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Neza... WIP

Corry Frydlewicz
polycounter lvl 17
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Corry Frydlewicz polycounter lvl 17
I originally posted this in Low-Poly characters without seeing the 500 tri limit there =P

I plan on modelling for next-gen, so this feels low poly to me

(less than 2000 quads)

Nezamodel22.jpg
Nezamodel22w.jpg
(the wires are 2-sided by accident)

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  • CheapAlert
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    CheapAlert polycounter lvl 18
    That's alot of un-defined edges and uneven poly distribution you got there
  • Valandar
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    Valandar polycounter lvl 18
    Not to mention a LOT of polys in the torso that don't add anything to the silhouette...
  • Spacey
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    Spacey polycounter lvl 18
    First about your renders...
    Those see-through wire frames are very hard to read. A screen grab (PrintScreen) of the viewport would be better. Also, try not to render on white as it is making everything look darker than it actually is. A mid-grey is usually a good choice.

    The poly distribution looks uneven. There are spots you could easily cut down on the poly usage (tail, torso, lower legs). You can take those extra poly’s and put them into the hands and some of the faked geometry in the texture (tubes on the thighs).

    The biggest problem I see with the texture is that you're moving right into the texture overlays stage without building up the underlying form first. The eye sees value before hue or saturation, so try and build up that form before putting the overlays and patterns on it. It looks like you're using the dodge/burn tool to create the dark splotches. Try to use color when painting the form. What I mean is use some blue in shadows and some red/yellow in the highlights (and sometimes the colors are different). If you do this your model will really come to life. Prom explains it better than me, so check out this link: http://itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm

    The tubes on the legs (on the inner thigh) are very ambitious. You're trying to fake too much of a change in geometry. The circular things are okay because they wouldn't change the silhouette very much if modeled, but the tubes have a lot of thickness to them and just come off as looking wrong when you try to show it on a flat surface.

    The tip of the tail looks weird in the wireframe, but it could just be the wireframe.

    The hands could use some extra lovin'. Try to give the knuckles more edge loops so they can deform properly. It looks like you’ve modeled in four knuckles (per finger). Humans only have three knuckles and seeing how this beast is humanoid I’d stick to human anatomy as reference. The thumb doesn't look like a thumb right now. It move much differently than fingers, but you've made it exactly like the fingers.

    Looks like there is some stretching occurring on the lower legs (the area between the light grey and the feet). The black lines aren't straight and should be an easy UV fix.

    I like the mass this character has, but the concept doesn't seem very fleshed out. This beast creature has mechanical legs, but no other signs of technology or why he has the legs. There's no insight into where this character has come from or what his function is in the world. Is he a science experiment gone on a rampage? Maybe he's some futuristic warrior defending his tribe from incoming enemies? We should be able to get a good read of the character just from looking at him.

    Hope you get something out of that jumbled mess of a critique. grin.gif


    And maybe someone should change the Low-Poly thread's name to something like "Low-poly Characters (>500 Tri's)" to make it obvious to those who have an itchy trigger finger. wink.gif
  • yeluis
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    yeluis polycounter lvl 17
    I think the texture is way too simple, messy and lacking definition for a next generation character. You can see the seems everywhere and the stretching and mirroring are pretty obvious. As for the modeling I agree with everyone here. too many undefined and wastes polys. next gen doesnt just mean throw in a bunch of polygons and still have it look like old generation stuff. you need to give more realism to the beast. give muscle definition add detailed modeling itno the armor. think about the characters environment, why is he part cyborg, what is his function this helps you to add stuff like scratches and smears to your texture giving more life and realism. i feel im startin gto repeat what others have already said. so just give it another try. Also reference reference and reference, you cannever have enough of that smile.gif
  • Corry Frydlewicz
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    Corry Frydlewicz polycounter lvl 17
    All right! this is what I came here for. Thanks for tearing me apart guys ^^

    I probably should have mentioned that he's only got placeholder texture on him and he's only got a load of polys running under his chest to support the edge loops running around the torso.

