Really? Because I thought they were starting to look strange, I'd also like to thank you guys for putting me through the works (knocked some sense and thought into my process now ).
Yeah I heard from a video that I watched a while back to always have arms at 45 degree angle so I'm going to re-build around that.
Stop worrying about posting updates to the forums and go look at more books and pictures for human anatomy and proportions. If you plan on drawing concepts for your models, tighten up your 2D skills by visiting places like conceptart.org
The proportions are still off (fingers, palm, thighs, arms), and those should be your first priority before moving on to texturing.
First make a basemesh with good anatomy.
Then make a proper high poly mesh.Right now it looks like you just smoothed your lowpoly. On your concept it looks like a hard surface tech suit,model that properly. Because right now it doesn't look like your concept.
Yeh I would slow down if I were you. If you want to work on sculpting, make a sculpt of a naked dude or girl. If you want to work on armor concepts, make a million concept sketches (and ask for advice and take it when given). You're doing at least 5 different artistic disciplines here and doing them all wrong.
I think it would be good to set goals for yourself. Try to make the perfect base mesh. Or get a base mesh and try to make the perfect texture for it. Once you've done that, try to make a perfect sculpt. Or just try to make a perfect sculpt working from someone else's base mesh.
It's really hard for young creative people to focus on things that way, but if you do you will set yourself above your peers. Until you do, you will not.
yea, a bit, but it wouldn't change the posture, which is way off.
Do what the others have said and take some time to look before you work. It wont just help a little, it increase the quality of your work by leaps and bounds if you really stick to it.
If I were you, I'd drop the idea of doing highpolies and sculpting entirely for the next year at least. If you want to learn, start with lowpoly diffuse models (or 2D, whichever you prefer). I started off by doing 500 polygon tanks and although I never do vehicles anymore these days, I haven't regretted starting off with such simple things for a second. It's not a matter of spending more time on every part, it's just that you can't jump into something as complicated as next-gen characters without having taken the time (measured in years, not days) to build up skills and disciplines.
Well, hopefully throughout this entire process you got to understand your personal workflow of a model from start to finish. And by the looks of things you're not afraid to tackle any of the stages. (some people loathe unwrapping, texturing, etc.)
I'm sure I'm beating the hell out of a dead horse by saying this, but take quite a few steps back and reevaluate and polish your techniques. I only say this because I'm a firm believer that anyone can be a game artist, it's a skill more so than a talent.
Look at the many resources you have available on Polycount and the interwebs and do some tutorials. Give yourself a year or more and I'm sure you'll be able to create some great work if you're dedicated enuough. Patience is a virtue.
the legs are backwards, rather literally. compare it with the loomis "ideal male"
the entire character is blobby and fuzzy. lowpoly model, normal map, diffuse etc. it looks like you've used a 256² or even a 128² and scaled it waaay up.
yes. it's important that you know how to work with normal maps, how to bake highpolies, how to use newschool techniques. but what's more important is the artistic foundations.
i think it'd be really beneficial if you limited yourself more, dump the normal maps and currentgen polycounts. Just take something around 800 triangles, a 256² or a 512² diffuse only, and make that look good. "The more you restrict yourself, the faster you learn" is my motto
since when do you guys help people that are not looking for help?
i always asket is that right, how would you do it, and nothing....
nvm, i hope it stays that way when im doing stuff again^^ @model
it has no details at all, ad the normalmap does nothing except for making it look ugly^^
but practise on somtimes you can be pro too (lol)
Well I am getting my ass whipped this week, I understand. I'm pretty much scrapping the current game project for now (I'd rather have the masterpiece that I dream of than a sloppy mess).
Any of you guys know good concepts/tuts etc to work on?
giving you a break, would make you get better how exactly? really, it's not much to ask for you to draw the fucking feet on your characters.
fine, you don't want any help, that's cool... i'll just keep my mouth shut and chill. but, i'm still not putting your shit on my refrigerator unless you've earned it, sorry alec.
