Like with many things in life, truth will help u get better faster. The more u sit around and jerk off the more u'r just gonna postpone the hard work.
U should be doing many other things other than modelling his body, such as: learning how to draw and paint a face before u even attempt texturing a 3d model, let alone a crappy one with a bad UV. Just a thought.
Wait what? The best advice you got was to basically ignore what everyone says and do what you want?
Your model has improved loads from the first post to the latest update so something is working.
One point though. This is Polycount, everyone is made fun of to some extent. You might as well get used to it, it's nothing personal. And having a thick skin is good for an artist, makes you less likely to be hurt when people point out your flaws. Just a thought...
No I didn't mean that like ignore everyone, I meant it like it's okay to make low poly models even if people are saying I should go high poly. And I'm not upset because people are pointing out flaws, I haven't even seen anyone point out personal flaws, and flaws with the model are why I am here, for critique.
On that note, reworked the face a little bit and started with preliminary hair. I tried adding more geo to the nose like crasong suggested but it was getting too complex for something you won't see this up close, and opted to turn the bridge of it back into polys instead of tris.
I'm still not satisfied with with the eyes/nose/mouth ratios, especially when viewed from the side something about it is off but I have a hard time placing it since it lines up pretty well with all my real life references.
I'm starting to think about how the neck will attach to the head graphically because obviously your head doesn't just taper off into nothing like it does there, and the two hair strands in the middle front will become geo so I can make them non symmetrical and stick off the head a little bit for added interest.
EDIT: Don't want to double post so:
The head is really starting to shape up now. I turned the ears into Geo as it looks a lot better this way, and tweaked the shading a little bit. Hair geo is still a little wonky right now, will try out different strand styles.
It kinda reminds me of a cross between Ralph Fiennes and Bill Nye the Science Guy
Blocked out some splotchy Reed Richards hair and worked the neck into the texture. Haven't shown the texture in a while so I included it with the mesh this time.
Not sure how to work on it next though, should I slowly build outwards from the next down and work on my body mesh as I reach it, or should I try to improve the whole thing in one fell sweep? I think it might go slower to work on everything at once but Ill will probably have more consistent quality and less needing to rework things if I did.
i dont really do too many characters but when i do i usually START with the body, blocking out major shapes. i work on the head and hands last because there is so much subtlety in those parts. also your kinda working ass backwards with the texturing. model the whole thing first, then texture. that way youre not unwrapping every time you tweak the model. itll make the problem youre having with the neck go away.
Haha don't worry Screwonhed, I did block out all the major shapes etc on the body first, I just never showed them. I started texturing the head first but quickly found out the model was no good and reworked it over and over from there.
Not sure what you mean exactly by problems with the neck though, could you elaborate?
You raise a good point about important areas though, I think next I am going to verify my body proportions, and then start texturing the hands.
With the texturing, try using a big chunky brush on a medium-ish opacity and throw in really thick, blocky shading first. Makes it easier to alter it while you get it looking right. Start with the big shaded areas.
Once that starts to resemble a well lit face (looking at it with a bit of squinting) then go back in and start to refine the smaller details and worry about blending it all together.
B1ll had some great examples of head texture progression from a few broad strokes through to final result... but he's taken them down
And unless you're working in black and white style, you might find it easier to throw down colour straight away. Get some ref photographs and colour grab areas if you need to.
Never played Soul Reaver, Ill take a look at this Raziel once I am home.
And @Talon, good advice, I'm going to go more broad/blocky with the rest of the body when I texture it then focus on detail at first.
As for the black and white, I'm doing it that way for two reason. One, I started in color and found it frustratingly difficult to keep the right tones and values for everything, and two it made it much harder to focus on the proper light/shadow when I was constantly fussing with the proper colors. I decided to color it afterward, and while this isn't everyone's style I think it works best for me.
Okay, so current my guy is five and a half heads tall. The Wow Male is roughly 7 1/3 heads tall.
I want him to be reasonably large headed and not a straight up human but I'm not totally sure what the 'right' dimensions are without throwing around fancy words like 'cartoony' or 'stylized.' Would it be fine if I just raised the shoulders and crotch to match with the reference or is there more to it then that, etc?
Lengthened out the limbs a bit and raised the crotch. He looks more adult now, but at the same time I feel like he has to look more serious now and less... torchlight?
