Texturing Project, Mr. Smiles: Please Critique!

Warhamster

Hello again everyone. My name is Brice Anderson and I am a recent grad from the Art Institute of Portland, focus in animation.

A while back I made a thread for the creation of my Mr.Smiles character, since then he has been rigged and I have already done several animations using him.

http://www.briceanderson.com/mrsmilesModel.html

I decided I needed cycling attack game style animations both with a firearm and a melee weapon. So I modeled a machete and sheath and replaced his left pistol with it. I am now texturing him so the character is actually finished before I start pumping out animations for my portfolio.

Here is where I need your guys' help!

While I can texture just fine, I am not specifically a texture artist so I am looking to get some good critiques and advise so my textures turn out as good as possible!

This is just a quick dirty color study sketch of what I have in mind for his textures.


I am going to texture the model with the normal map on it in photoshop cs4's 3d mode.

Warhamster

I already got the critique that the face on his mid section is not really noticeable, so I tried adding some simple eyes in the paint job to emphasize this.



-Edited the head size, I made the head too large first time I modeled him too hahaha. Thanks for the critiques!

Ged

his head is quite large and proportions in general make him appear to be about 12 years old or so, its a fairly memorable armour design though, keep at it

griffinax

My head screams: POWER RANGERS!
cool concept!
+ what Ged said.

Warhamster

Alright, did some work on blocking out the base colors and whatnot. Calling it a night and will work on it some more tomorrow.

-I plan on the armor to all be painted, and the paint will be chipped off with all the scarring.

sargent3d

I have yet to see a power ranger look that epic, and I'd be more scared if it was a 12 year old that was that well armed.

On more of a serious critique though, it looks like your going to almost complete black on the dark pieces which will make it harder to paint in a feaux-Ambient Occlusion. I'd say if it is black lighten it up a bit so you can paint some beautiful textures and use a rich black AO to really make the armor pop.

Warhamster

Hey Sargent! Good to hear from you again. When you say the black are you speaking just the armor paint or the leather as well? I am worried about brightening the leather because it might lose the definition between that and the dark blue clothe.

Sorry I have not posted all week, it was a really busy one for me.

Here is an update, I have not touched the black yet.

Isaiah Sherman

The one thing bothering me is the yellows. It can be in the material itself with your spec / gloss maps, but the yellow looks more like a plastic than a metal to me. I would also darken and desaturate the reds on the teeth on his torso.

Grime up the yellow everywhere a bit.

Warhamster

What my plan was is the yellow is all just paint on top of metal armor. So i was going to have it chipped away at all the scratches and bullet marks revealing the shiny metal underneath. I also want to grime it up a bit, but I could use some advice on the best way to do that.

I agree with the reds, Ill do that now.

Raider

his forearms from the front / looking at him side on look extremely thin, looking out they seem fine but you might want to bulk up it up a little bit for the outside, e.g the 3/4 shots

1st shot = right hard, 2nd shot = left arm, or maybe i'm just out of it this morning

Warhamster

Thanks for the critiques Raider and Isaiah, and I agree. I modeled him awhile back and the forearms at that point are too thin and it is exaggerated by his forearm armor because the grey portion is indented from the outer yellow. I would like to change it, and maybe buff his biceps up more too, however this character is fully rigged and weight painted(by my friend Royal Sybrandt), If i make those changes will it break my rig?

Here is the desaturated reds on the torso.

Warhamster

Hmm one thing I forgot to mention in regards to your post Isaiah, I currently don't have any spec maps applied, just normal and diffuse(overlayed onto a fake AO). I was planning on creating my spec from my finished diffuse.

Isaiah Sherman

That red sits a whole lot better now. Break up the solid yellows and grays everywhere.

Just keep painting!

Warhamster

Here is the first pass on the scratches/chipped paint. Keep in mind there is no spec map yet. I am planning on having the revealed shiny metal to be much more reflective than the paint.

-edit: I am not sure I like the bright silver on the black of the jaw and helmet's eye pieces. I am considering just having those a different material instead of painted(just keep it black on the dents and scratches). Please tell me what you would suggest.

konstruct

damn dude- I remeber seein this guy a year or so ago, and at the time I remember thinking it was pretty booty. You`ve come a long way man, and now its looking pretty promising! Props for trying to paint this all by hand, but unless your shooting for that hand painted look, using photo ref texture overlays are always your friend.

Overlays serve two purposes in my mind.
1- to add grunge that is pretty difficult to paint by hand. (you should still hand paint dirt/dust/rust, just make sure you have some good brushes for it. A grunge map should really just give you your base level of grunge.)
2- to add noise to surfaces- I.E. metal grain/corrosion, fabric texture, etc etc.

*but be weary- sometimes people go nuts with them, and I think they can become crutches for people early on. You`ve come quite a long way without using them so I think your in a good position to start.

and yea- spec maps are a big deal. even bigger still is a gloss map, but in order to really unlock the true power of a gloss map however your going to need a cube map. All surfaces in the world is lit by its surroundings, and that's what a cube map simulates. A lot of game engines, simulate the cube map approach by simply having objects be lit by bright points defined by light placement. While not a bad approach, this doesn't take into account that specular highlights, are actually reflections of the world, and most of the time, those reflections aren't perfectly round points.

I think this is the key reason why people like Marmoset so much. Unfortunately, it doesn't support gloss maps (yet) but you can define global gloss settings on a per object basis, so your metal, and fabric could be two separate objects, with two separate gloss settings. The cube maps are presets, but they get the job done.

