Low-spec Mortal Kombat Characters
polycounter lvl 12
Following a school assignment in making low-spec models, I thought it'd be fun to keep going and practice making low-poly characters... Since I'm an old Mortal Kombat fan (not to mention super hyped for the upcoming game), I decided I'd recreate some MK characters, starting with the cast of MK1. 
I've finished all playable characters (plus Reptile), so up next is Goro and Shang Tsung, before I start tackling everyone in MK2.
Following the lead of the school assignment, I've used a maximum of 500 tris for each model, and a single 128x128 diffuse map. I'm planning to use ~700 tris for bigger characters like Goro - we'll see how that works out I guess.
I guess there's a limit to how many pictures I can post, so check out the rest at my Picasa gallery.
I've finished all playable characters (plus Reptile), so up next is Goro and Shang Tsung, before I start tackling everyone in MK2.Following the lead of the school assignment, I've used a maximum of 500 tris for each model, and a single 128x128 diffuse map. I'm planning to use ~700 tris for bigger characters like Goro - we'll see how that works out I guess.
I guess there's a limit to how many pictures I can post, so check out the rest at my Picasa gallery.
Replies
johnny cage's facial expression is the win
Care to share some wires and flats?
marq4porsche: Yeah, I know what you mean with the shadows. I was pretty pressured for time doing these, so I didn't have time to fix everything that I wanted, but I will definitely keep it in mind for future models.
Slaught: I haven't had the time to grab any pics of the wireframes, but I'll make sure to do so when I can. Stay tuned.
agreed on the shadows and in fact I sorta feel some of it's a little monochromatic. You have a nice richness to the skin on sonya but I feel like the dudes could use a touch more color variation unless it's just my shitty work monitor.
Great work!
These are friggin awsome though. great job!
and here i was hoping it would be for a new upcoming game coming out :P
+1
Your shadows are both really black (use more color) and really strong. It looks like everyone with white pants spilled some ink in their drawers.
Tone them down and work a bit of color into them and they'll read as much more vibrant.
Great work, still
never was a fan of MK (played it as a kid, thats about it!), but sat down the other day and played through the newest demo with a friend.. was totally just pure FUN..
love the characters, skinning on reptile and his shoulders (unless its just you moving verts for the pose! cheater!!) looks sweet
now somebody make a level!!
and I'll get to animating these! ;D
then we've got ourselfs a Mortal...erm...Combat, for the sake of not infringing on any copyrights! ;D
we'll be milionares!! milionares I tells ya!!
Not sure about the best way to present wires/flats but I hope this'll do:
Funky Bunnies, Ghostscape: Duly noted. I was trying to get some decent colour ramps on all the textures, but in hindsight (whether it's your shitty work monitor or not) I agree that they are pretty monochromatic and that I'd need to push it further. I will probably leave these as-is since I'd rather soldier on and get more new stuff done than go through endless iterations on these same dudes, but I will definitely keep it in mind.
uneditablepoly: The models and textures were all completed over the course of five days, but I had to rush a few things as well as put in a decent amount of overtime to get it all done on time (hence some of the problem areas like dark shadows on textures that I'm aware of but wasn't really able to fix). Seeing as I'm actually busy with other things now though (also, not totally insane), I wouldn't expect anything approach a similar tempo for future models. There's a fair amount of stuff I can reuse though, so hopefully I can keep posting new things at a decent clip.
thatanimator: No cheating! Well.. kind of. I did not move any vertices manually, but I did tweak the skinning to make it look as good as I could for each character's individual pose since I wasn't going to actually animate them.
I have actually entertained the idea of recreating some levels to go with these characters, it'd give me a chance to practice some skill sets I'm less confident with... but maybe I shouldn't get ahead of myself. :P I'd be happy to let you work your magic on them though ;D
This is cool and this is what all students should learn from the beginning. Really stellar work.
ONLY crit is what some have said about you shadows beeing a bit too dark and"colour burn"''ish. Adding a blue tint would take you 1 minute with a colour layer.
Colours are merely a test, still working on the shading, getting all the shapes and anatomy right... as "right" as you can get a dude with four arms anyway! Final tricount is 671, comfortably within the "700-ish" limit I'd set for myself. Texture is 256x256 for now, but will be shrunk to 128x128 for the final. C&C welcome!
- BoBo
Bravo
I hope the issues that the earlier textures had are not as prevalent this time around, but I have to say I did struggle a bit with the skintones.
(couldn't be arsed to rig him for now - will pose him with Shang Tsung when he's done)
Up next is probably Shang Tsung, but I might just wait a little with him and simply go ahead and start with some of the easier MK2 characters first...
jeffro: Don't worry.
Anyway, just wanted to share some of what I've been working on since last time. Here is MK1 Shang Tsung as of now:
Currently 478 tris, but it may change slightly as I optimize or change certain details. Well within my self-imposed 500 tri limit, anyway.
I love painting textures so even though I'm not done with Shang Tsung I couldn't help but start on some MK2 stuff. :P Here is what I've got done on MK2 Liu Kang:
It is mostly based on the MK1 version but I did a lot of tweaking on the texture for the upper body. Shadows should look far less pronounced and the anatomy looks a lot more realistic. There's tweaking to be done yet, but please let me know what you think so far.
Hopefully Shang Tsung will be done soon, so I can get him and Goro posed and ready, and move on to MK2 proper.
great job!
You should create an enviroment!
Should have final posed pictures of him and Goro by the end of the week. Then it's on to MK2 proper... and maybe, if I'm crazy enough, some kind of environment? ;P
Thanks again for all comments.
Now I can move on to MK2 characters with a clean conscience... ^^