I let Dizzy collect dust for a little while, but Mr Skullface's finish forced me to dust-bust and finished her off. Sorry for the late reply folks :poly122:, I never imagined I'd take such a long break!
sheckee: thanks a bunch!
Pancakes: haha thanks a ton, but there are a lot of much more worthy sensei's on these boards than me
Hang10: thanks! haha
Scythe: thanks dood!
Donovan: thanks a bunch, glad you dig
Bushidou: thanks! the finish is a long time coming :poly136:
uncle: nope you're totally right, thanks a ton - that whole ratio was off. Hopefully I've fixed it now to look cooler
Joseph: thanks brosef!
foreverrendering: thanks a ton man! I'm a huge fan of your work
Scythe 2.0: haha sorry man I was MIA!
Final Stage: Round 1 - 'Rise from your grave'
So I had been working behind the scenes on this, but I definitely let it collect dust for a good while - for several reasons. I guess I sorta set my expectations higher than I was realistically able to hit for the course, probably largely because I felt invincible being able to call upon someone of Hazardous' caliber for guidance haha. But I also hastily postponed as much of my freelance as possible to the 'end' of the course so I could focus on finishing it. When I decided I wanted to include the wings, I realized I was going to go over my original estimate of time and cut into my built up freelance and vacation time which caused me to lose steam as I buried myself in it. I think it's important to finish projects in these situations though because the beginning and end of a project are when I personally learn the most, and as a production artist I think it's important to be able to finish shit.
In any case, I picked it back up and dusted it off. I'll see if I can remember all the difficulties I ran into with texturing and so on.
I fixed up my Necro sculpt and did one of Undine as well:
somehow the arms got super thin so I beefed them up and did a few other adjustments before baking
I wasn't fussed with the hair because I knew sculpting a transition from hair to feathers would be a lot harder than doing it in photoshop.
Dizzy's and Undine's hair/wing were still a huge pain to paint, though - and I learned a lot I'd like to try out on new characters. It's frustratingly constricting to sculpt and model hair for me. I ended up painting out most of the normal map for the hair parts so I could just focus on trying to just get the diffuse+spec interplay to look good. But next time I think I'm gonna have to model it less explicitly and rely more on the strips rather than the solid underlying volume like I have here.
Rigging stuff was also a pain, I'm pretty noob at 3dsmax's Biped, so I've always had to fight with it to get what I want. I like to set up a pose rig and try out a few different poses before I start really texturing though. I feel this gives me a better idea of the direction I'm going for in the final piece and helps me work back and forth with areas in the texture that may look troublesome in pose and so on.
Here's a pose strip where I was seeing how I liked different poses moving forward and asked a buncha my friends what they liked best keeping in mind I'd be adding wings to her:
I ended up using a 2x 2048 for Dizzy (though it was a bit unnecessary to go so big),
1024 for the Undine wing (blue one),
and 1024 + 1024x512 for the Necro wing (dark green one)
Final Stage: Round 2 - 'Thanks, but our princess is in another castle'
So after a bit of a break to focus on freelance, I wasn't satisfied with Dizzy yet. I ended up trying to do a lot of things I was unfamiliar with like a little animation and all that jazz (link below). I couldn't figure out quite how to show such a big character in a still since it's 3 separate parts, so I decided I'd try my hand at a simple pose-to-pose animation for a turnaround. Unfortunately though I had rigged it on pose rigs, so that made even this simple animation very difficult and of course I'm no animator. But luckily that wasn't really the focus for the turnaround haha
Presentation is done with the Xoliul shader, which I love because it has so many options. The only downside is it's hard to get soft alpha looking decent in the max viewports with shadows on something like this. I ended up being able to persuade some shots to work decently but most of them are left with clipped alpha. Having so much layered alpha, I still had to do some finagling. I took advantage of the way max sorts based on objectID, using the ever-useful [url=http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1134202&postcount=7 ]ReOrder Objects script[/url] by monster.
I love how accessible all the properties are in Xoliul shader, but limitations with max's viewport are a bit of a drag. In the future I might just try it in Marmoset from the start and see if all those Xoliul options are really entirely necessary vs. the cool effects toolbag has.
Anyway, I think I'm gonna call this done now. I could tweak it forever, but I'm aware it's diminishing return vs. making new art.
I learned a lot and tried a lot of new stuff to do/not to do that I'm really excited to try and apply to new characters! I hope you dig it
Hopefully my ramblings during the process were at least an interesting read haha
Please lemme know any suggestions you have so I can maybe fix it up, or at least apply it to future works
Awesome stuff! and probably one of the best presentations I've seen on here. Quick question, is the animation between the wings and the wings with the heads with it controlled through like a blend shape? Would be interested in how thats set up.
