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FF 6 magitek arrmor

Based on concept art from Amano, Still just a WIP here's some shots of what I'm working on in class. So far just finished with the bottom half of it. A couple close ups and one with the blocking of the top half in there to give an idea of total size.

A little too expensive for t a game model, prolly will go back and shave off some of the polys later.

WIP_1.jpg

WIP_2.jpg

WIP_3.jpg

Replies

  • BuCC
    Haha, I got a bit surprised when I saw your post, since I just yesturday started modeling from the same Amano concepts :P Great minds and all that.
    IMO Amanos concepts are pretty hard to transfer to 3d, since the guy often sacrifices realism for for dramatic effect and stuff like that.

    Are you intentionally simplifying the concepts? Right now I think your mesh looks very little like Amanos vision and very much like the sillhuette from the cover art of FF6.
  • torontoanimator
    im really liking it so far, though obviously for right now it look way too clean factory floor model-ish, i cant wait to see it textured and gritty like in the game!
  • Zotter
    BuCC wrote: »
    Haha, I got a bit surprised when I saw your post, since I just yesturday started modeling from the same Amano concepts :P Great minds and all that.
    IMO Amanos concepts are pretty hard to transfer to 3d, since the guy often sacrifices realism for for dramatic effect and stuff like that.

    Are you intentionally simplifying the concepts? Right now I think your mesh looks very little like Amanos vision and very much like the sillhuette from the cover art of FF6.

    Yeah his stuff is hard because even his machinery looks organic and it's hard to see where the planes should be sitting.

    I plan on going back with zbrush and taking care of all those little lines and movements he has throughout it. As for the texture I'm going to try to make it look as much like Amano's concept as possible.

    Do you have any of your's on here, it would be nice to see what another person's take on it would be.
  • BuCC
    I've just gotten started with mine, but I'll post as soon as I have something ;)
  • seforin
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    seforin polycounter lvl 17
    please do justice to this piece or I will virtual head butt you :)

    kTHNXBIE!


    But no seriously, good start, for a piece like this though and since the magitech was more or less battle used

    I would build this rough base and then take it into z-brush to get it some nice dinks and bumps to it along with some hard edge poly modeling prior to that Really make this look BATTLE used. Considering in the intro of the game they just came from a raid and were walking to the first city through the snow , have elements of that tossed in there as well (Frost and dinks!)



    im a big fan of the original concepts of this series so please do some justice to this :)
  • Pope Adam
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    Pope Adam polycounter lvl 11
  • Zotter
    Here we go got some more done today. Still have some geometry to model the rest of the wings and more detail on the the body chassy, after that it's of to zbrush and texture. I was having trouble getting the head proportion and the body sphere right, so I've included the reference I've been using, though I've been using the art book and this ref pic I found was a little small but I think the silhouete still reads.
    Considering that this is going to be a portfoilo piece please feel free to critique.

    FFVIA_Amano.jpg

    WIP_7.jpg

    WIP_5.jpg

    WIP_6.jpg

    torontoanimator - thank you and yes I do intend to dirty this up

    Pope Adam - thanks!

    seforin - I wouldn't have it any other way FF6 or 3 whatever one wants to call it ('specially if you had it for snes) Yeah definately plan on cranking out more detail later on down the line. I certainly hope I can do it justice.

    BuCC - Awesome it woudl be cool to see.
  • Zotter
    Got some more done. Was going to do the wings as an opacity map but the more I looked at the concept it looked like a frame with a screen stretched over a frame. Some minor tweaking before zbrush time.

    I still don't seem to buy the emblem on the ball hip joint, maybe its the small size of the border in comparison to the borders on all the other plating? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. :)

    WIP_8.jpg

    WIP_9.jpg
  • Zotter
    Did some more tweaking, got rid of the emblem on the leg because no matter how I sliced it I wasn't buying it. Also fixed some errors on the wings and head piece.

    I will be unwrapping and zbrushing soon so please any feedback would be greatly appreciated before I go on to the next phase.

    Wip10.jpg

    Wip_11.jpg
  • MattQ86
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    MattQ86 polycounter lvl 15
    Great so far, I can't wait to see the textures and normals get applied to this duder.
  • Kessler
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    Kessler polycounter lvl 17
    Knock Knock whos there? BEST GAME EVER!
  • whats_true
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    whats_true polycounter lvl 15
    I question why your bring this into ZBrush, because judging from the concept, a lot of the hi poly work flow looks like it can be done in Max, and done far more efficiently.

