DAoC: Catacombs headmodels

[doc rob]

Dark Age of Camelot: Catacombs just recently went gold and will be going live this December. This is the second expansion pack I've worked on for Mythic. I was lucky enough to be part of a team that redesigned and recreated much of the player character art for the game. We took 3 years worth of older artwork and remade it in less than one year, although not entirely from scratch. Many of the armor textures didn't get changed much at all. In addition, we added a lot of new customization options for the players that hadn't been in the game before. Players can select from one of 18 races, male and female, and then customize their face texture, skin color, eye color, morph 4 different facial features, select a hair style and a hair color.

Poop and Arshlevon came on with Mythic right when this project went into crunch along with a couple other guys and did a kick ass job making sure a lot of the stuff got in and looked good.

Shown below are 4 of the 36 different head models I did for the game (18 races, male and female). These redesigns were challenging because we were replacing characters that our players had spent up to 3 years with and become very emotionally attached to. We could not stray too far from the original flavor of each race. Also note that there is a huge variety of potential looks for any given race due to the customization options available.

http://www.planetquake.com/polycount/cottages/docrob/images/ElfRedesign.jpg
http://www.planetquake.com/polycount/cottages/docrob/images/SylvanRedesign.jpg
http://www.planetquake.com/polycount/cottages/docrob/images/InconnuRedesign.jpg
http://www.planetquake.com/polycount/cottages/docrob/images/ValkynRedesign.jpg

The textures on the characters are generally pretty flat, which is done on purpose for three reasons. First, the morphing of the facial features for character creation fights with the facial features painted onto the textures unless you give up some of the power of the painted texture and rely on the vertex lighting in the engine to show those features (such as the jawline). Second, the shader that tinted the different skin colors responded better with flatter textures. Third, the older human characters were relatively stylized and cartoony so we chose not to paint too much character into the human faces. I had about 2 hours a piece to do the concepts since I had to do so many. I sketched them in pencil before scanning them in and coloring in photoshop.

There's a lot more to show, but these are my favs and part of the small bit of art that I worked on alone /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[AstroZombie]

Nice work, Doc. Looks great.

[ScoobyDoofus]

Really fantastic work!
I almost feel bad for the artist who did the "before" models, as by comparison that work looks very poor.
Although, its possible that was due to a more conservative resource budget..

[doc rob]

Oh Yes! I almost forgot. WE ARE HIRING! If you're looking for work, or even if you're not, please send in your stuff to artjobs at mythicentertainment dot com with the subject (ARTIST CANDIDATE) or you can email me directly from the address in my profile if you're just intersted in what kind of place Mythic is. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[moose]

those look awesome man, /images/graemlins/smile.gif really love the tree people. treeee peeople treeee people.... heh /images/graemlins/wink.gif Especially the difference between the male and female face - the structure is pretty obvious, but the rings really sell it.

[Daz]

absolutely stunning stuff doc_rob!

[poopinmymouth]

On a side note: I have worked at 2 other companies, and for about 3 others doing contract. Mythic is hands down the best company I have ever even heard of working environment wise. My fellow artists are so tallented I feel lucky every day I walk in the door. They constantly amaze me with the quality of the concepts, characters, and environments they pump out. I have a blast everyday in an environment that fosters creativity and artist collaboration. I am definately in hog heaven. 8-)

As for the character faces here. Lucas you did a great job on all of them. I am glad I got to play a small part in bringing these characters up to date. Top notch work. Now I have to make some screenies of all the hairs and hats I made.

[JO420]

awesome models and textures,could you possibly make a tutorial on how you paint faces?? the subtley of the detail is beautiful.



ive been playin the game for close to 2.5 years now and part of what keeps me going is the amazing artwork. Toa was impressive as hell and this expansion looks even better.

[MoP]

Nice work man. I prefer these to some of the others I've seen (over on CGChat) because they seem to have more style and character, and even though the colour range is limited in the flesh tones (now I know the reason!) it still has a good effect.
Love the eyes of the blue-skinned guy, although I'm not such a fan of the proportions.

Solid work, and fast too!

MoP

[JO420]

do you guys have a tree generation app or make your own trees? i have to make a ton of trees at my job and wonder how you guys do yours.

[Mojo2k]

weird asking about trees in a thread about heads but anyways mythic uses Speedtree for its trees

[JKMakowka]

[ QUOTE ]
those look awesome man, /images/graemlins/smile.gif really love the tree people. treeee peeople treeee people.... heh /images/graemlins/wink.gif Especially the difference between the male and female face - the structure is pretty obvious, but the rings really sell it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Exactly my thought /images/graemlins/wink.gif

This is one of these few rare occasions where I am unable to find anything to critizise /images/graemlins/shocked.gif
Well done.

[Sectaurs]

hot elf girl!

the new faces are gorgeous, and make the old ones just look... well, silly.

[JO420]

"weird asking about trees in a thread about heads but anyways mythic uses Speedtree for its trees"


lol well its because today i was making trees at work and during my lunch hour while i played i wondered how they were done.



also why the teeth? new models lip sync abled?

