Old Hammerite Guard
polycounter lvl 15
CURRENT WIP:
ORIGINAL MESSAGE:
Over the past few months I've been tooling around with redesigning a character from one of the Thief games since they all have such crap graphics. I've posted a couple of images in the WAYWO thread over the past few days, but I didn't want to get spammy. So, with that in mind:
This is still heavily WIP. I haven't done any sculpting except on the head, which was actually a model I'd been working on before.
I'm aiming for current-gen hero character specs, so around 10k tris once everything's said and done. The plan is to use a 2048 for the body and a 1024 for the head since I want to get some of that crunchy stubbly detail in there. I'm aware that his limbs are kind of crazy-thin, so I'm going to beef them out a little.
Moar updates soonish. Crits are welcome, though keep in mind I haven't done any sculpting and he's still missing some pieces.
ORIGINAL MESSAGE:
Over the past few months I've been tooling around with redesigning a character from one of the Thief games since they all have such crap graphics. I've posted a couple of images in the WAYWO thread over the past few days, but I didn't want to get spammy. So, with that in mind:
This is still heavily WIP. I haven't done any sculpting except on the head, which was actually a model I'd been working on before.
I'm aiming for current-gen hero character specs, so around 10k tris once everything's said and done. The plan is to use a 2048 for the body and a 1024 for the head since I want to get some of that crunchy stubbly detail in there. I'm aware that his limbs are kind of crazy-thin, so I'm going to beef them out a little.
Moar updates soonish. Crits are welcome, though keep in mind I haven't done any sculpting and he's still missing some pieces.
Replies
I'll be following this
I think one thing to keep in mind is that since he's a Hammerite, he's gonna be pretty buff. Getting some good muscle definition in there could go a long way. I like how the face is looking so far. Do you have any ideas for the hammer design yet?
- BoBo
I love the detail and straps on the greaves. This guy looks like he'll turn out sweet in the end man.
Base:
I'm definitely going to beef up his arms and legs a bit. They're definitely pretty wimpy right now, so more meat is incoming.
I do have a hammer design in mind, but it's not going to be like the sledgehammers they have in the games. I want to give him a more realistic war hammer with a blunt striking surface on one end of the head and a spike on the other. I'd also like to have the Hammerite version of a rosary (which I'm just completely pulling out of my ass) tied around it for some interest, but I dunno if I'm going to actually do that.
Norron:
Yeah, the feet are definitely looking a bit small. I'm going to make 'em a little larger before I get to sculpting.
It's refreshing coming home to work on something high-poly after painting textures for pretty low-poly stuff at work all day. Still, I haven't gotten much done since yesterday, mostly just adding some hands and gauntlets.
The plan right now is to start sculpting and mucking about with proportional issues tomorrow. I'd like to have the sculpt done by the end of next week, I think.
Anyway, too much text, not enough pictures.
With that in mind maybe giving your Hammerite a weapon as opposed to a hammer that can be used for both construction and destruction might not fit entirely happily with the Thief background. Then again, I guess a hammer is a hammer, but it's something to at least consider when you're designing it.
You would be too if you were an old dude who had to lug a hammer around all day.
Jackablade:
You make a good point and I've definitely considered simply giving him something like a sledgehammer because it fits in better with existing Thief tropes, but I'm still leaning towards an actual war hammer. This guy's supposed to be somebody who patrols and takes care of intruders or fights enemies of the faith, so I think it would be logical to have a more traditional war hammer. I'm certainly going to put some more style into it than just a big stick with a chunk of iron on the end, though.
Been pretty busy with work and trying to woo lovely ladies, so I've either been too busy or too tired to work on this for a bit. But anyway, I got a bit of sculpting done and I like the direction it's going. I still have a lot of sculpted detail I want to add, though, so don't think this is close to finished.
I still need to scale up those feet. Hmm.
How'd u crinkle up those firly fuckers?
I've been trying to finish some stuff up before GDC rolls around, so I decided to come back to this and give it some love. I'm close enough to finished with the high-poly that I was able to start making the low. I still have some work to do before it's finished, but it's coming along pretty nicely.
