LOL...now that's sounds wrong..But actually I've told my friend once when she saw this model, she commented that "this model is having too much curve", then I answered "well that's the point, at least the victim will died in pleasure, let them enjoy the joy of the life for the last time"...lol......but she still couldn't accept the reason !!
Well that's for joke really, don't take it seriously..the main concept is the one that I stated above..
Btw, quick question guys...is it a necessary to create a high poly model on top of the game mesh for the detail to baked later on?...I mean in game industry is it a typical workflow? I'm worried about spending to much time on one model, but it's sometime achievable through texture/ normal map...because I really want to enter the game industry as a modeler. Thanks for any advise!
Well, by making a High poly Sculpt you can get lots of the details done, for example the cloth folds and the Flesh on the face, plus the model will look smoother and more detailed, and it will react to real time lighting in a more realistic way. to me the next steep on this model would be a good sculpting
Hrm..I'm a little bit confuse now. If you do a sculpting in let say ZBrush, then how you gonna transfer the detail to the low version?..because Max won't be able to handle (import) multi-million polys object (using Render To Texture option in Max). I thought of doing the unwrap UV first, then only sculpt in Zbrush, since it will be easier to bake the texture in ZBrush later on cus the UV is already set up.
My preferred way is zbrush>retopo in 3d app, then unwrap>bring high poly and low poly into xnormal>bake. There are probably some other ways, but that one is my preferred.
Today Zbrush has a Tool called DecimationMaster, It Decimates your.. lets say 10 million polygon model into 800.000 polygons so you can bake a normal map in max, but you can also bake your 10 million poly model with programs such as Xnormal. Zbrush can also make normal maps, so if you make your low poly mesh in a way that the level 0 of that mesh is your final low poly and you can subdivide it and create your Highpoly on Zbrush to sculpt it and then bake a normal map. if you need any help you can PM me and I can give you a hand if you want
The best work flow imo starts with a very low poly model that has the very basic form made in max , maya or whatever 3d app you are using. Import that to Zbrush and sculpt your way up through several subdivisions until you get the desired details. Next import the high poly into Topogun, draw your topology onto the surface of the high thus creating the in-game low mesh. By doing this your normal map will conform very nicely to the low poly. It will take a day or two to learn this work flow but its worth it. Having the ability to sculpt before worrying about topology removes a TON of headache.
well, if he starts the Level 0 model properly since the beginning, his low poly will be the lowest subdivision of his High poly model in Zbrush, witch means that it will adjust perfectly fine to the high poly details for the normal map baking, and also that he will be able to make the bakes with Zbrush. I only recommend retopologizing if the Mesh ended up badly miss shaped.
Thanks guys!..will try those suggestion and see which one is suit better for me..For now I really interested to look into xNormal, cus looks like lots people saying the good result of it compare to Max's bake. But still, having an option to choose is always better than no choise at all!..
@Cap Hotkill
Thanks man, I'll PM you if I got some problem along the workflow!
Cap: That's a really, really bad idea in my opinion. You'll have a densely gridded lowpoly without tris then, rather than one with detail in all the right places.
@MightyPea
Care to explain more?...what I have right now is the final low poly mesh with decent topology. So the next thing that I'm going to do is sculpt in ZBrush for the high poly version. After that bring both low and high version into xNormal to bake the maps.
Anything wrong with this workflow?..
That workflow sounds good Revel. just make sure that when you export your low poly to zbrush it doesnt have many Tris, Tris doesnt look very good while modeling and subdivinding.
you can optimize and Tris your model later on, while keeping the same UVs and even normals. I have done it before.
That is really not a good idea, and it will not look very good since you're changing the topology, which is required to have correct normal-maps.
You're better off using the lowest sub-division mesh as a base for the final low-poly and tweaking it to match the high-poly as closely as possible before baking anything.
@Cap Hotkill
Sure, I build this model entirely in quads, just need to do some edge creasing before bring it to Z for the hard edge.
Btw, after a year using Max I just know now that max has a "Edge Crease" setting to make hard edge on Turbosmooth-ed object without chamfering. Did anybody use this tool before for any good?..cus seems like no one was talking about it as far as I know from tutorials and stuff like that.