[doc rob]

Scooby - the old heads were mostly made about 4 years ago, I think they were about 100 polies or so. The new ones are between 500 and 800, eyeballs are sepearate and they have denture teeth for a couple of basic expressions.

J0420 - I paint kind of like Bobo the Seal, he's got plenty of tutorials on his site if you want to check them out.

[JO420]

awesome,just did, im gonna do them this weekend

[swampbug]

Hey Lucas! I love seein your stuff my friend. Top quality too. I just "WOW!" at each pic seeing the old version compared to the new version. Interesting 2d maps how things are layed out and cut around the face. Some kind of process so you dont make seams that way?

[HellMark]

Awesome work. I played DAOC very early on. Seeing all the great updates makes me want to go back. Too many damn good games to play them all. /images/graemlins/smile.gif I'm also loving the new environments. Great job guys. The talent at Mythic definitely shows.

[KMan]

Ooh. I like the way they all turned out. Shows that you don't need normal maps and spec maps to still have a good looking game these days.

My fave is definitly the dryad heads. The wood grain looks real nice, and worn too.

[Illusions]

I especially like the Tree heads, and the pale one. The attention to detail, and the way they are painted and detailed is beautiful. The bark texture on the trees is amazing, while the eyes of the pale guy and his skin tones are quite cool. Any particular reason you didn't go with the tattoo on the forehead in the final?

[Jeff Parrott]

Those are great. Everything is dramatically improved.

[Kevin Johnstone]

Nice work Doc. I'm really leaning more to enjoying the dry materials and tones in textures rather than the more popular oily shiny tones of yesteryear.

In particular I like the male woodsprite. The female one's circular folds on forehead spell out the mirrored nature the shading probably because I make gameart also though I doubt the average gamer would have any problem /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Good to see you post again, its been a while

[cochtl]

HeH, Im not a talented person, but I play one on TV!

The dedication everyone put into this project was something else and everyone did some really fantastic work. I pretty much got to see Arsh and Poop and another arty savant that doesnt appear on these boards (and he should) toil away to make some truly kickass content.

in honor of my fellow coworkers, i have made gold statues (well, cheez-wiz statues to be honest) in their likeness and worship them accordingly.

ROCK ON!!!

[killingpeople]

i feel happy funny in my pants.

[shotgun]

are you kidding me??
these are great rob!
the woodsprite i guess is everyone's favorite... mine too
wonderful job on that one man

a little thing u might wonna consider
ur shading around the eyes and brow is great, its detailed and deep (like volumatric). but i feel like u dont get that same level of rendering on the rest of the face. the reason may be because the orbits r very dark, and thus enhance the contrast, however other areas of the faces lack that defining, contrasting darkness, and therefore look more flat.
do u see what im saying?
just a thought /images/graemlins/smile.gif

keep up the good work
very nice

[ElysiumGX]

I really enjoy this style of texture on game characters. There's plenty of detail to bring the character to life, yet enough style to be pleasant on the eyes.

Great work. They're all awesome, especially the tree people.

[joolz8000]

Killer stuff! Wow. That's all I got.
Can we see more?

[rawkstar]

its awesome!

my favorites are the tree people and the last wolf looking dude... I love all the little details... the tree people are actually hands down awesome.

I just typed up a big ass crit on the human face and then decided "hey I should probably read what the post sais...maybe there's a reason why he did it that way" lol so yeah man I see its all good. you should post some ingame shots of these so we can see what the final result looks like in the game.

cheers /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[spacemonkey]

those are fucking great. I'd try playing Daoc again but I decided a while back that mmorpg's eat your life.

[_Shimmer]

wow, mythic has some great art guys, eh?
Shading, colouring and the whole feel of the characters are great. I really dig that you compared the old one with the new ones. Its like seeing retro stuff from a game (anyone remember the old HL 1 screenshots, har har).

Fantastic work. Crits: The proportions are a bit off, and maybe some more contrast on some parts would effect much.

[oDD]

new stuff is gorgeous. I'm sure people will like it. My favorites are the wood people and the last beast.

[Surgey]

Amazing stuff! Almost makes me want to buy the game. /images/graemlins/smile.gif Great improvement over the originals.

[RazorBladder]

wow doc, that's some serious good work /images/graemlins/smile.gif
Comparison shots are awesome, love the new versions, kick arse stuff.

[Mangled Poly]

wow rob breathtaking the tree face is very nice, and i just cant stop looking at how awesome the blue eyes are on the wolfman

[CCPhil]

wow, very impressive rich characters there

[_Shimmer]

more!!! i want more, just looked at the screenshots, very impressive! MORE PICS, MORE FLATS, MORE GIRLS!

[arshlevon]

awesome.. i guess the nda is up... i will post some of my face textures when i get back from LA.. i made some bosses too.. but i dont know if they would want me posting those. good work boss rob..

[perna]

Kickass, doc rob. Solid work

[SouL]

Thumbs up. A massive improvement over the old ones.