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Sketchbook - Scythe's Lair

greentooth
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Scythe greentooth
Hi there ! It's actually my first time registering a posting something here, i hope it'll be a great experience.

Onto the main dish ! I've been a real fan of starcraft for ages and I always told myself i'd do some kind of fanart when i'll think i'll be good enough in 3D.

I present you Manah, she's part of the Ghost division. This is still a wip, i need to finish the texture and the facial rigging. I hope you like her.

manahh.jpg


manahh2.jpg

manahh3.jpg

manahh4.jpg


sciimanah.jpg

I still need to do the sniper rifle and find a way to make a cloaking shaders, but things are going along nicely,

Stay tuned

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  • kylehorne3d
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    kylehorne3d polycounter lvl 9
    I Initially thought of Girl Crysis suit but now I see the StarCraft Ghost look too, cool design. The chest piece is just a little repetitive for my taste but solid work!
  • wake
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    wake polycounter lvl 17
    Welcome to polycount Scythe, hope you enjoy your stay :)

    A few things-- Anatomically nothing seems too out of place (glad to see you didn't go the super tits & ass route that most like to) besides that her hands look to be a little small. However I do think kylehorne is right in that the suit itself reads more like it's from crysis than from starcraft, which has mostly to do with the ribboning that you're using. I'm not a blizzard/starcraft guru by any means, but when that pattern is used in starcraft it's usually as metallic plating or piping-- you're using it in a much more organic fashion, emulating musculature/muscle fiber a la crysis. Your color scheme fits with the starcraft universe, but the suit pattern doesn't as much.

    I think the overall composition suffers from being too busy, especially in the front. While the space marine designs tend to be very greebly, the ghosts, especially female ones, trend more towards large, streamlined patches with bits and bobs on the side. Look at the rightmost concept or the video of kerrigan from sc2-- see how the center mass is a large, solid patch with more heavily detailed extremities? What I'd recommend on this concept is either smoothing out the stomach/chest area or doing the inverse and building very clean, streamlined forms along the arms and legs to complement a detailed torso. Either way, you might also want to change that U-shape running from the sternum to the neck. I see that it's the same motif from the concept art, but here it's so large and rides so far up her neck it looks like she'll choke if she bends her neck forward at all.

    oh, and what's the red mark around her eye? Is that face paint? Exposed muscle? It's an ambiguous read and distracting as a result-- I'd either resolve it more clearly or remove it entirely.

    Anyway, glad you decided to post. You've done a good job with this, and with a little more work I think you'll have a solid piece. Keeeep posting.

    here's the kerrigan video for you convenience:
    [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V1PwpoDqzM&t=2m25s[/ame]
  • Scythe
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    Scythe greentooth
    Hey !

    Thanks for the crit's and comments ! It's really important and helpful for me. I see what you guys means by the crysis looks, and to be honest i also have this kind of impression. At first I designed her as a pure sniper character, so in my mind, she'll have to lay front.

    Laying in that position for quite some time is unconfortable, so that's why i made this strong yet supple look on the armor. I certainly will go for more detailled arms, as you suggested.
    The front part, between the neck and the shoulder is way to pixellated, and i will have to redo it entirely.

    For the Mark, it was supposed to be some kind of red paint, or maybe blood splattered with her finger to look like paint. I know it looks confusing on the face shot since the nm map calculated it like it's digging in, but i planned on correct that too.

    Now that i look to it again, the front crysis like suffer from too much shadow.light information from the diffuse, i'll have to change that !

    Thanks again for the wall of text and the critics :D Right now the rigging' is slowly getting done. I have some ideas for the sniper rifle, 'll keep that updated !
  • Scythe
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    Scythe greentooth
    Hi,

    taking a break from texturing a little, i finished the complete rig (facial and body) and worked my way through some animated texture to represent the energy stream. The result may not be the final but it's looking really good :)

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

    See you real soon !
  • Scythe
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    Scythe greentooth
    Final version of Manae. The name changed at the last minute but I like it like that anyway. Actual low poly in game rendering. Post in photoshop. I'll post some other shots sometimes, as well with some texture, worth mentioning she is fully rigged, with facial rigging.

    This is also my participation for the Blizzcon fanart contest.

    manae.jpg
  • TheWox
  • m3nace
  • Scythe
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    Scythe greentooth
    Hello there !

    Not much of an update right now, still working on my next stuff but I'm taking my time, trying out various way of texturing and stuff.