    Personaly, I leave the Zbrushing for the wheatering aspect of the model while I do the majority of the high poly work in Max, just because it is usualy easyer to do.
    The model looks like it has quite a few sharp angles on, angles that may not turn up well with the normal map. Would give it more meat before considering bakeing.

    Your typology is a little bit all over the place too, with wires being packed in small places and spaced out over larger areas. Not very even.

    UVing looks like its gona be a pain hehe. Remeber to over lap and place seams efficianly for optimum resolution. Hope that helps.
  • Zotter
    MattQ86 yeah dude, neither can I :D

    Kessler damn right it is

    whats_true thank you very much for the feedback
    I plan on using Zbrush because a lot off the little organic details seems like they'd be easier to achieve in zbrush considering I don't want to jump the poly count, which is 6,430 any higher than it has to be.

    I can definitely see what you're talking about the topology, figure I'll cut out the edges on the little leg joint parts and add them to the armor plating.

    Thanks again XD
  • Zotter
    finall got most of the normal map sculpted, though there are some detailing work still to do. Since zmapper is screwing up my normal map I'll just post screen shots in zbrush then I'll actually use xnormals to get my N map made.

    edit: and for some reason the normals of the wing got flipped in zbrush but it doesn't matter much since its all going on the same uv location and will be double-sided in max.

    WIP_12.jpg

    WIP_13.jpg
  • PureWall
    looking cool, Ive been hovering around this thread. I really dont know anything of FF but that is starting to look good.
  • Harry
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    Harry polycounter lvl 13
    first i was like :/ then i was like :D
  • Zotter
    PureWall: thank you :D, my favorite final fantasy was 6 I figured it would be nice to go back and relive thiose days of playing it by working of stuff from it.

    Harry: Hehe, was that first look from the pre-zbrushed model? Either way, thank you.
  • ErichWK
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    ErichWK polycounter lvl 12
    I can only imagine how complicated it must be to take apart Amano's concept and build it together for 3d. But this is coming out really rad. <33
  • d00kie
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    d00kie polycounter lvl 17
    i have no knowledge of FF6, but that is a rad looking Robo.
    wait..wrong game..

    i like your robo.
  • Zotter
    ErichWK: Thank you very much. Yeah, his artwork is really organic, even all his machinery >.< But I've always loved it, so I guess it's my chance to fanboy it

    d00kie: Thanks dude, 6 my favorite final fantasy. On the snes, but was epic and cinematic without the use of FMVs
  • Zotter
    Okay, got some more work done on the texture, though I plan to paint some more detailing. I fixed some problems with the way the normal map was sitting on the low poly, now I've hit a real road block. I can't seem to get the specular right for the main body and can't find a good spec tutorial (specifically, what colors to use for what kind of metals you want) Please if you have any advise it would be greatly appreciated.

    WIP_15.jpg

    WIP_16.jpg

    Spec Map

    magitek_armor_S.jpg

    Diffuse map

    magitek_armor_D.jpg
  • Zotter
    Okay, I figured out what was wrong with my spec map, it was the craptastic diffuse map I was basing it on, so I went back and detailed it up, but I still want to do more work with the spec.

    Please, any feedback is greatly appreciated.

    WIP_17.jpg

    WIP_18.jpg

    WIP_19.jpg

    Diffuse

    magitek_armor_D2.jpg

    Spec

    magitek_armor_S2.jpg
  • Ged
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    Ged interpolator
    the black bits/ head etc are too dark for me to actually see what Im looking at, the texture flats look fairly good tho
  • Ghostscape
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    Ghostscape polycounter lvl 13
    Your texture is really holding back your model. Especially the spec - don't generate your spec by just making a contrasty diffuse. Actually define the material properties.
  • Sirdelita
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    Sirdelita polycounter lvl 10
    Agreed, the textures are holding this piece back...everything else is hella awesome!
  • Zotter
    to all: thank you very much for the feedback.