My biggest problem right now is that the mesh is just... boring. Like the human male from WoW is interesting to look at even when flat grey. Mine is definitely not, and just slapping bits and bobs on him doesn't help change this at all. What can I do to help change this without dramatically altering his outfit or something?
Yeah I see what you mean. Broke it up a bit more, definitely an improvement but not the best it can be. I'm not sure how to accurately portray anatomy under semi baggy clothes though.
I dont want to say to myself that "Hopefully it will look better once I texture it" because that just seems wrong to me. If the mesh looks bad then no matter how good the texture is it wont make up for it, but I just don't know what to do it to make it more visually appealing without completely changing the outfit into something that shows more skin or something.
Arms too long and thick, shoulders too narrow. Face looks squished, narrow.
The arms look too long but when I bring them down by his sides they are just right, but you're right they're probably too fat. I'm not sure what you mean by the shoulders are too narrow though. Does that mean they should be further appart? Larger?
Arms are looking better, shoulders too. Did you mean like this?
The fingertips should be about halfway down the thigh, this guys' fingertips go town to his knees.
What I mean about the shoulders is that they should be a bit bulkier, right now they don't look like they support the head well enough. And he could use a bit bigger 'wings'.
What's offputting about the image is that you're trying to stick close to realistic proportions and rendering, but the proportions of the body aren't realistic at all. So you'll need to find some way to connect these elements, like gradually moving from a realistic head-chest ratio, to an exagerrated chest-hip ratio.
Wings? I'm not familiar with this term outside of bird's wings. His ear? His arms? Ill try shortening his arms again a little bit but when his bone is in it and I rotate his arm down, they don't reach the knees, they reach a little bit past the waist like people should.
I thought he was looking pretty decent compared to the sheets of ideal proportions in a human male, could you do a draw over with some red lines to help me better understand what you mean?
Like, I -want- him to look realistic-ish, not to have huge hips and a tiny waist or something like that. The reason it dips in like that a little bit is because having it totally straight from armpit to toes looks boring and wrong.
I'm at work right now but I'll get you that stuff once I get home.
I just want to say, I don't want him to look like Buffman of the century here. He's supposed to look reasonably malnourished and/or lanky, not like the Hulk, not a body builder.
I'm liking the change to the legs you did though, that's definitely happening.
I'm guessing by arm down you mean like topdown the full arm view.
And right now the rig is all wrong due to all the resizing and shaping of the body Iv'e been doing, none of the bones line up and all the polygons are in the wrong places for animation. Once the body is right again I'll fix the rig to match it.
I'm guessing by arm down you mean like topdown the full arm view.
I'm pretty sure he means when you bring the arms down to the characters side, the finger tips land on the knees, instead of the normal place of the mid to lower thigh. This is a pretty common marker used to gauge arm length, since it can be kind of hard to guess with the arms up in a T-Pose.
He's supposed to look reasonably malnourished and/or lanky, not like the Hulk, not a body builder.
I suggest proportions closer to this then:
But you could be going for a slightly cute super deformed big head/hands look. But even if you are, those proportions are exaggerations of what the real human looks like, so a lanky character will have a long torso, and probably a small head, big headed proportions tend to make people look short or child like, two signals that don't say "lanky".
I would agree with that. The way you have him right now makes him look more like a Wii character which I don't think you're going for? (Since you compared him to the WoW male).
I only compared him to the WoW male because he was the only male model made by a big real company or whomever I can trust to be reasonably well done, since Blizzard is pretty quality, but I actually was sorta going for Wii silly.
You're right though Vig after rereading that he probably did mean with the arms at his sides, I just misunderstood. I really like your paint over's proportions but I wish there were some say to keep his head bigger and still make it work.
I feel like I am scope creeping what was originally meant to be a semi silly looking guy in terms of realism model into grizzled realism and into like something that would fit in with HL2 style and standard of look and texture.
Longer legs/torso like you put with the narrower inwards like Snader showed are a must, I'll do that first and then toy with various versions of head sizes etc.
I'm thinking like... TF2 they look good and human but not in a serious realistic way.
EDIT: Home now, brace for updates.
Lengthened the legs and torso a bit, brought the feet closer together and did other small adjustments. Head hasn't changed size any yet. Shoulders are kinda square in the down position.
