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Orc Warrior - Warcraft style cinematic - feedback for my first portfolio post

Hello everyone!

I've been working on a personal project for my first portfolio post (I was aiming to post it on Artstation). 

But I am a bit anxious if it's even worthy or what is needed to post it so it's appealing. 

My goal was to make a cinematic Orc Warrior in the style of Warcraft cinematics, I've grown up with Warcraft and I am still a huge fan of their artwork and cinematics. During this work I've been heavilly inspired by the Warlords of Draenor cinematic and mainly the work of the artist Wey Wong who did the surfacing work for the model Garrosh Hellscream. 

I've modeled and sculpted in Blender, did the texturing in Substance Painter, rendering in Blender and did some color correction in Photoshop. 





Here is a turntable render of the model 
https://youtu.be/LRa3e-dKO5Y

Any advice and feedback is more then welcome!

Replies

  • Noren
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    Noren greentooth
    I think it looks great!
    Some things I noticed, and keep in mind that I'm not super-familiar with your references, so some of that might be due to those.

    The front of the lower legs is very hard to read, the shapes get lost there a bit.
    The leather cloth feels like it was meshshmoothed. The borders are very clean and have no damage, even in areas where two pieces are stitched together.
    The stitches look like a texture overlay and more embedded than sitting on top of the material. Perhaps due to a common texture overlay or just an unfortunate structure. They also don't seem to really influence the leather.
    The outer chain on his left hand looks like it might slip off the gauntlet and onto his skin. Maybe he doesn't mind, though, being an Orc and all. 
    On the side area under the arms/pecs the forms of the various muscles and ribs flow into each other a bit too much and the resulting larger shapes look a bit deformed and flat in places. Also, maybe some skin would be pushed up by the belt.
    Some of the metal shapes like the rim of the shoulder pad look a bit too lumpy/randomly softened, but then again, he's an Orc.


    "But I am a bit anxious if it's even worthy or what is needed to post it so it's appealing." 
    Understandable sentiment, but I wouldn't worry too much about that. It might be your most important piece right now, but after some time it will (hopefully) be one among many. It's good work on a high level in my opinion, but the level is high in general these days. But of course it's "worthy", that's silly talk.

  • Reydan
    Noren said:
    I think it looks great!
    Some things I noticed, and keep in mind that I'm not super-familiar with your references, so some of that might be due to those.

    The front of the lower legs is very hard to read, the shapes get lost there a bit.
    The leather cloth feels like it was meshshmoothed. The borders are very clean and have no damage, even in areas where two pieces are stitched together.
    The stitches look like a texture overlay and more embedded than sitting on top of the material. Perhaps due to a common texture overlay or just an unfortunate structure. They also don't seem to really influence the leather.
    The outer chain on his left hand looks like it might slip off the gauntlet and onto his skin. Maybe he doesn't mind, though, being an Orc and all. 
    On the side area under the arms/pecs the forms of the various muscles and ribs flow into each other a bit too much and the resulting larger shapes look a bit deformed and flat in places. Also, maybe some skin would be pushed up by the belt.
    Some of the metal shapes like the rim of the shoulder pad look a bit too lumpy/randomly softened, but then again, he's an Orc.


    "But I am a bit anxious if it's even worthy or what is needed to post it so it's appealing." 
    Understandable sentiment, but I wouldn't worry too much about that. It might be your most important piece right now, but after some time it will (hopefully) be one among many. It's good work on a high level in my opinion, but the level is high in general these days. But of course it's "worthy", that's silly talk.

    Thanks alot Noren for your detailed reply. 

    Even though you aren't familiar with the referenced source there are some great advices you mentioned. 

    I didn't model the stitches they are indeed textured in Substance Painter but I find they act weird after rendering in Blender and they don't really look as good compared to Substance. I didn't find any fixes to this so I just took it as it is and continued my work. I think next time I will add them as part of the sculpt so it's more visually in the mesh. 

    Regarding the leather cloth pieces I had alot of issues with that part tbh. At first I had them as actual cloth as in linen with some sort of damaged look. But the lowpoly mesh was to lowpoly for the normals to act properly and so there was alot of deforming and clipping happening. So I decided to change the mesh and smoothed out the sculpt + changing the materials to a more leathery look, which I do think fits the character better. It does miss some damages on the sides, that's an area I definitely haven't figured out properly how to make it look appealing.
    Also your points are more than noted about how the stitches not looking like it influences the leather. Maybe as mentioned above making it an actual part of the mesh should be a fix, or is it possible with textures? 