The 7 seconds from 0:29 to 0:36 are how I feel all characters should be presented: Do the schematic turn around but show that they are more than 'just art' by adding a hint of life to them. It work so much better than just rotating turntables.
Replies
sheckee: thanks a bunch!
Pancakes: haha thanks a ton, but there are a lot of much more worthy sensei's on these boards than me
Hang10: thanks! haha
Scythe: thanks dood!
Donovan: thanks a bunch, glad you dig
Bushidou: thanks! the finish is a long time coming :poly136:
uncle: nope you're totally right, thanks a ton - that whole ratio was off. Hopefully I've fixed it now to look cooler
Joseph: thanks brosef!
foreverrendering: thanks a ton man! I'm a huge fan of your work
Scythe 2.0: haha sorry man I was MIA!
Final Stage: Round 1 - 'Rise from your grave'
In any case, I picked it back up and dusted it off. I'll see if I can remember all the difficulties I ran into with texturing and so on.
I fixed up my Necro sculpt and did one of Undine as well:
somehow the arms got super thin so I beefed them up and did a few other adjustments before baking
I wasn't fussed with the hair because I knew sculpting a transition from hair to feathers would be a lot harder than doing it in photoshop.
Dizzy's and Undine's hair/wing were still a huge pain to paint, though - and I learned a lot I'd like to try out on new characters. It's frustratingly constricting to sculpt and model hair for me. I ended up painting out most of the normal map for the hair parts so I could just focus on trying to just get the diffuse+spec interplay to look good. But next time I think I'm gonna have to model it less explicitly and rely more on the strips rather than the solid underlying volume like I have here.
Rigging stuff was also a pain, I'm pretty noob at 3dsmax's Biped, so I've always had to fight with it to get what I want. I like to set up a pose rig and try out a few different poses before I start really texturing though. I feel this gives me a better idea of the direction I'm going for in the final piece and helps me work back and forth with areas in the texture that may look troublesome in pose and so on.
Here's a pose strip where I was seeing how I liked different poses moving forward and asked a buncha my friends what they liked best keeping in mind I'd be adding wings to her:
I ended up using a 2x 2048 for Dizzy (though it was a bit unnecessary to go so big),
1024 for the Undine wing (blue one),
and 1024 + 1024x512 for the Necro wing (dark green one)
Final Stage: Round 2 - 'Thanks, but our princess is in another castle'
Presentation is done with the Xoliul shader, which I love because it has so many options. The only downside is it's hard to get soft alpha looking decent in the max viewports with shadows on something like this. I ended up being able to persuade some shots to work decently but most of them are left with clipped alpha. Having so much layered alpha, I still had to do some finagling. I took advantage of the way max sorts based on objectID, using the ever-useful [url=http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1134202&postcount=7 ]ReOrder Objects script[/url] by monster.
I love how accessible all the properties are in Xoliul shader, but limitations with max's viewport are a bit of a drag. In the future I might just try it in Marmoset from the start and see if all those Xoliul options are really entirely necessary vs. the cool effects toolbag has.
Anyway, I think I'm gonna call this done now. I could tweak it forever, but I'm aware it's diminishing return vs. making new art.
shot of the wires here, and some textures
I learned a lot and tried a lot of new stuff to do/not to do that I'm really excited to try and apply to new characters! I hope you dig it
Hopefully my ramblings during the process were at least an interesting read haha
Please lemme know any suggestions you have so I can maybe fix it up, or at least apply it to future works
youtube turnaround:
[ame="
thanks everyone for helping me improve
No you didn't with this Funky!
I'm fucking blown away man, A M A Z I N G finish!
seriously dude incredible work
also love the little move in the 360
...
Yep, he's serious! You totally nailed it man, bravo!
I really liked all the poses but I think you picked the best one!
And geez whats the tri count on this? Not sure if Haz limited you at all for a final count.
I'm jealous of your skill man
You've definitely progressed further, I'd say.
Also loved the little animation on the video, nice touch.
Great piece! Super sexy !!
INDEEEEED!!!!!!
shes stunning
Love how you've animated her too and gone that extra mile, great job!
1 question. how? :O
Congratulation, Dood !
Ok... I quit.
Just checked out your zbrushcentral thread, good stuff
EDIT: There should be a PC banner for this. It's too awesome to be forgotten.
Could you gift us with more resolution? I need it on my desktop.
yes man ... loving the animation before the turntable ...perfect ... really you made it perfect
good job man, fucking killer. now Troy can give us our surprise
And i though you could put more alpha in her front hair, feels like a block in some parts!
Good luck!!
:thumbup::thumbup:
-Woog