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Low-spec Mortal Kombat Characters

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  • conte
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    conte polycounter lvl 18
  • badmouse
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    badmouse polycounter lvl 8
    OMG! me too im a big big fan of MK series, the new one really rock!

    Yours hyper low poly chars looks amazing keep going with MK2 chars!

    I can't wait to see Shao Khan and Motaro!

    2 questions :

    1. How you make the rotation gifs? Looks like the frames aren't from a render. Do you capture frame per frame by hand?

    2. The textures looks amazing. Can you post 1 texrure for see how you work ?
    Are you using layers in psd or just 1 single amage without multiply or screen layers?

    Sorry fir the quwstions but i love how they look.

    Actually im working in Kai from MK4 ;)
  • Bruno Afonseca
    I´m also curious about the textures. Do you paint them on grayscale and then apply gradient maps into them? That´s what it looks to me!
  • Jigsaw
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    Jigsaw polycounter lvl 12
    Thanks for the comments!

    For the turntable gifs, I simply do a playblast of a 24 frame 360 degree turn, save it in an image format I can open in Photoshop, then use PS to crop the images and make a gif animation out of them.

    When doing the textures I generally start out with a basic ambient occlusion bake to get some idea of how to define the shapes, and colour flats to block out the different parts of the character's outfit. From there I paint everything in black and white, for the most part having a separate layer for each part of the outfit, or just creating new layers whenever convenient. Once the B&W is done, I use the hue/saturation adjustment to give it colour, and the colour balance adjustment to adjust the colour ramps so the texture doesn't look entirely monochromatic.

    At the moment I'm done with MK2 versions of Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, Raiden and Sub-Zero, but I'm holding off posting them until I get a few more completed. The next time I post some pics I can include some kind of step-by-step picture on how I paint my textures, if there's interest.
  • felipefrango
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    felipefrango polycounter lvl 9
    Jigsaw wrote: »
    The next time I post some pics I can include some kind of step-by-step picture on how I paint my textures, if there's interest.

    There definitely is, I'd love to see it. :D
  • MephistonX
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    MephistonX polycounter lvl 9
    +1 to seeing the tutorial

    awesome work!
  • drelectro
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    drelectro polycounter lvl 8
    absolute great work man! love the crispness and colour values on your textures!
    +1 for the tutorial
  • badmouse
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    badmouse polycounter lvl 8
    absolutely amazing! thank you Jigsaw! i can't wait for the mini tutorial and MK2 characters :)
  • Jigsaw
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    Jigsaw polycounter lvl 12
    Hey folks, just wanted to pop in and say that I'm not dead, and I'm still working on this stuff. Between end-of-semester stress and lack of internet access at home I haven't had a chance to post here lately, but work has been progressing slowly but steadily. Expect pictures of some of the MK2 characters as well as some sort of makeshift step-by-step explanation of my texturing progress before too long.
  • badmouse
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    badmouse polycounter lvl 8
    thanks for post again, hope see some mk2 models and the tutorial! amazing work :)
  • murphy7
    Really inspiring work there. Loving the textures. Quick question, if you UV your models do you pay attention to anything special except the "basic" stuff?
  • Jigsaw
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    Jigsaw polycounter lvl 12
    Sorry for the holdup! About a week later than I intended but finally here is some new stuff from me... the first batch of MK2 characters finished. Will post a group shot and turnarounds as soon as I can get these guys posed.

    liukang2.jpg
    raiden2.jpg
    kitana2.jpg
    scorpion2.jpg
    baraka2.jpg
    shang2.jpg


    And by popular demand, here's kind of a step-by-step walkthrough of my texturing process... I'm not sure how well I can explain things but I'll give it a try, and I'd be happy to answer any questions if there's something that's left unclear.

    step-by-step.jpg

    1. I start off by doing a quick ambient occlusion bake to give me a rough guide for how to shade certain shapes, especially around the face.
    2. I continue by blocking out colours, to give an idea of what things will look like and to help me see where shapes and details should go. I generally use different layers for each block of colour. It doesn't make a lot of difference at this stage but I will continue to use these layers throughout the rest of the texturing process as it makes things a lot easier towards the end when adjusting levels and colour balance.
    3. Painting in B&W, I start detailing the different layers.
    4. More painting. The shirt, eyes, eyebrows, fangs and claws sticking out of the arms are on separate layers.
    5. More shading and details. The red trim and details on the legs are, again, a separate layer.
    6. When the shading is completed, I start colourizing. I start by using the Levels and/or Curves adjustments to tweak the brightness levels. After that, I put colour into the different sections first by using the Hue/Saturation adjustment to apply a base colour, and then Colour Balance to breathe a little more life into the colour ramps. This is probably where I spend most of the time with these textures, as it can be kind of finicky to get good colour ramps that aren't too monochromatic, while maintaining decent contrast levels.

