Low poly characters- demon princess and steed

primativ

I am making a low poly version of a charcter concept I made for dominance war 3. I am looking for some professional critiques of my poly distribution and modeling. Any improvement to the character design are also welcome. Here are the original concepts.



Here are some screen shots of the models in max. I am aiming for a hero character poly count for the princess and steed individualy. The saddle will be part of the steeds poly count but will stay a separate object. Let me know if more information or images are needed.

Demon princess


Demon steed

primativ

Just a bump for the tuesday crowd, still need some advice.

chrisradsby

Well tell us more about your plan: Do you plan to sculpt the character? or just go for a low-poly+texturing work?

praetus

Your polygon layout is pretty solid. I don't have much to critique except that her thighs look kind of weird near the loin cloth. Kind of like they jut out really sharp. I'm curious to now what the final goal is on this for texturing? If you go for a handpainted feel I think it could pull this together. The design of her "steed" is bit too off the wall or comical for something realistic.

primativ

chrisradsby- I want to create and unwrap the low poly model first and then take it into mudbox for the detailing. I'll take the normal maps from mudbox and do an ambient lighting texture bake in max, then take that into photoshop and color all the parts of the map.

praetus- I wanted these to be more on the realistic side of things. When you say handpainted what would be a good example of that look? Should I just avoid using photos?

Thanks

praetus

I think a good example might be darksiders. It has a very comic book style feel without being overly cartoony. My main concern with this is textures that are either too sharp or just don't fit the style of your modeling. You concept looks somewhat comic style to me (no offense I don't mean that to be derogatory) and because of that I wouldn't personally go towards the photoreal side of things.

This is just my personal opinion though. By all means try some things out and go with what you like.

primativ

praetus- I think you make a good point. I googled the Darksiders models and I agree that they have a good texture style for my models.

Time to start unwrapping!

primativ

Last time I posted on this thread I had not yet started unwrapping. Now I have learned to sculpt in mudbox and bake textures. These are my first low poly characters I have made in a long time and the first ever to use normal mapping.

The princess has changed from a fiery red to an oceanic blue. I ended up changing the colors on the princess based on a friends critique. Although now I wonder if she looks too Navi'.

I have had more time to work on these since I was laid off in April, so if anyone knows a company in the Virginia/North Carolina area that needs a modeler let me know.

sybrix

First off, that steed monster thing is freakin sweet.

Now with that out of the way, I think your color schemes are too analogous. The colors used on the princess character and her gear lack saturation and contrast. Especially the details on her back tentacle thingies. You can barely see the striped detailing on them from a distance. If her armor pieces and the creature's helm are made of metal then I think that they are too diffuse. Metal has sharper shadows and more intense specular.

Same goes for the mount creature. His colors are too flat. Play around with a broader color scheme, like a different color for the underside of his thorax(?) to break up the sea of flat green. Maybe paint in some shading around the head area and the tip of his creepy spider legs, etc. Basically more color and depth/shading in the textures!

I also kinda want to see the squid thing helm's skin texture looking more "wet" and.. squidy.

Can you post your texture maps?

edit: Here's a quick and dirty Photoshop example, i would push it even more, but then again I'm obsessed with color. :}

primativ

Thanks for the crit sybrix, I will try out your suggestions. Here are the texture maps.





Here is the same models rendered with only default max lighting as opposed to the mental ray renderer from the other renders. I think this is closer to how a game engine would light them although I am not absolutely sure as I haven't tried them in any yet.

OtrickP

Nice concept, good models too, very clean. my only suggestion is (will be a pain in the ass) maximizing UV space, especially if its a low res model. I like the color scheme as well. Keep it up!

primativ

I changed the maps per sybrix's advise. I really like how the steed came out but I am on the fence with the princess. What does everyone else think?

Alberto Rdrgz

a lot of wasted space on ur UVs man.

jmt

If you had a more close-up shot of the face, I could specifically critique it, but right now I can just say that it looks kind of strange- the mouth, nose, eyes, neck and overall face shape.

I think that the skin contrast looks WAY too high in the specular areas. Having too much spec on skin is one of the mistakes a lot of students make. I do think that there should be more variation of colors, but this would be done through costume or maybe different skin materials/details, not from cranking up the levels.

This isn't really a bad thing, and non-3d people wouldn't notice, but your skin tone looks almost identical to the colors of a tangent space normal map. It makes sense for a blueish skin tone to be a bit teal in the highlights and a bit more purple in the shadows, but I don't think I've ever seen anything so similar to having the normal map as the color channel.

