International Student CG Awards entry WIP

gilesruscoe

So my lecturer suggested that i entered this, the quality of some of the entries are insane so i'm not expecting to win anything! Just entering for the sake of a good excuse to make a character.

Here's the contest page:
http://www.cgstudentawards.com/

Concepting isn't exactly a strong point of mine, so ive just done a quick doodle for a basic idea of where i want to take this, then i'l be making it up as i go from there.



Here's the WIP on the anatomy and face after about 90mins of working on it, zspheres/dynamesh






Going to be extracting the main armor pieces from the anatomy sculpt and retopoing in maya to start off the highpoly armor meshes. Will have a block out for the armor to show soon.

All crits and comments are more than welcome !:)

gilesruscoe

Small update on anatomy, moved about some of the proportions, fixed the wierd inverted elbow and overall tweaking

gilesruscoe

Base clothing to fill in the gaps under the armor, and also started to block in the armor pieces.

gilesruscoe

Last update on this for tonight, Got some more armor blocked in and some more shading to various parts.

Samfisher84

lookin great dude!

gilesruscoe

Thanks alot.

Last update for today, adjusted the size and shape of the hands to be a bit more interesting, also sculpted some of the wrinkling parts of them.
Tommorow i'l try to finalise the anatomy and get some high frequency detail on the skin, then onto finishing the armor blocking in. Would love to get some crits on the sculpt so far before i go ahead and start detailing.

gilesruscoe

Designed and modelled his gloves, a friend wanted to know what steps i do to make my highpolys, so i did a breakdown for the glove.

Seirei

Very cool breakdown of the workflow on the glove! It's always amazing to see some realy creative use of the tools you have available to you. :P

gilesruscoe

Thanks, i'l probably try to do more breakdowns for other things during the creation of this - will definately do a texturing breakdown as my friend wants to see that too (very demanding person!).

Here's how the character currently stands with the new skin details added in and a paint over of where im going with the character now. I've decided he's going to be a combat hover bike pilot, so i'm designing him around that idea now, more armor from the back and sides from where he is most exposed from leaning over a bike. Thinking about making his hover bike also, but i only have 30 days or so left and theres a ton of other stuff i have to do for other projects by then also.... We'll see.

gilesruscoe

Spine added!

Wesley

This is looking rad. Also thanks for the workflow breakdown, nice to see people do that.

gilesruscoe

Cheers Wesley!

Here's the start of his headgear, goggles done, need to sculpt the straps still. Head and torso armour to come soon.

gilesruscoe

Most of the chest armor is modelled in now, just need to do the stuff right in the middle of his chest. Once i have everything where i want it i'l go over and sculpt a damage pass.

gilesruscoe

Alright, chest armor is done, added in the denting and scratches (apparently he falls off his bike a lot). Onto the helmet now!

gilesruscoe

Helmet plating added. Also did a design change on it. The on side of his goggles which is covered up communicates with a lens in the back of his helmet, so he can switch between front and back view in one eye - no need for wing mirrors on his bike!.

gilesruscoe

Belt/thigh armour added:

TheDarkKnight

You're going pretty fast, looking good so far.

Will be keeping an eye on this!

gilesruscoe

Thanks TheDarkKnight, yea going pretty speedy, got a ton of other work to crack on with before i go back to uni, so i'm working on each thing pretty much all day everyday :P

Another update, thigh armor and trousers folds roughed in. Need to design his boots still, so i havn't started the lower leg armour yet until i know how they're going to join to the boots. Playing about with BPR too

gilesruscoe

hp finished!

Donavonyoung

The anatomy of the upper arm is off, you should be able to see the tricep when looking form the front of the arm. Instead the arm just looks like a tube with some lines carved in it. I would definitely revisit the insertion points of the upper arm to get them right. It doesn't fully realize the forms the arm should have. It also looks like he is to far back. The calves should be the farthest point back on the body. it looks like he is about to tip over backwards.

gilesruscoe

You mean to tell me, that after posting 14 WIP images of the arms you decided to crit me after posting the final render? I'll move some stuff around on the top of the arm, don't want to lose too much of the chunky-ness though.

spectre1130

Lookin good in quick succession.

C86G

Hm, the belly drives me crazy. It is bigegr than the eyes : /

gilesruscoe

Right, im back with crit changes, going to be moving onto retopo after this

-Triceps enlarged and top of arm re-arranged slightly to be more appealing in front view.

-Fixed up the folds in the legs and sharpened up their edges a little.

-Added some strapping to the lower leg armour to break up the bigger armour pieces.