    Not pictured: I work in 256x256 resolution, so the final step is to reduce the resolution to 128x128, using the Bicubic (sharper) resampling setting. After rescaling the image, it usually requires a small amount of final tweaking to bring out small details, particularly around the eyes.

    Hope that gives at least some insight into how I work. Stay tuned for more stuff, and hopefully it won't take ages this time...
  • conte
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    conte polycounter lvl 18
    that's just me or pics dont work?
  • badmouse
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    badmouse polycounter lvl 8
    yeah! the big Jigsaw made it again!

    Thank you for the tutorial, is a great reference :)

    With kitana done you can make easily Jade and Mileena right?
    Same with the male ninjas.

    Again, thank you for all this. looks super great. i can't wait to see Shao Kahn and Kintaro, i guess they will be the last in the list.

    EDIT :

    Conte, i can see the pics perfectly.
  • Jigsaw
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    Jigsaw polycounter lvl 12
    Decided to finish the last few guys before moving on to posing and whatnot. :)

    cage2.jpg
    subzero2.jpg
    reptile2.jpg
    jax2.jpg
    mileena2.jpg
    kunglao2.jpg
  • badmouse
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    badmouse polycounter lvl 8
    O~kidoki! the playable 12 characters of mk2! very well done! are you coming to do Jade, Smoke and Noob Saibot ?

    Looks super great! you are making a mk fan super happy :)
  • Lucra
    Man, I have been trying to figure out a project to start working on and I think you just inspired me, as a modeler I need to start off working on more low-poly models instead of attempting something extremely detailed. Im gonna pick a favorite game of mine and attempt to do some low-poly models. I also wish I was as good a texture artist as you. I think its my weakest skill.
  • Jigsaw
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    Jigsaw polycounter lvl 12
    Ah, and of course things take about a billion times longer than expected. :P Anyway, I finally got all the posing and whatnot finished. I'd really like to do more of these but I'm officially taking a hiatus for now, cause I really need to focus on some other projects and building my portfolio. Hopefully I'll do the MK2 bosses as well as the MK3 cast later on, but not for a while. Thanks a lot for all the positive comments and support, I really appreciate it a lot. :)


    mk2group2.jpg

    subzero2.gifcage2.gifliukang2.gifkunglao2.gifraiden2.gifjax2.gif
  • Jigsaw
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    Jigsaw polycounter lvl 12
    And here are the rest. Thanks again for looking!

    mk2group1.jpg

    scorpion2.gifbaraka2.gifkitana2.gifmileena2.gifshang2.gifreptile2.gif
  • Cooljay
    Nice posing on these low poly models. Adds a lot of character to them.
  • mr_ace
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    mr_ace polycounter lvl 9
    ha these are so bad ass, amazing work. mk has never really been in low poly has it? except for mk4, but lets not talk about mk4
  • Quasar
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    Quasar polycounter lvl 19
    Great job on these! They deform so well too
  • Harry
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    Harry polycounter lvl 13
    where's liu kang's mullet?

    i like, demand answers
  • KazeoHin
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    KazeoHin polycounter lvl 8
    Wow. simply awesome! This makes me go back to 1998. I wish there was more demand for these super low-res games, now that everyone's godamn phone can do phong shading and normal mapping.
  • badmouse
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    badmouse polycounter lvl 8
    Super amazing! are you coming to make yhe hidden characters Noob Saibot, Smoke, Jade and boss Kintaro and shoe kahn?
  • Vegas
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    Vegas polycounter lvl 9
    Man, I'm sure I'm going to repeat everything that has been said but these are fantastic on all fronts. Great modelling, efficient use of UV space, fantastic textures. All immediately recognisable. Well done mate, can't wait to see more work from you.
  • Jigsaw
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    Jigsaw polycounter lvl 12
    Thank you all once again for such an overwhelmingly positive response. Kinda makes it all feel worth it. ;D

    mr_ace: As a matter of fact there was actually a port of UMK3 released on iOS recently that replaced all of the sprites with low poly 3D models. I haven't had a chance to see it with my own eyes, but I'd love to see how they did the characters for that game. Other than that I guess the closest would be MK Shaolin Monks on PS2/XB, being a 3rd person action-adventure type game it would've at least had lower polycounts on the characters than contemporary fighting games, but presumably still a few thousand tris per character. (and agreed, let's not talk about MK4 lol)

    Harry: The size of Liu Kang's mullet is fairly accurate to how it appeared in MK2. Feel free to look it up, his hair didn't quite start getting out of control until MK3... I'll have you know I take mullet sizes quite seriously! ;)

    badmouse: I might eventually. But for now I'm working on other projects so I can get a decent portfolio up and running. I absolutely love doing this kind of stuff though, so you will definitely see more of it in the future, whether it's Mortal Kombat stuff or something else entirely.
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