Full Metal Alchemist Environment
polycounter lvl 14
Hello Polycount once again! :poly009: My next environment piece is from the anime/manga Full Metal Alchemist, specifically the room from Episode 3 "Mother" (first anime series) where Ed and Al tried to transmute their mother back to life:
Back in 2005 when I first decided I wanted to be a game artist, I went through an inspiring period where I began drawing and watching animations again, signed up for school and began watching Cartoon Network, including Adult Swim. I still remember the first night I watched anime which had the line up of Full Metal Alchemist, Ghost in the Shell and Inuyasha (which actually took me a little while to get into, but I did eventually). Futurama was also on that night. So much of my life changed that night. Some more of my reasons for choosing this piece:
1) I've always wanted to do a Full Metal environment but couldn't think of the right place. This room to me embodies the heart of the story and is the single-most irreplaceable location. With Al's Armor on the wall it also has a focal point to immediately tell the viewer what they are looking at.
2) After my last environment was a bit large, sci fi and modular, I wanted to do a smaller room that had more earthier elements. A single light source, wood, books, bottles ... these all have real life references.
3) It's awesome!
Full Metal Software: 3ds Max, Maya (maybe), Mudbox (Maybe), Photoshop, Substance Painter, Unreal 4
Full Metal critiques are welcome. I am working to become the best artist I can be. I'm not sure what sort of timetable this one will have. I do expect more cheesy Full Metal jokes. :thumbup:
First post:
Back in 2005 when I first decided I wanted to be a game artist, I went through an inspiring period where I began drawing and watching animations again, signed up for school and began watching Cartoon Network, including Adult Swim. I still remember the first night I watched anime which had the line up of Full Metal Alchemist, Ghost in the Shell and Inuyasha (which actually took me a little while to get into, but I did eventually). Futurama was also on that night. So much of my life changed that night. Some more of my reasons for choosing this piece:
1) I've always wanted to do a Full Metal environment but couldn't think of the right place. This room to me embodies the heart of the story and is the single-most irreplaceable location. With Al's Armor on the wall it also has a focal point to immediately tell the viewer what they are looking at.
2) After my last environment was a bit large, sci fi and modular, I wanted to do a smaller room that had more earthier elements. A single light source, wood, books, bottles ... these all have real life references.
3) It's awesome!
Full Metal Software: 3ds Max, Maya (maybe), Mudbox (Maybe), Photoshop, Substance Painter, Unreal 4
Full Metal critiques are welcome. I am working to become the best artist I can be. I'm not sure what sort of timetable this one will have. I do expect more cheesy Full Metal jokes. :thumbup:
First post:
Replies
Update on the armor model. One of the key issues I want to work on here is my speed and efficiency. I will begin posting a little more frequently now in order to force myself to work faster. Feel free to add any crits or advice based on this endeavor. At the moment I'm trying to put the relative outline of everything in place buy pushing polys around in a sloppy manner. I definitely suffer that feeling of "What do I do now?" when I'm modeling in the beginning. Sometimes I just need to do something ... ANYTHING to keep moving forward.
As an aside, I think the chin makes him look like hes from Ducktales (I moved it back a bit earlier tonight, it was major Ducktales territory before then). :poly108:
I'm planning on modeling through both armors on the wall before tackling the rest of the room.
Much more fleshed out now. Still going. The back of the armor will not be seen as it is up against the wall.
I am very unhappy with myself for not moving faster. Speed is the single-most thing I want to learn here. A lot of it has to do with confidence and that feeling, "I don't know what to do next? How is it supposed to look there? I don't know?" and checking the refs over and over again. I'm debating now on whether or not to do this armor up to the painting stage first, or to move on to the next prop once the high poly is done. That is my usual method to do all high polys, then all low polys. I think one reason is in case I need to really alter props much in order to fit the scene together. I wouldn't want to have that issue staring at me after already having baked.
Any questions, feel free to ask. I want a good learning experience for all on my threads.
The sabaton spike guards look a little too close to the center, move them both outwards a bit (front view).
I think Alphonse's proportions are a little off, here's some good reference for you to have a look at:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6184/986/1600/Alphonse%20Elric.jpg
http://media1.giphy.com/media/Xjd3MrhWu9haU/200_s.gif
(This image is small, but it shows how thick he is from the side)
(:
Thanks.
Here I have a WIP on the hand. One major issue I have is going from the circular shape of the armor at the edge of the forearm, to the hand. A human hand is much more flat so looking at manga/anime refs is giving me a challenge here in translation over the two medias. I need to transition from a fatty circular wrist to a believable set of fingers.
Note that the symmetry is inconsistent since I have this in multiple pieces so far, so concentrate on the left side more than the right. This armor will be seen straight ahead front view and overhead (as you can seen in refs I have posted) and likely some sort of general 3/4ish angle view that will likely be the main render. I probably shouldn't have even posted a full side view. Another issue to note is with manga/anime source refs is the inconsistency of drawings per scene (That neck guard thing is in front, back and below the chin at random, the head goes higher and lower, etc.) I need to choose a direction and move forward with it.
I get what you're saying about how fluid some anime drawings can be, but they're usually during action scenes with lots of movement, in my viewing experience.
I think it'd be good to challenge yourself at getting Alphonse correct at all angles, even if you'll only see him from the front.
It'd also be a great portfolio piece!
