Murm's Dominance War Thread

[Aldo]

touchê

[Heart_Murmur]

A little more progress. Not the finished zbrush of the head, I'm thinking of messing it up a bit, not exactly sure how yet though.

[airrunkle]

Those are some sexy crotchless chaps there 

[Kraemology]

Might be cool to give your character some crazy scar or deformity on his face. I always thought stuff like that made people looks so much more hardcore. ....remember sgt barnes from platoon? You don't fack w/ that man! ....oh, lookin sexy by the way

[Moose]

Looking pretty good, can I get a front side and back view? lot easier to crit when it isnt stylistically posed.

initial reaction is that his chest seems too big and puffy almost like he has cleavage, and Im thinking the calves are too big due to his boots flaring a bit much. His head also looks a bit like its ben pinched. his chin is extra large and his forehead seems a bit small.

-J

[Heart_Murmur]

Here ya go, have at it. Very WIP right now, none of the clothing is near half way done, more or so blocked out. All quads on the body mesh for zbrush, no intention of doing that for the low poly.

[Moose]

Hey Murm,

not a ton of time but I would say overall its looking pretty good, his calves are a bit thick and his torso seems to be pushed a bit forward. I would look at fixing those two things. His legs also feel a bit long but it works stylistically. His boots are definitely too big for him right now and I would revisit those, and his feet in general.
Ill try to post some more specifics later.

-J

[JustinM]

His head is pushed back too far, it looks like someone put something in front of his face that he doesn't want to smell or something and he's forcing his head back to avoid it. I think his shoes could be scaled down slightly.

[Moose]

I would agree with that, if you pushed his head and shoulderblades / back forward a bit it may solve some of the problems. His center of balance is awkward right now, it should run roughly from center of head to his center of feet.

[Heart_Murmur]

Thanks for the advice guy's, I think these proportions should be better. The legs though are a little elongated for lankiness purposes.

Edit: Actually I think his face needs to come forward a bit more. Rib cage could probably come down a little more too.

[Jmendoza]

Hey Nate, you got a pretty good base model there.

I think if you go in there and polish the model some more you could keep it as a base for future models.
here is a few crits...

-his legs are very off balance with the rest of his anatomy. The problem here seems to be that either his feet are too small or his thighs and calves need to be shortened and beefed up.(a mix of both)

- His neck seems to be working properly in front view but in side view it seems short. The problem here is that his neck is too wide near the chin area, just give those polies a little push back and problem fixed.

-his fingers look ok but his pinky should be shorter, pinky is always the one that offsets the fan of the hand.

-you could probably go in there and optimize the mesh to cut down on polies.

-I would go and study the way the knee is modeled from someone who you admire. It seems deformation on this current one wouldn't work properly.

That is all for now, can't wait to see this baby finished. Good job!!!

[S.Ohlberg]

His bottom is too big.

[Heart_Murmur]

@mendoza: Thanks man, some strong points there. I think I will keep this a basemesh for further projects, but he needs some major cleaning up as suggested. Good call on the pinky and neck.

Here's the basemesh for everything, now for the zbrush pass.


Basemesh Ortho's


Basemesh Perspective


Weapons. Throwing knife(Left) and Dagger(Right)

[Cory]

hey nate nice job. just one thing that caught my attention though, his torso piece looks like a modern day bullet proof jacket. and his boots follow the same suit-> modern day. but the cloak over his head and the tunic around his waist don't seem to fit the same style, or time period, or...something. I dunno maybe its nothing but I just thought it might break up the continuity of you character.

[Heart_Murmur]

You're right on the boots, perhaps when I get it into zbrush I can fix that issue. Right now everything looks super clean, there is going to be a lot of tweeking going on once I get him into zbrush. Same goes for the chest piece, It is going to be a hybrid between metal and Ice armor, the details are just not there yet. If not, they are easy fixes. Good call.

[Cory]

metal and ice huh? very nice.
yeah I'm sure once you work your zbrush magic, the cloth draped over him will be more cohesive. 

[duoxan]

Post-apocalyptic futuristic fantasy where magic exists.

thats straight from the prompt, so dont forget it....

id say the problem is they dont flow together, but if you find a way to tie them together, maybe the cloak is leather? scrap pieces sewn together? cut up those boots, and attach some random piece of metal or padding to make him look more mad maxish

[JustinM]

Hey Nate, is there a tutorial online somewhere on how to do the Render To Texture process that you showed in that mini SGDA meeting? I keep trying different settings and options and can't seem to get it to work. At all.

your character is looking pretty cool. He might have trouble when grabbing a throwing knife because the dagger might get in the way (but not necessarily). I'm not sure what kind of straps you're planning on but how you have it now the throwing knives seem very 'tacked on', and might look better with some straps or something, of course that also depends on how you ZBrush and texture it.

[Heart_Murmur]

Hey thanks for the advice guy's, I'll try and incorporate the critiques as much as possible, at this stage its hard rework some of the designs due to time constraints.

@Justin: I did a little searching on google, but couldn't find the tutorial I wanted, It involves a tire and was incredibly short and to the point, if anyone knows the one please post. Anyway some google searches came up with these tutorials. I skimmed them and they seemed to do projection normal mapping.

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/normal_workflow.htm

Half way down shows the projection mapping.
http://www.game-artist.net/forums/spotlight-articles/43-tutorial-introduction-normal-mapping.html

[Heart_Murmur]

Artifact - I'll admit its a bit busy, but I'm at the point where I don't want to touch it anymore. I'll probably sculpt the sphere's.

Arm is a WIP.



3.2 Million poly's.

[Heart_Murmur]

High poly almost done, I'll start on the Low poly tommarow.

Couple things still to do:

Fix pants, folds look irregular in some spots.
Complete stitching in some areas.
Spread ice to the right side of his face.
Find a better spot for his throwing knives.
Engrave Weapons.


17.8 million polies.   


Polycount logo

[duoxan]

put the knives on his chest? in his boots? behind his gauntlets?

or better yet, have him shoot them from his gauntlets....just kidding

[vern701]

pant folds are the most noticeable were they meet the boot, defiantly fix that

as far as throwing knives, look at reference of were soldiers keep grenades, it's the same basic principle, quick access to thrown objects.

if your looking for a place that may be a little more exotic, I'd say his lower back, the "small" i think is what it's called, it'd also spruce that area up a little more, seeing how it's a little plain compared to everything else

[Screw-on Hed]

sweet stuff nate.

when you engrave the knives, i would suggest pushing the ice theme a little more. i dont really get the ice feel yet, despite how awesome everything looks. the artifact gauntlet sculpt looks demonic rather than ice.

thats my 2 cents. everything looks great though.

[Clintus Maximus]

Damn Nate that's freakn sick bro. The artifact really works on this guy. I love how that arm that it's attached to is kinda messed up. His boots are sick i love the design on those. The folds on the clothing are really looking good. I can't really pin point anything i don't like. Except that its too bad you've gotta have that logo in there because it does't really flow with this guys style you know? lol

Now, question:
Did you Z-brush or model the detial of the artifact and his other fore-arm? They're pretty intriacate so i was curious if you winged it or if you concepted it and modeled it.

[orion]

Nate, this is looking ridiculously good. If I had to critique, I would question the vertical length of your man's head. It feels like it should be taken down about 15% vertically, and maybe 5% uniformly. Also, people are right about the creases in the back of the pants being noticeable, but your sculpt is pretty amazing. Can't wait for more.

One comment on the clothing design- I'm not sure if this has come up before, but seeing him from the back makes me worried about that back 'loin cloth' piece. When he runs, wouldn't it swing up and smack him in the no-no balls 007 style?

[Heart_Murmur]

Thanks guy's for the feedback, I'm a bit off schedule I was suppose to have the low poly done yesterday and haven't even started it yet. Hopefully I can work on it tonight.

@vern & duoxan: I put the knives right on his weapon sheath, I think it works, its  a little sketchy but it will have to do. They are right in arms reach now though.

@Jeff: I agree with the demonic theme going on with him and I think the texture will fix that, most of Ice/Snow gets its traits from being white so hopefully that will help. Sculpting Ice is hard!

@Clint: Yeah what I did with the armor was sub-divided them upto 2 million polies, then I drew on masks to mask out the parts of the design. Inverted the mask selection and then just used a inflat button/slider to adjust how much I want them to pop out. Also there is a tool called lazy mouse that gets rid of hand jitter which is really cool. The design was all improve, having symmetry on you can pretty much make any scribbles a cool design. I'd be willing to show anyone at school how it works, its really quite simple.

As for getting the 2 million polies back into max, I just recently figured out how to do projection mapping in zbrush, so that shouldn't be much of an issue.

@Orion: Yeah those pants were bothering me, I think I fixed them, I'll get screens up later tonight of the finished model and weapons. As for the head I'll also pop some ortho's up so you guys can see the proportions correctly.  The back loin cloth is going to be more of a light fabric, so hopefully he can sleep easy.

Thanks again!