Fantasy Knight in armour

tda

Pretty much done with this now, here's how the end result came out -


[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd1WnDc8E_c[/ame]

There's still a few days left for small tweaks so if anyone has any crits feel free to throw em up. Thanks to everyone who commented so far, your crits have helped out a ton!

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Hey dudes. This is a piece im working on for uni, got about a week or so left to finish it. I figured now would be a good time to get crits on it before moving into zbrush for fine detailing. Proportionally he's pretty wild i know, i was quite inspired by vagrant story's art style at the time of deciding the shoulder width

This is my first real venture into high poly hard surface stuff so hopefully i can pull it off. Looking for crits on anything and everything

pics!


and the concept im working from

marlfox8

the hands dont look very armorish

Thrasher

Nice mesh! Could we see the wires? The only detail I could spot is the opening on the forearm guards. In your concept you have it crested inward while on the model is it more rounded... But that's me nitpicking. >>

yiannisk

There is quite some difference in the feel the sketch has and the actual 3d implementation.

The concept sketch looks like armor while the 3d looks a bit like a robot

acc

I think the robot look is just because of the head. It's got a weird shape and I'm not really sure how he would see anything out of it but a tiny sliver of his opponents' feet. It doesn't feel like a human would ever want to put their head in that thing.

Aside from the head, it looks pretty cool and solid to me.

A-N-P

I agree on the head thing, I also think the hands or fingers need thickening up a bit. But great work.

Amarth93

yea, thicken the fingers and hands and add stitches to the sides so it looks more like leather or something (many knights used leather gloves, the swords slipped in the ring mail gloves)

tda

Cheers for the responses.

I see what you mean about the head looking somewhat mechanical but i can't lie, i do like that effect. I'll have a play around with making it a bit rounder though see how that looks too. As for the hands and all the bits under the armour, that's what im detailing up in zbrush at the mo. The fingers went pretty thin as a side effect of the smoothing i think but i'll be fattening them up later when giving him his gloves.

Thrasher : The wires are nothing special really but here's a screen. I liberally abused the double smoothing method to save time on this stage. Also you're quite right about the elbow area. I deviated quite a bit from my concept which i i prefer the look of, but when i tried it in 3d it just didn't look right if you know what i mean.



Doing some test bakes with xnormal today and they are turning out a lot better than i expected, should be able to whip through the bake pretty quick when it comes time.

etb342

So, have you built a base mesh for this guy already? Can we see that too?

He seems really blank right now and the materials all feel the same. How about adding some bunching folds in the fabrics that are under the armor. It'll help give us the impression that he's wearing layers of protection and gear to sell the illusion when you bake it out. Do you plan on painting extra details on a height map for alterations to the normals?

tda

I haven't built the lowpoly yet no, just one piece to test baking settings. Nothing really worth showing tbh.

Quick WIP of zbrush stuffs.

zacko9000

Looks Cool, reminds me of Demons Souls. Love that game.

SHEPEIRO

as peeple have said there doesnt appear to be enough room in the helmet for a human head

tda

Yeah shep you're right as were the others, i altered that and it looks a lot better now.

Powering through the bake now, the hours are melting away. Still a few bits left to do and plenty of cleanup to keep me busy for the next day or two.

ez_jamin

Hands feel way too small and out of place (no armour on gauntlets)

JeremyRM

Yeah, I'd like to see bigger hands too. Why did you make all that wicket armor then not come up with something cool looking for the hands? Not saying this is a good choice for style but you get the idea.

tda

Yeah you're right, im feeling that way about the hands as well. The only thing that's been holding me back from making plating on em so far has been worrying about the topology and how it'd behave when rigged, or if it was just flat how the normals might warp when the hand moves. I'll do a couple of experiments to see what works best, i need more time heh.

Titus S

Aw man this shit is sicccccccccccck!

I love that kind of armor design 100% I always have been a a fan of it.

Good luck with it and keep kicking ass!

tda

Cheers dude!

I've locked the bake down now, although he's still missing elbowpads. I made some plating for his hands so they don't look left out compared to the rest of him and a quick sword too. I've fallen out with the shape of the elbowpads, so if i can't think of a new one soon they are getting axed. Onto texturing now but i don't have much time left, gotta whip through em hella fast! Here's a very early progress shot, barely scratched the surface



edit - quick closeup of the new hands

Mladen Jovicic

nice. im liking the overall proportions and silhouette, very interesting shapes.

ngs616

This guy looks awesome, great work.

Lord McMutton

Looks great so far. For the elbow, you could have it attached to the vambrace like the knee armor is attached to the greave.

vcortis

I like how the armor accentuates his ass and crothcal regions. Lol jk, it's looking good so far let's see what you do with the textures!

tda

Thanks for the positive comments guys, means a lot! Here's today's update on the texture work

ngs616

This is an awesome character. It really makes me want to take another shot at making some armor.

Skamberin

Really nice work so far man. I remember those Oblivion armors you made, kick ass work.
As for elbow pads, maybe something similar to the pieces you have protecting the wrists?
Or maybe a layer of chain-mail just in that area?
Keep up the good work.

The_Kozmonaut

Looks great so far. reminds me of Demon's Souls

tda

Thanks guys! I'm glad this stuff seems to be reminiscent of demon's souls, i love the art in that game.

Here's the first pass at the scene idea i've been making this guy for.


Nothing is finished yet, still texture work to do on everything and proper rigging to do on the knight, but it's getting there. These guys will be sitting on a pedestal i'll be making next week for a reel turnaround. Still undecided about the elbows.

I'm surprised you remembered my oblivion armours skamberin, that was a while ago

StevenEgan

Oh, very nice!