It's at 16,155 tris at the moment, so there's a lot of fat that could be trimmed. That said, I'm going to aim a little higher than the polycount I stated in the first post.
Looks like some good stuff, although I'd like to see a bit more light detailing on some of the armor.
Also the tights that are showing on the knees and lower legs, the folds seem kind of directionless. Not sure if the material would fold like that or not. Might be small enough to ignore though.
Aren't billowy clothes like that usually just pleated? Not additional straps over the top.
Just seems a little foofy/jestery for a Hammer imo.
As a forward movement for the universe it's a pretty great idea though, merging the forward thinking of the mechanists with the temperance of the hammers.
Thanks!
Norron:
The plan is to give him some edge highlights and accents in the vein of this image, so he's certainly going to be a bit more detailed as I progress. That's all Photoshop work, though.
As for the folds, I wanted it to look like bunched up, wrinkled, slightly loose tights. I may have to go back and resculpt that area.
Baddcog:
I saw this image when researching period clothing and decided to run with the idea of having strips of cloth with a second layer underneath. They're not exactly accurate or necessarily even practical or entirely grounded in reality, but they're poofy and fun and I enjoy them.
Stinkhorse:
I honestly hadn't put that much thought into it. I've played through good portions of the Thief games, but I never paid a lot of attention to the lore. I was more concerned with just sneaking about and not dying all the damn time. I just figured they were interesting design elements that I'd like to use.
Alberto Rdrgz:
Life got in the way. In the intervening months, I've gotten a job, apartment, girlfriend, car and various other obligations. But now I'm back just in time to finish this for GDC!
Been pretty busy, so progress has been kind of slow. I've spent the past couple of days setting up and working on baking textures. UV mapping was a huge bitch because of all those little bits on the insides of his sleeves, but I managed to not fail spectacularly, so yay!
I'm breaking him up into a few chunks so I can swap out things like heads, headgear and weapons. That'll let me have options beyond a hammer for this guy. I may also sculpt an alternate head and possibly make some sort of helmet or hat, depending upon what kind of time I have.
The head's using a 1024 and the body's using a 2048. Other accessories like the hat and hammer will use smaller textures. I still need to finish baking the hands and feet, but I think it's coming along quite nicely.
The bake is looking really good so far so not much else to say.
I love that you're planning for swapy-bits.
I didn't mean to imply that I'd somehow lost all those things. I just meant that I now have the time and motivation to get this done.
Anyway, I'm finished baking shits. On to actual texturing!
Looks sick!
Looking forward to the texture. Feels very renaissance-y.
Almost reminds me of a knight of the blazing sun from warhammer fantasy.
beautiful work. looking forward to the textures.
Stunning quality and style here!
STRIKER:
While it would've saved a pretty significant number of tris, I decided to give them actual thickness because it simply looks better this way. Since they're not planes, I don't run into the problem where they disappear from certain angles. They have weight and feel chunky. I like that.
Teensy little update. Started on the textures:
A little update on the head texture. Painting skin is, as always, a huge pain in the ass, but also ever-so rewarding.
Been trying to give him a more unified color palette and richer skin tones. I changed the gold to silver and did a bunch of tweaks to his facial texture. It's tough getting just the right amount of noise and surface detail in the facial textures, but I think the time I'm spending is paying off.
Any crits or comments are welcome. This is a portfolio piece, so I'm not just trying to make it some vanity project where I don't listen to feedback or something. A classic Polycount-style asshole ripping is more than welcome.
Here are some issues I'm aware of that I'm certain to address in the near future, so they probably don't warrant commenting on since they'll change anyway:
- Spec needs a bunch of work across the board, but especially on the leather. I'm only using a temporary spec and gloss map, so I'll be adjusting it further.
- A hat and/or helmet is forthcoming, so don't worry that his head is a bit bare at the moment.
- There are some gnarly seams in a lot of places, most obvious on his gloves. Those are just a UV padding issue and will be gone.
Here's some stuff I'm looking for as far as crits or comments are concerned:
- Color palette. It's a little more unified and less haphazard than before, but only because I'm using a narrower range of colors. Any suggestions about tweaks I could make would be welcome.
