How can I make this better?

seth81 · Jan 2007

Hello Polycount. I keep coming to these boards for inspiration and motivation. I graduated from school a few months ago and have been trying to get my first job in the industry... but randomly sending out my resume and reel hasn't paid off. So it's back to practicing and trying to get better.

With that said - here's my latest wip. He's about 9,500 tri's. I'm using 2 1024 maps for diffuse and normals. Still have to do the spec and alpha maps.

aesir · Jan 2007

I think you could optimize the low poly a LOT in all sorts of various places. Especially since you have a normal map supposedly doing most of the work. Just concentrate on what polys aren't contributing anything to the silhouette and get rid of em.

One other thing you might want to keep in mind is that you dont have all that many loops going around the man-dress he's wearing,esepcially in comparison to ther areas of the body. And while I don't think you need those loops to add detail, it would probably be very helpful for animation purposes.

Japhir · Jan 2007

I like the model but the texturing is still a bit plain (don't know how to improve that though

) other than that, great job!

Jaco · Jan 2007

It's a good model, but it looks a bit plain. It could use some finer details, and some nice contrast.
The gold(?) doesn't really look like gold. Try using some brighter colours, if the guy likes to wear gold, he probably would not wear such bland colours either.
The cloth also needs some deeper, and more detailed wrinkles.

low odor · Jan 2007

Rig him..put him in a cool pose

Mark Dygert · Jan 2007

I think you have too many polys where it doesn't count like the head, hands and arms. And not enough in the hanging cloak. No one will care about the high poly parts because they will notice the cloak deforming very poorly. It also looks like you could easily rework the topology of the cloak to be all quads. That way if you ever want to take him into Zbrush or Mudbox it will make things a little easier to work with. I would suggest using mudbox to give him some proper normal map detail since the normal doesn't seem to be doing much.

If he isn't going to ever move his legs then you're in good shape leave him alone and optimize it a bit.

Where are his feet?

Slipstream · Jan 2007

I don't think need to model many of the small ridges in the armor, or have such a smooth curve to the pauldrons, especially since you're going to have a normal map on it. Let that handle those smaller details and use your polygons to smooth out the silhouette and give you the density needed to animate it smoothly.

Granted, this does show off your mesh building skills quite adequately . . . maybe you should make two separate version, one that shows your understanding of next gen concepts with a strong silhouette, and then one that has a mess of modeled detail.

G/J overall, just decide what its ultimately going to be used for and prime it specifically for that

seth81 · Jan 2007

cool, thanks for the quick replies. I ripped out a few poly's and added some loops to the man-skirt. he's down to about 6,200. is this better? should i keep going and reduce him more? I'm also including a just normals shot... i was getting the feeling that this isn't detailed enough or maybe i'm using it wrong?

i haven't taken anything out of the head yet... just out of fear really. how much do i need to model for facial deformation when it comes to game models?

now a few questions - i had a lot of poly's in the scarf around his neck before, thinking that since the folds in the scarf will overlap and block that view of other pieces of the scarf that i should model that in. of course that would probably only be noticeable at a really close-up shot. now the scarf is more along the lines of a deformed cylinder... is this the way to go? are there any rules as to what detail is too small to model in (the ridges on his forearm guards and back thing)? how is cloth handled in the latest generation of games? still rigged and weighted to bones? or should i try to plan for dynamics like syflex type stuff?

again thanks for the replies... i'm going to try to break up the texture a bit more, add some finer details, and add some feet. keep 'em coming if you would.

How can I make this better?

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