But this is just my opinion, so obviously you don't have to do that haha.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/printthread.php?t=88308&pp=40
I'll be following this thread, good luck dude!
Feel free to bring on the FMA fandom. Love it.
Next step is the other armor next to this one. I will do the high poly of that, then likely their low ploys, and bake them. I'm feeling like I will want to get past these before tackling the rest of the room (get them over with). I will do all the texturing after everything has been modeled, baked and placed into Unreal.
Also if you haven't already seen, Allegorithmic posted up a pretty comprehensive video series of Painter/Designer to Unreal 4. Might be worth checking out if your workflow explodes.
Some crits. I might consider at least getting a rough blockout of the environment before delving too far into a single asset, just so you have proportions down and know that the sizing, composition and lighting all look the way you want it too.
+1 to AdvisableRobin. Blockouts are always good!
Keep it going man, love the work so far.
Thanks. After taking way too long to get Alphonse' armor done, this one took me one night (somewhere around 8.5 hours). The design is what takes me so long. If I get negative about what to do, I need to simply move something and see if it's right or not. If its wrong ... why? Where can I move it to make it right? So I end up with a really sketchy mesh with polys going through each other in places, which then need cleaned up. That part is usually satisfying because you can see it taking shape. :poly009:
The scene blockout will be based around the armors.
Armor bakes are done! The normal map previews on top are in Substance Painter. The cloth is a separate piece only because I accidentally forgot it when I made the UVs :poly122:. With the "other armor" I thought of fewer pieces and simplicity, so it has fewer low poly pieces going across multiple high poly parts, but the bake was a little warbly at first. I needed to address the edge loops going against the high poly piece shapes, which resulted in waviness. For Alphonse I kept the separate armor pieces separate in the low poly. This resulted in a much easier and quicker time tweaking the bake (admittedly I was quite surprised with how good the first bake was, as only the head had any major issues)
I'm very happy to finally be at this point. Now I will get to the block of the scene.
Scene blockout. :poly009:
Update. Admittedly not much to say other than I decided to make every piece to completion one at a time. Usually I would make all the high polys first. Everything in checkers is done (Unless I decided to redo it later, which has already happened)
Edit: I do have a question ... How would you go about making a glass container with liquid in Unreal? I'm guessing maybe having to model the liquid as a solid full shape that fits completely inside the glass.
http://designcasa.com.au/images/detailed/0/seletti-vase2_lab.jpg
Finally starting to look like an alchemy lab. My biggest concern is that I don't skimp on quality for feeling overwhelmed with the scope of the whole things (so many props to do) :polytwitch:
Finally in Unreal 4 :poly142:
My first day of texturing and first day with Allegorithmic B2M. Any thoughts? I will need to go into Substance Painter and give a more careful paint-over of some of these assets. Overall I'm feeling good and that I might be able to meet my goal of getting this done before 2015 after all. We'll see.
Substance Painter work on the two armors and the first shield. Still getting used to the roughness levels moving from Substance Painter to Unreal (initially getting that high contrast white/black cloudy look and having to drop the low levels in Photoshop to even it out).
Thanks. Good to be back on this after a week off. I'm having a difficult time getting the "posters" on the walls to look good. Any crits on them? They look like 3d planes to me and I'm stumped about how to fix them. They should look like they were drawn/written by hand by the Elrics. Thoughts in general? I'm still working on the textures like that metal burner and some of the wood.
It doesn't have to be that extreme but I think this gets the point across
Looking good so far!
Update. Yup.
That paper crit really helped btw.
I'm just now starting to get some confidence and feel like I'm getting somewhere. I'm starting to use B2M less and Painter more.
Getting there! Still need to re-address the walls and floor, the open door, and fix the direction of the barrel planks. Feel free to give crits on anything else.
Getting closer. At this point assume I'm done with everything and feel free to let me know if I'm missing something. I hope the walls and floor look better now? I will add the transmutation circle and possibly the bucket of "human elements" on the ground. Any thoughts?
Close to calling it done. Any final thoughts? I've been fiddling with the lighting. What is seen here is the light intensity, GI and AO sort of cranked. Then after building, I greatly reduced the intensity of the lights so you can actually see the wall light structure. Their is a little bit of LUT color adjustment... too much just blows out the lights with over-saturation. It's a balancing act of trying to get the lights to not be overblown, the room to be lit enough, and the dynamic hard lighting/shadows to shine.
Anyway, looking absolutely fantastic. Not entirely being sold on how the floor/walls/doors mesh together, with the doors/walls seeming fine with everything else more or less, but the floor being... kinda out of place. Are those stones/tiles or is the floor cracked? Interested in your interpretation-- but it feels a little high-frequency, and not quite as hand-placed as in the show. That, along with the chair in the corner not looking quite as used as I might expect, is the only nit-pick that's really grabbing me.
Looking forward to seeing the final beauty renders.
Finished! Thank you again Polycount :thumbup:
I'm happy with the results
I have a strong emotional attachment to Full Metal Alchemist and was proud to offer my own little tribute. I hope that you were able to learn from it as I did. Thanks again and all the breakdowns can be seen on my artstation page here:
http://www.artstation.com/artwork/full-metal-alchemist-lab
EDIT: Uh, I can see through the back of the chair in the top down shot, though, which is kinda...
Floor is looking much better than the previous screenshots.