2010 Comicon: Valkyrie [Big Pics Ahoy]
polycounter lvl 12
Hey dudes, heres my entry for comicon this year over at GA.
I picked Valkyrie, but decided 2048 and 12k poly's was an opportunity to cram in way more shit than a viking chick with a braid and spear, so i overhauled her from top to bottom in a style that I enjoyed more.
I took inspiration from Aion, Genzoman's wicked illustrations, Shunya Yamashita's female face illustrations.
Shes under budget at around 11,200 which I was really surprised with at the end, I should have used those extra tris to round out some more of the armour pieces but i didnt really know how heavy the wings were going to be before I actually started blocking them out, in the end they are barely 100 tris each!!
By that time I had literally no time to go back to the mesh and start cutting stuff back in.
Beauty Shot
Presentation Shot
Textures
( Am working on a decent wireframe and a 360 spin to post up so you can get a real sense of scale from her wings etc)
Everything is hand painted except for the light dirt overlay on the metal. And i havent used any renderers for any of these shots - just straight viewport grabs from max using xoliul's badass shader which is totally free for both max and maya.
For my beauty shot I painted smoke using a photoshop smoke tutorial I found on the web, and for the 'particles' I simply found a pic of a night sky with bajillions of stars on it, scaled them up to 3 different sizes and erased which ones i didnt want to help give that illusion of depth.
After working until 4:00am on it i looked at it in the morning and saw that it looks like shes underwater.... doh! but hey thats how I rolled.
Lessons learnt from this comp:
* Wings that work nicely are fucking hard to pull off, no rigger in their right mind would be happy with trying to make what ive done work nicely.. heh.
* Trying to work with a character that has a massive silhouette in its entirety can be frustrating, I want to show her face but that would mean cutting off her wings, or cranking up the perspective or finding some strange angle to shoot her at etc.
* I underestimated the time it would takes to present a character like this.
Some WIPS and other goodies
Thanks for looking dudes, hope you like!
I picked Valkyrie, but decided 2048 and 12k poly's was an opportunity to cram in way more shit than a viking chick with a braid and spear, so i overhauled her from top to bottom in a style that I enjoyed more.
I took inspiration from Aion, Genzoman's wicked illustrations, Shunya Yamashita's female face illustrations.
Shes under budget at around 11,200 which I was really surprised with at the end, I should have used those extra tris to round out some more of the armour pieces but i didnt really know how heavy the wings were going to be before I actually started blocking them out, in the end they are barely 100 tris each!!
By that time I had literally no time to go back to the mesh and start cutting stuff back in.
Beauty Shot
Presentation Shot
Textures
( Am working on a decent wireframe and a 360 spin to post up so you can get a real sense of scale from her wings etc)
Everything is hand painted except for the light dirt overlay on the metal. And i havent used any renderers for any of these shots - just straight viewport grabs from max using xoliul's badass shader which is totally free for both max and maya.
For my beauty shot I painted smoke using a photoshop smoke tutorial I found on the web, and for the 'particles' I simply found a pic of a night sky with bajillions of stars on it, scaled them up to 3 different sizes and erased which ones i didnt want to help give that illusion of depth.
After working until 4:00am on it i looked at it in the morning and saw that it looks like shes underwater.... doh! but hey thats how I rolled.
Lessons learnt from this comp:
* Wings that work nicely are fucking hard to pull off, no rigger in their right mind would be happy with trying to make what ive done work nicely.. heh.
* Trying to work with a character that has a massive silhouette in its entirety can be frustrating, I want to show her face but that would mean cutting off her wings, or cranking up the perspective or finding some strange angle to shoot her at etc.
* I underestimated the time it would takes to present a character like this.
Some WIPS and other goodies
Thanks for looking dudes, hope you like!
Replies
Easily one of the best pieces I've seen in a long time. That beauty shot goes further than just being a 'good model technically and aesthetically' it's a piece of fucking art dude.
Nice to see a bit of Xoliul action too in a world becoming quickly overpopulated with a certain primate ;p.
I especially enjoy the work on her face and her beautyfull eyes. Lovely. Also the wings are impressive. I also like the simplicity of her armor. Not overdone with ornaments and such. It fits nicely.
I guess the special effects on her spear in the beauty shot are painted. Or did you some particle effect magic to get the effects into 3d?
The face is one of my favorite parts, especially the eyes and lips!
Also I love the wings. Is each "feather" a plane that you moved the vertexes around for? Sorry I'm new to the modeling scene and was just wondering haha.
Great job anyways!
Slave Zero: Thanks man, yeah the smoke and particles are added in photoshop after the screengrab - I really like Xoliuls shader, very little post work involved in any shot once some good lights have been setup!
Charlie: Haha yeah man you got it pretty much - each plane is moved around and placed individually until i found the right volume that I was after for the wing. It was much more challenging that i thought it would be, and i imagine it would be alot more challenging to make a wing that actually works well animated - that will be the next step!
Sampson: thanks dude, Your right i should have cut those things out of the helmet - always next time!!
Thanks again guys, stoked you like her
Congratulations on getting top row you deserve it for this awesome piece.
Shotgun: Replicating a comic hero would be pretty boring for me, and I cant bring myself to just make a duplicate of something thats already been made dozens of times every comicon. I like this kinda direction more, and its the best I could do in 5 weekends of free time, sorry to dissapoint, will try harder next time, and hope to see your entry next time too
Anyhow, great job on the entry!
What shader is that and how can I get a hold of that?
dkreset: Dude haha, so I didnt even notice that until a couple of days after I composited the final shot!!!!
Bradmyers82: Thanks for the crit - if you could elaborate on why you think the face is more stylised than the rest that would be helpful thanks!. Regarding the shader, its Mental Ray SSS shader applied to a realtime arm - not a realtime shader. Your the first person to point that out, but now that you have, ive realised its not very explanatory is it!?! Ill fix that up! thanks man!