The monster is a lot cooler looking than the girl, but it too suffers from having the same sort of lack of variation in the design, materials etc. It's kind of hard to explain this, but look at 3d models that place high in dominance war or other contests and compare them side to side with your models. They all have very interesting form, details, varied materials that yours seem to be lacking.

You called this "Low Poly" but it doesn't seem very low to me. How many tris? In fact, it seems like you have a lot of edge loops that aren't doing a ton. Some would help with deformation, but aren't adding much form. The monster's arms have very long rectangular quads. There should be more edge loops going around his arms, especially near the elbows, and less going up/down . There are other areas as well like the monster's spikes, legs, little leg things and the bent over abdomen area.

primativ

JMT

Here a better look at the face. Her expression is a neutral pose at this point as I have not rigged her yet. Give me an idea of what needs fixed.

Trust me I didn't use the normal map for the diffuse even though there are similarities:)

The demon steed with saddle is 12186 tris and the princess is 14476 tris. I was making these with the idea that they would have hero character polycounts similar to God of War on ps3.

Thanks for the crit!

jmt

The sternocleidomastoids seem to stand out way too much. Her neck seems kind of long and thin.

I don't see anything about the face that really stands out as a major error, but a lot of little flaws that add up to make the face not as good as it could be. Her mouth is in an awkward position. You want it to be a neutral pose, but it looks like she's making an "E" sound. Also, the lip color extends too far away from the corners of her mouth. The eyebrows don't look that feminine. The form of the nose doesn't seem that appealing. It's kind of stubby. The shape of the eyes could be a lot better, the eyelashes are a solid piece and her irises are massive. Her cheekbones are also very bulbous and wide. I can see what you're going for, but all of these proportions don't come together as a whole as well as they could.

Look at real life reference. Take an image of a girl that you want her to look like and put it next to your model. Really take a good look at determine exactly what need to be fixed to make it look better. 2d and 3d art can also be helpful if you want to make her stylized - Jason Chan, David Rapoza and Slipgatecentral to name a few.

P442

Aside from what others have said, I don't believe the models or textures have a clear style. The work isn't quite realistic, nor is it stylized/cartoony. It has elements of both in a mish mash that doesn't really work. Also, the design is uninteresting. Let's take the queen for example. She is pretty much a sexy woman with a funny hat. Ok, she has tentacles on her back, but it just makes her look like a sea creature more than a demon queen. Personally, I would suggest combining her monster with the queen to create something very sexually unappealing and non human. I would also lose the tattoo OR completely cover her in tattoos. Also, let's be real here. Have you ever seen a tattoo like that? that is one solid color and just a silhouette?
Ask yourself some questions. Why does she even have a tattoo? Why does she have an alien squid hat? Why does her creature have a robot head? What is her armor made of? I cannot tell. What is the purpose of her tentacles? Please think about these things, and if you do not have a good explanation those elements should be changed.

jmt

P442: I agree with everything you said, but tattoos like that are common. Google image search "black dragon tattoo". They're usually ugly, though. The shape is strange and it doesn't really flow with her body, which is pretty much the most important thing about tattoos. I don't like the hind legs and tail especially

Something else I realized: How would she sit on that saddle? It looks extremely uncomfortable. Are those spike things handles?

HAL

In addition to what the others said about the facial features/body shape and the lack of a constant style of the textures they look extremely blurry.

It doestn seem to be based on a too low texture resolution though but

a) on a lack of contrast like jmt mentioned

b) on an overuse of small brushes scaled up too much or blurred down random noise

Keep it up!

Roepetoepa

Hmm the proportions of your character are a bit off man, mostly facialy ...
Good luck with the competition tho !

primativ

Well I finally got around to rigging and posing my models but never remembered to post them here. So these shots are a few months old but I'd still like to get some thoughts. I hope these clear up the mystery of how she rides this steed.









JMT- I worked on shortening her neck and making the muscles less bulging. I also took your advice and used a real reference for her head.

HAL - I think some of my contrast issues came from from the poor render setup, I think I've improved.

Dimfist

Looks like bad porn from that last pic. Just saying lol I think my main critique is what a lot of other people have said. The anatomy is a little wonky at parts and the color palette isn't dynamic enough. Why is there a squid on her head? What are the other themes that characterize her? She has shells on her breasts, but and a squid head but her fingers are not webbed and she has no gills or other obvious fishy type features. The mount looks like a sci-fi scorpion. I'm just tossing these out there because I feel you are lacking a unification of themes. Also, from how she is posed (bad porn) its apparent that she wouldn't be able to sit comfortably on the mount. Each idea on its own is decent, specifically the mount, but together I think it make sno sense.

primativ

Dimfist- Thanks for the critique, which parts of her anatomy needs fixing? How could I make the colors more dynamic, any quick fixes?