    The look of the metal shapes is definitely intentional on my part, I was thinking about a battered Iron look. I don't see the Orcs being too crafty and just beating their hammers on the iron to make forms. So I also didn't go for shiny metals with clean edges, if that makes sense :smiley:

    The only part I don't really see and I don't mean this rude is that you find that some muscleparts look flat, I would love if you could maybe show me a bit more what you mean? 
  • Reydan
    I don't know why the thumbs down emoticon was added after the smiley. I tried to edit my reply but I couldn't somehow, sorry!
  • Noren
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    Noren greentooth
    No worries.
    I can't do an overpaint right now, but what I mean is that the resulting connected "sausages" (also not meant rude) from the serratus to the obliques look a bit sqashed, but that might be the light. Generally, it's not bad at all to have shapes flow into each other or summarize them, but here I feel it's a bit much. Hope that was clearer.
  • Reydan
    Noren said:
    No worries.
    I can't do an overpaint right now, but what I mean is that the resulting connected "sausages" (also not meant rude) from the serratus to the obliques look a bit sqashed, but that might be the light. Generally, it's not bad at all to have shapes flow into each other or summarize them, but here I feel it's a bit much. Hope that was clearer.
    I see what you mean now. I think smoothing those parts won't harm it. If I would redo this character I would add a bit skin on him. I started the model in sculpting phase with a super muscular build (even more than now), like a body builder with no fat percentage :)
  • Ashervisalis
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    Ashervisalis grand marshal polycounter
    Could I suggest a saturation/value gradient on the skin from waist to head? He looks like he forgot his sunscreen. I think a gradient would really help bring the viewers focus to his face.
  • Reydan
    I added an expression to the model and also changed the color grading in Photoshop, gave it an overal warmer tone. Found the bug for the stiches, the normals with a strength of 1 was too much so it causes artifacts. Did lose some details on the leather parts now that I lowered the strenght to 0.5, but overal I still like it and the stitches look a bit better. Still a bit too "painted" on but I am not going to model it I think for this piece.
    Would love some feedback on the changes and the expression. I think adding a little more asymetry in the brows and one of the eyes wouldn't hurt. 


  • Noren
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    Noren greentooth
    Maybe try flipping the green (and maybe the red) channel for your stitch normals. They look embedded in places, but the normals seem to be outside the string, which would speak against them being inverted, but it's worth a try. Maybe just calculated from a diffuse? Perhaps you can show the normal map and diffuse for some of them.

    Facial expression is a nice touch, but he's even more orange now.
  • Reydan
    Noren said:
    Maybe try flipping the green (and maybe the red) channel for your stitch normals. They look embedded in places, but the normals seem to be outside the string, which would speak against them being inverted, but it's worth a try. Maybe just calculated from a diffuse? Perhaps you can show the normal map and diffuse for some of them.

    Facial expression is a nice touch, but he's even more orange now.
    I will post the normals when i get home. 

    Color skin is brown with an orange tint on my screen. But i can tweak it ofcourse. Less saturated?
  • Noren
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    Noren greentooth
    Yes, I'd say less saturated, and assume Ashervisalis was thinking about a gradient to less saturated as well. Additionally, there could be a bit more local variation in color and saturation as well. There seems to be some, but it's very subtle at the moment.
  • Reydan
    Noren said:
    Yes, I'd say less saturated, and assume Ashervisalis was thinking about a gradient to less saturated as well. Additionally, there could be a bit more local variation in color and saturation as well. There seems to be some, but it's very subtle at the moment.
    Gotcha, I think if i post the diffuse texture map you will see there is alot of different color inside the texture. But think the overal lighting is too aggressive together with the color correction. And then maybe the amount of different coloring in the diffuse isnt as strong as it looks. 
  • Reydan
    Noren said:
    Yes, I'd say less saturated, and assume Ashervisalis was thinking about a gradient to less saturated as well. Additionally, there could be a bit more local variation in color and saturation as well. There seems to be some, but it's very subtle at the moment.
    Sorry I was away for a week and afterwards caught a flu. 

    This is the normal texture for the leather parts:

    Don't mind some overlapping parts, some tiles aren't used anymore / changed. I need to clean those up.
    But the stichting parts are definitely too much in the normals?
    This is the diffuse texture for the orc:


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