Chrome for example would look black in the diffuse, with all the surface information painted in the spec- and the sharpness of the reflections controlled by the gloss map. Chrome is an extreme example (because its basically a mirror) but any and all metals would work via the same principles, where the spec/gloss combo is what makes it truly look like metal, and the diffuse defines what the metal looks like when light hits darker spots in your spec maps (I,E dirt- scratches etc)

Warhamster

Damn, thats enough info to keep me full for awhile. Thanks for all the insight!!! I have never actually used a gloss map, and hopefully I will be able to do my first one for this guy. Now are gloss maps just the reflectivity(not specularity) of an object, and hence will only work with mental ray or similar renderer with raytracing?

konstruct

its a reflectivity sharpness map-
black = blurry reflections.
white = crisp reflections.
the brightness of those reflections is controlled by the brightness in the spec map.

To be totally honest I`m sure mental ray is capable utilizing gloss maps- but i`ve never actually set up a material for it. The UDK has a gloss map slot when setting up materials, and the Marmoset engine, has a gloss slider on a per object basis. I`m sure many other engines and apps have gloss features as well, but those are the only ones I know off hand.

Imo- I`d give marmo a go as its probably going to be the most user friendly option for right now. It should help get the concept across so at least you have a baseline understanding that you can then expand from into other applications.

Warhamster

Cool, interesting that I have not really learned about gloss maps before.

I do have quite a bit of experience in the Unreal3 engine, some in making materials but more in importing animations. However I think you are right, Marmoset will probably be easier and faster.

-What would you suggest I do for the black portions of the helmet?(the jaw and the eyes) I do not really like the way the silver looks on it but am unsure what else to do for the damage on it.

Warhamster

Alright, overdue update. Here is some grime added, tried to break the yellow up, added darker grey in the gashes, some other small changes, yada yada. Still no spec map on it. I need to learn how to paint in 3D in order to paint in the fades on the clothe and gloves and whatnot due to there UV seams.

Let me know what you think so far!

Warhamster

Here is a close up on the machete.

Warhamster

Here is a basic preliminary spec map applied.

Warhamster

So apparently when I modeled and UV unwrapped this character I was under the influence. My choice of seams are lacking logic. I have some bad seams that come through from the normal map at the knees and is emphasized by the specular map, Is there any way I can fix or alleviate this without re unwrapping him?

Warhamster

Alright, lightened the blacks and blues a little. Also made some changes to the spec map.

Please give me advice! Waiting to learn how to paint in 3D so i can do fading on his shirt and pants, but other then that I am running out of ideas.

Warhamster

Time for an update, faded the pants and some slight bit on the shirt and vest.

Marmoset captures









You may have noticed this in the renders, but marmoset has decided to cut a triangle in either of his lats, and this missing geometry is not actually a face or actually follows my edge flow. At first I thought it could be a reversed normal on a face, but I double checked it in Maya and all the normals are fine. Here is a close up of the botchery.

konstruct

could you post your maps?



It looks like you might be pure white/grey with no saturation in the color to paint your highlights. Always remeber there is no pure white, or pure black in life. you always have to use some sort of saturation in your lights and darks in order to convey a believable material.



Also, I would try and unify your tones. you have the warm/cool thing going on, which is cool- but because of the lack of tonality in the highlights, they fight each other. Personally I feel like this guy would do some good, by unifying your pallet a bit, then once thats down- find some key spots for some color accents.

Isaiah Sherman

To fix the triangle issue, you need to triangulate before you export the OBJ. Just don't save your Maya file or delete history after you triangulate.

konstruct's color scheme is a nice touch. Even with his color touches, I would still drop the yellows down beyond what he did.

Warhamster

Wow thanks for the critiques guys, I will be sure to do those things. I just started working another animation gig, and I am working ALOT, so I will get to this the first chance I get. Probably this weekend.

-I really like the colors you did far more then what I have now Konstruck, and the simple texture you put on the cloths adds way more than I expected.

Here are the body and armor diffuse layers... And yes they are separate files, I have learned a lot of things NOT to do throughout this project. : /

Isaiah Sherman

You could either have a texture like that, or like this. You can see the flexible parts of his suit is like a tightly knit mesh.

http://mcsearcher.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/patrick_wilson_in_watchmen_wallpaper_1_1024.jpg

Warhamster

Interesting, I like the idea. Are you suggesting replacing the cloths with that kind of texture?

Warhamster

I like the red shells, even though from being familiar with guns and ammo when i see those colors i think shotgun shell and not bullet. But why the green grenades?

Warhamster

Here is a basic pass of desaturation and adding some texture to his clothes. I am not sure why Marmoest did not read a couple of my textures, but i'll figure that out later. Also, this looks much darker and more desaturated in maya, Marmo seems to blow it out a little. Some settings I should change?

Isaiah Sherman

The fact that the bullets are so thick makes me thinkg they're shells anyways. So you either need to think that he's using a shotgun pistol or that you should really make sure the texture for the bullets reads perfectly as a bullet.

I think your first pass on the cloth is a good one.

Warhamster

Maybe this will better explain my confusion and what I meant when I said Marmoset was blowing out my colors. This is the SAME THING screen grabbed from Maya. You can actually see the desaturation I did. : /

TheZeke

the manic smiley face on the back of this guy is a fucking rad design, I want it printed on a shirt!

Warhamster

Me too