Making Moto (progress thread)
Update 02/13:
ORIGINAL POST:
Hey all!
Not making the same mistake I made with my last pieces by waiting until a bunch of work was done before starting a thread. So, here's what I'm planning to be my next portfolio piece (assuming all goes well)...
Moto! For those who don't know, Moto is an enemy from Nintendo's Metroid game series (appearing in Metroid II and as Moto-X in Metroid Fusion).
Unfortunately, I could only seem to find one piece of concept art for him and the following description of his appearance: "Moto are solitary creatures with head and back protected by a hard shell and thick dinosaur-like hide."
Here's what I have so far...
Quick front and side sketches:
Sculpt detail/Texture ideas (pardon my "lovely" handwriting):
Blocked out base model loaded into ZBrush:
ORIGINAL POST:
Hey all!
Not making the same mistake I made with my last pieces by waiting until a bunch of work was done before starting a thread. So, here's what I'm planning to be my next portfolio piece (assuming all goes well)...
Moto! For those who don't know, Moto is an enemy from Nintendo's Metroid game series (appearing in Metroid II and as Moto-X in Metroid Fusion).
Unfortunately, I could only seem to find one piece of concept art for him and the following description of his appearance: "Moto are solitary creatures with head and back protected by a hard shell and thick dinosaur-like hide."
Here's what I have so far...
Quick front and side sketches:
Sculpt detail/Texture ideas (pardon my "lovely" handwriting):
Blocked out base model loaded into ZBrush:
Replies
My main criticism with this so far is his sense of balance. As the character is spherical, his centre of gravity will most likely be towards the middle. At the moment his legs are too small and too far forwards, so he'd have a lot of trouble standing up. I'd suggest giving him larger feet and straightening his legs a little. It might also be worth bulking up his leg muscles, as it looks like his default stance is a squat.
Your reference has legs that come from towards the back and underneath him, rather than protruding from his front. I'd recommend working on his large proportions before detailing, that way you won't end up redoing work. I think his talons could do with some separate geometry like the horns, as they look pretty beefy in your reference, but they're a bit small in your current sculpt.
It's a really cool looking creature, and a solid start. I hope this helps!
I see what you mean about where the legs start on the reference. Not sure how I missed that, but I'll be sure to correct it next. No worries on me getting too detailed yet, I hadn't planned on doing that until I was sure about proportions and everything else.
The talons were separate, but they got kind of messed up when I was moving the legs around (which also thinned them a bit more than I wanted). I'll probably try to clean that up tomorrow.
Thanks for the feedback!
I tried finding more pictures for reference...seems like a hard guy to find. That means you are going to have to fill in the gaps for a lot of the details. Good luck!
The only part I could see as being somewhat detailed already is the mask, but for that I just threw down some clay tubes, smoothed it a bit, and used the crumple brush all over the place. I wasn't sure what kind of look I wanted to go with for that, so the result is just me experimenting (which I liked, so I'll probably move forward with it once the forms (the legs specifically) and cleaned up. I'll try to avoid doing that with the other areas. I know I definitely have a problem getting side-tracked on details when it comes to sculpting, so I'll be extra careful about that. Thanks for the feedback!
And yes, finding references was next to impossible. There's only the one piece of concept art floating around and then two sprites (one from Metroid II and the other from Metroid Fusion). There appears to be a commonly used piece of fan art as well, but it doesn't really make for a good reference.
I'm looking forward to adding some of the details myself, but I'm mostly concerned about making sure I stay true to the basic form of the reference I do have.
Thanks again for the feedback!
As for the talons, I get that problem sometimes. You could try using BackFaceMask in the AutoMask Brush settings (I think that's where it is!) to avoid squashing the mesh. Failing that I just reimport the problem areas and go from there.
I'll lower the detail level and work on the things you mentioned before moving on (shouldn't be too hard as all I've done so far is Dynamesh it - probably just at too high a resolution).
I was trying to stay consistent with the concept with the thickness of the mask/plating, but I think you're right about it looking better if it were thicker.
Again, thanks for the critique! Very helpful.
i love your voice dude
-Added thickness to the mask/plating as suggested. Also adjusted the position/curve of the plates to better match the reference from the get-go (rather than assuming I'll fix it in the sculpt).
-Worked with the position and size of the legs. Might still need some adjustments, but my new subtool structure should help me be able to adjust that later if needed without undoing other work.
-Ditto for the claws.
-Mostly more work on the legs
-Mask plate has eye holes again
-Did some work on the back plates (position, size)
Next, I decided to start detailing a subtool at a time. Not sure if that’s the “official correct game artist way,” but it has allowed me to create better goals to stay on track (e.g. complete mask detailing next weekend).
