Oh, I just realised another cool thing about this approach:
Since all the texturing is currently stored in my ZBrush highpoly files, I can edit my lowpoly geometry and UVs at will and simply re-bake to see how it looks - that way I can get optimum geometry and UV layout without ever having to sacrifice or reconsider texture work done in Photoshop.
It also means I can update my highpolys later on if needs be, tweak the lowpoly to match and re-bake. Then I can leave texture polishing and refinement to much later in the process once I'm sure the geometry and UV layout is going to work, and I never lose or destroy any data.
Score!
Looks really kickass MoP i love it. Your texturing process is 100% identical to mine except that i use a Zapplink usually as the starting point and refine with polypainting.
Another cool thing you can do is using the Enhance Shading Brush in Projection Master to give some subtle lighting in some areas for example on metal combined with a reflective material.
Yea looking really awesome MoP. Loving the lantern and the detail you packed in there, really great stuff! Cool idea about the work flow too, I love super flexible UV workflows.
Lowpoly for staff finished, lowpoly for lantern done too. Initial bakes at final resolution (lantern takes up a 512x512 square), still a lot of normals issues with the lantern, I might just do it in XNormal since I don't trust Max's baker.
Still no texturing done, I am going to avoid using Photoshop until all the lowpolys and bakes are done, just so I don't waste time.
Yep, on the staff only. I've baked normal maps, diffuse maps (no lighting) and AO maps for this. The lantern is just pure flat material colour & AO from Max.
r4ptur3: The staff and lantern together are exactly 2000 triangles. I've modelled out the eyes lowpoly now too (all 10 of them!) and they come to just over 1000 tris. All individually rotateable
Hopefully I can fit all 4 harpoons into around 1000 triangles, if so that will leave me 6000 tris for the guy himself, which might just be enough. I have a feeling I will have to optimise like crazy though...
Anyway, speaking of harpoons, I think I'm done with the highpoly for them:
Lowpoly for staff finished, lowpoly for lantern done too. Initial bakes at final resolution (lantern takes up a 512x512 square), still a lot of normals issues with the lantern, I might just do it in XNormal since I don't trust Max's baker.
nice work on the staff.
for hard surface normal baking i would highly recommend baking in Maya2008 or 2009. it get near flawless hard surface normal maps from there. everything else i bake in xnormal.
MM: Yeah, in my experience Maya's normalmap baking and viewport display is a lot more consistent and higher quality than Max's. I am going to either use XNormal or keep it all in Max, though, because I don't want to spend a lot of time and effort sending lots of things back and forward between packages.
Anyway, I've finished the highpoly and lowpoly for the harpoons - exactly 300 triangles per harpoon ... the guy currently has four on his back so that's 1200 tris, but if things get tight I can easily drop it to just three.
I will probably do a ZBrush detail pass and maybe polypainting/ZAppLink work on the highpoly harpoon later on, if time allows.
I also thought it was interesting to compare the very first WIP shot I took to where he is now. I can't believe I ever thought those were good proportions :S
Lookin good. The only thing that bothers me a bit is the net. It looks like it's made of unmoveable metal. If you could make it look stretched across his shell really tight and still hanging loose in others, it'd be cool.
Hmm. I am going too slowly ... everyone else nearly has their textures done
Lowpoly is sitting around 9600 triangles now, although it's nowhere near finished yet. Most of the body and big arm are just the ZBrush base mesh at the moment (triangulated areas in the wireframe are parts I've actually worked on for the lowpoly).
Still need to add in the net (probably about 200 tris) and the spines on his back, although I am still not 100% sure that those are even needed at this point.
Also I need to figure out a non-poly-heavy way of allowing his eyes to blink
Currently I only have one extra loop around the eye sockets for the eyelid, if I skinned that to a joint then he could blink but it'd look rubbish. Maybe I will leave that out for now and add it in later, I don't need blink ability for the final pose and submission, it was more just something I wanted to do to make this guy act as a really cool finished piece with a proper rig and everything.
I hope to find room in my lowpoly budget for some fish...
nice work on the lowpoly, love all the little alpha'd touches - how do you get that to display in max? last time I tried was max 8 and it was nasty. Oh and by the way cool stuff in 3D world this month
Re: blinking... do it like a lizard or amphibian that blink a membrane iirc rather than the actual surrounding of the eye(s), you should be able to get away with duplicating the eyeballs themselves - UVWmap the eye close and then 'open' them - with perhaps a slightly transparent material?
Or.. like a frog that pulls it's eye back into its skull when it swallows, that way you can deform more of the mesh than just the immediate surrounding eyelids?
kat, yep, I was thinking the same - I could probably get away with a shader effect if I absolutely wanted that blink, and had the time - I can probably find an area of texture somewhere to grab it from and just do an extra pass in the shader driven by a rig control.
Started and finished the rig today... still needs a little refining, but it'll do for now. I may polish it up after the contest is over and make a few little animations, should be fun.
Zero work on the textures so far, it's basically flat colour fills.
looks cool! are you planning on doing the textures the Zapplink way or the old fashion way. I`m really interested in trying out more polypaint to texture work and would be nice if you could share some pros/cons when you are done with the comp.
viniterra: haha, crazy - i hadn't seen that before, looks... strange
warriah: cheers, although that pose was just my random bone rotations to test extremes of deformation, it's probably not going to be anything like that in the final.
bilbana: thanks - due to the limited time left I think I'm going to do it the old fashioned way in Photoshop, because if I used ZApplink and polypainting for the whole character I fear I'd waste too much time trying to learn how to use the tools effectively rather than just being able to make it look good straight away.
is that fk rigging? i really need to get myself a copy of max for that nice biped rig they have, fbik is such a pain to set up in maya...max seems much more intuitive in that department.
