In an effort to get back into using Max (haven't used it in several years) I thought I'd make a simple model. I'm not a huge soccer fan, but I thought the World Cup might be a good opportunity to do something outside of my comfort zone:
I made a bust of this fictional character from Morocco (even though they didn't make it to the World Cup this time around). I considered doing more busts for a bunch of different nationalities... we'll see.
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its kinda weird how you did the eyes for the model.
YOu just motivated me to go work on my low res model!
or is it just the fact makes uv's tighter
also - the decision to separate the eye itself results in the faceted outline of it. considering its the focal point, you might want to avoid it. maybe it would be better to include some surrounding white - which blends more easily - and have the eye smoothly circular. from game-production POV usually the entire eyeball is separated anyway for animation purposes, which would also fix this issue
You're right about the (un)flipped eye. These screenshots were straight out of BodyPaint, and I had neglected to flip one of the eyes. As for how the eye is actually made, I've always thought separating the iris/pupil out was a good compromise to enable the effect of moving eyes while retaining low polygon counts and textural freedom around the eye area. I've seen it used in a few games here and there, and while it does look awkward in a still, it fares a bit better in motion.
As I was making this I couldn't help but think how cool it would be to see an NBA Jam-ish type soccer game with stylized characters. Smaller field, fewer players, really flashy moves. But that's just another pipe dream.
I used mostly BodyPaint (3d painting app) for the textures, and some Photoshop here and there.
It's mostly to pack the UVs as tightly as I could. I often don't care much for how UVs are oriented unless there's some sort of technical or planning reason. If I were strictly painting in Photoshop then I would definitely try to make things easier on myself and straighten those shells out, but seams and awkward angles are much less of a concern for me in BodyPaint.
Thanks, I agree.
You may be right about adding some white to round out the edges. I was thinking that white edges would look odd when rotated at certain angles so I left them, but those situations would be rare anyway.
but yeah it's looking good so far. love the textures.
You're right. That's pretty good reference so thanks for mentioning those games. Goes to show how much I keep up with sports games . I suppose I meant to say an NBA Jam type soccer game made by myself, hehehe.
Well, using a plane could get awkward because at that point you'd almost have to use alpha. I was planning the model to not use any alpha at all, and it would be rather wasteful to only use it on the eyes. This was intended for a low spec game where the characters might only be using one single-sided material. You wouldn't want to use a single alpha material on the entire character either, and simply avoiding alpha if possible is always appreciated for performance. At least, that's how I understand it .
I could be totally wrong about this whole eye thing as I've never actually had to use it in my job. It's just something I have seen used before (the human female eyes in WoW being the main example I can think of right now).