@MoP
Hi MoP glad to see you here, so what is the workflow that you suggested for me to take?..because currently my low poly model has captured most of the shape/ silhouette of the final model, if I sub-divide it even more in ZBrush is it going o change the topology?..
And owh one more question for now, Ok let say I have this low poly unwrapped, and bring it to ZBrush divide it a couple of levels which might going to change the UV a little bit. Then I bring it to xNormal. Is it going to be a problem if my low poly has good UV and high poly a bit messy UV? or is it necessary for me to unwrap the high poly again?
Thanks guys, you guys have already save me from a lot of headache by answering my questions. I hope you don't mind.
About the UVs, Dont worry, for the baking the High poly UVs are not nesesary, though, if you can make a nice UV for your low poly before you sculpt it you can enjoy of Baking and Polypainting your model with Zbrush.
Thanks for the feedback guys, keep 'em coming!
Here is an update for the high poly sculpt in ZBrush.
Front view
Rear view
Currently finish sculpting the dress already and I intentionally make it a little bit "dirty" looking. Sometimes it's kinda hard to avoid the "lumpy" look when I too carried away with the sculpting, therefor I need you guys POV about it, hope I nailed it correctly.
definitely some work to be done on the ass....no self respecting zombie horror hottie would tear a great rip in her dress without some toning at the gym first!
Seriously, the rest of her is stereotypical perfect form, and her posterior is just flat and shapeless, which dont look right compared to the rest of her.
Dress looks fantastic, nice job. The hems are the only bit that look a little unfinished, but i guess you know that too
LOL..c'mon guys, you know I haven't done anything to the butt area, I only intended to make her "face-less" not "butt-less" owkay...
This update I only work for the dress. The small detail like what Drav said, "The hems are the only bit that look a little unfinished" is haven't put in, because later I'm going to compose it with the photo source generated normal map in Photoshop, I don't think its quite visible if I just sculpt it in Z other than subd it more than 7mil polys.
Guess I can leave this for right now and continue with the head sculpting. What do you think about her ass now?..honestly I'm not too satisfy with the looks of it now, but just couldn't get to point what is the wrong part. Any suggestion will be much appreciated!
As for your current progress, I think you need to define her buttocks some more, at the moment it looks like she's wearing a diaper. You might be able to do it by difining the groove between the buttocks(not sure what it's called in english) some more to help get rid of the diaper effect(I presume she's wearing panties on the picture).
Even if her face was sliced off and carved out, there would skill be parts of the eye sockets, nasal cavity and cranium showing. Lots of places for bone to be sticking out. Also parts of the lower jaw would still be there so you could have teeth and partial jaw bones showing. The skin on the cheeks would rot away rather quickly so you could show it torn and have the jaw bone fall in a very unnatural way. You could drop the jaw down and have the head cavity go back enough that it's showing the cervical vertebrae. Lots of potential in that head
She could use more butt-crack showing on the panties. Wandering the halls of a hospital is sure to cause some serious pantie wedgie. See examples.
Did a test bake using xNormal (haven't use xNormal before, so yea...), gosh its hard to achieve a nice clean bake. Question guys, most of the problem is around the hips area, since the dress and the hips are very close to each other it makes a funny artifacts like as if the ray coming from the lowpoly tracing a wrong surface, and a few other surface where the lowpoly didn't match up perfectly to the high poly due to, well the lacks of polygons to support the curves area. Am I suppose to separate this kind of area in the first place?
Ditch using xNormal for this project and instead I bake the maps directly inside ZBrush. Here is what i got so far, display using 3PointShader Lite in Max viewport.
Normal+AO
Not much update lately, my focus got distracted by the new PS3..dang~ :poly132:
Next will be diffuse map!
Update time~
Done a bit of texturing work for the head. Looking nice so far, at east for me..:poly136:..next thing for the minor detailing color around the scar and stuff..
What material/shader are you using? I'm not convinced by it as it is. I can't really make out any specularity so far? Kind of boring lighting setup.
