Mancubus
Hey All!
I started a new character piece, a revamp of the Mancubus from the original Doom game. I plan on sculpting the character to a finish, then make a lowpoly cage for it and bake the normal map etc.and make it a realtime asset. I'm currently finishing up the sculpting on the fleshy bits, and kinda doodling with the mech bits (i really need some practice on those) and would really appreciate c&c.
I started a new character piece, a revamp of the Mancubus from the original Doom game. I plan on sculpting the character to a finish, then make a lowpoly cage for it and bake the normal map etc.and make it a realtime asset. I'm currently finishing up the sculpting on the fleshy bits, and kinda doodling with the mech bits (i really need some practice on those) and would really appreciate c&c.
Replies
Also have to go with more pipeage: it's generally a prominent feature in Dooom & Quake.
kaoticvisions: thanks! I tought the other versions were a bit too deformed, I really like this concept by Ariokh(?) but i tought i'd go for a less deforemed approach.
http://www.robotvsbadger.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Mancubus_by_ariokh.jpg
I'm still debating the head area, i tried adding some tech bits like pipes there, but they seemed a bit out of place, i'll have to mess with it more tomorrow when i have the time. Also thanks for the tip on the pipeage, i'll most def. add more of it as soon as possible! (especially to cover the junk area
some more work on the fleshy bits, still not final, but gettin there slowly. Tomorrow pipeage and more techbits.
Maybe try pipes coming out from his calf region? I could imagine it dragging along, making a scraping sound, seems like it would be really cool if it was in a game. Also, depending on how you positioned them, it could help make a really cool silhouette.
i say let him be fat. gluttony version of a homonculi !
Succubus deals with seduction, while Mancubus deals with destruction.
yeah. make him be able to shoot from his penis too.
But on a slightly more serious note, I think you could really sell the weight of this guy just by splaying those toes out a bit more.
If you look at this pic here or better yet here of elephants' foot bones. Those outside toes start to shoot out laterally, which IMO would make him feel more planted, like in the concept.
But coolio dude. Cyborgy stuff is always fun.
Also, the rocket launcher needs a bit of love. It should look like a Jet engine rear-ended a chain gun.
Apart from those two crits, it's great!
also, if you really want to make this mancubus scary as hell.
add shoulder rocket launchers. One for each shoulder.
that'll really make this guy seem like a heavy destroyer.
Tea Monster: Thanks for the suggestions, i fully agree about the cannon, it really needs some pimpage, I think i'll play around with it some more, hopefully it'll click if not, back to the drawing board i guess
Robat: nice catch on the triple nip man! it's my favourite part to sculpt :P The feet need work for sure, I added an extra toe there, still doesn't feel too stabile and a bit mushy, i'll have to tweak it some more i guess. Good ref too you posted!
Dashtoronto: that would be so badass.
RJBonner: maybe...
RobbyH: Thanks!
kaoticvisions: Thanks for the good suggestions! i'll def add some more details on this.
Thanks everybody for solid advice, man I love this forum :)Some more work on the tech bits (really need more practice on those, it seems really laborious.) some more sculpting and playing around with the forms a bit.
I'm debating on adding more details on the dude, on the other hand i wanna go nuts with the techy bits and fatrolls and whatnot, but on the other hand i'm afraid that the model will get too cluttered. Still needs much refinement, still not happy about the face, placement of the dick tubes (yeah...) and the feet are a mess.
you really want to make him scary?
make him taller. alot taller
i noodled with the face some more and it seemed to go south really fast, so i tweaked the manface more and the bakc and the feet, unfortunately the legs don't hold too much polies at the highest sdiv so there's not much to be done with this basemesh, so i decided to start working on the lowpoly cage and sculpt the final detail pass on the uv-d and more evenly spaced mesh. the cage is still in very early stages, but i'd appriciate crits on the edgeflow on that ( i didn't add a loops for the eyes, since the eyes will be obscured with the tech junk.
Some nice detailing in places man and the edgeflow's lookin fine from what i can see so far (gonna use it for the low poly bake down too or just a new base for sculpting?).
got the rough cage done for the upper body and did a test bake on the normals right now the fellow is sitting on 2k faces sharp and the textures for the upper part were 1024x1024 with really sloppy uvs some artifacts below the chin and a weird seam issue on the tricep but other than that the bake came out pretty good (?)
the more fat around his stomach is a good idea. Just take his belly button and use that as a center point and using a compass (or imaginary compass) and draw a circle around his belly button perfectly. There you have it. More emphasis on a more prominent belly.
the pipe from the mouth looks retarded. I was actually disappointed when they did this. It sincerely makes him look retarded. I think his face is perfect. I did want to suggest making one more roll of fat under his chin, to emphasis on his obesity. So that he has three chins, instead of two.
lastly, my best idea. Better than the shoulder rocket launchers and increase in height. The mancubus is a spawn of hell, no? Then, my idea would be to create a face and mouth where his belly button is. A demon's face if you will. Don't make his eyes where his nipples are. That would ruin it. Put his eyes underneath his chest, in the stomach region and his mouth in the stomach region too. The mouth would shoot fireballs or something. Also, just to minimize confusion: Yes, this means he would have two faces.
Something like this for a general idea:
lastly, his implanted mechanical eyes don't suit him. I would suggest making his eyes just pure black whole pupils to emphasis on his evil nature.
Lastly, if you do accept the demon's face on his stomach region idea. To take it even further, would be to have a mechanical tongue/apparatus coming out of his mouth with an eye that shoots at the end of it.
Good luck!