Neox

i think the weakest part right now is the shading, not so much the texture, as no matter how good you'll push the texture if the shader stays as is, it will always look half as good as it could look

tda

Yeah neox you're right on. With time permitting im planning to port these to the cryengine for rendering so I've been neglecting the max shaders for that reason. I should put the effort in really though incase i run out of time and have to fall back on max, i'll have a tweak around with em later.

Quick update before i run out, streamlined the pose a bit and added the 2nd monster dude. Might make an early pass at the enviro before i finish rigging.

tda

More stuffs done. Got a good start on the pedestal although i still need to add lots more detail. I'm thinking ivy climbing the wall, rock debris from the broken wall scattered around, a broken stool or barrel or somesuch, maybe a ladder and some tools? Also gonna add some extra polygonal detail to the base, rocks and roots poking out around the sides. Should look sweet in a day or two. Enough talk, pics!

KyleJensen

The_Kozmonaut wrote: »

Looks great so far. reminds me of Demon's Souls

Ha. I thought the same thing after seeing the textured model. I love that game. xD

JeremyRM

Looking good man, the only thing I notice now is the pose might need some work. This might just be the camera angle but in the first image when you look at him from the side you can see his weight is off and it appears as if he is going to fall with the lizard man.

tda

Yeah jem i noticed that not too long ago, sorted it. Lots of smaller changes since the last update, moved the base a little to get some water interaction with his foot, added a few more details (still have UV space for a few more but im stuck for ideas). I think i'll dirty up the texture of the monsters a bit, they're a little clean. Maybe the knight as well. There's a little bit of clipping to fix too, but other than that im almost done now

SHEPEIRO

please re-light this even if its temporary lighting its killing it

Serp

I think the stone panels are a bit too low resolution. If you make the texel density more similar it will help a lot.

tda

thanks for the comments dudes

shepeiro - on that right now. i've decided to go with max instead of crysis after catching some of xoliul's tuts on setting up his shader. i'll post an updated lighting shot when i have one, im crap at lighting though so it'll need some serious crits im sure

serp - yeah you're right. the texel density differences on the enviro bits is something that's been bugging me for a while. in hindsight i should've just put the whole lot onto a 2048 instead of splitting them over 2x1024, that way they'd match eachother better and be closer to the characters density too. i'd love to spend the time to correct it but the deadline for this is real close so i gotta leave it. something to be more mindful of next time i split texturing over 2 files

tda

Proper pass at lighting, not sure about it. It looks blown out on my monitors but apparently it's "way too dark" on a friends? crits? i think i'll probably lower the bloom or maybe even ditch it, it hits the big pale areas on the birds way too high

Neox

seriously take cryengine or unreal or whatever engine that has better lighting and shading then max, the shader is still looking very plastic with greyish darker tones or bake a proper lighting with mr into another uv channel, right now it imho just looks bad and that not because of the single assets.

tda

i guess it's my friends monitor that's off and not mine then. i've popped the scene into max2010 and updated to the latest version of xoliul's shader and it seems to looks a lot better to me now compared to that last one. annoyingly i don't have enough time left to play around with a game engine now, i want to get this wrapped up pretty much by the end of tomorrow so im gonna have to stick with max

here's how it looks in 2010 anyway

Krynn72

I know you probably don't have time to address this issue, but your character is really clashing with the environment. If you take a step back from your monitor you almost don't realize the knight is even there, he just kinda looks like some part of the scenery. The texture for him is simply too dark I think. I don't know what kind of background you plan on having, but I'd suggest having a brighter color to make his silhouette stand out more, because again, with the grey he is hard to see.

Harry

yeah, he'd look all holy and heroic if you just cranked the brightness of his armour. It's a bit of a cliche but right now he's practically camouflaged and you probably dont have time to do more than that

ngs616

I really like this character. The design of the armor is awesome.

marlfox8

yea i have to agree with krynn his armor is so dark it blends in with the stone. lighten it up

weiswayne

really nice stuff

tda

As it turns out my monitor calibration was pretty much up shit creek. The dark grey of poly's post boxes was almost the same as the black in the BG, explains why i was getting washed out results. I've sorted it out i think, and made changes to the lighting to something that i think looks.. okay. Presentable at least anyways i think, im no expert at lighting.



I took your suggestion Krynn and tried to pop him out a bit more with some boosted frensel and a small pump to the reflection. When this thing is moving the reflections on him make him pop out pretty well next to the bg. I've got a day or two more now to finish comping this together into a reel and do a writeup, as if explaining anything in a report about what i did is gonna be earthshattering. I'll post up the video once it's done, with any luck i'll be able to come up with something good.

chrisradsby

Great work real inspirational man, love the design you've got going there reminds me a lot of Demon's Souls. Some really sweet looking monsters as well!

tda

Thanks dude, being compared to demon's souls gets me all pumped up!

The reel is pretty much done now, although there's still a few days to change and tweak things around a bit if anything pops up. Any crits are more than welcome. The only bit i'm worried about to any great degree is the music. I've been told by some that it's too in your face, and by others that it works really well and makes them more excited about what they're looking at, which was my goal. The main thing i don't want to do with it is come across as if i think i'm the hottest shit ever like some pretentious asshole, although from what i hear most companies just mute these things anyway.

Enough jabber, video!
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd1WnDc8E_c[/ame]

felipefrango

I really like everything a lot, except for the lighting, I think it really brings it down, which is a shame since it's such an awesome piece. It lacks direction, the gradient background seems placeholder, and the lack of proper lighting makes the rest seem very monotone. Maybe try adding a lightsource to the scene, such as a torch or a lamp attached to the wall next to the gate and contrast it with another source on the opposite side, of a different color.

Ged

very cool but yeah this could do with a bit more atmosphere, eg ground fog, rim lighting etc?