Jester - C&C would be great!

Draffin

Hey All,

This is a character i'm making for one of my uni classes. The model needs to be under 10 000 tris and we have the semester to model, texture, rig and animate the character. I'm new to the forum but i've been reading around and it seems that just about everybody has some fairly amazing talent and i'd love to hear your opinions/advice etc etc.

This is also the first organic creature i've modelled (and textured)

7472 Tris










Cheers
Ben

Forgottenhero

Have you got any wires that you could put up?

Draffin

Ahh of course







Hope these are ok

BradMyers82

The two things that stand out to me the most are the proportions, and the face texture.
Proportion wise you have many issues.
tbh, I'm a little too lazy right now to do a proper paint over for you, but you should be able to compare the standard Loomis proportions to your model and find the problem areas:




The silhouette has obvious problems as well. He looks far too stiff, and flat. But I think when you work out proportions to match the image I provided, you will find it resolves this issue.

As for the face texture, I am assuming it's a wip?

It looks like you have pretty much the same color throughout the entire face, with some very subtle color here and there.

Take a look at some photos of faces, or even your own face for reference, and start to work in some stronger color variation. The lips and eyes being the most obvious of choices atm. Also don't forget to give your textures a shadow and highlight pass.
Good luck man, and nice work so far for your first organic model.

P.S.
Here are a couple of tutorials on texturing a face.
This is for if you want to hand paint the textures yourself: http://www.pig-brain.com/tut01/tut01_01.htm
And this is an option if you want to photosource them: http://www.hapzunglam.com/txt_tutorial2/txt_tutorial02.htm

If you haven't painted faces before I suggest you photosource them, but its up to you.

Draffin

Thanks Brad,
I've gone over the face texture and added some more to the "temperature" zones of the face.

The character isn't really supposed to be the "ideal male". Stupidly i took the render from perspective and not from a fixed orthographic camera. So i've also added an orthographic render below

You said there were quite a few proportion based inconsistencies in the model. And looking at the model it does seem wrong in some way. Maybe i'm just looking at it the wrong way but i can't for the life of me pick what it is. Can you elaborate?

renderhjs

the textures are pale, gray so is the rendering. The AO bake is also to obvious - there is to much gray scale noise in his face

but first perhaps create a prober render and scene setup with 3 point light for example and FG renderer such as MR.

BradMyers82

the arms do not connect to the body properly in the under arm area. The hips are way too narrow. He appears to be 5 heads tall, so his proportions seem too far off, even for human who is not supposed to have ideal proportions. The legs look too short, the arms could be slightly longer. The wrists are far too thin, the spine does not have a natural curve, its completely flat. The knee to foot area should be longer, and the legs should go up and into the buddocks higher up.

Point being, even stylized characters have certain consistency with proportions. If you are not critical of these consistencies, then things will just look wrong to the viewer. Believe me, when I first started out, it was difficult for me to see these things too, especially when you are working on a 3d character and spending countless hours on it. You really need fresh eyes to help you get good critiques.
I suggest you play with the proportions still. Set them up to that of the ideal man, then change them from there to have the stylized look you are going for. Trust me, when you do, you will see for yourself many of the things you are having a hard time identifying now.
renderhjs is absolutely correct about the textures. Also, don't render with an all black or all white background, this is a big "no no".
Good luck man!

Draffin

So i had a play and this is what i've ended up with. Though i have some trouble with artifacts appearing in deep crevices of the face. I think this is because the vertices are too far apart and at a too narrower angle to the camera, is this right?

Also, i was trying to use a directional light behind the character to give a rim lighting effect. But for some reason it ended up illuminating the inside of the head quite brightly. Any ideas as to why this may be?








Thanks again all for all the critique

imb3nt

he looks so frightened.

like jail-break caught in the spotlight.

Draffin

More appropriate? :P