Stylized Skull Mech
polycounter lvl 15
Hey just wanted to post a little personal project I started for fun after Uncharted 3. Its based off a Creature Box concept, based in the Ratchet and Clank universe. Wanted to do something different then what I was doing at work, something very stylized and not an environment ha.
I initially made some areas incorrectly from the concept and fixed them once they were pointed out but didn't actually like the way they looked and changed them back haha. So a few liberty's were taken.
-Anthony
I initially made some areas incorrectly from the concept and fixed them once they were pointed out but didn't actually like the way they looked and changed them back haha. So a few liberty's were taken.
-Anthony
Replies
Cool stuff, dig the proportions. Spec is a meh/nonexistent. Would love to see this guy animated.
How many tris?
Some ideas your way:
(it's a gif, might be a tad slow to load)
1) "Eyes" - with mechanical designs things just sticked into each other hardly work. You don't find that in real life so it feels off. I think it could use a pair of eye sockets.
2) edge highlights - those a really good for defining metal shapes. And it's not a crime to even put some into the diffuse. You can even paint in some top-down lighting to make it pop a bit more.
3) some more spec would be nice
4) color - for a cartoony model it's could use some saturation and colors overall. I might've gone a tad over the top on the overpaint with those lights on the canons, but they could be useful gameplay-wise and show different attack states for example.
if you add a cool shooting effect and light it accordingly you'll get a killer picture man.
Best of luck and once again really solid work so far.
And I would also suggest trying out some other lighting as well; it's really not doing your model justice.
Are you planning on animating this sexy beast as well? You know, for the lulz of it.
Also, texture sheets; pretty plez?
+1 for texture sheets.
Missing sockets on the eyes were due to me forgetting to turn the alpha on for the eyes. Wanted too keep the spec/edge highlights sublet but I bumped them up a bit so its not too matte. I kept the simple color pallet from the concept, I liked the clear/simple colors. Fit with the style. Tried adding some other colors but I never got anything I really liked. If someone knows some areas/some colors that would make this so much better I am willing to hear you out. But for the most part I am happy with the simpler colors.
@Andres - What your seeing is just an optical illusion of modeled geo. Its just the normal map mixed with the high contrast of the black inner areas and the white outer areas. It makes the white appear to bleed out from the black areas. Its just an illusion your eyes perceive because its not actually changing the silhouette at all
I actually do have this guy animated a bit. I couldn't get Marmoset's animation stuff to ever work so I gave up and my free trail ends today at work so I wont be able to do further tests. Oh well, next time
Model Stats - 14.2k tris Here are the flats too, I would rather not show them cuz there horrible looking and I did so many stupid things. Like why in the world did I uniquely unwrap all 5 teeth!?! my god! ha
-Anthony
EDIT: platform is also very fitting haha
Great job!
I dislike the use of the spec though, it doesn't seem to be conveying much information that's not already in the diffuse. Would like to see the diffuse a bit darker, the spec a lot brighter, and more going on in there.
yea, i was wondering the same as Andreas when i looked closer.
it doest look like an illusion when magnified, is that a selection clipping ?
however i thought you used two cylinders, one dark inside and one outside with the insets masked out in alpha.
anyways, good work. the material separation needs more work though.
Hmm, that's actually a very clever idea, I don't think I've seen anyone do that specifically, before. I wouldn't think it's worth it to add an unnecessary alpha, as opposed to the 100-200 tris it might take to model it out on both sides?
Anyways, this is really great work Anthony, it immediately gives off a ratchet and clank vibe. The guys at naughty dog won't fire you for spending all your free time working on Insomniac concepts? Hehe.
You could just delete the geometry in those places and have a cylinder under it.
Using alpha to save 100-200 tris is pretty much always a terrible idea. You're adding a more complex shader and effectively another map's worth of memory for what amounts to a negligible (or more likely, negative) change in rendering performance.
I'm really digging the fat, square-brush paintjob, reminds me of the texture work in TF2 and it looks very good on this kind of pulpy sci-fi.