1st Game Character: Futuristic Warrior

[Josh LaFayette]

Hello all,

This is my first post on the site, so I'll briefly introduce myself. I'm currently attending the Art Institute of Portland, and I'll be graduating this September (only 6 weeks!). My focus is on modeling, character setup, and animation. Up til this point, I have done high-poly modeling to smooth, so I wanted to expand my modeling skills and create a game character.

Project description: My goal is to model, texture, rig and animate a character and get it working in the unreal 3 engine.

Poly Limit: 8,000 tris

Proposed modeling pipeline:
1. I will use Maya to model the low poly version, then unwrap it in Headus UVlayout.

2. After unwrapping, I'll add edgeloops and clean up the topology so that it will smooth nicely, being careful not to move or delete my border edges, so that it will keep the same UVs as the original lowpoly version.

3. I will then import this highpoly version into zBrush, and use it (in combination with Photoshop) to generate my normal, color, and specular maps.

4. Back in maya, bake an AO map to composite on to the color, then put it all together on the lowPoly version.

This is my first game project, I haven't done most of this stuff before, so I would really appreciate your feedback and comments. Thanks!

Since I'm not much of a concept artist, I enlisted the help of a fellow student, Andrew Fisher, who came up with this awesome character.

right now, I'm close to being done with the lowPoly version, at this point it's at 7,498 tris.





Any suggestions or critiques would be great, especially as to what areas need more polys, and which areas could use less. Also, if you notice any proportion/model problems, let me know. Thanks!

[beartraps]

Welcome to game-artist Josh. Not a bad start on this guy but some things are bothering me:

I think you should work on his gesture, he looks like hes about to fall on his face. Take it into Zbrush and repose him (mainly his profile)

Here is what I would do for workflow, I personally like to build the high poly model first, that way you can get it looking as good as possible before you do a low poly:

1. Either redraw the side view or just use the front concept art as reference for the armor. Do NOT use it as a modeling template, the front view looks good but the profile view is pretty bad. You should also do a paintover of all of the different pieces of his armor so you can know exactly how it is put together.

2. Start with an asshole naked base mesh and get it looking good with proper proporitions. Your dudes head looks too big, legs look bow-legged, and his hands look a bit too large. I think its important to have a naked base mesh that looks decent on its own before you start dressing it.

3. THEN build all his clothing and armor on top of that base mesh. Export all that stuff to Zbrush and start sculpting away!

Keep it up!

[melonman]

I'd agree with dieone that's defo good advice especially about the proportion creating a naked character will expose flaws straight away. One other thing im not sure if it's relevant because I can't see the crotch properly but I think that it might be too low where the legs join the loin cloth. I would model that a bit higher up because it may cause some probs when animating. Overall good job man just keep working on it.

[ciaranb]

Nice concept and the modelling is nice and neat. My tip is that the head seems too large. A body should be 7 heads tall, yours looks to be about 5/6. im not sure that is ur intention or not but try and see what it looks like. Overall its coming along, get some detail in there but most importantly keep at it.

[scooba01]

awesome start. i think the head is a tad too big. And it kinda has kiddie proportions for some reason. a typical heroic male should be around 7 to 8 heads in height.
have a look at your concept the head looks more in proportion.

[Nitka]

Good wireframe. We are waiting for the UV and texture.

[Josh LaFayette]

Sorry about the long response time, but I got busy with a midterm project.

Thanks everyone, for the great feedback - it has really helped me out.

dieone: Great pointers, thanks for taking the time to comment. I ended up redrawing the front and side views, paying more attention to proportion, and then I sketched the armor on top. Hope this helped with the posing and scale issues.

As far as modeling the high poly mesh first, how does this work? I'm just wondering how you keep the same uv's for the high and low poly. Maybe there's an easy way, but I'm still new to zBrush. If you could share a bit more detail of your pipeline that would be helpful.

melonman: I tweaked the proportions quite a bit, but I'm not sure if I got it right yet. I'll show a render without the loincloth.

ciaranb and scooba01: I agree about the head size, it was looking way too big. I adjusted it so that he's closer to 7 head tall.

Here are the new reference sketches I came up with:


And this is how it looks after some adjustments, the current poly count is 7,988 tris.






And here's a shot without the hanging cloth:


let me know if you see any more problems with the proportions. Also, if you see areas that could use more or less polys, that would be helpful. Do I have enough edge loops around the joints?
Thanks again for the critiques!

[dbsmith]

Much improved from the initial version. Proportionally, his hips look to be quite far away from his chest as if his stomach is too long (but it might just be the way his lower pelvis is modelled - theres something a bit strange there anyway).

Also, the elbows won't deform properly if animated unless you set up the edges to accomodate this.

[Josh LaFayette]

dbsmith: Thanks for the suggestions. I think you're right about the torso looking too long, so I did some tweaking to the proportions, and I also reworked the elbow, hopefully it helps.



I'm at 7,996 tris now, and I'm feeling pretty good about the lowPoly version, so I went ahead and unwrapped it. Here's how the UV's look:

[Nitka]

The scale of the face, in UV it can be more . Typically allocate 30% of total .

texture resolution?

P.S. Sry 4 my english.