Leviathan for Hand held

dazz179

Hey hey
I'm looking for some feedback and critique on a model I've made, its for one of my university modules and the deadline is next week.

Thanks

Steve Schulze

You're going to want to get rid of those harsh corners in your tail coils. It looks like there's a lot of places where you could cut down geometry with no change to the silhouette at all, particularly if you separate the head spines and teeth from the body.

With some better optimising, I think you should be able to significantly reduce your over all polycount and still have some relatively smooth coils in your tail.

Bruno Afonseca

What did you use to bake these normals? Because to me it seems that it's throwing lighting off a bit, creating seams.

dazz179

the normals was made with a combination of the nvidia filter and zbrush's inbuilt one.

Snader

Less sides, more segments.

Skillmister

The tri limit for characters is 1500 isnt it? So you could easily add more segments without going over to get rid of those sharp corners.

BradMyers82

What is the basis of this project? Are you learning to bake normals or other technical details, or is this more art based where form and function plays the biggest role?
The reason I ask, is its really hard to critique this not knowing exactly what it is for.

dazz179

Skillmister - yh the tri limit is 1500

bradmyers82 - it is art based so form and function are the biggest thing but I would like the critique for the others anyway

Free_Fall

Whats all this 3d sperm man

BradMyers82

ok, well the general shapes seem off to me. It looks awkward having a huge head, with a long body with very little tapering going on. That's not to say something like this can't exist, but if you look at the real world giant sea creatures, or even prehistoric, they generally have the opposite characteristics from what you have here. Take a whale for example. Therefore, You def. want to have good references up so that it is clear what you are going for and how well you are executing it.
Also, from a technical standpoint, something like this would ideally be animated in a completely straight pose. Or in other words no zig zag on the body, This would make for a really boring shape artistically, which is another reason why this creature design isn't so hot. Also it looks like you have a seam by the neck, and the specular should be broken up more than it is currently. If your going to use a normal map, I would put some more fine details in the normals/spec to help describe the skin. Scales, or crustaceans, are a couple of ideas.
Good luck man, don't call this one done just yet.

dazz179

the reference I've used are more mythological creatures like.....
http://images.wikia.com/castleage/images/e/e7/Serpent_Ancient.jpg
http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/1/1a/Sea_Snake.png
http://images.wikia.com/finalfantasy/images/8/82/Ffviii-leviathan.jpg
http://www.fccplace.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Leviathan_Orange.jpg
where as for real world its more deep sea creatures
http://seavenger.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/picture-21.jpg
http://www.listoid.com/image/153/list_2_153_20101219_131214_247.jpg