to them, which aren't part of the same hierarchy.
Hope this helps, keep up the good work!
New background on the presentation shots
I'm about to begin animating them. If I'm going to give the hair/cape/coat ragdoll physics in the engine, I don't need to worry about animating those bits, right?
So my musicians and I have actually begun doing stuff. Check it out:
[ame]
[ame]
[ame]
[ame]
[ame]
[ame]
How do the animations look?
You took her a long way from what you started with, and the fact that a simple character project like that is turning into a full fledged game project is awesome. Give whoever is doing the music a pat on the back. I'm liking where this is going.
Also, the mushroom is awesome.
Great looking though!
Edit: I see why the big change from the armor pieces...they are modular! haha, alright, if you add a darker crease to the edge of the armor pieces that will help to break it off the pants...since you can't very well darken under it once you remove the armor. How many different texture sheets are you using? size? Is there any reason you can't have 2 different diffuse sheets? One with armor on, one with armor off?
I'm planning on releasing it for the PC, hopefully via Steam.
And speaking of the Shroomster, I've made two more:
The bomb flower one is basically a Kamikaze: they'll run up and explode on ye. The Shroomsters run up and attempt a weak dive tackle. The cacti don't do much. They're pretty much plastered all the time:
Stuff dump:
Decided to have the big guy, Gil, use hafted weapons instead of huge swords. Here's his starting weapon:
And a sword that Ellie gets later on in the game:
Part of a thing:
A concept for these things called Wayfarers:
Yusssssss.
Great work, I think you're over defining the boobs in the texture though, if you play them down with less or even no shadowing, they will look more realistic to the style. Nowhere else do you have such harsh shadows, currently they conflict with having the armpits at fullbright.
Mostly referring to the pink haired girl, here is some criticism on the way you've exaggerated the features: Her elbows look a bit too high, the seem look really chunky for a slender character, her neck looks thicker than the collar, I'd do more texture painting (especially the pants), her feet still seem too small to me, and her legs are stiff.
The way her pants/boots are designed, I would think that the leather band between the pants and boots wraps around her knee. Because of the way that the boots are shaped, it makes me think that the calf muscles (gastrocnemius) are below that band. I don't know if that's the bottom of the pants or the top of the boots, but if thats where the knees are, it seems 1)anatomically too low, even for a cartoon and 2)not comfortable.
I also think that it would look better if her shirt was another color, even red, as its sort of clashing with her hair. Her breasts seem to be individually defined. I once made the same mistake on a model when I was in school. Google "Cat Woman". Unless the top is specifically designed with individual cups, it shouldn't look like that.
I was about to say this same thing and then saw hawken beat me to it, so I'll just say I second the above.
But yeah, I'll get back on this and act on the critiques whenever I pick it up again. Thanks, guys!