WIP: Military Charcter

AliasOpilo

Hey guys,

I'm not usually one for showing my work, but if I'm ever going to progress i need to get some constructive criticism.

Below are a couple of images of a character that i am currently working on for a related UDK project. I am currently in the Zbrush stage of the designing but it would be great to get an outside perspective if theres anyone out there willing to do so before i continue on any more.

MainManiac

I think you need more 'lift' from the peck to the upper abs. Looks good, pants in the back seem awkwardly wrinkled though.

neck muscles going from behind the jaw to the clavicle seem a little too inclined, they go down and fan out instead of turning like you have it.

Nizza_waaarg

looks mega similar to that richard smith tutorial, right down to the boots, backpack and folds on the pants (not necessarily a bad thing but kinda seems like it was based on that, more than some more appropriate ref in certain areas).

Atm it's lookin a little messy, could do with a solid smoothing over pass and refining some larger/longer folds across the pants, just so it's a little easier to read.
Laces on the boots and a seam running downt he sides of the pants might help tie it all together too.
Other thing that stands out is the shoulder straps on the bag should be alot further apart towards the shoulders considering how loose the pack is (hope that makes sense).

Would also try pulling the belt and top of the pants up a bit too if you can. Torso is looking a little on the long side and the pelvis isn't reading as being long enough.
Helmet's a bit of an odd shape and seems a bit small. I always have massive probs with trying to do military type helmets tho, pain in the ass to get the shapes right ^^


Anyways, hope that helps. Good effort so far, some cleaning and touching up areas could really help fancy it up

AliasOpilo

@ Nizza_waaarg I see what you mean about the richard smith tutorial (had a google after you said). It wasnt something that i specifically looked at but it could be in my ref image folder somewhere.

What you and frell said about the pants is something ill crack on with straight away as well as all the other comments which are very fair.

Cheers for the help so far very much appreciated.

Mark Dygert

I don't know how else to say this, but it looks like his ass became a vacuum and his clothing was a plastic bag. I'm not only talking about all of the folds converging in his pucker hole, but everything is so tightly constrained and sucked into ever gap instead of crossing over it.

His skin in this way too vacuum sealed, its not normal to get the type of muscle definition on the bicep /shoulder where it folds back in on itself. Skin typically stretches over gaps and slides around ontop of the muscles. It's important to remember that skin doesn't follow muscle down into the bone, its stretched over the surface.

Now granted, you want to exaggerate some of the details so they aren't lost when you bake but what you're baking you want to be accurate to human physiology.

DDuckworth

You're not off to a bad start, a lot better than what most people have that are bashful to show their work. My biggest crits are his clothing, his shirt seems way too tight, it's like his muscles are a vaccuum to his shirt, now that's not really a bad thing because shirts can be tight, but if they are tight they usually aren't covered in wrinkles, one or the other take your pick. The pants have a similar problem, they seem like they are defying gravity, overall they are tight and wrinkle covered randomly, in the crotch the pants are getting sucked up into him, let them droop a little, give him some wiggle room if you know what I mean.

Remember that wrinkles occur for a reason, areas from the waist to knee are usually fairly wrinkle free, sure they have a crease or two but just barely, not full on wrinkle, then the kneww usually gets a lot in the back of the leg since that's where pants are stressed the most, and then it's pretty straight until the ankle where of course it's wrinkled due to the boots. Some of the shapes you have in the wrinkles overall seem random and not the way pants bend on a typical basis.

The backpack looks nice, you seem to have gotten the wrinkles a lot better on that in all the right places.

For what I think is the mustache it looks like a slug on his face, I know this could just be a placeholder though, but you might want to just plain consider taking it off and doing that part in maya/max with fur.

The helmet strap, i'm guessing you either plan to mirror or it's supposed to be broken off on one side? If it's a one strap helmet then it looks too short to reach to the other side.

Hope that helps you get a look from an outsiders perspective, keep it up, this piece has plenty of room to grow ^_^

DDuckworth

Bahahaha mark as soon as I hit reply yours popped up above me with the same comment!

AliasOpilo

@Mark Dygert: I get what your saying about the vacuum thing, Ill try and tone this down especially on the shirt.

The pants seem to be the main areas that everyone feels needs the most improvement, and to be fair more reference should have been used in the first place.

@DDuckworth: The mustache is something that i want to keep on the character but i am uncertain of the best approach for its creation as its going to be used in UDK (max fur work in UDK?). I could better whats already there or use alpha plains (which seems to be the unreal method).

Again i appreciate everyone taking the time to reply.

DDuckworth

Yeah you can keep it, i wasn't saying to get rid of it entirely I would suggest going with the "Dominic Santiago" method but here is a resource for whatever method you want to go with

http://wiki.polycount.com/HairTechnique?action=show&redirect=Hair+Techniques

Overall it really comes down to two choices, poly hair or alpha planes, either can look fine but poly hair often fits a more cartoony/stylized character more than a realistic one like this one. When it comes to alpha planes it's all the same idea just different techniques on how to achieve it for different looks, take your pick!

AliasOpilo

I have retopologised my model and have an almost finalized base mesh.

The model consists of four layers, clothing, skin, muscles and bones, with the idea being to demonstrate the character being damaged through material transitions using Unreal.

The model with the clothing, helmet, bag is 16k tris, with the addition of the muscles and skeleton the total is 29k tris.

Hopefully the images below will better illustrate what i am talking about.

AliasOpilo

Its been a little while since i updated, but i now have something to show just bare in mind this is pretty much the first time iv tried to make a human character.

The following images are the result of some fun time in UDK.















and also a video: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS83CU2AUZI"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS83CU2AUZI[/ame]

bludragon

The cloth folds on his pants seem a bit unatural.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6IKYPrHDz0[/ame]

Heres a good video i found on ytube on the subject, (even though you might not revisit the already textured version, would be good to keep handy for future reference)

AliasOpilo

Cheers for that it will definitely come in handy for next time.

Ahrkey

Cool idea with the muscle/bone damage thingy. Makes me wonder what bones actually look like "fresh". Are they really bright white/yellow? I'll leave the googling up to you

Reventius

Funnily enough, the new Mortal Kombat game has pretty much exactly the same damage modeling system that you've set up. And, to my knowledge, they're also using the Unreal Engine. Here's an example of what I mean.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdcCdkwx-CM"]Smoke's Fatality[/ame]

Looks good though for your first human character! Keep it up.

AliasOpilo

@qlz i know what you mean. I originally went alone the lines of having the bones bloody, but for the this concept/demo i wanted to show a clear distinction between all of the layers

AliasOpilo

@Reventius thats pretty messed up! I had no idea that MK had done this until i saw the demo, pretty crazy stuff :P

Slaught

The Wolverine:Origins game also had a similiar system.

AliasOpilo

@Slaught this approach was derived from both X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Bulletstorm. Both of them have characters that have internal geometry and use materials in this way.

AliasOpilo

Iv also made a second character that ill put into a separate thread later on. But for now heres another video (bit short) that shows the materials working in a slightly different way.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlq2oDQ8TV4[/ame]

I am going to go back and adjust the speed at that the clothing disintegrates, at the moment its really past compared to this skin damage.