Hey everyone,
im quite new around here but thought i should post my stuff and try hopefully get feedback/tips/advice to improve as an artist.

Right now the project im working on is Female Rebel Soldier. I went for a tough kind of look instead of the classic Overly sexy beauty wielding a weapon, Really wanted to make a tough looking character that could kick some ass. While being pleasant to look at, at the same time :P

[IMG][/IMG]

Quick update, Tried painting some color onto her (extremely quickly) tomorrow i will be focusing entirely on painting her as well as i can. Will also upload my Orthographic views tomorrow.

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Havnt uploaded stuff here for a while so i thought id do some more WIP shots, these are my finished paint over and scratched knee pad reference.

The design is rather plain and undetailed, don't you think?

Sorry for no reply. Ive been bogged down with trying to learn to rig and what not.
Snader I actually agree with you, I wish I wasn't dumb and regularly updated this so my result could of been more refined.
Anyways heres a huge dump of the progress I made. Fell free to critique and criticize, I will be working on this character after it is due in my own time.

The above images were low poly imports of my zbrush files which are below.

As you could probably see i took off the belt accessories and knee pads, I done this for 3 reasons, Not being able to neatly sew the kneepads on, Lack of rigging skill atm to attach the side pouches, and to be able to achieve a decent skinning quicker. I do plan on putting these pad sand bags on once my knowledge and experience of rigging and skinning improve.

Quick little shot of messing around with LCshader tools.

started making my diffuse texture (still need to create a Spec). The reason the black grid lines are on the mesh still is to help ive me reference to the exact position on the UVS.

More photos of a closer to finished textures. Also now rigged (not skinned however)

My rig, Its fairly basic, IK legs, FK arms. was planning on IK/FK arms however with my lack of rigging skill I was unable to get it right after about 30 attempts. However I have not given up and am determined to one day soon be able to rig IK/FK switch arms.

The feet have SDK's on them for foot movement, The hands also have SDK's with a fist movement and hand spread.

Also working on making her ponytail dynamic for Gamebryo. However as ive modelled in Z up dynamics is being a complete pain in the ass.

Quite happy with this rig, However if anyone can point me in the direction of helpful rigging videos or scripts itd be much appreciated

you may want to refine her features, unless you're using this as a reference:

Haha Gir Thanks for the feedback.
Your completely right her face does need some refining done to it Although the screen shots presented are only Diffuse textures (which honestly need some more work on them), Ill try take a Gamebryo shot of her tomorrow to try and show what she looks like with her normal maps. Apparently NI Multishaders don't like to render Normal maps in Maya's view port

Normal maps wont save this.......


I suggest you do some figure drawing to learn proportions and anatomy. Im crap at this too....

Are you using image reference? You need to stare at some naked ladies.

@Drav, thanks for pointing out the incorrect anatomy,I definitely need to work on Female anatomy, I mainly choose female since ive always drawn males or modelled males (so hopefully when this character is finished ill be making another girl to practice anatomy (maybe doing a full body sculpt in zbrush), The torso is a little to long ive noticed and the chest lacks definition, If you can point out more that's off (there's probably alot haha) it'd be much appreciated, or even if you could point me in the direction of some orthographic websites it'd be really appreciated

@Riot, the actual character was modelled of various naked woman orthographic's, (am I aloud to post them as part of my reference pictures?) Also like I mentioned to Drav, If you could point me in the direction of some orthographic shots of the female anatomy that'd be awesome

*edit*
Or if either of you could point me in the direction of good female (or male) topology threads or sites that would also be awesome

Also for anyone who sais the character needs to be more refined/better anatomy, can you please leave me a comment on what need to be done e.g. shorter torso, or somthing like that. Right now its to late to change the mesh FOR THE ASSIGNMENT, However I want to make another female character after this assignment on the side, So all suggestions and advice will be used in my next character, Thanks everyone for the feedback

Here is what I do, and this is an example from my own personal work flow.

On the left is an old sculpt of mine. One that I did when I was first starting to learn. Once I got better and I was able to see anatomy better, I came back to the sculpt and decided to fix it up. That is on the right.

This is just the silhouette of the model from the front. So what you can do is put a black material on your model, turn off all the lights in your 3D program and compare the two. (Compare your image to the woman on the right in my attached picture.)

I am not saying that my anatomy is perfect, I still have to learn and change things when I am making my 3D art... But you can get the idea.



And here is some proportion reference... You can google lots of images! Just type "human proportion reference."

www.3d.sk for orthographic photos of women, some digging around should find you some of the free ones.


Really tho, and this is my next hurdle, is that to be any good at this, you need to know how people are put together, and how they look in motion. In short, you need to be able to draw, or at least sketch.

So to fix your model in the short term, find a front and side photo and get things matched for a quick and rough fix. In the long term I think you want to at least be able to sketch poses and draw passable well proportioned figures.

You certainly need to know enough to be able to sculpt without sticking to photos like you were modelling a car, and I think that comes from drawing poses.

Have a look at hazardous's thread, and look closely at his figure drawing advice. I am going to start a sketch a day using the tool he mentions and see how i get on.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showt...t=98113&page=2


Cheers

wow, thanks guys (just like to say Riot i looked at your website and holly crap your characters are awesome! Feels awesome to have someone so talented trying to help me out,)


@Drav, Ill try moving the verts around to atleast match Riots silhouette
I also completely agree with you on the drawing/sketching part. I do sketch and put some stuff up on Conceptart.org (not sure if im aloud to post the link to my account on that) Im not amazing (and dont have much work on it as I just joined) But im trying to find a life drawing place close to my home, so fingers crossed

Ill make another screenshot post when ive adjusted the model.

Ive moved as much as i can without having to UV my character or effect were my skeletons bones are, It looks much better with hips haha, Thanks Riot for the silhouette.

No problem. We all have to start somewhere... Just keep trying to improve. My best advice now would be to finish this character and start a new one. Try to get the proportions right in ZBrush before moving to the next step.

I find when a character is not great. it is better to stop working on it and move on. Instead of getting stuck, then you just end up doing the same thing over and over.

Thanks riot, I allready have my idea for a next character as a side project, Learnt alot of tricks from watching people make there dominance war characters for modelling.
My aim is to try and reach there level of awesomeness and hopefully one day become even more awesome

Want to see his complete completed

Rigo ill be posting a finished version within the next week, as its due on tuesday. Hopefully ill be able to work a bi more on animating it properly and put up a video of her doing some actions.

Pardon Jeanne?