War for the Overworld: Troll WIP

Patackular

Hello all.

Currently working on this amongst other things. Any critique would be great.



(Troll concept, War for the Overworld)

Progress:

Little work has been completed for the hands and feet. Stomach needs increasing and head/face, rearranging.

Patackular

...no one?

Mike Yevin

that titty ring is disturbing lol, and i cant help notice that the cloth looks like a camel toe.. i would suggest sculpting that assymetrically

oh and try and incorporate a more appealing shilouette, similar to the concept art, right now you still have room to push the wraps on his arms and his torso/upper arms. nice job otherwise :thumb up:

Patackular

Thanks guys

Hboybowen, what do you mean by weird? I can't take credit for the concept, but it would be helpful to hear about what could be improved.

You are the classiest of gentlemen, Mr Yevin. Good point, I'll have to make sure they stand out.

Patackular

Progress:

Rojo

Good progress. That nipple ring is insane.

The muscles in the neck shouldn't be curving around the jawline at that angle. Think about how it functions in practical terms, would it be stabilizing the head if it were bend and limp like that? Grab it between your fingers and feel what it does when you move your head around. Think in those terms considering all the musculature.

The feet don't feel like they're anchored, you might want to play around with the ankle.

Patackular

Haha, it is a bit worrying.

Thanks Rojo, I'll have a play. Grabbing my neck muscle is uncomfortable as hell though.

Baddcog

So that's what ork boobs look like, ewww...

Seriosuly, they look very feminine. Man boobs are very flat and probably more 'squared off at the outsides. It's just a loose pec muscle with saggy skin and fat.

Those are too rounded, too much cleft between them, etc...

Mark Dygert

I know what I would grab in a knife fight, YANK "you can have your teet back when I'm done using it as a door knocker"... I mean, looking pretty good so far, keep working on it.

Patackular

Haha, I'm not getting on your bad side Mark. Thanks guys, I'll have a play around with the boobs. I'll post up some progress, chest in case it needs more work

Patackular

Had some time to move forward with this with the feedback which was great. Projected the normals and started a diffuse. Here he is in UDK.



A lot of work still needs to be done on the skin, particularly in trying to add in different tones, but getting the fur part to have appropriate surface definition has worked quite well.

Let me know what you think :thumbup:

BARDLER

I like the model, it looks really good. The only thing I would suggest is adding a "wetness" to his skin because I picture trolls to have grimy wet skin.

Patackular

Cheers. You're right! I'll have to knock something up in UDK's material editor.

chrisradsby

why would trolls have slimy skin? doesn't make sense xD They would have rough skin, living in harsh condition without any sort of skincare! Good work so far man

Patackular

100th post....woooo....

Yeah, trip to the chemist for Mr Troll. Either way gotta get some specualr information going.

Meanwhile, I've been playing around trying to get this shader set up.

http://www.moddb.com/games/unreal-tournament-3/tutorials/tf2-shading-in-ut3

Ran into a bit of a hitch and I'm not sure what to try



It could be that I've only built the bottom part of this shader and the other parts will solve the issue, but it seemed like the error was unhappy with the 'paramcube' part.

Oniram

EDIT (DELETED) EVERYTHING I SAID BEFORE!

just search cube in the content browser...find any cubemap and plug that into the parameter.

all that does however is just adds some ambient color to the diffuse.. with or without that step it will still work

achillesian

seems a little over saturated in post number 12

Patackular

Ok, thanks Onirum. I'll get around to that soon.

Yeah, Ive been working on the texture some more. Here's the model in Max with the Xouli shader, with my normal map and self-illumination on.

Got plenty of nasty seams but I'm hoping the Max painting tool thingy will take care of those.

Let me know what you think.

Patackular

I managed to set up the TF2 shader, found at ModDB.


However, although the material editor reports no errors, the final result looks very different from the one illustrated.

ModDB:


Troll character:



Although this gives for an interesting effect and gives off a glow that would suit the far distance game view, it appears to be swallowing up a lot of the detail I have pained in.

