Water Demon Work In Progress

Celes

Hi All,
This is a class game project model work in progress. Right now I am working on normal mapping this guy in z-brush. It is a villain for one of the boss fights and supposed to look tall and skinny yet have broad shoulders for intimidation. the upper torso will be textured like ice and the bottom portion will be looking like a water column. the normal for the left arm blade will be crazy-bumped due to the thinness of the blade. I have come to a point that I will be needing suggestion for what I can do to make this character pop. Here it is, critiques welcome:

Celes
www.celescreation.com

tbaugher

anorexic water demon, nice. id say you really need to define the abdominal region either with some muscle or intestines. the pecs need to have a little more weight to them just more definition on them in general. i really like the spine, this is going good keep it up!

Taylor Hood

Still wip? It looks like a good start. Alot more detail to go.

Celes

Thank you tbaugher. I will work in some muscle and skin definition in the abdominal and pecs area today.
LoM Chaos: thanks and yes it is still a wip. If you can give me some suggestion for areas that need details the most, it will be greatly appreciated.

For those of you may be interested in the base mesh, here it is:

I can still tweak and split polys here and there, but not too drastic of change since I am also about to rig and do some animation cycles while getting critiques on the normals and diffuse (I will start on the diffuse once the normal is at a satisfactory state in the time frame I am given).

Taylor Hood

I hope I don't mistake the dress looking area will need some wrinkles and folds (hope its a dress,lol)

The stomach bit too. Maybe some abs?
I'm scanning thru your sculpt and it seems you've already covered most of the stuff.

Celes

LoM Chaos,
It's not a dress :-) I kind of wish it is though, lol that won't be as big of an issue.
I actually want to make it a water column and when he moves it moves like a jello or amoeba. the bottom actually never lifts off of the ground and he doesn't jump. I want to do something with the "dress" in z brush but can't come up with anything that looks water-column ish.

Taylor Hood

I knew it! lol, thats what it is.. I get it.

ngs616

Are you talking about something like this?



You should make it something similar to that with some sort of vine-like exoskeleton around it.

Celes

ngs616,
Thanks for the picture! I think it's a great reference for the look and texture of the water column. That would be a photoshop challenge for me but I'll see what I can do. As for exoskeleton, I might not be able to do that because of the amoeba-like movement I had planned for it. But that gave me some idea for my earth demon (if I get enough time to make one).

Celes

Here is the water demon in Maya's high quality display with normal, diffuse, spec, incandescence. The diffuse, spec, and incandescence maps still can be changed. Here is the newest pictures. Critiques are welcome, it is still a WIP:

LuckyDevil

Hmm, it'd be hard to make the 'legs' look like water with just the maps that you currently have. It would really need a shader to sell, but of course that doesn't help you out much since it's up to the game programmers as to whether the shader makes it in or not.
Perhaps with the weapons on the arms adding some transparency will help it look more like ice. Right now it looks a little too similiar to the legs. But again, shaders are what's going to sell the model.
With the mask though, I would add a little more variation in color, such as painting in some highlights, make the inside of his mouth darker, maybe make his teeth a different color. Right now it looks a little flat, and I think that having a little more contrast between the high spots and low spots will help it out a lot.

Gannon

The texture feels a little like stone. If you can give his lower body some transparency with a distortion or some kinda of moving normal map that'd be kinda cool. Then add a few extra planes inside with bubble textures that kinda move also that'd be cool. Otherwise he looks like a statue to me.

Celes

Thanks rdmlegend. I did think about moving UVs and adding extra planes. Since you and a couple of my colleagues had mentioned, I think ima have to come up with some tricks...
The extra planes will have to be the ones moving, with the panning UVs and semi-transparency because it will be on a separate texture map. Now maybe that extra plane should be... out side of the existing "skirt"?
my art director also suggested the water spouting/moving normal effect that tags onto the character. Now should i make the effect something separate or attach it to the extra layer of "skirt" while i'm at it and make them both share the same texture map with panning UVs? and have the effect, extra layer of skirt, and the original model be one mesh? If I do that will that affect the animation negatively?
I suppose I can try out all methods but I kinda am on a time constrain and binding takes time time.. so, suggestions are welcome.

thegreypencil

Heya,

I think you could emphasize the incandescenc effect more. Also, maybe blend the weapons into his arm with sometransparency mapped planes. You know like shards of ice?

Celes

Thanks thegreypencil.
yeah I think i can brighten up the incandescence. alpha planed elbows? hmmm... not sure what they'll look like.

I'm currently playing around with the double layer "skirt" with panning UV and putting frosts on the body of the demon... figure i might as well experiment around while I wait for critiques.

Celes

new progress:

less stony looking. frost/snow on body, extra layer of "skirt" with panning normals. increase in incandescence and saturation.

tbaugher

Good progress i'm liking the snowy look to this guy. I think you could definitely add some scratches and wear to the edge of that blade on his left arm. Keep going

Celes

tbaugher: Thanks for the comment. Scratches eh? you got it!
LuckyDevil: Thanks, I can bring up the highlights and shadows in the masks a bit more.

thegreypencil

heya,

I think I was drunk, my bad planes is a horrible idea. Maybe edit the sculpt or add some geometry if you can spare it to blend in the icebits to the arm?

Heres a quick sculpt, hope it gets the idea across.



Try varying the transparency on areas of the cylinder maybe?

Hope it helps!

Celes

thanks for taking the time out to demonstrate thegreypencil.
I think i can try that out for the blade arm. it's looking a bit boring anyway. and it should add asymmetry to the whole model. I can take the transparency idea to the horns too!

GugloPWN

When I see those water column legs I'm thinking it might be cool to have creepy underdeveloped legs floating inside the membrane. The transparent outer layer could make some neat stuff.

Celes

lol thanks GugloPWN, I think my water and fire demon are already scary enough as they are. The game is rated E, with them creepy legs floating around, children may be scarred for life. Yeah the transparent outer layer stuffs are definitely fun.
well here is the final model for the water demon. Texture itself still can be changed. Till the game gets done, changing textures really doesn't hurt anything. But I kinda need to move on and bind him to them rig.
anyways, the new water demon: