A good GI render and controlling your hard and soft edges on your low poly models will be essential ingredients in achieving this look. Textures can be relatively simple with some subtle variation in high frequency color / bump to achieve the matte aesthetic, but the modeling, lighting and rendering will make or break it.
Hi Thanks for the comments. I tried to make corrections to the face and the top of the suit. I continue to sculpt the legs, and it's really difficult to obtain hard edge shapes. When I subdivide, the edges become too soft. For example, the shoes looks like clay. I'll keep working on it.
considering that each major release from valve is coupled with subtle graphical enhancements i dont doubt it's realtime ... According to wiki episode 2 will boast improved large scale terrain with dense foliage DOF and more realistic soft shadows .. along with some more dynamic lighting ....
beautiful work everyone! I just tried submitting now before work (even though the "deadline" is long gone) and went through with no problems. long live soft deadlines in the game industry edit: and I actually got TWO confirmation emails, different ones! they are obviously wigging.
The guy kinda reminds me of the old Fade to Black game. I think a big help would be lighting on the characters. You imply some lighting when he fires up, but otherwise the guy and the UFO have no lighting on them, a little soft lighting would do wonders.
Sky dancers? come ON, that shit was AWESOME! Which kid wouldn't be happy with something that flies and mauls? Truth be told, the wings really were pretty foamy and soft. Now the Thundercats Thunderclaw, that thing was cool. It really snapped shut pretty hard. http://www.toyarchive.com/Thundercats/Vehicles/Thunderclaw.html
It's the default texture filter when rendering in max which makes your textures look blurry and soft. Catmul rom will sharpen the image, much like the sharpen or unsharp mask filter in photoshop and give you crisper results. Maya has a similar issue w/ texture filtering.
I like it so far. My biggest beef would be the lighting. I'm sure you meant for it to be dark and have contrast but I'm losing the characters in the background. Bring in a few more soft back lights. Just enough to give them a little more distinction from the set.
Looking great. The car seems like it's floating above the street a bit. Maybe the shadow bias needs to be adjusted to pull the shadow closer to the car? Or perhaps you could add a soft blob shadow for fake AO, to "ground" it a bit more. Could just be the floaty physics. Looks like a lot of fun.
Looking good so far. My main concern is the face looking to manly for the kid size/young teen style body. Its going to be a good challenge for you to find a nice balance of the head translating into the body, by playing around with the scale of the head, proportions, softness, style etc. Looking forward to seeing more :)