Custom UT3 Character with Muscle System Simulation

barnesy

Hey guys this is another project I'm working on at the moment. Im looking into how musle systems are used in next gen games for my FYP. Basically I want to try and simulate muscle deformation by any means nescessary in UT3. If anyone has tried this before can you let me know how it went please? There seems to be little infomation about it on the net.
Heres the concepts so you can get an idea of the style im going for.

Original Concept


Front Blueprint


Side BLueprint

barnesy

Heres the Zbrush sculpt. at sub div3 and at the current sub div is how I would like the muscles to look at the end but smoother. When get higher res models though, they just look like plastic men.


I decided to make the traps smaller, might change them back. I also longer boots to give the character better proportions. The skeleton beneath the mesh is Epics Male skeleton for reference.

Currently I am re difining the muscles and ading detail to the boots. Ill post another update when I have more done
Cheers

barnesy

-update-

Heres some more progress. Ive been really ficusing on getting the anatomy correct. I really strugglled on getting the back looking real rather than one big but crack...literally..it went in way too much haha.
I should hopefully have the anatomy finished today so that I can start the fine detailing like the skin surface and the tears in the serratus and external obliques muscles aswell.



If anything doest look, feel free to oint it out and ill try mending it

crasong

Hey! I'm diggin the design

Nice big improvement on that musculature so far, and as you know it can still do with a lotta tweaking, supposing that the anatomy is based that off a mans.



the front looks generally okay, but it's the back view that looks a little too busy to me. Specially say from the triceps to the elbow. I'd suggest blocking that area out before adding the ripped details. I'm no sculptor but perhaps this image might help you. Your Pectorals are a good example of how the muscles should turn out, if that makes any sense to you.

Keep it up!

Billz

Looks really good so far. My few crits would be That the arms seem kinda thin and short, especcialy seeing as how the rest of his body is so jacked. Also, his quads and hamstrings could be beefed up. I'm not sur e if it's intentional, but his traps look like they are too wide from a front view, stopping them before the shoulder a bit more would help define both muscles a bit more. Good work tho man, cant wait to see more.

achillesian

not super awesome anatomy, but going by the wires you posted you're going to have armor over those parts, so it shouldn't matter much.

barnesy

Hey Guys , really sorry for the late reply. For some reason I dont get notifications of new posts , so ive thought that this thread has been inactive. Ill have to find out how to enable them because its really annoying.

Thanks for the feedback guys , since the last post I have really spent time addressing those issue with the anatomy. I am now in the process of retopologizing it.
Im really trying to model the edgeflow around the major forms. You may wounder why the body has the same amount , if, not more polys? Its because I want as many edge loops on the body for the muscle deformation.



Theres a large amount of pinching beneath the arms and where the horns join on to the head. I dont know if any of you guys have had this before? I think that itll be a case of smoothing it out with the smooth brush when it is finished.

As for the muscle simulation itself I am going to create tweo sculpts. One Flexed and one relaxed. Im going to play around with skin fx to see how i can get muscles to deform beneath the skin and create a clean simulation of muscle deformation.

Im open to any crits and suggestions if you may have any \o/

barnesy

Heres an image of the full character with the boots and armour before the retop



Im basically going for a aztec stlye. The boots need re working aswell.

zenarion

That's not a lot of armor on him. Seems that you didn't really know what to do with his feet, and slapped some boots on there.
His forehead looks disturbingly small.

barnesy

zenarion wrote: »

That's not a lot of armor on him. Seems that you didn't really know what to do with his feet, and slapped some boots on there.
His forehead looks disturbingly small.

The boots are on there because hes designed for UT3 and when fitting it to the skeleton it had to be devided into 5 chunks. As for the dorehead it looks small at the moment because the skin hasnt been drawn in over the bone like horns. I didnt want it to go skin , BANG horn....but I think you might be right though. Once I have retoped it ill add in the skin details etc.

Thanks for the honest feedback though

barnesy

Zenarion your comment has just gave me an idea. As you say the boots do look abit out of place. I think adding some sort of armour like the necklace design on the leg might make it fit in more. hmmmmmm

yiannisk

I would love to see how this evolves.
But you need to do a lot of work to bring this straight.

thing is you started on the wrong foot. with a very unbalanced concept.
this anatomy image that was posted later won't hep you much really.

look in zbrushcentral.com i am sure you will find plenty of good examples there.

The arms are too short and thin compared to the rest. Atrophic.
The boots as mentioned look to heavy and bulky for him.
There are lots of issues in almost every area.

Perhaps you would like to emphasize a bit more on the horns.
Silhouette wise they look close to hair. perhaps you should pull them back a bit to give more of a "ram" feel to him if that is what you were trying to do.

If your plan it to learn the tool continue, but if you plan to make a proper model i would suggest you start with a more appropriate concept.

QUICK AND DIRTY TIP : something you can try is take a screen cap of the model you are replacing, and paint over the concept so you match proportions easier and on target.

barnesy

Hey guys ,
I have finished the other modules that I had to do alongside this one. I recieved alot of criticism for the overall anatomy of the character.



Here is an update of my efforts to fix this problem. I also have to re address the amount of armour that is distributed throughout the character as it seems unbalanced at the moment with the large boots and waist peace on just skin.
Let me know what you guys think
Thanks

barnesy

Hey guys, does anyone know where I could find a pre made skeleton like the one below (Marcus) For Unreal?



I need a IK skeleton for my project so that i can rig my character to it and experiment with morph targets
Any help would be greatly appreciated
Thanks

barnesy

I have found out that i dont actually need to create such a complex bone system and that a simple character studio bipd will be fine.
I have been battling GoMax all day as it seems to scale my model up all the time . The next issue i face is finding out how to bake the diffuse texture from the high polly onto the low poly if thats even possible

PixelMasher

yea it should be pretty simple to do that, just use render to texture and select diffuse instead of normal map.

barnesy

Ive used texture baking before in the past and it allows me to bake the textures when everything hasa white material applied to it and when there is the skylight with a plane below the chatacter etc. But when I have tred baking the diffuse from a zbrush file it just bakes red