As always, feedback and critiques are encouraged!
And yeah, Nintendo seems to been inspired from this guy in a few series. I can see a bit of him in Cubone as well as some of the enemies in Zelda (whose names I cannot recall at the moment).
Thanks for the sub!
Things on my list to do before moving onto the legs and claws:
-Sharpen the cracks on the face plate
-Add some more detail to the face plate
-Add eyes
-Turn off symmetry and start adding damage/details to the back plates
What I finally decided to go with is that Moto follows armadillo anatomy in that the scales are lying on top of bone. However, for Moto, the bone is quite thick and can take more of a beating than an armadillo. So, my plan is for the texture in the damaged area to actually show as bone (like the face plate will be). I think that will give it some consistency and show that those areas are the same material, just that the back is covered in scales. Hopefully, I'm not too off in thinking this direction. If so, please let me know. :P
As always, feedback encouraged.
-More work on the back plate uniformity deformation and damage
-A little touch up work on the face plate
-More touch-ups on the face plate
-Eyes added!
I'll probably work on the eyes next (since they shouldn't need too much work), but then I'd like to move onto the legs. That's the area I'm least sure about, so any feedback about them before I start would be greatly appreciated!
Now this is the kind of feedback I need! :thumbup: I've never worked with a rigger before and have only experimented with it myself a couple times for simple things.
So, do you have a suggestion on how far out I should extend the legs? Will I need to adjust the thigh angle as well or just the calves?
About halfway down the page:
http://metroidpower.tripod.com/sprites_enemies.html
I spent quite a bit of time (probably too much) analyzing how Moto would walk/run, including watching a gif I found of Moto's run cycle, looking up how Sheegoths move since they are a similarly structured Metroid enemy, and looking for real life animals that could be similar. Turns out, the giant armadillo's back legs were pretty close to what I was looking for. Guess Moto is more armadillo-like than I realized. :P
First image is giant armadillo reference.
Second is a side-view of Moto's current state (very much in progress). I think the legs are extended enough at this point (though the back of the knee needs some touching up). Judging by how he looks in motion, the tibia/fibula part of the leg wouldn't be able to extend/rotate much further (if at all). Of course, I'm not a rigger, so I could be very wrong. Please let me know! ^_^
Didn't want the rest of the night to go to waste, so after a short break, I kept working on the body/legs/claws.
Critiques and feedback encouraged!
Critiques highly encouraged since I know I have trouble with texture definition (already having trouble with the body/legs...)
PS: Should I pose Moto before I continue work on texturing or after?
From top left to bottom right: Normal, diffuse, specular, gloss. (Apologies in advance if the image quality isn't too good, imgur wouldn't upload so I had to use something else)
Also, if you're using old style rendering, you're going to want to look into this. Use the skin shader to your advantage.
http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/skin-shader
Silly me, because it wasn't human skin, I didn't even think about using a skin shader. :P Trying to get that lizard/dinosaur hide look just was not working with my specular and gloss adjustments, so hopefully the skin route will improve that aspect of the texture.
And yeah, I'm not going the PBR route this time. I'll probably try that for my next project, but figured I was tackling enough things that are new to me with this one as to not complicate it further.
Going with a Metalness Roughness workflow all you have to do is the following for each pixel you paint:
1) Is this metal? Yes or no? (Metalness, it's either white or black [usually])
2) How shiny do I want this to be? (Roughness)
Albedo is literally just diffuse without any AO information. At all.
At best it combines with the Metalness map to do weird things.
Otherwise, just did more work on the back plating and a few other minor adjustments.
Textures: Diffuse, spec, gloss, and translucency. (not posting normal again since it hasn't changed)
-Redid lighting
-A bunch of adjustments to the skin shader, still not quite happy with the look
-Diffuse and specular adjustments on the face plate and body.
Textures: Same as before (diffuse, spec, gloss, translucency)
Still planned:
-Face mask needs more hairline cracks as opposed to the large ones.
-Other tweaks, depending on feedback/critiques
and the vertical lines on the shin look random and not ...accurate?
the look better here before you changed the sculpt
at least the finish line is in sight!
No worries, I appreciate you taking the time to comment at all!
The lines on the shin were added after I did some looking into how we imagine dinosaur hide would've looked. It has a lot of what seemed like a folding look to it in what I saw, so I tried to replicate that. So, either I didn't nail it or it just looks off on Moto. But, I'll probably leave them alone at this point and use it as a learning experience for the future.
I'll do some more tweaking on the body spec/gloss. I've been going back and forth on the gloss levels for a while now, so it's nice to get someone else's eyes on it.