Survivor/Explorer Character

gilesruscoe

New character project, will be posting progress here and hopefully be able to pick up crits along the way.

Ref's




Concept that i'm not very happy with, pushing my 2D skills as much as i can these days, but still ending up with very blobby and wierd looking concepts. Something that will hopefully improve in time..


start of the base mesh/block out with low version of my body sculpt under it:



And the body sculpt:



The hands are really flat and shapeless at the moment, so i need to work on those.

Stay tuned for more

gilesruscoe

Made some boots for him today, will add stitching on them in zbrush.

Sukotto

This is a good start but I think going over the body again would benefit you, all the muscles are blobby looking, you need to tighten them up. And as always check your references.

And his face could use some work too, right now his face looks like hes 50-60 but he has a really young looking muscular body which is odd. You may be going for a rugged looking face but he looks old more than anything

gilesruscoe

Hey Sukotto, thanks for the feedback, i agree the face wasnt matching the rest of the body. So ive decided to make him alot older now. Here's the new sculpt, hopefully more believable anatomy.

Goeddy

woow wait a minute.
it looks like you sorta know the single muscles, but not realy wich shape they have.
adding random wrinkles doesnt help much for the believability.
i´d suggest you to, for now atleast, realy try to skick as close to a good reference as you can.
try to get a shape with all the muscle(and bone) in place so that it looks good, from there on, making him look old will take nearly no effort at all and will look a lot better.
also for the hands remember they are not flat, they got more like a U-shape, viewn from the tip of the fingers to the elbow.

gilesruscoe

For references i was trying to achieve something simlar to Selwys "old man" sculpts:
http://www.selwy.com/2008/digital-sculpting-reel-2008/
Among other real references (not other sculpts).
Would you mind highlighting the areas which are blatantly wrong?
Cheers!

gilesruscoe

Lil more on this, decided to just stay at low sub div levels on the anatomy sculpt, went back over and fixed a few things - will save wrinkles and stuff for when i do a character that actually has skin showing.

MM

the shape of the boot sticks out as the biggest error to me.

currently what you have looks like a toddler;s shoe, but even then it looks too straight/rectangular and cant tell the left from the right.

look at more boot reference and feet reference too.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=boot+sole&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1573l3101l0l3409l9l8l0l1l1l0l96l568l8l9l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=1920&bih=1017&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=Ic0lT8_FI-Xq0gHC47jPCA



this is a boot reference i had laying around:

gilesruscoe

Cheers man, i'l add some more curvature to them. Going to be sculpting the tread using an alpha in zbrush too probably.

In the meantime, here's a start on the trouser folds

PaulP

Hey I like the concept, and the model seems to be coming along nicely. I was wondering about what you're going to do with the shoe laces. Everything else seems reasonably low poly, while the laces seem very high. Are you planning to bake them into a single mesh at the end? I've never been too sure on how to tackle this area myself, I usually just sculpt them directly into the boot/shoe mesh in ZBrush and bake them out.

gilesruscoe

Yea they'll just be baked down onto the shoe low poly, which will just be the silhouette of the shoe really, no need to model details out on something like a shoe, unless its for some first person feet or something.

Playing with polypaint..

gilesruscoe

More on this..

MainManiac

Those boots look amazing... not sure what happened above the knees though

gilesruscoe

Little more progress on this guy

Iciban

hey, how did you do the laces for the boots? u got them working so well

gilesruscoe

Hey,
I did the laces by making curves in maya to the shape i wanted the laces and then used the extrude along curve tool to make them into geometry. For the knot at the back i simply made 4 different Torus' and twisted them together.

Donavonyoung

I still think that you are missing a lot of bony landmarks of the body, such as the elbow, and it looses its shape. You really need to back to the lower sub d's and do some work on the overall shape still. Especially on the hands, they have no form. Keep it up though, it is coming along.

krimzondestiny

Looking like a good start. I would say though, you should either revisit the pants or the shirt. Right now, it seems like you used the same brush/settings to do the detail in both of the objects. Right now, the wrinkles and folds in the pants are too similar to those in the shirt. Basically, they look like they are made of the same material. I'm not sure if that is what you were going for, but I just looks that way. I would say, make the wrinkles in the shirt smaller and tighter because the shirt is more form-fitting than the baggy pants.

