First Real Character - Hamadryad Servant

jakelear

Hi all,
Been working on trying to establish my portfolio, so I figured I'd post this little guy up for critique.

These little buggers hang out in trees and cause a great deal of discomfort to any who disrupt the sanctity of the forest. With Chameleon like skin, they can become nearly invisible to the naked eye, perfect for ambushes.


I'm sure there's improvements that can be made to the topology, and a few smoothing errors here or there. Any suggestions are welcome and appreciated though.

3700 triangles, 2048 diffuse, 1024 spec/normal

Rendered in Marmoset.







Also, here's a quick concept for a "blank" version, without his camo active, maybe for after death.

achillesian

way too many tris in areas that dont bend, or need to deform

if your doing a normal map let it do its job,

you have tons you can reduce without affecting the silhouette.

Just because tri budgets are higher now, doesn't mean you should use them up when not necessary.

I like the diffuse though.

p.s. i'm a newbie so dont take everything i say to heart, also did you start from zspheres in zbrush? Because it kind of looks that way.

jakelear

Yea, this started as a zsphere sketch with the new 3.5 zspheres. You're right about the poly optimization, I'm sure I could get this down to around 2.5k tris with a little effort. I just retopo'd it real quick and then started texturing, so I literally didn't do any optimization.

I essentially used this piece to learn basic 3ds max (been using maya in school,) retopo, and normal map/ ao baking in max.

Thanks for the input!

Edit: minor update to spec and normal, working on cleaning the topo now

butt_sahib

I like the eye
Its sad how you didnt bother doing the retopology.
The texturing isnt greay either. Seems you overlayed the texture with a scratched metal image and thats pretty much it (other than laying down the flat colours).
I really think you should have retopo'd it as i think using those zspheres as actual ingame meshes is foolish, whatever the case.
I also dislike how much the whole structure resembles a quick zsphere model
If youre learning something and doing just THAT aspect of the character and leave the other things out, how can u put this in your portfolio. Generally a level of consistency in a folio is an important thing for employers, they dont really want to see large scale improvements over the course of your portfolio IMHO.
Hope i wasnt too rude

jakelear

New topology with bake, 1680 Triangles

Going to take it back to zbrush and do some fine details, and then redo the diffuse.

Michael Knubben

Maybe you feel you're done on this one and want to move on, but if that isn't the case, please consider taking that shot into photoshop and doing some rough paintovers. Right now he's a blobby middle-mass with some tubes attached to it. Nothing perturbs the silhouette, nothing really flows into eachother in a visually pleasing way.
On top of that, you seem to have put some leaf-textures in his texture in hopes of that giving him 'detail', which i think is the wrong way to go about it. The detail doesn't support what's there in the mesh/normals, and actually serves to flatten those because of that.

Painting over him in photoshop might help to give you some ideas on how to make him more of a character, and to have him look more memorable. Especially the face (important as it is in defining character!) is lacking definition.

keep at it!

jakelear

Thanks for all crits so far!!

EarthQuake

You've gone from one extreme to the other with your topology, where in the first shots its clear you have a bit too many loops, this latest topology has much too few to the point of it just be straight tubes for anything but the joints. I think you've followed achillesia's paintover much too closely without thinking about how it would affect the end result of the model, you've got some curves in some of those areas and you should just take time to think more about where you're placing your loops, exactly what they are doing, instead of following some silly advice like "no bending, no extra loops" which i dont think he meant to be taken literally.

I know some people can get pretty anal when it comes to tricount, but 1680 is very low for a character in this day and age, hell the first mesh at 3700 is relatively low as well, while there was some areas that could have been optimized, it didnt need to be cut in half, as you should be able to see there that the mesh looks much worse that jagged. You should let the normals do their job, but adding shape to the silhouette is *NOT* the jobs of the normals.

Now, going back to the design stage a bit and trying to come up with some more interesting shapes and a nicer silhouette to spend a more tris on is definitely a good idea. Looking at the above thumbs, you still have some very tubular designs on most of those.

Hitez

i think giving him some spider-like fangs in his mouth would be cool, maybe give him a few spots where he has some shell? and make the form of his claws a bit more believable too if you can. he also has very thick appendages, but a very small torso, i was thinking it would look better if you maybe arched his back a bit? it'll give him a bit more of a bug look too.. I like your idea of the chameleon skin though i hope you can make that work out.
also, the leaf texture actually looked kinda good, made him look as though he had veins showing through his skin. and i love the eyes.

ralusek

biggest problem with creature is hips. they look nonfunctional and come at an awkward intersection with torso. i'd mess with it a bit. more along the lines of "A" or "C" of your drawings there

jakelear

Thoughts?
More like an armor-type carapace, with spikes for climbing and other more frightening utility.

achillesian

Use your judgment with the loops i guess, if you feel the femur is going to bend a little in animation or posing add some loops, if you want it to stay immobile like an actual bone (or segment of exoskeleton) then don't add loops. Tri-count really has more to do with what's going on in the modeller/animator's head than the outside opinion of others.

These are important question for number of tri's and loops

-will this be animated
-what roll in a game will this character play (main, background, enemy, cinematic)
-what platform is it aimed at
-What parts of the body are hard surfaces, what are soft

so basically, take what i said, and what earthquake said, with a grain of salt, ask yourself these questions, and make decisions.

killingpeople

You'll need loops to accommodate this motion: http://img.blogcu.com/uploads/3dsmaxci_kemik.jpg and prevent the cylinders from collapsing.