Dashtoronto: you have a beautiful mind
got the cage and unwrap done to the fleshy bits, and started the mech parts it seems like the unwrap is going to be a pain in the ass, since i messed around with it for the whole afternoon and got really fucked up results. Yay.
I also started doing the lowpoly version of the mech parts etc. with less than stellar results. I made a few test bakes with xnormal, and the results were abysmal as illustrated below. The first row of images illustrates the results with obj cage that was done from the lowpoly cage (scaled up a notch) the layout is really messy still and the unwrapped items were wonky, but there were really anoying artefacts and it seems like some polies were messed up somehow (blue channel went haywire) the cage looked fine when viewed in xnormal, but when the cage was sufficiently scaled up to capture the high rez details all of the tangent map went green. The lowest row shows the result from blender, horrible still, but no artefacts atleast. Does anyone have any idea what's going on i'm going crazy.
here's some of that sweet sweet normalmap goodnes applied to the cage, next gen baby!!
I think, perhaps, make him shorter and fatter. And more demonic. I do like it so far, though - for sure.
The modeling is excellent but personally I like Mancubus shorter with stumpy legs. So then his guns drag on the floor. You could also give his guns more weather and maybe dents.
I don't know what's going on with your normal map, but I use a combination of Blender and xNormal myself; in my experience, you don't need any cages for baking, just a bit of frontal ray distance, so you can try to do without and see if the results are better.
Also sure the "Use cage" option is checked in.
Avoid Blender's beta OBJ exporter if you can, it's very buggy.
Urbanmelon: I see what you mean, i will work on the proportions more, but i'm not going fora super obese type of build more of a morbidly obese, for some reason it just doesn't make sense to me make him so fat that it would be impossible for him to move. The head issue is something i need to work on more, thanks for pointing that out!
Zwebbie: thanks for the help! it seems like the whole mesh is corrupted somehow, i've had no problem with exporting meshes to Xnormal and baking maps from blender before. The discard backfaces-hits option didn't help in this instance nor using anything else, guess it would be quicker to remodel the whole thing than to trouble shoot this further.
Odium: Thanks for the crit, will work on it.
looprix: thanks man! i see what you mean with the stumpy legs, it would be true to the original char for sure, but somehow it doesn't quite sit well with me, having kinda hard time figuring out how he would move and all
Joopson: Thank you for the kind words and crits, I think i'll ad some more fat to the build, but prob. not as much as the original had
Baby steps forward not too much time today to work on this
edit: is it customary to show wp shots in orthographic view? all the shots now are with perspective on in zbrush
or the image of mcdonald's guy i posted.
but good job, otherwise.
and lol @ his penis. I can't believe you actually drew that.
and about the penis, how could i resist, decided that i wouldn't bother with the fupa approach and make him anatomically correct (sorta) Do you think that makes him somewhat less menacing?
some more work on the diffuse, and minor sculpting. I made a realitme shader for the model and baked the maps. more sculpting to come and diffuse enhancements. Baby steps...
Viewport grab in Blender
Also, more importantly,
the thing that's missing is....
his two guns are really small. They lack a menacing appearance. I would suggest making them twice as long and also twice as thick to give them a more powerful and more menacing look. (meaning a significant increase in number of rotating barrels for each chain gun)
if you see in the below image. you'll see what i mean...(the guns are longer and look much bigger)
I agree having a bigger belly would be good to have.
Keep it up!
If "ok" = good enough.. then the transition between his arms and guns is good enough.
If I was you and you were me.. I would say.. ney, you! "ok" is not good enough - I'm going to make the transition more dynamic, even if it means remodeling some of my awesome hard surface rings with holes in them in such a way that it's not just a line but that there are interesting shapes from the gun creep up in a staggering manner towards the shoulder..or something
I don't know - it's nit picking. It's pretty solid - keep it up!
I'd suggest upgrading to 2.55 (or grab one of the latest builds off of Graphicall). The other option is to take a copy of the mesh to 2.49b (the last non-beta version). You'll loose animation data, but you are just after a decent mesh to get into X-Normal. Once you've got that, you can continue working on the original in 2.5x.
One thing with Blender that I found works well is to make the normals visible (with those blue lines sticking out of the faces). For some reason, Cntrl-N works better when you do that. Also, if you do have back-facing faces, you can actually see which ones are the offenders and individually flip them. Hit the 'N' key in the 3D window and its under 'Mesh Display'.
dekorh: Thanks man! Solid crits, now that i got the mechbits somewhat in order i plan on revisiting the sculpt, the hand stumps need work good point. I think i'll make the flesh entangle to the machine bits and add some clapms, maybe that will work
MattLichy: Thanks! +1 duely noted for more fat
Dashtoronto: you bet! i plan on adding a grinning mouth to the model as soon as i'm finished with the relaxed pose (and rotten teeth too!) I hear you about the guns, but i'll prob leave the as they are, i'll add some more details with nDo for sure.
got the lowpoly model for the techbits working + unwrap and some diffuse work done
OpenGL render from the viewports + sharpen in post
PogoP: Thank you!
gonna call this one done, thanks for everyone for good crits and comments! they really helped! This was really a good learning experience for me, really need to nail the design before finalizing heh
beauty
viewport
wires
click for turntable
http://vimeo.com/19594406
i have to say though that the beauty shot is looking rather blurry and low quality compared to the other wip shots you've posted up (this could be because of resizing or image compression, but i figured id point it out). also there is some odd poly distribution at a few places, like some excessive loops around the waist area, a harsh transition from the arms to the cannons, and it looks like you could probably use a few less edges for some of the cylinders making up the guns. other than that the model is ace