    I'll definitely smooth out the poly placement and put up a printscrn
  • Corry Frydlewicz
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    Corry Frydlewicz polycounter lvl 17
    Here's my latest update. I tore off his limbs and reworked his edges. Cut him up and added alot of polys. He's been re-unwrapped too, but I'll show that when I start to texture him.

    Nezamodel33.jpg
    Nezamodel33a.jpg
    Nezamodel33b.jpg
    Nezamodel33c.jpg

    And I put the poly counter on and did screenshots this time ^^

    His legs are all in pieces, so I can model them seperately and assemble them as their own parts. I think this will make it easier to rig and also make it feel more mechanical. More updates to come ^^
  • Zergxes
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    Zergxes polycounter lvl 18
    I think you still have a lot of work to do on optimizing that mesh. Instead of deleting whole parts, get rid of some more edges that don't help describe the form. I'd shoot for cutting your current count in half.

    Good luck. Check out some of the stuff by the crazy folks here at polycount, or seek out wireframes of published game models- that will give you an idea of what kinds of tricks to do.
  • Corry Frydlewicz
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    Corry Frydlewicz polycounter lvl 17
    Next steps:
    * Remove some cuts
    * Possibly remove all polys under armor

    I was gonna have him put the armor on during one of the animations I was planning for him... but I changed the way it hooks together drastically and the animation would be too chunky now, so I could just remove those unused polys.

    Do you have a good source in mind for me to look at for wires?
  • hawken
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    hawken polycounter lvl 19
    lol the limit wasn't there before you posted. However I must thank you and good luck with the beast!
  • Cubik
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    Cubik polycounter lvl 18
    Bobo is pretty much the man whne it comes to optimized models:
    http://www.bobotheseal.com/

    You have tons of optimizing work to do. This model could easily be around 500 polys, 2000 is way to high for this relativly simple model. The siloette Focus your polys in the deformation zones; the elbow, shoulder neck and around the mouth+eyes if you plan on any facial animation.
    If you remove the tris in his(?) claws and clean up the poly distribution you could conceivably use this model as a mid-poly base model, which you then would both optimize a lot to create a lowpoly and refine to create the highpoly.

    The texture also needs work. Just slapping a max produceal on the upperboy isn't going to be enough. Study Doom 3 and Quake 4 art assets to see how they use diffuse maps, specular maps, normal maps and more to create a more complete and believable model. I would wait with the texture until you have a more polished model, but it's good that you have a basic idea on how the texture will look. I believe that it's essensial when you model.

    This all might sound harsh, but it's what you need to hear. I didn't want to accept it myself when I first posted here, so I continiued on my merry way and ended up with a shitty model. I do believe that I have improved now, both in how I take critique and in how I create my models, but you can always get better.
  • Corry Frydlewicz
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    Corry Frydlewicz polycounter lvl 17
    lol... there is no texture on the new model yet ^^

    The armor's UV's are layed out and I put a basic stin-looking texture on the ribbon, but that's it.

    I'm gonna optimize the crap outta him, then normal map probably. I haven't tried that yet, so we'll see.

    Removing tri's in the claws? Those are gonna be solid on the finger and not move at the joints at all... does it still need quadification?

    And, of course, I'm thankful for your input you guys. I signed up here in the first place so I'd get more than the "mom putting your work on the fridge" critiques I was getting from other sites.
  • rooster
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    rooster mod
    he means if you wanted to subdivide it the tris would need removing because they would cause pinching. The poly distribution is a big factor on this guy, take a look at him and ask where he mostly needs polygons to round the silhouette- if you ask me all those many polys in the chest need to be ripped out and stuck in the hands, because they're not doing much at the mo and could be doing a lot more. Having said that you've got enough in the hands to make them rounder as is.

    Personally I would chop out any edgeloop that isnt significantly defining the model, really strip it down, then look again at where the model is looking too blocky and cut back in some polys, but only as many as you need.

    lastly its common practice to count in tris, as 'faces' is a pretty wooly count- you have a mix of quads and tris and the actual number of tris isn't apparent.

