Torchlight - Thief / How to improve Texture?

Monkeynutz

Portfolio: www.RolandAriens.nl
Hi, just found out about this site. Quick history lesson about my life:
Im 24 from Holland started level design when i was 13, mostly unreal but i touched every editor out there. Years later started playing with Maya and later 3Dsmax. Resently finished Game Design Skool.

Now i might have a shot to work @ AAA Game Studio but they told me i needed to learn to texture.

So this is my Second Character texture. Judge it! Please be honost i can handle it. But bare in mind its low poly "Game Model" and the engine doesnt support fancy stuff like NormalMaps or even SpecularMaps.

Concept by Blazan:



3D:

Monkeynutz

Texture Image:

BradMyers82

Hey, I think you have done a great job!
My main crit would be that the white wraps and the finger nails could use some more contrast to them, as currently they look very flat. Basically just give those areas another pass on the shadows and highlights and I think your good to go. The hair could also use another pass imo as well.

What engine are you showing this in? Is it torchlight? Anyways, I am just noticing you have shadows there under the arms and stuff, but its not painted in your texture, which made me curious.

One last comment, You could make better use of the UV space. Things could certainly be tighter, but its really not horrible or anything.

Again, great work, and I hope you get the job!

acc

You're modelling for torchlight, a game where the characters are really tiny on screen. If I shrink down these images I can't see his face, his hair blends into the wraps, and the purple/blue clothing blends together.

I'd lower his eyes/eyebrows on the model, as well.

I think you should decide if you want to present a nice big showpiece or to present it as it would actually look in game, in which case you want much more contrast, larger forms on the face, and a much smaller texture (256x256, probably).

P442

this looks good. The silhouette around his neck is strange. I would give him a collar with actual geometry.

moose

I like the model, it has great shape and looks cool! Have some gripes with the texture & UVs though:

your unwrap is very inefficient. A lot of pieces could probably be mirrored chunks: parts of hair, the arms, small buckles. You also should try to be more efficient with where you plance the pieces within the 0-1 UVW space, making sure you fill in as much of it as possible with the pieces, taking their individual resolution into account.

With the texture, i think you should also scale it down to a 512, or 1024 to work on it. 2048 is a little large, and you really are not using the pixels well for how large it is. IE: you could do the same detail at a smaller resolution, and it'd be less cumbersome to work with, and would probably look better in the end in-game.

With the texture, maybe play with doing a little more color variation on the clothing? It is pretty bland, and i reailze you'd put armor on it - but seems a bit bland. The clothing details are kind of hit & miss, at some places they don't look like clothing, with really dark folds and creases, and in others look great. Examples: I dont think the back really works, but some select areas of the pants work great.

its a cool model, and good start to the texture, just think it needs more polish. Maybe it'd also help to see the model within torchlight from their camera angle?

Are you setting this up to use their modular textures for armor and pieces?

illadam

Sweet! This looks awesome I agree with the contrast crits on the arm wraps, hair and hands. Though a little more insight on what this will be used for will help too on crits. Are you using this for torchEd or just as a portfolio piece?

If nothing else you should hook the up the modders this would make a sweet new class!

Monkeynutz

Thanks for all the advice.

Torchlight: This character isn’t going to be imported into Torchlight. It’s purely an attempt to Copy the Style. Setting this Character up for Torchlight would mean separate textures for the Head, Body and Armor. And a 256x256 resolution which for me @ this time was to hard to make look good. (BTW the renders are in 3dsmax with Vray and that’s how I’m going to present them in my portfolio)

Tweaks: Based on your advice this are the changes I’m going to work on today:
- Texture: Scale down the resolution to 512x512 or 1024x1024 see how that goes.
- White wraps: Add more contrast
- Nails: Add more depth
- Eyes: Lower just a little bit
- Hair: Could use some more tips, don’t really know what to do with it.
- Cloth: I noticed some folds are correct and others are inverted.

Want to thank you all for your input. I hope to upload some tweaks later this day.

Baj Singh

I would paint some of the shadows into the texture and increase the self illumination to a reasonable amount in your modeller material so you don't get those mesh shadows created by your low poly.

Looks cool though.

Monkeynutz

I did some testing with the Cloth folds. Try to add some depth. They look more like cuts to me...

Megabiv

Looking good, but i see what you mean about the cloth folds looking more like cuts now. Perhaps making them not so dark will help them look more like cloth instead of cuts. Still i do like your texturing (even more so because its far better than mine could be ), keep it up!

snake85027

Looks really good, id say for the texture you should make some of the folds in the clothing pop out less evenly, it might be because of the shadows that you have around the folds feel even. Also for the belt buckle give the highlights some almost white edges in a few places to break it up more.

Monkeynutz

You right smoothing the shadow on upper side gives better effect:

gives cool depth feeling thanks to the pattern distorsion

Monkeynutz

This is the final version, unless someone has some idea's to improve it.


Tonight im starting on my next project.

Eric Chadwick

Looks good!

Why does the upper arm have a crease running all the way around it? Doesn't make sense anatomically.

The index finger has a shading seam, makes it look a bit like another finger's been added.

Facial proportions don't match the concept. Should be more compact.

If you're going to render PNG with transparency, don't render on white. Render oon black, so the alpha premultiplication doesn't give you white fringe.

I would also add some contrasting colors to make it pop more, and tie it all together. Each section is looking very monochromatic.

Also think about posing him in a cool action pose?

Keep going! This will be a rocking portfolio piece!

Monkeynutz

The upper arm crease: I looked @ examples used in Torchlight and they all use very hard lines to show the anatomy. Its not realistic but you cant really see it on the model.

The Fingers are made as lowpoly as I could with keeping in mind that it has to use a gun so the Index finger is separated for animations

Facial proportions: Mmm you might be right but I’m not going to changes those anymore.

And about the Cool Pose. I’m working on a blade now. Then ill see what cool pose I can give him.

OrganizedChaos

Looks good so far, have you tried turning the illumination all the way up when you paint? That helps me a lot when painting shadows.

Regarding the upper arm- I think maybe your shadow there might be too much, or it just looks better on the Destroyer because he has such a huge upper torso. For some reason with the way it is now it appears to me like the torso and arms are completely separate pieces.

This also kind of bothers me- is it a seam?


Cool weapon, but does it fit the character? When I think thief, i'd imagine more of something like an assassins blade as opposed to something that large and extravagant. Personal opinion.

Keep at it this is only getting better

Monkeynutz

At first i made a blade myself without the help of my concept artist. He didnt like the sword so he made something else. I asked for a Saberish big looking thief sword. And he came up with this.

About the illumination? You mean in photoshop the lighting? i have it set on Unlit.


This better?

OrganizedChaos

self-illumination should kill the light setup, it's just something I do to paint in situations where you would want to paint in shadows (ie diffuse map only)

here you go-

Monkeynutz

ah okej

Monkeynutz

Sword done, i think:

gammaslam

I think the texture looks great, the forum has definitely helped you lots.
the only thing that bothers me when i look at him is the perfectly square belt buckles.

I'm not sure if you have to stick to a strict poly count but those things stick out to me.

hope that helps. Great job

Tom Ellis

Looks really nice, you've really captured the torchlight style IMO.

Monkeynutz

I want to thank you all for your help. Altough the character can still use some more improvement, I feel I will learn more starting a new one.

360 View: http://www.rolandariens.nl/Tweaked/thief.html

Next Character 0_O

By Blazan