Yes man, slow down, you are making a ton of mistakes that you should easily be able to see. Turn off your music, and work in silence if it helps you think.
You know ive given a bit of advice to some art friends and it really did seem to help them and it is something that i do. It teaches you to be self critical in a constructive way.
Grab a blank sheet of paper and a pen, now just sit and look at your model/drawing and write down every mistake you can see; and when i say everything i mean everything. Dont stop till you fill the whole page.
Now the next task is to work down the whole page fixing everything that you wrote down, and dont show us again until you do do that. You obviously arent an idiot and can work things out analytically as you have worked out all the respective technical processes so that is why i am suggesting this.
Also the bueaty of this is that any improvement that comes out feels so much sweeter as you worked out the problems yourself.
giving you a break, would make you get better how exactly? really, it's not much to ask for you to draw the fucking feet on your characters.
fine, you don't want any help, that's cool... i'll just keep my mouth shut and chill. but, i'm still not putting your shit on my refrigerator unless you've earned it, sorry alec.
haha brutle dude
No gold sticker for you!
Alec to just ping on what hes talking about
your obviously in your drawings worried about "the character"
hince why your drawing armor and such
But its obvious your still novice at drawing your form.
Practice the form practice block men/ women get down forms before you do details (jesus I need to listen to what I preach some times..)
anywho great practices I would suggest is andrew lemis (hope I didnt mispell his name)
He has a explanation that breaks down the human body to forms that makes drawing sketches of characters simpler.
Its annoying trust me but just practice basics
I heard this once by a professional and its a piece of advice stuck in the back of my head till this day
-Told to me by a guy who works at blizzard I know
"When I was younger I use to love to draw,but I could never draw well and what I did draw I hated because it wasnt good, so I spent alot of time just drawing things I hated non stop,(forms and proportions) and I eventually started to get to a point I was good enough doing things that were boring and making them interesting and then drawing started to slowly become fun again. "
I didn't mean"gimme a break" harshly - I was basically saying you caught me. I understand, I was paying most of my attention to the upper body before realizing I wouldn't have room for feet, again... haha.
And I get what you guys are saying - I did a full page study of character guidelines and basic shapes - filled the page up nicely with thumbnails - I only posted this picture because it was related to the topic and I thought it was an improvement.
Excuse me for sounding like a whinny bitch if that was the way I accidentally came off.
I didn't mean"gimme a break" harshly - I was basically saying you caught me. I understand, I was paying most of my attention to the upper body before realizing I wouldn't have room for feet, again... haha.
this is basically what i've been talking about from the beginning. you need to use gesture drawing to place the forms for everything. your first strokes should layout the entire form and pose. sketch it out real light and then build up your strokes, it's very common practice. i think if you spent more time lightly planing out your drawing with gestures, you'll be much better for it. and not just the forms, everything, including the feet. draw out everything lightly before you start committing some real lines.
Thats what I'm doing now, light guidelines to find the motion/pose I want, using basic shapes to block it out, then adding the larger details before going into the smaller details.
From looking through this post I can see that youre fairly determined to get this guy into 3d.
Going back to drawing is the right idea. What you've done here is not working though. I can see that your trying to figure out how this guy is going to look from a front and profile view which is good but what you've done isn't going to help you until you can describe shape's and volumes in a clear manner.
There are a lot of steps you can take to simplify the drawing of the human figure. You should focus on simple shapes and lines first and then use perspective drawing techniques to turn those shapes into forms that describe volume.
`
Stay away from shading and value for the time being. Focus on making clean confident lines not the shaky and rough ones and dont fill it in with value that doesnt really mean anything like youve done here.
Someone already posted this link earlier you should bookmark it and study it and really try to learn some of the concepts that are being explained.
If you scroll down to the section on line art where he gives an example of a character holding a sword and the stages of line art for that character you should start by trying to create the first two stages for your character the ones labeled rough pose and flesh volumes. Although you should probably stick with a standard layout of front, profile and back before doing a pose.
