RAR! GROWL! SNAP!
polycounter lvl 8
So, I thought it might be time to stop hiding in the sketchbook thread and post something already. Since I've solved my problem of "how the hell am I gonna bake these sculpts?", I'd actually like to get on with finishing a couple of them. Specifically, this guy. Ive hit a couple of walls and would appreciate any thoughts or ideas.
Next thing on my plate is reworking the belt, and making it feel like an actual belt, rather than a continuous strap.
<poof>
Next thing on my plate is reworking the belt, and making it feel like an actual belt, rather than a continuous strap.
<poof>
Replies
He looks like T-Bag from prison break with the goatee and sardonic smile, heh.
You talking about the tv show prison break? I don't think Ive ever seen an episode of it.
I have a feeling it might be the combination of human calf to to dog calf. Its all sculpted really well but there might be a better design, Im talking specifically about the back calf splitting to the reverse knee/heel. A wolfs foot is also a lot smaller than that proportionally to his leg. The feet look almost like a large dino's foot. rather than a wolfs paw.
I havent seen the previous version, and dont want to ping pong you around, but I feel personally that a thin lower leg that is bulked up with hair alphas later might get you further to a werewolf feel? anotomically correct number of toes that are more stubby, in a paw formation, not long finger toes.... with better dog nails, like those high half moon nails that arch high and look like talons a bit.
Love the hands, perhaps the belt/shorts could match the shoulder arm setup a little more?
also just an after thought i thought werewolves had four pads on there feet
most people who do werewolf's copy the wolfs legs. and wolfs don't have any muscles on that weird backwards facing bit
http://www.billybear4kids.com/animal/whose-toes/wolf/WolfStanding.jpg
@Microneezia & ru4it - thanks for the all the feedback about the legs. I completely agree with most it and have started working them in a new direction. After a fistfight with zBrush as to whether or not it was gonna let rebuild the topology for the feet (to get rid of the toes), I finally got around to reworking the lower legs/feet. I think after I get a bit of sleep, I'mm gonna add some fur to the feet, up the back of the lower leg.
@buddy - Thanks!, I think. I never saw any of the concepts for predator, but it's interesting to think about what he could have ended up looking like.
I think that you could also curve the lower leg slightly further if you wanted to add a little tension to the muscle groups, I have included a rough line of the sort of curve that I would hope to achieve. (b)
Sorry if a cause offence, my only real excuse is that I'm new here
So I decided to learn max and what better way to do that than try an actual project in it! The going has been a bit slow (hence the time between posts), but I thought I was at a point worth an update. So I kept some of the base armour that I liked, scrapped the rest, and I think it's much closer to what I had in mind in the first place.
Any thought are very much welcome.
Anyhow Great work!!
http://www.paleoart.com/russian_fossils/fossils_photo_gallery/russian-vertebrate-fossils/russian-pleistocene-wolf-skeleton.jpg
Keep it up. ^^
Luke - I assumed you meant the armour bits in your image. It's been redone now, but thanks for feedback anyway
Rai - Thanks for the reference, it helped greatly and after reworking the legs one more time, I think they are where they need to be, albeit some tweaking, assuming I want to actually finish this guy...
I would like to bitch about how I haven't had much time to work on him, but considering the current economic situation, I'm thankful to be busy with work, even if it does detract from my free time... Anyway, I've modeled the armor and I'm just starting the zbrush pass..( as in, imported and separated...)
as always, any and all feedback is appreciated.
zee bake test:
zee geo:
anyone have any idea why parts of a projection cage explode out when applied through the RTT dialog? not a biggie, as it's fine when you apply the modifier manually, just curious...
So the ears are kinda funky? just paint 127 127 255 (numeric value of color) flat blue over them to fix it. If you want you can take a black and white image of fur and put it over the UV coordinates of the ears and do a hieght to normal bake in photoshop with xnormal (free download plug-in), overlay that with the rest of your normal maps and just fade it in with a mask so it covers the janky part only.
It sounds a little complicated but it's a lot better than dealing with cages and that nagging quest for the "perfect bake", which no one will know about other than you in the end anyway.