1 and 2 are my favs. It would be cool if you played with blending 2 of them together, kinda like a real crab. If you check out some pics of fiddler crabs you can see how they have these cool color gradients on their main claw. But yea man this guy is looking pretty shhweet.:)
nrek: yep, those two are my favourites too. I'm leaning towards #1 most, I think it has the most natural feel and nice contrasts. Definitely going to add in some better gradients and patches of more saturated colour too, as you say.
Replies
Looking forward to seeing it implements on the main dude.
Since all the texturing is currently stored in my ZBrush highpoly files, I can edit my lowpoly geometry and UVs at will and simply re-bake to see how it looks - that way I can get optimum geometry and UV layout without ever having to sacrifice or reconsider texture work done in Photoshop.
It also means I can update my highpolys later on if needs be, tweak the lowpoly to match and re-bake. Then I can leave texture polishing and refinement to much later in the process once I'm sure the geometry and UV layout is going to work, and I never lose or destroy any data.
Score!
Another cool thing you can do is using the Enhance Shading Brush in Projection Master to give some subtle lighting in some areas for example on metal combined with a reflective material.
Keep it up I'm sure this will look awesome.
Lowpoly for staff finished, lowpoly for lantern done too. Initial bakes at final resolution (lantern takes up a 512x512 square), still a lot of normals issues with the lantern, I might just do it in XNormal since I don't trust Max's baker.
Still no texturing done, I am going to avoid using Photoshop until all the lowpolys and bakes are done, just so I don't waste time.
Hopefully I can fit all 4 harpoons into around 1000 triangles, if so that will leave me 6000 tris for the guy himself, which might just be enough. I have a feeling I will have to optimise like crazy though...
Anyway, speaking of harpoons, I think I'm done with the highpoly for them:
nice work on the staff.
for hard surface normal baking i would highly recommend baking in Maya2008 or 2009. it get near flawless hard surface normal maps from there. everything else i bake in xnormal.
MM: Yeah, in my experience Maya's normalmap baking and viewport display is a lot more consistent and higher quality than Max's. I am going to either use XNormal or keep it all in Max, though, because I don't want to spend a lot of time and effort sending lots of things back and forward between packages.
Anyway, I've finished the highpoly and lowpoly for the harpoons - exactly 300 triangles per harpoon ... the guy currently has four on his back so that's 1200 tris, but if things get tight I can easily drop it to just three.
I will probably do a ZBrush detail pass and maybe polypainting/ZAppLink work on the highpoly harpoon later on, if time allows.
I also thought it was interesting to compare the very first WIP shot I took to where he is now. I can't believe I ever thought those were good proportions :S
Looking forward to seing how you coordinate
the monster colours with them.
That stick is definitely teh sickness.
I'm gonna try your workflow for my next model.
^_^
Lowpoly is sitting around 9600 triangles now, although it's nowhere near finished yet. Most of the body and big arm are just the ZBrush base mesh at the moment (triangulated areas in the wireframe are parts I've actually worked on for the lowpoly).
Still need to add in the net (probably about 200 tris) and the spines on his back, although I am still not 100% sure that those are even needed at this point.
Also I need to figure out a non-poly-heavy way of allowing his eyes to blink
Currently I only have one extra loop around the eye sockets for the eyelid, if I skinned that to a joint then he could blink but it'd look rubbish. Maybe I will leave that out for now and add it in later, I don't need blink ability for the final pose and submission, it was more just something I wanted to do to make this guy act as a really cool finished piece with a proper rig and everything.
I hope to find room in my lowpoly budget for some fish...
please give a shit about the blink and spend the time on something you actually see on the final image. polycount ftw!
Are you going to throw on some finer detailling in the texturing phase?
Some 3dsmax screengrabs of the finished lowpoly with normals and ambient occlusion baked:
Finished highpoly in ZBrush, in the end it was quite rushed so it's not as detailed or as well-designed as I'd hoped for, but it should do...
I will start the texture and posing next.
Or.. like a frog that pulls it's eye back into its skull when it swallows, that way you can deform more of the mesh than just the immediate surrounding eyelids?
kat, yep, I was thinking the same - I could probably get away with a shader effect if I absolutely wanted that blink, and had the time - I can probably find an area of texture somewhere to grab it from and just do an extra pass in the shader driven by a rig control.
Zero work on the textures so far, it's basically flat colour fills.
Waiting for the textures, keep up the nice work!
warriah: cheers, although that pose was just my random bone rotations to test extremes of deformation, it's probably not going to be anything like that in the final.
bilbana: thanks - due to the limited time left I think I'm going to do it the old fashioned way in Photoshop, because if I used ZApplink and polypainting for the whole character I fear I'd waste too much time trying to learn how to use the tools effectively rather than just being able to make it look good straight away.
let's see some pixel fun!
Rooting for ya!
is that fk rigging? i really need to get myself a copy of max for that nice biped rig they have, fbik is such a pain to set up in maya...max seems much more intuitive in that department.
-Woog
Fear the lens flare.
http://www.dkimages.com/discover/previews/1365/11102083.JPG