- Armor detail. Any suggestions about details I could add, whether ornamental or utilitarian would be great. Thoughts?
- The skin texture. Thoughts, suggestions, paintovers? Does it actually look like skin? Is there something I'm missing that I should add or take away? I'm probably going to add more liver spots and accent the wrinkles with some color, but I can't think of what else to do, if anything.
- The cloth strips. I have a couple of ideas for interesting detail I could add there, but I'm very much open to suggestions.
Anything else you can think of to tear this fucker apart would be awesome. Got some great reference images? Some advice from working with similar stuff? Hints, tips, tricks? Drop some knowledge on me, yo.
Feel bad for not leaving you with a crit, but nothing you didnt cover in your notes jumped in my eye. Maybe save for the segmentation over the leather straps on the calves armour, but that is only really visible on the zoomed pic.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?77667-My-work-from-Assassin-s-creed-2-)
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?97394-Assassin-s-Creed-Brotherhood-Characters
Your's seems to be a little more stylized so I would possibly brighten up the edges of the cloth, giving them nice highlights to really pop out the shapes. And I am sure you will do some nice color variation as well
edit: found his website, its a lot easier to view the details
http://nicolascollings.com/?page_id=38
Nice work!
Looks pretty good, there's only a few things that I would change,
for me the big one is the face, in the sculpt he looks pretty old, maybe pushing 60, but texture makes him look about 40. I've added some more colour variation; some blue/purple under the eye's, lighter highlights (with some white in the eyebrows/beard), some splotches on his cheeks and a much higher hair line.
the clothes are about the same, just added a dark gold trim and a deeper red to the arms and legs.
Also widened the belt. this is just personal it kinda looks like its made of paper how you have it.
Once you put that... erm... chest belt(?) back it should take care of any lack of armor detail.
I think you can bulk a bit the legs, from the knees to the bottom (even already baked).
And play more with the color scheme for the uniform. here goes a reference that might be useful; http://tinyurl.com/7ts4bbz
That's my 2 cents!
A couple of things I came up with: I like saying small eyes for the win cuz' nine times out of ten, when you try going with smaller eyes you just can't go back. That might also help his head from feeling disproportionately narrow.
The other thing was, currently your armor dents are kind of conspicuous. Maybe add a little more so the eye doesn't keep jumping to those little circles. Although, as someone mentioned, when you put the chest strip back it may be less of an issue.
Anyway, pretty minor stuff for an already awesome piece. I look forward to the final!
Unfortunately there's not a lot I can do about visible polygons in that area aside from giving it a ton of excess detail.
POFFINGTON:
I'd actually been looking at some of those as reference before you even posted them, but it's nice to have all of them in one place. I'd just seen a few on CGHub. I'm almost certainly going to brighten up the cloth folds a bit to make them pop more.
JMYoung:
You were right about the cooler tones in the skin. I added a touch of blue and purple and it made it worlds better.
ScudzAlmighty:
This was a super useful post and it gave me a ton of ideas to play around with. Thanks so much!
Sukotto:
Bam, navy blue. I don't know if I like it yet, but it seems to be growing on me.
Marshal Banana:
Excellent suggestion! Done!
artquest:
Thanks!
cox:
I think you're right about the legs. I need to just bulk them up a touch. I haven't gotten to it yet, but I'll have that done by the next update.
Sputch:
I definitely need to add a bit more variation to the armor to make it look a bit worn and used. Once I've added more scratches and stuff, the dents should be less conspicuous.
This isn't a huge update, but I've spent a bunch of time playing around with different patterns and color schemes and whatnot to try and find one that doesn't look either overly plain or overly cheerful and jester-like. I think I've found a decent middle ground, though I still need to add some finer detail and light color variation. I'll most likely add some stuff like stitches and fine fabric patterns to the poofy bits.
I also did a bit more work on his face texture. I added some more cool tones and lightened his stubble and eyebrows. Hopefully he doesn't look quite as vibrant and young now.
Once again, any feedback is welcome.