Drywall

I agree with Donavon, The anatomy in the arm is pretty messed up right now, especially in the wrist/hand. His thumb is broken and smaller than it should be, and his palm isn't large enough. His fingers are doing some weird things as well. Going back a subd level or 3 and moving stuff around until the silhouette is right is a good plan.

gilesruscoe

Revisited alot of stuff on the highpoly as suggested, a few things still look a little dodgy, but i decided i need to start wrapping this thing up, so onto the lowpoly!

Heres how it current stands at 8.5k tris, still have to do the retopo for his machete and mask.

Normal + AO + Polypaint bakes, no spec yet or texture work:



Wires in maya:



Things to do-

Retopo mask and machete ( AGAIN, goddamn file corruptions)
Finish bakes (mask, machete, buckles)
Textures!
Rig
Walk cycle anim.

gilesruscoe

started to work on the textures, basic spec map in place at the moment, working on skin tones of the face at the moment.

farettig

I think the shovel is a little bit too beat up at the moment. It kind of looks like tin or an equally thin metal. I think if you removed the 'bumps' and kept the scratches and wear it'd look better.

gilesruscoe

Cheers farettig, i think it's looking better now.

Did a little more texture work today

Shiniku

Some parts of this are really working, you've got some skills, but as a whole it's just not doing it for me.
I think you've got some good technical skills as far as working with the programs go, but you might need to re-focus on some basics of structure, anatomy, and color theory.

The anatomy has some serious issues, and all I can say is to just keep comparing your work to multiple references. The face has some serious issues, and I can't tell if you're going for realism or stylization. Parts of the arm are working, but others aren't. From the front, the muscles on the forearm don't seem to be wrapping around the form properly. The transition from hand to arm is not great, the wrist could use some work. The hand seems too.. eh, flat. The structure curves a lot more, how the thumb is attached right now isn't very natural, and the fingers should come out in more of an arc, take a look at your own hand. Look up some anatomical diagrams as well as photos of actual people, try not to reference other people's works too much, you just copy their mistakes.

I really like how the folds have been sculpted on the pants, but the actual placement and such seems pretty strange. The folds don't seem to occur in the right places or wrap around the form properly - it looks like you modeled them from several orthographic angles because the front wrinkles don't interact with the folds on the side, which doesn't really interact with the folds on the back of the leg. Overall it looks odd, again, look up ref.

The shape of the boots are still very wrong, I can't see much of a difference from where they were before to now, after MM posted up that nice reference. The shape of the sole should conform more to the shape of a foot, the toe should curve up, the back should not be so straight, etc. Despite some really nice modeling, the forms are looking really flat, especially on the low-poly.

I really like the way you've done straps and all his accessories.. like i said, your modeling skills are very nice, you just need to learn to critically analyze the shapes more when comparing to reference, and do some more anatomy studying. Hope I'm not coming across as harsh.

gilesruscoe

Thanks for the write up, not coming across as harsh at all, helpful infact. I agree with all the points you made, but now im unsure as to what to do, return to the highpoly and fix things, try and fix what i can on the lowpoly/texture or leave it alone and take on those crits for use on my next character. I've got two weeks left before the hand in is due for this character, along with a bunch of other things, so sadly time is against me on this one. The character was supposed to be realistic, but i do agree the face is bordering on stylised. I think it's mainly the nose which is doing that and the over defined jaw.

I guess i'l probably poke around on the lowpoly and textures to see if i can fix some of the issues you've mentioned.

Thanks again.

Shiniku

You could probably make some slight adjustments to the low-poly - like making the boot toe point up slightly. But yeah, considering the time constraints I don't think it's worthwhile to go back and do a bunch of work on the sculpt for this now. Just keep some of those things in mind for your next character. You've got a good attitude, keep up the good work!

gilesruscoe

Small fix on the boot, hows this? Recon i should make it slightly more pointy too?

gilesruscoe

Got his mask retopo'd and baked down, base textures on it at the moment:

gilesruscoe

Playing with lighting setups in Marmo and started to texture his mask. Few issues i need to fix with the mesh it seems, like the hat clipping at the edges, which is strange because it doesnt happen in maya viewport. Is there a way to adjust the near/far clipping in marmoset?

gilesruscoe

Machete done and playing with mental ray, apparently we have to use mental ray for rendering for this module

gilesruscoe

These are the final images i'l be handing in. Really wish i had another month to spend on this guy, so much i'd love to change on him, but there just isn't time Might come back to him as a personal project during the summer.