If you are considering using any other shader or rendering environment I would start using that right away as any textures you create should be created for that end purpose.
@kodde
I'm using 3PointShader Lite for the material and yeap you're right currently its only diffuse+normal applied to it.
@[N]
Well, my initial concept was actually having the dress is kinda yellow-ish too (like having a mud dirt/ smudge off blood stain/ etc) and I tried it too to this model, but then I don't have any contrast between the skin and the shirt because it looks the same with the same color same blood texture. No worries, will figure a way out of this! thanks.
# The skin looks like rusted metal to me. I can see where you're going with some decay and blood, but it ain't entirely conviencing for me. Maybe instead of going for a very noisy skin texture, I think pale skin with a little touch of damage would work alot better, and then you could add the blood spatter on top of it.
# The clothes actually looks very nice! Everything except the underwear is conviencing. They look too clean for compared to her shirts. Adding some more dirt and discoloring would help it along nicely.
@Zpanzer
Why it looks like a rusted metal?..because I'm using a rusted metal texture
I want to make "rust" as the virus that infected her skin and eating up her face like the actual rust in the metal surface. But since the color is somewhere around the mood that I want then I try to experiment using the rust texture instead. Well maybe you're right, it was too noisy in some part but I tweak it a bit.
@HonkyPunch
You got me..Silent Hill is the inspiration of this model..hehehh thanks dude.
@BlvdNights
LOL..don't bring her accompany u go lunch! !!
Yeap diffuse is not finalized version yet.
And here is a bit of adding things here and there +spec and gloss turned on..
Question; does the color looks pale in your monitor?
Guess I can call it done..for now...any comment guys?..
I can try to push it a little bit further by making a gloss map, as the "inside" head area can be more glossy-wet kinda surface looking, I don't know but is it worth to adding 1 more map considering an allocated texture memory for 1 character in a game?
Change from the last post mostly on her dress and a bit of skin work. For the dress I make it more "even" all the blood stain on it to make it more natural and probably you won't notice as much but I added a fabric texture to it also. And for the skin adding some veins and fixing some other part.
Owh and btw the poly count/tri count on the screen grab is showing the correct one, she sits bellow 10k tris
Next thing her "backpack", need some more thought into it and I might make her drag it along the floor instead of carrying it around in her back. We'll see.
Will update -hopefully- soon enough!
And owh, thanks for helping me along the way and make this character for my limited knowledge possible
Play around with varying gloss across different texture materials. For instance, the buttons on her shirt might be plastic and therefor deserves a higher level of specularity and a narrow gloss. The exposed "gore areas" might deserve a more narrow gloss. Like the meaty areas around the face.
If you are able to get some anisotropic highlight on the hair that would probably look nice as well.
DOG-GY> I agree. All too often games go overboard with too much spec and too narrow specular highlights. In the SC2 example I think it works great, they are supposed to look slimey.
@kodde+DOG-GY
Thanks guys..looks like adding gloss map really help push things a bit further. But kodde, the hightlight on the hair REALLY tricky man..have to figure out some way! :poly142: I think there must be adjusting spec+gloss, but haven't found a good combination of those two yet..but for now this is the gloss effects on the face and her stocking is the more visible change compare to the skin and dress (I don't think skin and dress will have a tight gloss)
Here it is, a small update on the glossy map applied.
Replies
-Woog
Well that's for joke really, don't take it seriously..the main concept is the one that I stated above..
_Revel
_Revel
Or is there any other possible way to do this?..
_Revel
@Cap Hotkill
Thanks man, I'll PM you if I got some problem along the workflow!
_Revel
Care to explain more?...what I have right now is the final low poly mesh with decent topology. So the next thing that I'm going to do is sculpt in ZBrush for the high poly version. After that bring both low and high version into xNormal to bake the maps.
Anything wrong with this workflow?..
_Revel
That is really not a good idea, and it will not look very good since you're changing the topology, which is required to have correct normal-maps.
You're better off using the lowest sub-division mesh as a base for the final low-poly and tweaking it to match the high-poly as closely as possible before baking anything.
