First Game Character
polycounter lvl 14
I've done models before but this will be my first full game character. The sculpt is nearly finished and I'm about to do the lowpoly aiming for around 4-5k polys.
My question is how do I assign different materials? If I was doing a character normally I would break it into different objects and assign things like SSS individually, but a game model has to be one mesh I think? I'm not sure how to achieve this.
My question is how do I assign different materials? If I was doing a character normally I would break it into different objects and assign things like SSS individually, but a game model has to be one mesh I think? I'm not sure how to achieve this.
Replies
Game models don't have to be just one mesh these days... it depends on what the game engine requires, but even if you had to combine the meshes for export, you should still be able to assign different materials per face so one mesh could have more than one material. You just need to plan on this and build your mesh accordingly.
In any case, you're probably going to want to use as few materials/shaders as possible, but the better ones should be able to simulate a lot of the effects you're used to doing in traditional 3d (with limitations, of course).
That's an interesting character, by the way.
Make the same case for hands and feets.
haikai : Would you be able to expand on this? The only things I've used in the past are mia materials and maya fast skin.
Nitewalkr : I was aiming for more stylized proportions based off a comic Wormwood The Gentlemen Corpse by . It's difficult though because Ben Templesmith is very loose in his illustration and changes things from one page to the next.
Justin_Meisse : I didn't think anyone would get it. I guess that means I'm at least in the ballpark haha. I want to do his hair and was thinking of using alpha planes, but really have no idea how to go about it.
danshewan : Yeah. I'm still not 100% on the proportions, but I think it looks close.
Gallows & Cap Hotkill: : I've never played Grim Fandango but have seen it on top ten game lists. I should probably get around to it. :thumbup:
proporitons seems a little wonky and not 100% on the cloth folds but i like how he works overall and his head looks cool.
As far as gettin different materials and stuff applied to a game char, depends on the engine or whatever you're putting him into but generally you can handle alot of that stuff with your maps.
ie: you can make a seperate black and white map to select which areas will get some SSS going on (thinking about unreal mat setup right now, similar in most things tho). Can also make a map to adjust glossiness in different parts of the mesh. All goes ontop of the colour, normal and spec maps and whatever else.
Hope that made sense
As far as the maps, I've never put any of my models into a game engine, so I'm not sure about the process. I've been watching the Gnomon DVD "Character Texturing for Production" where he paints a black and white SSS map and plugs it somewhere, but I'm not sure how to do that in Maya. I'm also not sure what shader to use to get everything looking as it should.
Unfortunately, us Maya users have fewer options to get nice, real-time previews in the viewport. If you have an Nvidia gfx card, there are a number of CGFX shaders that you might want to experiment with that can give good results.
Instead of relying on the Maya viewport, there are also some other options such as exporting your models to something like the Marmoset Toolbag viewer:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=74848
or you can use Xnormal's viewer:
http://xnormal.net/
And of course the more "authentic" options such as getting your model into UDK or Sandbox, etc.
also agreed with haikai overall. I normally just use maya to check my basic maps (diff, nrml, spec... think that's about it). I've only ever really bothered with a SSS map when putting things in unreal and doin mat setup in there. Oh i use a phong mat normally, set the scene to high quality view mode or whatever and that's about it
But yeah, marmo makes everything looks awsome, would defo recommend just jamming stuff in there. Plus theres a skin material and a default phongy kinda material for next gen stuff. Can't mask them off to combine them unfortunatley but still looks really nice.
Oh and folds just take heaps of practice and studying ref... still way off being not shite at them here
HonkyPunch : haha I remember those.
Nizza_waaarg : You can't use two different materials? So the only difference would be the texture? Also, I found some great clothing references so I'll be busy for a while. :thumbup:
Torch : I really gotta get around to playin that.
So little update. I worked on the lowpoly and have it just under 3k polys. Does anything stand out as needing to be reworked? (I had no idea how to handle the shoe laces and was going to let the normal maps take care of them. Bad idea?)
I don't know how you intend to bake your normal maps, but I see a lot of quad faces that seem bow-tied/twisted. This isn't so bad if you render from within Maya, but if you use Xnormal or something like that then it can triangulate your model differently from how Maya does which can throw off your bake in those areas. I usually triangulate these areas myself. I think it's good to specify how these areas should be tesselated so that you don't get any surprises in deformation.
What's really giving me problems are the teeth and shirt collar area. It's very tight so I'm not sure how to solve it.
You can try to isolate your meshes for the render and then composite all of the normal maps together. Rarely is there a situation where I can get everything on a character rendered perfectly on a single pass.
A lot of game engines are going to expect or produce a single model on export, but the model itself can be made of multiple combined meshes. I'd keep them separate to make the building stage easier and then combine them at the end. You definitely do not have to make your model a single contiguous surface.
Holy crap I wish I knew this. It would've made things so much easier.
Can anyone help me out with the teeth? I was having problems with my first character too. Would it be best to do the teeth and gums as once piece?
Your specular map makes no sense though(If that is your spec map)
It would be good to invert your skintone color,but not the AO.
As for the teeth, i would make the gums and teeth seperate in the HP model, but make it one part in the LP
Ps. I got this char from here:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=69164