Think of normals as you would any other texture, they can be painted over, tiled, moved, scaled etc in photoshop. Just don't rotate 'em
Will it look as kick ass in your portfolio? Not quite, you wont have that really nice finished high poly render that the layman thinks looks really pretty and shiny but has no actual real-world use, but you'll get the job done, and the model wont look any worse because of it.
So i guess the best of both worlds would be to create the cool looking high poly render for the portfolio but just do what dirty work needs to be done with normal manipulation to get the low poly working.
Normals are important, but not the end all be all, make sure they work where you put the most effort in, but in cases like this with the ears, just blast it away with blue and start from scratch in 2d.
hope this helps
I just spotted an anatomy problem, the pectoralis major attaches under the deltoid, it doesnt run down the side of the pecs.
http://www.docmartin.at/Unfallchirurgie/Schulter/pectoralis.jpg
A bit late to fix it i guess.
stands at 8726 tris pre-fur and the diffuse and spec are in the works...
The armor looked great in the high res, but it's been almost completely flattened with how you are lighting it here. I can't tell if you should be inflating some of your high res model bits a wee bit or not because of it. Maybe give it a little lighting love and repost?
I purposely lit it flatly because it was always easier to develop the diffuse without a bunch of other stuff in the way, but if you know a better way, I'm all sorts of open to suggestions. Also, I've been floundering with max's viewports shaders, trying to get the hang of them...
Something funky is up with my model I think, I'm getting this strange alpha sorting problem....
see how the alpha shows up fine on the left leg, but shows the background on the right?? You can't see any of the mirrored bits through the alpha. Not just the mirrored parts, but most of the shoulder armour and some random faces on other not mirrored parts dont show up either....
It's happening in every directx shader I have and in marmoset, so I was thinkning there's something funked up with the model somewhere....
Anyone know what the hell this is??
That shader does full alpha, it just doesnt always do it right.=)
@stoofoo - yea I kinda thought it wasn't the shader, since it was happening with everything. About the hair, I'm inclined to agree with you. It's not really workin out so much.
To think of the about it, most of the good example's of sculped hair work because they are usually on very stylized characters..Add another piece to the live and learn pile...
Also: Your face has lst some detail in the translation? Dont know, but your sculpt had some tude. Your low res looks like its not got the same thing going. What gives?
the bigger shapes aren't as deep, but I think most of them are there. The layout of the teeth is thinner in the LP, that could be part of to. I 'd planned on fixing that anyway to be a closer match the the sculpt
edit: it was the placement of the eye inside the head, i had accidentally moved it in front of the eye lid. look closer now.
And if anyone knows, is culling related to the particular shader in max? I'cant for the life of me turn it off with any of the dx shaders...
and another pass on the textures... i think ive got the saturation in check now and im 98.436% with the armor and fur, gotta dig in on the nails, mouth elements, refine the skin some, and tweak the laces, then it's on to the spec.
For refinements, I think the hair could use some more clumping drawn into the diffuse. The metal bits need to be greatly darkened in the diffuse(think gun metal) so that the spec can do its job, and id push the spec up on the edges a bit more too.
OTherwise I'm liking it bud. Keep it up.
thegodzero - thanks man. I don't have a new image to post atm, but i did drop the value on the metal plates, works much better.
stoofoo - Thank ya much. Yea, I reworked some of the fur on tgz's comment, and it's still not quite there. I've all but finished the spec (not shown yet), so maybe I'll go back and rework some of the normals for the lighter patches, since I've changed them around a bit too..
been in and out of town for the past week, and been trying to get this guy a weapon designed, but I'll post the current progress + fixes when i get a chance...
The head/teeth are really letting this one down right now. The face has lost its form with that fur on it. And the teeth are in need of some grit or otherwise integrating them. They just stand right now.
Is this using the shader I sent you? If so, tweak the direct to like 1.2 and indirect to approx .4. That indirect is ambient lighting from the cube map and flatens it a bit.
Looking pretty damned good though my friend. *high five*