Heh, kinda reminds me of Nick from L4D2 or the white suit Tony Montana wore in Scarface. I think I need to lengthen the coat a bit too, it ends too short.
Made a couple of small changes, but its just not capturing the essence of how I want it to look at all. Maybe I should step away from the model and try doodling it for a while, I think Ill do that.
I'm sure you'll have loads of crits for this one but that's not the point here, I haven't actually done any non-texture actual art in so long I'm really rusty. I'm just trying to better get across how he's supposed to look. The face is derped here but oh well, light and shadow on complex objects aren't easy.
I hope this gives a better idea for critiques. Crit the crap out of this piece if you want, it's throwaway anyways. :poly124:
I get the feeling that you are lacking in any serious concept art / design.
You just jumped into modelling something and are making it up as you go along. It doesn't work like that. Get back to the drawing board and design a character properly. Don't skip steps.
The Team Fortress 2 Characters look that way through extensive design and concepts which led to that model. They didn't just open Maya and model a Heavy straight off the bat. As I said, stop skipping steps.
Some more small changes. I merged the coat with the body mesh, before they weren't directly connected. I'm still not satisfied with it, I feel like I am going in the wrong direction.
I tried experimenting with a more exaggerated coat. I don't think it really worked all that well, but its a step closer in the right direction.
I widened the legs pose substantially and brought the arms down to 45 degrees. With the coat flattened out like this its starting to look really good.
Unless there are any major crits or problems with it currently, I'm thinking of cleaning up the topo and moving onto texturing.
Preliminary clothes blockout on shading. Once I get it down pat ill start adding in folds and details.
Penciled in a lot of details sans shading, and cleaned up the blockout substantially. Once I give this all the proper shading and clothing folds comes color next. UVs need tweaking as well.
Nice shiny fancy shoes. I think they look good.
And yeah it's only four fingers right now, I'll probably move up to five once I reach that part in texturing.
Just out of curiosity, why painting in grayscale? We used to have a lot of oldschool guys who would do this, but they all eventually sucumbed to the fact that it was sort of a waste of time, and color and value are too important relative to each other to do in separate passes.
Just out of curiosity, why painting in grayscale? We used to have a lot of oldschool guys who would do this, but they all eventually sucumbed to the fact that it was sort of a waste of time, and color and value are too important relative to each other to do in separate passes.
I answered this somewhere in the thread but it's because I was having a lot of problems getting the right black/white shading value or tonal value or whatever fancy art term right, and the color was just distracting and getting in the way, it kept getting desaturated when I'd darken or lighten it and it was just a huge painful mess.
This way is much easier for me and it's how I like to do it.
On that note I tried blocking out some folds in the pants but its generally pretty bad.
If anyone has excessive experience with clothing folds that would be great, I couldn't find any decent reference or tutorials about it besides general al purpose stuff in how cloth folds at the most bsaic level.
I know the shadows need to be much deeper. and not randomly placed like they are here.
Deepening the shadows and highlights makes it look visually more appealing but doesn't change the fact that the underlying forms are wrong, but I still cant find any good reference, all the pants online are ironed flat for showing purposes. This is the best one I did find:
I'm done for painting on it tonight, I hope there are some interesting paintovers or references to look at tomorrow.
That's what I -was- doing, I guess I just wasn't getting the perfect part.
Anyways, latest version is much better then before, started looking at pants in games rather then pants on actual people, which wasn't working.
I think its a little too wrinkly in the back so Ill work on that later. I'm thinking larger longer stroke wrinkles suit it better then many small wrinkles.
^That is looking much better. I don't know anything about how to do wrinkles in clothing, so I'll leave the advice alone, but I think reducing the wrinkles in the back of the pants as you said, sounds like a good idea.
I answered this somewhere in the thread but it's because I was having a lot of problems getting the right black/white shading value or tonal value or whatever fancy art term right, and the color was just distracting and getting in the way, it kept getting desaturated when I'd darken or lighten it and it was just a huge painful mess.
I'm not seeing this in your texture. All your values are the same... there are no darker grays or lighter areas, you're not figuring out values. You're making everything white and painting the same amount of shadow everywhere. the pants do get darker at the bottom, but that almost comes across as just being over-worked and not intentional.
If this is a later step you add on top, I guess don't worry about it.