Oniram

you should multiply the diffuse with the rimlight, instead of (what looks like in the image), your AO. that way the rimlight will be green instead of white. also the entire shader should be plugged into Custom Lighting, the blendmode needs to be set to MLM_Custom.

Neox updated the shader to take out some old techniques that have been replaced or made up for.. and its color commented too.

http://polyphobia.de/public/tutorials/TF2shading/shader.jpg

take a look at that and try to follow the same structure.

Steve Schulze

I'd tone down the contrast on those darker areas of skin quite a bit. Might just be case of needing to reduce the opacity on your ambient occlusion by about 70% and maybe tinting it a little.

achillesian

Diffuse is hurting this alot in my opinion, the shading you're adding in with the diffuse seems too dark, and over done. Try getting a nice amb occ bake out of xnormal maybe to work from.

Patackular

Thanks guys

I'll got on to the diffuse shortly.

Cheers Oniram, I was actually working from that re-work and as far as I can tell, I've followed it accurately.

The MLM_Custom blendmode was a big help but I'm still getting the same overall effect.

I've tidied up the material a bit and taken a enlarged view of it.

Patackular

Update here.

"Well, if you're gonna light like that, then I'm leaving you, you whore!..."

These were the last words I flung at the TF2 shader when I was having no luck in getting it to work.

Instead I've gone for a much simpler build that adds a clamminess to the skin, accentuates the hand-painted look and tints the edges with blue, adding a more fleshy authenticity....I hope.



Well, here's some theory behind blue being used in skin.

http://www.androidblues.com/shadetut.html

I've ramped up the saturation and light information for the cartoon style, hopefully it's not too garish.

odium

That texture really isnt doing it for me. Its almost like a Quake 2 model, in fact, with how much dark blobby shadow there is on the diffuse.

In fact I may even go as far to say the model looked better in the high poly renders BECAUSE it was a nicer even flat colour, and a much nicer colour at that.

EDIT: I just lowered the saturation down 50% and upped the gamma to 1.30 and IMO it looks a hell of a lot nicer.

achillesian

if you're really going for a cartoon style, its time for a redo to be honest. But if you're going for that quasi-real pleasing art style you were initially executing pretty well, I'd make some minor changes, mainly to the diffuse. Here's my quick paint over. Let the engine do the shading, or do a good ambient occlusion bake with xnormal, if you really need the shadows in the diffuse that is.

Patackular

Thanks guys. Helps a lot. Looking at it, it does just come across as really rushed. I think I needed to step back for a second and reassess what I was doing.

I think the 'quasi-real pleasing' style much better suits what I meant.

Patackular

Here's an earlier one.



Should have realised then I was going too heavy :S

B Fatz

Haha don't get too down on yourself, part of being a good artist is being able to take criticism of your work and make changes, at least you're able to do this (unlike a lot of people I see on here)

Patackular

Cheers. I don't see the point in being all defensive about it. It is what it is.

chrisradsby

It's part of the process Texture changes are the quickest ones to do. Just play around with some adjustment layers and see if you can get a nicer result Nice work so far man.

Patackular

Thanks for the support

Here's some changes to Fruit Pastel Man. Hopefully executes a little more subtlety.

Oniram

lookin good.however i think he is still looking a bit too saturated. i really like the dark blotches youve got on the back (not the red ones, the subtle black/darkgreen ones).. see if you could make those a bit more apparent and maybe scatter some bigger ones around the shoulders so it doesnt look so bright and flat colored.

chrisradsby

I agree, too saturated still, it all depends on the scene you'd put the character in but right now it looks a bit too saturated you might want to turn it down just a bit Other than that great work!

Patackular

Thanks guys , finally got around to altering it:

Envart

That looks a lot better to me. The red and the saturated green were clashing.

MephistonX

thats looking awesome pat, much improved !

Patackular

Thanks guys!

yodude87

congrats man from hulk to troll in a couple posts

Torch

I gotta say that 2nd revision of the troll is just so much nicer to look at (I look at a lot of semi naked trolls as you can tell,) the colors just blend a lot better and don't make your eyes bleed. Really cool!

Patackular

Haha, appreciate it. It's been a learning process, for the 1472829th noobery, but who's counting?