Sure, I build this model entirely in quads, just need to do some edge creasing before bring it to Z for the hard edge.
Btw, after a year using Max I just know now that max has a "Edge Crease" setting to make hard edge on Turbosmooth-ed object without chamfering. Did anybody use this tool before for any good?..cus seems like no one was talking about it as far as I know from tutorials and stuff like that.
@MoP
Hi MoP glad to see you here, so what is the workflow that you suggested for me to take?..because currently my low poly model has captured most of the shape/ silhouette of the final model, if I sub-divide it even more in ZBrush is it going o change the topology?..
And owh one more question for now, Ok let say I have this low poly unwrapped, and bring it to ZBrush divide it a couple of levels which might going to change the UV a little bit. Then I bring it to xNormal. Is it going to be a problem if my low poly has good UV and high poly a bit messy UV? or is it necessary for me to unwrap the high poly again?
Thanks guys, you guys have already save me from a lot of headache by answering my questions. I hope you don't mind.
_Revel
Here is an update for the high poly sculpt in ZBrush.
Front view
Rear view
Currently finish sculpting the dress already and I intentionally make it a little bit "dirty" looking. Sometimes it's kinda hard to avoid the "lumpy" look when I too carried away with the sculpting, therefor I need you guys POV about it, hope I nailed it correctly.
Any thought about this progress?
_Revel
Seriously, the rest of her is stereotypical perfect form, and her posterior is just flat and shapeless, which dont look right compared to the rest of her.
Dress looks fantastic, nice job. The hems are the only bit that look a little unfinished, but i guess you know that too
Give the ass more "Bump" XD
This update I only work for the dress. The small detail like what Drav said, "The hems are the only bit that look a little unfinished" is haven't put in, because later I'm going to compose it with the photo source generated normal map in Photoshop, I don't think its quite visible if I just sculpt it in Z other than subd it more than 7mil polys.
_Revel
Really nice work man, looking forward to seeing more updates, and be sure to post a ref-sheet of some nice behinds.
Guess I can leave this for right now and continue with the head sculpting. What do you think about her ass now?..honestly I'm not too satisfy with the looks of it now, but just couldn't get to point what is the wrong part. Any suggestion will be much appreciated!
_Revel
As for your current progress, I think you need to define her buttocks some more, at the moment it looks like she's wearing a diaper. You might be able to do it by difining the groove between the buttocks(not sure what it's called in english) some more to help get rid of the diaper effect(I presume she's wearing panties on the picture).
Thanks man! And yes, she is wearing panties, not diaper lol...
Right, so for this update I modify her butt+adding more detail to the model; the scars and some infected skin around the scar area.
As for the head it looks kinda "empty" right now and I think its due to lack of her hair right now. So any thought for the area to improve guys?..
_Revel
She could use more butt-crack showing on the panties. Wandering the halls of a hospital is sure to cause some serious pantie wedgie. See examples.
Images linked because resolution is so high.
http://uploader.ws/upload/201009/ass3_94455.jpg
http://uploader.ws/upload/201009/ass3_150271.jpg
http://uploader.ws/upload/201009/ass3_208360.jpg
Thanks dude for the reference!
Did a test bake using xNormal (haven't use xNormal before, so yea...), gosh its hard to achieve a nice clean bake. Question guys, most of the problem is around the hips area, since the dress and the hips are very close to each other it makes a funny artifacts like as if the ray coming from the lowpoly tracing a wrong surface, and a few other surface where the lowpoly didn't match up perfectly to the high poly due to, well the lacks of polygons to support the curves area. Am I suppose to separate this kind of area in the first place?
_Revel
Normal+AO
Not much update lately, my focus got distracted by the new PS3..dang~ :poly132:
Next will be diffuse map!
_Revel
Done a bit of texturing work for the head. Looking nice so far, at east for me..:poly136:..next thing for the minor detailing color around the scar and stuff..
Any thought guys?
_Revel
Did you mean adding the skin bumps texture?
I don't know but does it looks too messy right now?..