    So both textures are weak or just the spec? I've been trying to find a good tutorial for spec maps because I know I need help in that, I painted the detail the best I could on the diffuse but if I need to take it further any ideas?

    thanks again!
  • uneditablepoly
    It seems the texture is very dark and the details are getting lost in the render, very lost. It's hard to tell in the image what exactly is going on with the surface of the model. Try brightening things up a bit and making the details more clear.
  • Ghostscape
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    Ghostscape polycounter lvl 13
    Zotter wrote: »
    to all: thank you very much for the feedback.

    So both textures are weak or just the spec? I've been trying to find a good tutorial for spec maps because I know I need help in that, I painted the detail the best I could on the diffuse but if I need to take it further any ideas?

    thanks again!

    Both. Overall you have very little material definition, few fine-level details, etc. Your darks are too dark. You have very little believable wear, grime, dirt, etc. You have colors, rather than materials, in the diffuse. It looks like you're painting a lot of lighting information rather than letting your lights and normals control that.

    Your spec is just a contrasty diffuse, which is very, very, wrong. You should be using it to define the color and amount of spec each material has - for example, your black metal should not have a black spec, it should have a white spec. Use more layers and masks - I typically have one layer set for my diffuse with each material masked off (and then other layers for grime, wear, etc) and then duplicate that and change the contents of each material completely. You should never be generating a spec map from a flattened diffuse.
  • MattQ86
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    MattQ86 polycounter lvl 15
    I've found this tutorial very helpful in painting specular maps. Good work so far, now you just need to refine your textures.
  • whipSwitch
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    whipSwitch polycounter lvl 8
    I think ghostscape covered most of the problems with the diffuse. At the moment, what i would do is just put a flat 50% gray or white spec on everything and work on the diffuse, it's all metal so it will work for a temp stand in. You're to busy bouncing back and forth. Get a nice tight diffuse done and the spec will be easier to produce.
  • Zotter
    to all: thank you for the feedback

    uneditablepoly: yeah, after looking at it on a different computer I'm seeing how dark it is, I think I need to readjust the gamma on my laptop.

    Ghostscape: Thank you for taking the time to go more in depth on your explanation, I will definitely try to work more with layers.

    MattQ86: That's great I really haven't thought to use zbrush for anything besides sculpting my normal map.

    whipSwitch: Yeah everyone's been really helpful, thanks I'll head back to working on the diffuse a bit more. Yeah, that's something I have a problem with that I get so excited to see the finished product that I skip the steps on the way >.< .
  • Zotter
    Thanks for the feeback so far.

    Did more work on this, found it really hard to separate laying down highs and lows on the texture map for the look of the material and not for the specular, and to let the lighting in the scene and the spec map do the work. After that I went back and worked out my spec map from the updated diffuse.

    WIP_20.jpg

    WIP_21.jpg

    WIP_22.jpg

    magitek_armor_D3.jpg

    magitek_armor_S3-1.jpg
  • whats_true
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    whats_true polycounter lvl 15
    Good improvement, but still a touch to dark to me. I like how you broke up the dark spots with the armor and violate color, but thats lost when you get to the head. I'd continue the color around the head area so it doesn't look as mushed up and hard to read. Maybe even define it better with a better contrast or some color me thinks.

    Heck, could even try doing a levels on the entire thing and to tone down the darks to see what looks like.

    Also, its good rule to have the SPC map be very contrasty, while the diffuse be somewhat more flat. you go to think what parts of the metal will actually catch light and make it bling. Will you see a reflective surface off of rust? How about copper. Will you see it in deep crevasse or on the surface of things. Metals also give off certain SPC colors as well. Metal is usually a tint of blue, copper a orange or yellow, exhaust pipe ends a rainbow effect. Keep working on it.
  • Zotter
    awesome, thank you very much that helps a lot, especially what colors to use for which spec.

    Yeah my teacher said the same thing about the head piece, I was holding back because the concept if very dark, but I figure with 3D you have to let that go in the translation from 2D. I want to keep it minimal but you're right about it being hard to read.
  • Zotter
    Hey thanks again for the feedback, I definitely want to continue working on it but as graduation draws to near so does my portfolio deadline so in the interest of getting more than one prop done, I'm going to have to move on for now.

    The armor is supposed to just be a prop in a full scene, city and all based on the work from amano, so I finally got the base of it done.

    Any Feedback greatly appreciated :) .

    amano_render_01.jpg
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Still way too dark.
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