About the wrinkles - too many. it looks like it was stuffed at the bottom of the hamper. what you have painted isn't that bad, but needs to be toned down, i think. the ass looks particularly strange, at least in this angled shot. and why is it so bunched in the crotch, as if he were wearing some sort of harness? what is causing that?
Yeah I agree the wrinkles are out of control right now, I am going to cut back on them a bit.
I have no idea what is bunching it at the crotch I am guessing that's just how the pants are made because all the pants references I could find have long straight folds leading into the crotch area.
I'm not sure I follow your description of how I am working, I didn't start white I started roughly 128 between black and white and have been adding light and shadow to it. When I was working in color, when I repeatedly lightened and darkened an area it would cause the color to rapidly lose saturation, so I would be constantly going back and re-saturating it. With b/w I don't have this problem, and color will come last.
not talking about color, but value. dark versus light. right now if you just put color over everything, they'd all be the same value, because your grayscale is all the same... if you squint, or blur the image, it's all the same shade of gray.
this might not matter, depending on your methods of coloring it. but looking at it as a gray-scale piece, it's lacking that.
your color shouldn't be losing saturation, unless you lighten/darken by burn/dodge. which you shouldn't do. paint highlights on color by choosing a new color and painting on top of it, same for shadows. don't use white and black on color.
I was neither using burn and dodge nor using straight black and white, even I know that is amateur. Ill show you what I mean here:
Also new clothing folds. Ignore the seaming at the seams right now, once it looks good I'll paint it out to blend in with the rest.
The biggest problem I am having with the folds/creases right now is that mine are like 99% horizontal lines in the clothing, yet every reference I have has loads of diagonals and folds running vertical on the leg, yet whenever I try to incorporate those, it just comes out looking bad wrong and terrible.
When I am lighting/darkening the base red, I lose that saturated color when repeatedly lightening and darkening the area and cant get it back by mixing the two colors I am flipping between and its a pain to go and select the red again and re saturate.
I still have no idea what you mean by value and shades of grey, could you illustrate what you mean? When I look at my model I see many shades of grey, its not just one flat grey color all over. Do you mean like adding colors into the grey like blue and yellow? I don't understand.
when he says "value", he is talking about the contrast between darks and lights. for example, your pants are looking pretty good in this last update. but you could push the darks and lights in the creases.....each shadow under the creases lacks darker colors just under the creases....and above the creases...there could be some light highlights. i realize it's still a WIP. but as far as the value thing....he just means differences between the range of light and dark.
I think I get what you mean, but the darker blacks I use the more depth it feels like is there, I don't want to push the values too high or else or will look unnatural.
That's only the preliminary paintover, once I have it accurate, then I'll be spending time making it look good.
pushing the lights and darks will make it "pop" a lot more...which usually is a good thing. and to be honest, the model is not going to look "natural" at all due to it's proportions. if you are going for a natural look with iconic proportions....then ok.
ok. i thought about it a bit. and if it's a preliminary paintover?... then sure...i gotcha. those folds in the back of the knee area are looking good.
I'm getting really frustrated with these legs because all the pants I see for real are rifle with vertical folds and creases, and no matter how exactly I copy them, on my pants they just looks like horrible tentacled growths or something.
Top images are the too many wrinkles, current legs, and a horribly failed attempt to add vertical folds. Just standing up and looking at my own pants after moving around a bit, all sorts of non horizontal creases appear, so why can't I make that look right?
I am almost to the point of doing a high poly sculpt and baking the AO down onto the incredibly low poly and painting on that because of how hard this is.
New version, I'm still no where near satisfied with it though, but no matter how many times I paint it over It's just not working.
your wrinkles are so intense! it looks like the reference you found was the wrinkliest pair of pants on the internet. remember less is more. especially if this guy is going to be animated, if you have a bunch of wrinkles it'll look off. so you want to find a neutral amount to paint on.
and dont forget to run sharpen filter at the end. it'll help make a lot of the softness tighten up.
That's what I am going for Screwonhead, too few wrinkles looks simple and plain, too many looks bad wrong, and all horizontal ones are the worst. Folds in clothing is a huge pain, I'm going to try and start from scratch again instead of building up on it more and more like it was the Mona Lisa or something. Apparently there are like 12 versions of the face under it.
New from scratch:
It seems kinda simple now but once I clean it up and add in dirt etc, maybe it will look better?
You have all theses line going up and down, its freaky, doesnt make much sense..Fold follow your body and gravity... Try and blend your.. paint?. together..