Dont bother to post any more 5 minute super sketchy drawings like the one with the missing feet or this one you just posted. The only advice we can really give on drawings like these are to start over and take your time on the drawings.
It takes a lot of practice and study to draw a decent figure. Dont be discouraged keep working at it. You should check out books on figure drawing take classes and draw your ass off youll only get better if you do.
This character is based off the main group of soldiers in a novel length story that I wrote, they're called : The ghosts of Sol (the solar system) - nanosuit-bearing soldiers, fast and deadly - IO wanted the character to have only a little bit of armor and more tight suit (like some kind of space ninja )
so what type of features would the suit have? the parts would have to flow with the muscles to have maximum flexibility, jet boosters would be useful, so a mini jet pack or something. what challenges does someone have to overcome in space? Give him some tools he'll need.
In the context of what the environment is, they have a life support backpack and thats about it. I wanted the armor to resemble Grey Fox from the Metal Gear series :
In fact, now that I look at it, I think it's time for another re-draw.
Alec3d, just wanted to comment on your good attitude and determination. Keep up the good work, and you'll have this character looking badass in no time!
Alec3d, just wanted to comment on your good attitude and determination. Keep up the good work, and you'll have this character looking badass in no time!
You don't know how much that means to me for you to say that
Replies
Yeah I heard from a video that I watched a while back to always have arms at 45 degree angle so I'm going to re-build around that.
There's two bloody tri's that are floating around up the top of the UV layout, I'll have to track 'em down!
Stop worrying about posting updates to the forums and go look at more books and pictures for human anatomy and proportions. If you plan on drawing concepts for your models, tighten up your 2D skills by visiting places like conceptart.org
The proportions are still off (fingers, palm, thighs, arms), and those should be your first priority before moving on to texturing.
First make a basemesh with good anatomy.
Then make a proper high poly mesh.Right now it looks like you just smoothed your lowpoly. On your concept it looks like a hard surface tech suit,model that properly. Because right now it doesn't look like your concept.
I am going to quote you now forever you realize
I think it would be good to set goals for yourself. Try to make the perfect base mesh. Or get a base mesh and try to make the perfect texture for it. Once you've done that, try to make a perfect sculpt. Or just try to make a perfect sculpt working from someone else's base mesh.
It's really hard for young creative people to focus on things that way, but if you do you will set yourself above your peers. Until you do, you will not.
yea, a bit, but it wouldn't change the posture, which is way off.
Do what the others have said and take some time to look before you work. It wont just help a little, it increase the quality of your work by leaps and bounds if you really stick to it.
I'm sure I'm beating the hell out of a dead horse by saying this, but take quite a few steps back and reevaluate and polish your techniques. I only say this because I'm a firm believer that anyone can be a game artist, it's a skill more so than a talent.
Look at the many resources you have available on Polycount and the interwebs and do some tutorials. Give yourself a year or more and I'm sure you'll be able to create some great work if you're dedicated enuough. Patience is a virtue.
the entire character is blobby and fuzzy. lowpoly model, normal map, diffuse etc. it looks like you've used a 256² or even a 128² and scaled it waaay up.
yes. it's important that you know how to work with normal maps, how to bake highpolies, how to use newschool techniques. but what's more important is the artistic foundations.
i think it'd be really beneficial if you limited yourself more, dump the normal maps and currentgen polycounts. Just take something around 800 triangles, a 256² or a 512² diffuse only, and make that look good. "The more you restrict yourself, the faster you learn" is my motto
i always asket is that right, how would you do it, and nothing....
nvm, i hope it stays that way when im doing stuff again^^
@model
it has no details at all, ad the normalmap does nothing except for making it look ugly^^
but practise on somtimes you can be pro too (lol)
Any of you guys know good concepts/tuts etc to work on?
http://nickzucc.blogspot.com/2008/04/working-with-zspheres-tutorial.html
hope it helps you.
@ bulls eye : I can't watch many videos, I'm about to be capped
what 3d app are you using?
great for beginners and veterans. imo.
