First model - need advice

Sojumekju

EDIT: Hey guys I finally managed to finish this character. Any comments or criticism?




Character turntable link

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KoL5Eg3cjo"]Strife, Darksiders character turntable - YouTube[/ame]

Hey guys I just started the first assignment at my school and I need advice on how I can make it better. Also if anyone has links to tutorials on creating a game character from scratch, workflow or how to transfer a sculpt in ZBRUSH into baked out maps on a low res Maya model would help me a lot.
Any advice is appreciated! Thanks~
This is due in a month so I have a lot of time to work on it.

Also I feel as though my models have a higher polycount than they need to be, any suggestions?

magmabolt

is this your high poly model or low poly?

Sojumekju

High poly i guess, im not actually sure how many constitutes as "high".

Olli.

your "high" poly model is the one that is more detailed, and you use it to bake down detail on to your low poly model, which is less detailed, but will inherit the details from the highpoly using a normal map.. The actual polycounts are not that important (except for the low poly, where the polycount should be as low as possible while still maintaining proper silhouette and joint topology (assuming the model will be rigged to be deformed using bones)

Sojumekju

oh yep, we are going to rig and pose it soon. I suppose this is high poly, although there really isnt that much detail in it... If theres a way i can squash it down even further that would be good... I'm in the process of polypainting it in Zbrush atm. Do you have any tutorials on how I can do as you said and bake the details onto a low poly mesh keeping most of the details?
Also thanks for your comments

Olli.

this is the one i used when i was learning:
http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-3d-studio-max/how-to-bake-a-flawless-normal-map-in-3ds-max/

Geurilla

You should bring this in Zbrush or Mudbox and go crazy. It would be really cool.

Sojumekju

dI'm currently in the process of taking my maya mesh and making a normal map in zbrush. I'm using xNormal to bake the map, can anyone tell me why i have these little rough patches in the grooves and along hard edges like right down the middle of his mask for example?

Could it be because when i subdivided the mesh in zbrush it smoothed the hard edges out and messed up normals there?

Thanks

Sojumekju

ok I managed to solve what was happening before, it was just the normals on the obj import to zbrush were hardened in some areas causing it to give that nasty line down the middle.

Anyway here is my quick bake to test how everything works, still a lot of work to do but let me know what you think of the way im going? any tips greatly appreciated!

this character is from the darksiders universe and i kind of want him to fit in there, although i probably dont have enough experience yet to make it look anything like darksiders but i can try right?

xenocarium

You're off to a great start for you first model ever. One thing I can say, is that you're going to want to add 100X more detail into your Hi Poly sculpt in Zbrush. It honestly makes texturing a hell of a lot easier as well.

And yeah, anytime you see those black lines, it means that the normals on your low poly were not softened (You're so lucky that you've found that out this early. That took me an eternity)

Samfisher84

wow first model! great start!

Sojumekju

thanks guys for the advice! and yeh it was lucky i found that out haha

@xenocarium: what kind of detail do you think i should add?
I kind of felt like subdividing more but the mesh for just the mask at the moment is 1mil polys. I read somewhere that a 1028x1028 normal map can only pickup as much detail as 1 million so there no point going higher. I dont know if thats true though and I'm afraid to test it because my computer isnt well equipped to handle that many polys. (getting a major upgrade soon though yay)

Sojumekju

Hey guys i just ran into a problem you guys might be able to solve. As you can see in the picture, some of the normals of the armor has been inverted. As far as i know in maya the normals are facing the right way and appear correct in render, but when imported to marmoset this happens.


I wanted to create a duplicate of these pieces of armor from the other side so i simply grabbed the object and duplicated it onto the other side after I unwrapped and arranged the UVs. This is probably not the correct way to mirror UVs. I was wondering if anyone knows how i can solve this.
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EDIT: SOLVED. After some thinking and experimenting, i have resolved this issue. Duplicate in maya works as promised, however i was using duplicate special and scaling it on the X-axis by -1. I suppose normals arent changed in this process therefore they get turned inside out on a plane. This time i will just duplicate normal and rotate it into position manually. Next time i will do it properly from the start, this being my first model attempt.

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Also i want to make a piece of cloth hanging from his back, it is on a 3d plane and as you can see the normals only appear on one side and is invisible on the other, how can i achieve this effect so it appears from both sides of the plane?

Sojumekju

Hey guys I finally managed to finish this character. Any comments or criticism?





Character Turntable link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KoL5Eg3cjo

Eoq

The lighting is very dark, which kinda removes all the sweet details that are now currently black. I'd suggest giving him a more interesting lighting : )

Shanthosa

If you want to continue to use Maya's duplicate special function for mirroring, then you can just use Normals -> Reverse when you're ready to export to avoid it flipping inside out.

You can also check this ahead of time by using Shading -> backface culling inside of your viewport.

Sojumekju

oh wow just what i needed to know shanthosa, thanks

and Eoq yeh I realised the lighting wasnt the best now haha, ill work on it next time