Why the seems right there? its the worse place. Strange..
Im not too sure why you are going with grayscale Tbh. But hey,. at this point..
What do you mean by blend my paint? I thought I was doing that but maybe you mean something else i could be doing that I don't know about.
How do you set up your brush exactly maybe? You seem to be getting better results then how I am working mine. Ill try working the pants over again real quick.
Well, I tried to imitate yours but that's all it feels like, an imitation. When I did the face way back when, the first paint over someone did made me really understand light and shadow and how it should look and I could use that to make any face I wanted, but I don't feel like I am learning anything this time, I don't know why I am drawing it like this and it doesn't look very good when I do it either. You said to examine my pants and other stuff but I don't understand because it doesn't look the same. I don't understand -why- so I can't make it look good. Does that make sense?
I also think my pants uvs are getting more and more screwed up each time I adjust them to each new pants paint over, it's really hard to keep them optimized to the shape and fit to the painting and everything, I have to change them pretty much every single paintover.
Repaired the Uvs and tweaked the texture a little bit, your paintover is a part of the texture in this image, I'm trying to understand why it looks good and mine doesn't so that I can fix what I am doing wrong and make my own version.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I really like b1ll's version but I wish I knew how/why it looks like that compared to all the folds I've done before, I can't find any reference that looks like his really. Like, because I don't know why it is folding like that, I can't make up the sides and back that he didn't show because I have no idea how it would look/fold.
Maybe i'll try PMing him to see if he can elaborate more.
Also paintover. The back seems wonky to me, even if the front is improved(?)
After examining a bunch of new references, I have a new paint over. I think it's a lot better than before, but could still use some tweaking. The straps on the legs need to be darker and look more strap like and less like part of the fabric for one.
On a side note, 100th post, first time a thread of mine has reached this far. Finally updated my avatar in celebration. :poly142:
On a roll so I did more work on it, as well as added the head back on. With the knowledge gained from the legs, I did some preliminary work on the sleeves and around the arm where it connects.
Thanks! I thought so too. I'm probably going to start working on the coat now. It's sorta blotchy looking around a lot of the dark areas because I was trying out painting on it in the photoshop 3D paint directly on your model thing.
I find it sometimes useful especially when cleaning up seams but I'm working in CS4 and I don't know what it's like in CS5, but it's a pretty alpha feeling feature. Need work, definitely doesn't replace old fashioned painting on the texture map itself.
Replies
U should be doing many other things other than modelling his body, such as: learning how to draw and paint a face before u even attempt texturing a 3d model, let alone a crappy one with a bad UV. Just a thought.
No I didn't mean that like ignore everyone, I meant it like it's okay to make low poly models even if people are saying I should go high poly. And I'm not upset because people are pointing out flaws, I haven't even seen anyone point out personal flaws, and flaws with the model are why I am here, for critique.
On that note, reworked the face a little bit and started with preliminary hair. I tried adding more geo to the nose like crasong suggested but it was getting too complex for something you won't see this up close, and opted to turn the bridge of it back into polys instead of tris.
I'm still not satisfied with with the eyes/nose/mouth ratios, especially when viewed from the side something about it is off but I have a hard time placing it since it lines up pretty well with all my real life references.
I'm starting to think about how the neck will attach to the head graphically because obviously your head doesn't just taper off into nothing like it does there, and the two hair strands in the middle front will become geo so I can make them non symmetrical and stick off the head a little bit for added interest.
EDIT: Don't want to double post so:
The head is really starting to shape up now. I turned the ears into Geo as it looks a lot better this way, and tweaked the shading a little bit. Hair geo is still a little wonky right now, will try out different strand styles.
It kinda reminds me of a cross between Ralph Fiennes and Bill Nye the Science Guy
Related:
Blocked out some splotchy Reed Richards hair and worked the neck into the texture. Haven't shown the texture in a while so I included it with the mesh this time.
Not sure how to work on it next though, should I slowly build outwards from the next down and work on my body mesh as I reach it, or should I try to improve the whole thing in one fell sweep? I think it might go slower to work on everything at once but Ill will probably have more consistent quality and less needing to rework things if I did.
thats my 2 cents
Not sure what you mean exactly by problems with the neck though, could you elaborate?
You raise a good point about important areas though, I think next I am going to verify my body proportions, and then start texturing the hands.