*ahem!*
ya try to help a guy...
giving you a break, would make you get better how exactly? really, it's not much to ask for you to draw the fucking feet on your characters.
fine, you don't want any help, that's cool... i'll just keep my mouth shut and chill. but, i'm still not putting your shit on my refrigerator unless you've earned it, sorry alec.
You know ive given a bit of advice to some art friends and it really did seem to help them and it is something that i do. It teaches you to be self critical in a constructive way.
Grab a blank sheet of paper and a pen, now just sit and look at your model/drawing and write down every mistake you can see; and when i say everything i mean everything. Dont stop till you fill the whole page.
Now the next task is to work down the whole page fixing everything that you wrote down, and dont show us again until you do do that. You obviously arent an idiot and can work things out analytically as you have worked out all the respective technical processes so that is why i am suggesting this.
Also the bueaty of this is that any improvement that comes out feels so much sweeter as you worked out the problems yourself.
haha brutle dude
No gold sticker for you!
Alec to just ping on what hes talking about
your obviously in your drawings worried about "the character"
hince why your drawing armor and such
But its obvious your still novice at drawing your form.
Practice the form practice block men/ women get down forms before you do details (jesus I need to listen to what I preach some times..)
anywho great practices I would suggest is andrew lemis (hope I didnt mispell his name)
He has a explanation that breaks down the human body to forms that makes drawing sketches of characters simpler.
Its annoying trust me but just practice basics
I heard this once by a professional and its a piece of advice stuck in the back of my head till this day
-Told to me by a guy who works at blizzard I know
"When I was younger I use to love to draw,but I could never draw well and what I did draw I hated because it wasnt good, so I spent alot of time just drawing things I hated non stop,(forms and proportions) and I eventually started to get to a point I was good enough doing things that were boring and making them interesting and then drawing started to slowly become fun again. "
And I get what you guys are saying - I did a full page study of character guidelines and basic shapes - filled the page up nicely with thumbnails - I only posted this picture because it was related to the topic and I thought it was an improvement.
Excuse me for sounding like a whinny bitch if that was the way I accidentally came off.
this is basically what i've been talking about from the beginning. you need to use gesture drawing to place the forms for everything. your first strokes should layout the entire form and pose. sketch it out real light and then build up your strokes, it's very common practice. i think if you spent more time lightly planing out your drawing with gestures, you'll be much better for it. and not just the forms, everything, including the feet. draw out everything lightly before you start committing some real lines.
Going back to drawing is the right idea. What you've done here is not working though. I can see that your trying to figure out how this guy is going to look from a front and profile view which is good but what you've done isn't going to help you until you can describe shape's and volumes in a clear manner.
There are a lot of steps you can take to simplify the drawing of the human figure. You should focus on simple shapes and lines first and then use perspective drawing techniques to turn those shapes into forms that describe volume.
`
Stay away from shading and value for the time being. Focus on making clean confident lines not the shaky and rough ones and dont fill it in with value that doesnt really mean anything like youve done here.
Someone already posted this link earlier you should bookmark it and study it and really try to learn some of the concepts that are being explained.
http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm
If you scroll down to the section on line art where he gives an example of a character holding a sword and the stages of line art for that character you should start by trying to create the first two stages for your character the ones labeled rough pose and flesh volumes. Although you should probably stick with a standard layout of front, profile and back before doing a pose.
Dont bother to post any more 5 minute super sketchy drawings like the one with the missing feet or this one you just posted. The only advice we can really give on drawings like these are to start over and take your time on the drawings.
It takes a lot of practice and study to draw a decent figure. Dont be discouraged keep working at it. You should check out books on figure drawing take classes and draw your ass off youll only get better if you do.
Hopefully this helps good luck.
this better?
Whats the purpose of this character? Spy and stealth, or big bulky strength? His legs need a bit more attention on their shape, and are too close.
In fact, now that I look at it, I think it's time for another re-draw.
You don't know how much that means to me for you to say that
Thankyou mate, that really gave me an insight to the whole process! Man that guy is awesome.