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.

Oh this is going to be beautiful

Looking very nice so far.
I'll be following this

Looking awesome! I've been playing through Thief: Deadly Shadows recently, so this is kind of exciting.

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?

very nice so far. I'm looking forward to this.

- BoBo

I love you for this, Swizzle. I love you.

Feet feel a little small, but that's all I can find that I don't like.

I love the detail and straps on the greaves. This guy looks like he'll turn out sweet in the end man.

Thanks, guys!

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.

he's so sad

Loving that Swizzle. Not entirely sure about the military hammer idea. the entire theology of the Hammerites is based around the fact that they're keeping the construct of mankind of man kind together and building new... stuff to move it forward for their deity the Builder. Something like that, anyway. It's been quite a while since I've played the game.

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.

Turista:
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.

Looking really great, I can't wait to see more!

this is looking awesome man

It might just be his massive greaves but his feet look a touch small! Excellent work tho!

That is so cool dude
How'd u crinkle up those firly fuckers?

so reminds me of Alice in wonderland

Yeesh. Seven months later and you'd think I would've finished this thing already. Oh well.

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.

Sheesh man, took you long enough.

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.

He's looking pretty cool but honestly I don't understand the idea behind the sleeves and pants.

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.

preeety cool you revived this thing! i was wondering where it went.

This is a cool character. I love the contrast of his old stylized weathered face to the nice stream lined costume. It doesn't look weird to the eyes it flows nicely. I dig.

Isnt the cog wheel the symbol of the mechanist splinter of the faith? Dont get me wrong it makes for an awesome buckle, but I thought they had been scattered as heretics after Karras self-martyred.

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.

Cool progress, get some texture on that guy : )

Justin Perreault, Baj Singh:
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.

I'm a little concerned by the way you said all this great stuff happened, but now you're back...

The bake is looking really good so far so not much else to say.
I love that you're planning for swapy-bits.