WW2 with a modern twist character project

[Zeus]

For which Engine - N/A
Current Polycount -
Max Polycount - 9000 tris possibly 10000 if i can sway my lecturer
Texture Size - 2 x 2048x2048
Description of background information on piece - I have a unit that's just been set at university, two characters need to be modelled, textured and animated. The first needs to be modelled in two weeks ready for rigging, but im hoping to have him textured in that time too if other work isn't too intense. Basically the setting is WW2 with a twist. The twist i'm putting on it is that it basically reached a stalemate and 10 years on from the start the War is still raging. Im hoping to model the characters with elements of both traditional WW2 history as well as evidence that the warfare has gradually evolved throughout the conflict.

Where are you looking to receive criticism - any comment is welcome, im hoping to post the various stages of development over the next few weeks, so should be lots to comment on.
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Here's a quick concept, i dont have the proper one on my comp yet, please not the colours are simply dividing up the mesh into sections and are not examples of colour schemes lol (nb the guy has syringes that carry antidote to various gas attacks that have become standard in the conflict):



Ive had one day so far on the modelling and have my low poly head ready for zbrushing:



here's the zbrushed version, cant go any higher than 4 subdivides or my max will crash on import, also the detail on the top of the head is minimal as thats where the hat will sit:



More posts coming soon

[Bunyip7]

Humm cool.. think you can share in this process so I can follow along? I've never used Zbrush but would love to give it a try.I have decent max experience zip for zbrush. Wondering if I could be guided here in the event I have to model my own character - player models for our mod.

[snake85027]

i may be wrong but doesnt the cheek bone look non existent.

[Zeus]

Yeh Bunyip7 that's cool, i'm hoping to try and share the stages of development as it progresses. Snake, i wasn't sure what you meant exactly but ive pulled the cheek bone out a little in the side view and refined the bone structure so that its more noticeable. Hers a screenshot:

[Zeus]

Ok, day 2 of modelling, i had to work on other units in between the head and the torso but im back at it today. basically im modelling each low poly asset that has been colour coded in the concept (see above) and then modelling the high poly sculpts either in zbrush, max or a bit of both. Below is the base high poly torso mesh that ive created today and in a few hours last night, its been tricky as i wanted to model the harness on top of the coat and have the two as one mesh - this is so i can make the folds of the coat occur around the harness, if i had done as two seperate meshes then this might have been more tricky. Anyway enough blabber heres a render:





Certain things to do with the shoulders and structure i hope to tweak in ZB, but I have to go out now but when i get back i may add more detail to the harness thing in max before exporting to zbrush, some metal armour plates on the shoulders. The harness also has no pockets at the mo, im going to do these seperately and add them onto it later.

Comments welcome as always!

ps the pockets are open as i want gloves to hang from one and a scarf from another

[Zeus]

well its late but ive just done a zbrush sculpt of the torso, i refined the things i mentioned earlier and so far im fairly pleased with it. Though the shoulders stick out a it too much at the moment, but that will be fixed when rigging is done on the final model. The sculpt has 4 sub divisions and is too many polys to export as one file and import into max - my comp will crash. Im planning on attempting to export it in two halves so hope it works, if anyone has any thoughts on this id love to here them! Here are some screens:

[Corsair970]

You've got a pretty good thing going here, but this sparked a interesting and original idea for me. I painted a bunch of crossbowman miniatures for a friend's D&D game in Waffen SS camo and though how interesting a dark ages WWII would be.

As for your idea, you seem to be doing a Brit, and you should do some research considering Brittan was in the process of making body armor for every soldier that has a similar design to what you're modeling, just a heads up.

[Zeus]

hey really? that's a weird coincidence, ill look into it thanks - could help my end report. Glad this thread has given you some ideas - most of the time people pick the same old genres, but never think of mixing them, but doing so can often result in some great work.

My workflow has really sped up with this latest character, heres a hand model i just finished:






At the moment im still modelling low poly and high poly assets, still got trousers, boots, hat, harness pockets and breathing apparatus to go. Once they're all done ill join the low poly, uvw map and then bake the normals - more screens coming when i get them. All comments and input of any kind are really appreicated!

[Zeus]

OK had a break earlier for most of the day but i got back and cracked on with some trousers, i made the low poly and imported it into zbrush and have sculpted the high poly now too. The low poly trousers will then be refined to match the high poly sculpt by adding some more polys when both models are together in max later on. I've also made the folds on the trousers very prominent as i want the normal map to hav a lot of definition. Here's some screens:

[Zeus]

Hi all I've done some more work today, made a high and low poly weapon for my character. Its based on a concept I've done merging both old and new weapons - an old WW2 Thompson and a newer M4 type weapon, this is to go along with the whole "the war is still raging" twist so the technology has gradually advanced throughout the conflict. Some detail for the normal map is on the high poly model but to save time some will be added manually in photoshop to the normal map file, here's a screen:



ive also spent the morning refining the low poly trousers so that the low poly also features some folds etc so its not all in the normal map