-Made his belly button smaller, i quite liked the big belly button as it threw him off being too human looking. But if it's looking strange to other people i guess its safer to just change it





And a render without the chest/head armour for the hell of it..

Donavonyoung

Here is some great reference for the arms. This really should help with how the bicep, delt, pecs, tri, lats, and teres insert along the top on the arm.

gilesruscoe

While the reference you posted is great (and i'm sure it'll come in handy for other characters), It's almost a completely different body type for what i'm going for with this model, especially in the arms. So i'm not really sure what you are suggesting? I don't want to seem like im shrugging off your critisism, i did make changes to the arm as you first suggested.

Donavonyoung

It may be a different body type but the anatomy is spot on, and that is what I wanted you to see. Your arms are still like sausages. See in the reference the complexity of the planes for each muscle group. That is what you are missing. The shape and form of the muscle is just not there.

wretchedgoat

Like where this is going, nice little tut for the glove

gilesruscoe

Lowpoly done, and painted up the highpoly for texture masks later:






Will try and get the unwrap + bakes done tonight too.

gilesruscoe

Didn't get as much done today as i would have liked, crappy home computer takes too long to do everything, especially bakes and zbrush stuff. Anyway i got the UV's done for everything and got a test bake done for the body, few areas i need to tweak my cage on, other then that i'm good to go for proper bakes on it (few normal map seams on this one from where i forgot to re-harden my UV edges)

gilesruscoe

Bakes done

gilesruscoe

Pretty much done with him now, need to fix up some minor seams and make a pedestal for final renders / turn table, but it's more or less where i want it to be now.

gilesruscoe

s-s-s-s-submitted!!

You can checkout the turntable video and final renders on my page. If you want to share/tweet or drop me a vote that would be much appreciated! Dropped in a mention for polycount in the description for good measure.

http://www.cgstudentawards.com/2012-entries/201-giles-ruscoe

Macattackk

nice job, you did that pretty fast too. Id say you couldve had a bit more color variation in him. Also the skin couldve had more depth in the texture to give it a more fleshy look. The scratches seem a little haphazardly put on. you should think of those in terms of where he is going to get hit the most frequently and vary where the damage is by that.

As far as general character design critique goes, its hard for me to get a sense of who he is by his outfit. if there were more clues in his design as to what role he played then it might make him pop more as a character. for example if hes some kind of battle engineer(which is what he looks like to me), then tools and a little pistol in a holster might describe him better. This is just a good thing to think about as far as character contests go. Although maybe you didnt have enough time to do a lot of stuff; not sure when the contest ends.

definitely a solid entry though, good job and good luck in the contest

GodfishB16

Like Donavonyoung said, It may be a different body type, but anatomy is anatomy regardless of how bulked up/skinny the character may be.

gilesruscoe

Alright so i've decided to come back to this again and make it into a more appealing portfolio piece instead of just another unposed character turntable!

I went into the mocap studio and got a few idle animations, walk cycles and random things captured. So i'l have that posted up as soon as i can get it attached to the rig. I also wanted to give him a small diorama pedestal type thing for him to stand on. I thought some kind of roadside pit stop would be good considering he's a bike rider.

Few props for it done, still need to do some more!

gilesruscoe

BEHOLD ...a wrench...



Should have animations on the character by friday hopefully. Will post up when i have it done.

gilesruscoe

Okay, some WIP mocap stuff. This is with a proxy mesh for now until the weighting on the full character is finished.

I look like an ass - had to tie my dreads over the top of my head so that they didn't mess with the back sensors :P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4WJEDWXnmYY

gilesruscoe

First batch of raw data on him now. No feet or hands done yet either. Needs cleaning up!
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23IvEDvGSr4"]SilegWholeTakeRaw - YouTube[/ame]

Jessica Dinh

I really like your props! I think the grime and wear on them looks great :] Excited for more.

gilesruscoe

Thanks Jessica!
The rig got finished and weighted!


Going to start finishing up the scene now and playing with render settings/lighting setups while i wait for the mocap lecturer to get back to me with my mocap data

GabrielP

Very cool, was scrolling through the thread trying to figure out where on earth I had seen this model before. Just hit me that I'm subscribed to you on youtube! Lovin it, keep rockin!

gilesruscoe

@ gabriel and Jess Thanks a lot )

Just finished rendering the final shots for this guy, including one of the mocap scenes!

Animation:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9dbNSac30w&list=UUcBlmEJStNge5WhyMnxPudg&index=1&feature=plcp"]Biker Animation - YouTube[/ame]

And a pose render