Once that starts to resemble a well lit face (looking at it with a bit of squinting) then go back in and start to refine the smaller details and worry about blending it all together.
B1ll had some great examples of head texture progression from a few broad strokes through to final result... but he's taken them down
And unless you're working in black and white style, you might find it easier to throw down colour straight away. Get some ref photographs and colour grab areas if you need to.
And @Talon, good advice, I'm going to go more broad/blocky with the rest of the body when I texture it then focus on detail at first.
As for the black and white, I'm doing it that way for two reason. One, I started in color and found it frustratingly difficult to keep the right tones and values for everything, and two it made it much harder to focus on the proper light/shadow when I was constantly fussing with the proper colors. I decided to color it afterward, and while this isn't everyone's style I think it works best for me.
Okay, so current my guy is five and a half heads tall. The Wow Male is roughly 7 1/3 heads tall.
I want him to be reasonably large headed and not a straight up human but I'm not totally sure what the 'right' dimensions are without throwing around fancy words like 'cartoony' or 'stylized.' Would it be fine if I just raised the shoulders and crotch to match with the reference or is there more to it then that, etc?
Lengthened out the limbs a bit and raised the crotch. He looks more adult now, but at the same time I feel like he has to look more serious now and less... torchlight?
My biggest problem right now is that the mesh is just... boring. Like the human male from WoW is interesting to look at even when flat grey. Mine is definitely not, and just slapping bits and bobs on him doesn't help change this at all. What can I do to help change this without dramatically altering his outfit or something?
Kinda like comparing an action figure to a lego man.
I dont want to say to myself that "Hopefully it will look better once I texture it" because that just seems wrong to me. If the mesh looks bad then no matter how good the texture is it wont make up for it, but I just don't know what to do it to make it more visually appealing without completely changing the outfit into something that shows more skin or something.
The arms look too long but when I bring them down by his sides they are just right, but you're right they're probably too fat. I'm not sure what you mean by the shoulders are too narrow though. Does that mean they should be further appart? Larger?
Arms are looking better, shoulders too. Did you mean like this?
What I mean about the shoulders is that they should be a bit bulkier, right now they don't look like they support the head well enough. And he could use a bit bigger 'wings'.
What's offputting about the image is that you're trying to stick close to realistic proportions and rendering, but the proportions of the body aren't realistic at all. So you'll need to find some way to connect these elements, like gradually moving from a realistic head-chest ratio, to an exagerrated chest-hip ratio.
I thought he was looking pretty decent compared to the sheets of ideal proportions in a human male, could you do a draw over with some red lines to help me better understand what you mean?
Like, I -want- him to look realistic-ish, not to have huge hips and a tiny waist or something like that. The reason it dips in like that a little bit is because having it totally straight from armpit to toes looks boring and wrong.
Paintover time!
Could you show a screenshot of the arm down, and show a shot of the rig?
I just want to say, I don't want him to look like Buffman of the century here. He's supposed to look reasonably malnourished and/or lanky, not like the Hulk, not a body builder.
I'm liking the change to the legs you did though, that's definitely happening.
I'm guessing by arm down you mean like topdown the full arm view.
And right now the rig is all wrong due to all the resizing and shaping of the body Iv'e been doing, none of the bones line up and all the polygons are in the wrong places for animation. Once the body is right again I'll fix the rig to match it.
I'm pretty sure he means when you bring the arms down to the characters side, the finger tips land on the knees, instead of the normal place of the mid to lower thigh. This is a pretty common marker used to gauge arm length, since it can be kind of hard to guess with the arms up in a T-Pose.
I suggest proportions closer to this then:
But you could be going for a slightly cute super deformed big head/hands look. But even if you are, those proportions are exaggerations of what the real human looks like, so a lanky character will have a long torso, and probably a small head, big headed proportions tend to make people look short or child like, two signals that don't say "lanky".
You're right though Vig after rereading that he probably did mean with the arms at his sides, I just misunderstood. I really like your paint over's proportions but I wish there were some say to keep his head bigger and still make it work.
I feel like I am scope creeping what was originally meant to be a semi silly looking guy in terms of realism model into grizzled realism and into like something that would fit in with HL2 style and standard of look and texture.
Longer legs/torso like you put with the narrower inwards like Snader showed are a must, I'll do that first and then toy with various versions of head sizes etc.
