Industry feedback for Unreal Character Project

rich_py

Hi im new here, im a final year computer games design student and am currently doing a project which requires me to create a character to be exported into the unreal engine.
It also requires i get "industry feedback" to help me along the way, and i was wondering if anybody can do that here.
A little info on the project: Im doing a GTA style character, used 3ds max to model it, actorX to export it, and im using the Unreal editor that comes with Unreal tournament 3 (rather than UDK, not sure if there is too much difference but anyway)
This is about where i am at in terms of the character.

rich_py

*bump*
Hi anyone? being as they have been no replies yet im extending this to feedback from anyone and everyone

anything will be greatly appreciated
thanks

Jaco

Your topology around the shoulders and joints in general is pretty bad, and won't deform nicely, I'd recommend checking out the wiki (1 2)
Those hands also need some work.
Your polygon distribution is also not great, you've got way to many polygons in the eyes, shoes and face mask (are you working with a polycount in mind?) Remove those polys and use them on the body where they're really needed.

rich_py

Thanks for the reply, i agree the shoulder are poorly topologised i will attempt to correct this but due to the clothes needing to be interchangable within the unreal enginei may not be able to make it as good as some of the works on the pages you linked to.
The eyes i hadnt even thought about so thanks for bringing that to my attention.
The facemask it fairly dense due to the fact it needs act like cloth when in game and not other reason.
The polycount im working with is somewhere in the region of up to 12000 tris which i am under.

KyleJensen

The whites of his eyes shouldn't be completely white. They look cartoony and don't fit in with the rest of the face. If you're going for a cartoony appearance, you can keep the eyes a pure white, but you're going to have to make everything else more cartoony. If you're going for realism, you may want to give the eyes a more realistic texture.

ralusek

the whole model has a really projected texture feel, as if you just googled "hair" "leather jacket" "face" and "jeans" and pasted angles on your model. if you're gonna use photo references in your textures, you should probably use some overlays and warps so they at least fit your model a little better

edit: and your wrists and hands are pretty frail, pretty frightening

BradMyers82

12,000 tri's is a lot. It looks like you are at what 4-5 thousand currently? I would say that there are a lot of proportional issues currently. The eyes appear too big. The bridge of the nose too narrow. and the overall cranial mass is extremely small. If you took away the hair and made that area skull, it still would be too small imo.
Also, since you are using unreal, I would expect that you would use a proper normal and specular map. This means you should make high poly models and bake that information for everything you have here. At the moment, it seems you haven't done this.
Another thing I notice is that the jacket appears to have the specular painted into the diffuse. This is a big "no no" for next gen type stuff. You can make things look decent when they are static, but when you move them and the specular shine doesn't move with it, then it looks really fake. If I am wrong and you didn't paint in the spec, you still should really have a realistic painted spec instead of a basic flat specular color. Either way, the specular is letting the jacket down I am afraid.

No big deal man, you're in school and your learning so I would totally expect you to make these mistakes. Overall it looks like a really good start with a next gen type character. It just sort of strikes me as a lot of photo projection, without really understanding how to get the materials working correctly. If you have the time, I suggest you watch this tutorial: http://eat3d.com/next-gen-texturing-techniques
It covers in detail the fundamentals of next gen texturing, and the proper pipeline/ workflow.

There are other topoligical issues as others have mentioned, but I feel the biggest thing at this point are your proportions of the face/hands and your textures. Nice work so far man, and good luck!

P442

the design of the character is all over the place. (going off of the in game view)
he's got this bad ass leather jacket, but then he's wearing like bellbottoms and moccasins, and it looks like he's wearing some kind of preppy sweater underneath. The bandanna is also gangsta or cowboy, but doesn't really make sense for this character. I would suggest pushing it in one direction or the other. A greaser/biker dude, or a preppy dude. I think a preppy dude coming after you with the impact hammer would be more interesting personally. Good Luck

snakes23

Id probably work on the topology more. Its already been mentioned but when animating something the topology around the joints and face are pretty important in current gen games. personally id aim for more evenly spaced quads in these areas.
Also look deeper into the characters overall anatomy. I think this will help you with your characters form a lot.

Check out www.hippydrome.com for some ideas on modelling for articulation. I know its a lot higher poly count stuff but i think the methods can be transfered to game oriented models.

hijak

Not really going to get into the topology or anatomy, lets just say they need a lot of work, specifically i would say you need to look at how other people do these types of models, people on these forums, not people at school.

but my main gripe is about the pink gloves and belt buckle. Really really strange choice, and does not fit with the rest of the character at all. that and the hand is freakishly small, looks more like some sort of t-rex hand or something.

Dont get discouraged though, these are common mistakes people make. And really the best suggestion i can make is that you start a new one, and forget about this one if you can. While you work on the new character post here for feedback during the process, so we can make suggestions that can actually be implemented by you. As it is, changing the problem areas will pretty much be impossible and starting over would probably be faster. But stick with it, and even if you need this one for school, work on a second on your own at home, and really take a close look at the work of others, particularly in the low poly section here, that should really shed some light over how topology is to be used.

P442

yeah, characters aren't easy. Its a learning experience. Do some studying of anatomy and draw. Even if the drawings aren't great, you should have a better understanding of proportions. While you're at it you can play with character design. See what looks cool, what doesn't. it'll save lots of time and headache in the end.