    Anyway, Caldria sent me a message, he wanted to know how I handled the exoflex on my ghost, so I thought I might as well do a mini tuto for everyone, since that could help~

    First and foremost, I had to look back about what is the exoflex, and it's purpose. What is an exoskeleton :
    An exoskeleton is the external skeleton that supports and protects an animal's body, in contrast to the internal skeleton (endoskeleton) of, for example a human. In popular usage, some of the larger kinds of exoskeletons are known as "shells". (taken from wiki~)

    Ok, so exoskel are basically a both protective and vital. But as in crysis and in Slipgatecentral's Nox, I wanted it to be flexible, so that in wouldn't hinder the characters movements. It should look flexible, as well as robust and strong...Not the easiest thing to do !

    I start back in zbrush, by sculpting the body of my female character. Then, when I feel happy with the result, it's time to start working on the suit. I tried various methods, such as masking my skeletons area and the extracting it, but it doesn't work. Even at the lowest level, the extraction doesn't work well when the area masked are really close. Time to find another way.

    while watching the making of nox ( Check it out, it's amazment material, Part I : http://vimeo.com/5738519 Part II : http://vimeo.com/5734031 )

    I see that he actually painted a rough idea of his exoflex on the body, and then retopologized it in zbrush. I, after trying numerous ways in zbrush, thought too that it would be the best option to get the equivalent of an extract but with tight close area. Turns out it worked wonders !

    (If you don't know how to retopologize within zbrush, you have to append a Zsphere within you subtools, and down the tools menu you have a retopology tools.
    After finishing you topo, just clic on "make adaptive skin" and append the newly created topology to your current work)

    I have my base mesh, time to start the heavy thing. I quicky realized I could'nt go where I wanted with Zbrush for now, so I decided to get back in Softimage XSI (but that might work with any other soft)

    Here's what I started with

    exoflex1.jpg

    Good start, but not sufficient enough. In the Crysis and Nox exemple, each of the lanes are kinda round, and that what i wanted to achieve too.

    In order to create that, Obiously I had to extrude everything first. Note that through the whole process, I kept looking at my mesh with the subdivision up ( + and - on the numpad for xsi, 1, 2 and 3 for maya. As for max, you can put a Turbosmooth on top of everything).

    exoflex2.jpg

    Why you ask ? Because eventually I will get everything back to zbrush for the final detailling, so I had to check that everything looked good when I will subdivise it in here.

    I then selected my mesh and applied a push modifier, so that everything would be closer than before. It's important because when you'll be subdivising it everything will be smoothed up and taken away from each other, and for good result I needed them to be quite close

    exoflex3.jpg

    After that, it was a lot and lot of moving vertices so that the would be in the perfect places, so that they would intertwine really good with the rest of the suit.

    exoflex4.jpg

    When everything seemed fin to me, I exported the whole mesh back to zbrush and use the move tool to stick it to the body, like a skintight suit. I then proceed to finish the char, create my lowpoly topology and then bake everything :)

    Hope that will help Caldria and everyone that are trying to create some exoflex like Crysis's one. There might be some better method out there, but this one worked pretty good for me :)

    See ya around~
  • Caldria
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    Caldria polycounter lvl 8
    This is awesome, many thanks Scythe. Really appreciate it. ^^
  • Scythe
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    Scythe greentooth
    Hi hi, just some doodle, testing Zbrush 4 R2 :)

    femalien.jpg

    femalien2b.jpg
  • Scythe
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    Scythe greentooth
    Well, working on a bust right now, low texturing ftw :) 512²

    281ho8z.jpg
  • Scythe
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    Scythe greentooth
    Howdy :) some more work, doing various project at the same time :) First one is the same texturing stuff as before, still trying on getting the most of the texture sheet, the most details I can think of :)

    The other is a futuristic alien guy, basemesh was provided by a friend of mine (Florian "chokmah" Delarque), I then zbrushed the shit out of it and designed the armor Still a lot to do since it'll be a game char, but it's in good way !

    Stay Tuned


    zukpjt.jpg
    24c5kht.png
  • Scythe
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    Scythe greentooth
    Howdy, Finally finished the hirez sculpt of Whilelmina, it was about time. Anyway here's some render. sadly there are some artifacts since I had to decimate it anyway, my max wouldn't want to load 40m tri..:(

    anyway, here it is, big res inco :
    3537dro.jpg



    2v16sfl.jpg

    2z65w91.jpg
  • Scythe
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    Scythe greentooth
    some update on whilel, started the retopo

    33xvju8.png
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