I'm thinking like... TF2 they look good and human but not in a serious realistic way.
EDIT: Home now, brace for updates.
Lengthened the legs and torso a bit, brought the feet closer together and did other small adjustments. Head hasn't changed size any yet. Shoulders are kinda square in the down position.
Heh, kinda reminds me of Nick from L4D2 or the white suit Tony Montana wore in Scarface. I think I need to lengthen the coat a bit too, it ends too short.
Made a couple of small changes, but its just not capturing the essence of how I want it to look at all. Maybe I should step away from the model and try doodling it for a while, I think Ill do that.
I'm sure you'll have loads of crits for this one but that's not the point here, I haven't actually done any non-texture actual art in so long I'm really rusty. I'm just trying to better get across how he's supposed to look. The face is derped here but oh well, light and shadow on complex objects aren't easy.
I hope this gives a better idea for critiques. Crit the crap out of this piece if you want, it's throwaway anyways. :poly124:
You just jumped into modelling something and are making it up as you go along. It doesn't work like that. Get back to the drawing board and design a character properly. Don't skip steps.
The Team Fortress 2 Characters look that way through extensive design and concepts which led to that model. They didn't just open Maya and model a Heavy straight off the bat. As I said, stop skipping steps.
I tried experimenting with a more exaggerated coat. I don't think it really worked all that well, but its a step closer in the right direction.
I widened the legs pose substantially and brought the arms down to 45 degrees. With the coat flattened out like this its starting to look really good.
Unless there are any major crits or problems with it currently, I'm thinking of cleaning up the topo and moving onto texturing.
Preliminary clothes blockout on shading. Once I get it down pat ill start adding in folds and details.
Penciled in a lot of details sans shading, and cleaned up the blockout substantially. Once I give this all the proper shading and clothing folds comes color next. UVs need tweaking as well.
Nice shiny fancy shoes. I think they look good.
And yeah it's only four fingers right now, I'll probably move up to five once I reach that part in texturing.
I answered this somewhere in the thread but it's because I was having a lot of problems getting the right black/white shading value or tonal value or whatever fancy art term right, and the color was just distracting and getting in the way, it kept getting desaturated when I'd darken or lighten it and it was just a huge painful mess.
This way is much easier for me and it's how I like to do it.
On that note I tried blocking out some folds in the pants but its generally pretty bad.
If anyone has excessive experience with clothing folds that would be great, I couldn't find any decent reference or tutorials about it besides general al purpose stuff in how cloth folds at the most bsaic level.
I know the shadows need to be much deeper. and not randomly placed like they are here.
Deepening the shadows and highlights makes it look visually more appealing but doesn't change the fact that the underlying forms are wrong, but I still cant find any good reference, all the pants online are ironed flat for showing purposes. This is the best one I did find:
I'm done for painting on it tonight, I hope there are some interesting paintovers or references to look at tomorrow.
New set of creases and folds on the pants, this one more closely based on actual pants and less on pulling it out of my butt. Crits anyone?
If anyone would like to help give me some pointers or something that would be great.
Anyways, latest version is much better then before, started looking at pants in games rather then pants on actual people, which wasn't working.
I think its a little too wrinkly in the back so Ill work on that later. I'm thinking larger longer stroke wrinkles suit it better then many small wrinkles.
I'm not seeing this in your texture. All your values are the same... there are no darker grays or lighter areas, you're not figuring out values. You're making everything white and painting the same amount of shadow everywhere. the pants do get darker at the bottom, but that almost comes across as just being over-worked and not intentional.
If this is a later step you add on top, I guess don't worry about it.
About the wrinkles - too many. it looks like it was stuffed at the bottom of the hamper. what you have painted isn't that bad, but needs to be toned down, i think. the ass looks particularly strange, at least in this angled shot. and why is it so bunched in the crotch, as if he were wearing some sort of harness? what is causing that?
I have no idea what is bunching it at the crotch I am guessing that's just how the pants are made because all the pants references I could find have long straight folds leading into the crotch area.