    Thats all technical stuff though, I think the design and proportions are really cool- keep bashing away and you'll have a good model at the end!

    edit: I've also been guilty of these things, this latest general character is really forcing me to look again at what optimisation means and so its stuff fresh in my mind. When I think back to a dredd model I made a while ago I really need to go back over it and get it into shape..
  • Joao Sapiro
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    Joao Sapiro sublime tool
    i think that if you still dont understand model optimizing it still is a bit soon for normal mapping imo , normal mapping is good, but still your base model has to be well distributed.
  • Corry Frydlewicz
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    Corry Frydlewicz polycounter lvl 17
    OK I chopped him up and I think I managed to maintain his desired shape. I set my Tri budget to 2400, and removed every single tri Icould find, even in the fingernails.

    Neza35_01.jpg
    Neza35_02.jpg
    Neza35_03.jpg
    Neza35_04.jpg

    What should I do next? I was thinking of working on the legs, but I'm going to assemble them as seperate parts, like my old AutoCAD engineering crap.

    I also made a new UI Scheme from scratch this week and it's frickin' sweet ^^

    And thanks again for all the input guys! I really saw what you meant when I started chopping up the mesh. There was alot of information there that Didn't require so many vertices.
  • Corry Frydlewicz
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    Corry Frydlewicz polycounter lvl 17
    More progress. I re-modelled the whole leg to optimize it and get a cooler shape to it. My character design teacher has been helping me with my sketches and I'm in turn slapping those onto the mesh.

    He may look like he's leaning a bit forward off-balance, but he carries a pole-type weapon that he props himself up on, so it's intentional.

    Neza36_01.jpg
    Neza36_02.jpg

    Bout to start unwrapping, and maybe texture the armor till someone comes online to guide me ^^ Thanks!
  • Corry Frydlewicz
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    Corry Frydlewicz polycounter lvl 17
    I finished my starter textures for my armor. Never used a Wacom Tablet before, but it was pretty cool ^^

    I'm gonna clean up the UV edges to fix the weird seam in the back, but otherwise it doesn't look to bad for a base (IMHO).

    Neza38_01.jpg
    Neza38_02.jpg
    Neza38_03.jpg

    Too hungry to continue, so I'll probably do more Monday. Let me know how the polys of the torso and legs are if you can, I don't want to move any further on that until I get some sort of "approval" ^^ G'nite folks!
  • Corry Frydlewicz
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    Corry Frydlewicz polycounter lvl 17
    UPDATE ( 3/13/06 )

    Worked mostly on my Unreal Level today, but also got a bunch of Neza stuff done too. That's right kids... no life.

    * Unwrapped the body.
    * Positioned the legs in his idle pose. Mirrored them over.

    Neza41_01_thumb.jpg
    Neza41_02_thumb.jpg
    Neza41_03_thumb.jpg
    Neza41_04_thumb.jpg

    Neza40_UVW_thumb.jpg
    Neza40_ArmorUVW_thumb.jpg

    Next step is texturing! Yaayyyyy! ^^
  • Corry Frydlewicz
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    Corry Frydlewicz polycounter lvl 17
    UPDATE ( 3/18/06 )

    * Began texturing today

    Neza42_01_thumb.jpg
    Neza42_02_thumb.jpg
    Neza42_03_thumb.jpg
    Neza42_04_thumb.jpg
    Neza42_05_thumb.jpg

    I'm fleshing out the structure of the legs before I start dirtying them up. They should be as scarred and rusty as the character himself when I'm through with them.

    I'm also obviously going to fix the wicked seam around the base of his neck. It isn't visible with the armor on, so it's a low priority fix until I get the legs done.
  • Corry Frydlewicz
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    Corry Frydlewicz polycounter lvl 17

    UPDATE (3/28/2006)

    Neza is pretty much finished. His textures need cleaning up and his Rig is basic, but he is fully functional animated. I plan on working on his textures more to add more contrast and then I may add some IK Chains to the ribbons hanging from his armor. I might do that all tonight, or I might just procrastinate and start working on assets for my next project, which you all will see posted here soon enough.

    Neza49_poses_thumb.jpg
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