Arranging all the blood splatters is harder then I thought :poly132:
Don't mind the white strip at the top of her stocking, its gonna replace with some texture later.
*I notice something, my desktop screen is much darker then my laptop. I don't know in you guys monitor how does it looks like.
_Revel
What material/shader are you using? I'm not convinced by it as it is. I can't really make out any specularity so far? Kind of boring lighting setup.
If you are considering using any other shader or rendering environment I would start using that right away as any textures you create should be created for that end purpose.
Btw, a zombie just can't get white clothes, they must be dirt ( not dark everywhere, but can't be white).
I'm using 3PointShader Lite for the material and yeap you're right currently its only diffuse+normal applied to it.
@[N]
Well, my initial concept was actually having the dress is kinda yellow-ish too (like having a mud dirt/ smudge off blood stain/ etc) and I tried it too to this model, but then I don't have any contrast between the skin and the shirt because it looks the same with the same color same blood texture. No worries, will figure a way out of this! thanks.
@achillesian
Lol, thanks dude
Much appreciated all your comments!
_Revel
Some thoughts of mine when looking at it:
# The skin looks like rusted metal to me. I can see where you're going with some decay and blood, but it ain't entirely conviencing for me. Maybe instead of going for a very noisy skin texture, I think pale skin with a little touch of damage would work alot better, and then you could add the blood spatter on top of it.
# The clothes actually looks very nice! Everything except the underwear is conviencing. They look too clean for compared to her shirts. Adding some more dirt and discoloring would help it along nicely.
Here's to it's completion.
Great work so far. You could definitely do some more work on your diffuse though.
Why it looks like a rusted metal?..because I'm using a rusted metal texture
I want to make "rust" as the virus that infected her skin and eating up her face like the actual rust in the metal surface. But since the color is somewhere around the mood that I want then I try to experiment using the rust texture instead. Well maybe you're right, it was too noisy in some part but I tweak it a bit.
@HonkyPunch
You got me..Silent Hill is the inspiration of this model..hehehh thanks dude.
@BlvdNights
LOL..don't bring her accompany u go lunch!
Yeap diffuse is not finalized version yet.
And here is a bit of adding things here and there +spec and gloss turned on..
Question; does the color looks pale in your monitor?
_Revel
Something like this or the other:
I can try to push it a little bit further by making a gloss map, as the "inside" head area can be more glossy-wet kinda surface looking, I don't know but is it worth to adding 1 more map considering an allocated texture memory for 1 character in a game?
Change from the last post mostly on her dress and a bit of skin work. For the dress I make it more "even" all the blood stain on it to make it more natural and probably you won't notice as much but I added a fabric texture to it also. And for the skin adding some veins and fixing some other part.
Owh and btw the poly count/tri count on the screen grab is showing the correct one, she sits bellow 10k tris
Next thing her "backpack", need some more thought into it and I might make her drag it along the floor instead of carrying it around in her back. We'll see.
Will update -hopefully- soon enough!
And owh, thanks for helping me along the way and make this character for my limited knowledge possible
_Revel
Pose her in an interesting manner.
Play around with varying gloss across different texture materials. For instance, the buttons on her shirt might be plastic and therefor deserves a higher level of specularity and a narrow gloss. The exposed "gore areas" might deserve a more narrow gloss. Like the meaty areas around the face.
If you are able to get some anisotropic highlight on the hair that would probably look nice as well.
Here's an example of the narrow kind of spec I am referring to. It gives a kind of "slimey" look which I think might work well for certain areas on your model.
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2009/06/spawningpool.jpg
Anyway, looking great, and I agree that it should be slimey. It does feel too flat right now. Keep up the great work!
Thanks guys..looks like adding gloss map really help push things a bit further. But kodde, the hightlight on the hair REALLY tricky man..have to figure out some way! :poly142: I think there must be adjusting spec+gloss, but haven't found a good combination of those two yet..but for now this is the gloss effects on the face and her stocking is the more visible change compare to the skin and dress (I don't think skin and dress will have a tight gloss)
Here it is, a small update on the glossy map applied.
Keep the comments coming!!
_Revel