I'm not sure I follow your description of how I am working, I didn't start white I started roughly 128 between black and white and have been adding light and shadow to it. When I was working in color, when I repeatedly lightened and darkened an area it would cause the color to rapidly lose saturation, so I would be constantly going back and re-saturating it. With b/w I don't have this problem, and color will come last.
this might not matter, depending on your methods of coloring it. but looking at it as a gray-scale piece, it's lacking that.
your color shouldn't be losing saturation, unless you lighten/darken by burn/dodge. which you shouldn't do. paint highlights on color by choosing a new color and painting on top of it, same for shadows. don't use white and black on color.
Also new clothing folds. Ignore the seaming at the seams right now, once it looks good I'll paint it out to blend in with the rest.
The biggest problem I am having with the folds/creases right now is that mine are like 99% horizontal lines in the clothing, yet every reference I have has loads of diagonals and folds running vertical on the leg, yet whenever I try to incorporate those, it just comes out looking bad wrong and terrible.
When I am lighting/darkening the base red, I lose that saturated color when repeatedly lightening and darkening the area and cant get it back by mixing the two colors I am flipping between and its a pain to go and select the red again and re saturate.
I still have no idea what you mean by value and shades of grey, could you illustrate what you mean? When I look at my model I see many shades of grey, its not just one flat grey color all over. Do you mean like adding colors into the grey like blue and yellow? I don't understand.
That's only the preliminary paintover, once I have it accurate, then I'll be spending time making it look good.
ok. i thought about it a bit. and if it's a preliminary paintover?... then sure...i gotcha. those folds in the back of the knee area are looking good.
Top images are the too many wrinkles, current legs, and a horribly failed attempt to add vertical folds. Just standing up and looking at my own pants after moving around a bit, all sorts of non horizontal creases appear, so why can't I make that look right?
I am almost to the point of doing a high poly sculpt and baking the AO down onto the incredibly low poly and painting on that because of how hard this is.
New version, I'm still no where near satisfied with it though, but no matter how many times I paint it over It's just not working.
and dont forget to run sharpen filter at the end. it'll help make a lot of the softness tighten up.
New from scratch:
It seems kinda simple now but once I clean it up and add in dirt etc, maybe it will look better?
You have all theses line going up and down, its freaky, doesnt make much sense..Fold follow your body and gravity... Try and blend your.. paint?. together..
Why the seems right there? its the worse place. Strange..
Im not too sure why you are going with grayscale Tbh. But hey,. at this point..
GOodluck
How do you set up your brush exactly maybe? You seem to be getting better results then how I am working mine. Ill try working the pants over again real quick.
Well, I tried to imitate yours but that's all it feels like, an imitation. When I did the face way back when, the first paint over someone did made me really understand light and shadow and how it should look and I could use that to make any face I wanted, but I don't feel like I am learning anything this time, I don't know why I am drawing it like this and it doesn't look very good when I do it either. You said to examine my pants and other stuff but I don't understand because it doesn't look the same. I don't understand -why- so I can't make it look good. Does that make sense?
I also think my pants uvs are getting more and more screwed up each time I adjust them to each new pants paint over, it's really hard to keep them optimized to the shape and fit to the painting and everything, I have to change them pretty much every single paintover.
Repaired the Uvs and tweaked the texture a little bit, your paintover is a part of the texture in this image, I'm trying to understand why it looks good and mine doesn't so that I can fix what I am doing wrong and make my own version.
Maybe try on small pieces where you can consentrate on getting a few folds realy good, instead of the whole pant with ok looking folds.
I know it's frustrating not getting something the way you want but there is no easy fix to it, hard work is the only way.
Keep on working
Maybe i'll try PMing him to see if he can elaborate more.
Also paintover. The back seems wonky to me, even if the front is improved(?)
After examining a bunch of new references, I have a new paint over. I think it's a lot better than before, but could still use some tweaking. The straps on the legs need to be darker and look more strap like and less like part of the fabric for one.
On a side note, 100th post, first time a thread of mine has reached this far. Finally updated my avatar in celebration. :poly142:
On a roll so I did more work on it, as well as added the head back on. With the knowledge gained from the legs, I did some preliminary work on the sleeves and around the arm where it connects.
Thanks! I thought so too. I'm probably going to start working on the coat now. It's sorta blotchy looking around a lot of the dark areas because I was trying out painting on it in the photoshop 3D paint directly on your model thing.
I find it sometimes useful especially when cleaning up seams but I'm working in CS4 and I don't know what it's like in CS5, but it's a pretty alpha feeling feature. Need work, definitely doesn't replace old fashioned painting on the texture map itself.