another couple of hours on this, and now i'm calling it a day!
Hm... I like it, but it sort of looks a bit too serious. Now, I can't put my finger on why. But I believe it's because the face and the muscles are a bit too defined. It seems a bit too serious. I think it would look better if you tried to smooth some of the forms out a bit or something.
Hm... I like it, but it sort of looks a bit too serious. Now, I can't put my finger on why. But I believe it's because the face and the muscles are a bit too defined. It seems a bit too serious. I think it would look better if you tried to smooth some of the forms out a bit or something.
i know what you mean - as i sculpted thats what seemed to come out more
it doesnt help that i'm trying to model in a fairly neutral facial expression, but i'm half thinking that instead of cute this guy could be more sly and cunning. He is goat based after all.
And heres a bit from wikipedia thats inspired him a bit
"The faun is a half humanhalf goat manifestation of forest and animal spirits that would help or hinder humans at whim. Romans believed fauns inspired fear in men traveling in lonely, remote or wild places."
anyway *definitely* going to iterate more on the face, but likely once i've got the full accessory set done too.
quick update on my latest efforts - most of the accessories done, and a second iteration on the face to make it softer/cuter and in general just a bit more appealing!
Mmm I actually prefere the old face. It was more goat like! This one make him look like some kind of elf.
Very nice work by the way
i was half thinking of doing 2 versions - one cute, one sly. but not entirely sure.
My inclination is to stick with the more elfin/cute one for now - but that may change!
Well it kind of depends... A faun is (As far as I know) a sort of elf that just has some bodyparts and a slightly goatlike face. The sllighty raised eyebrows give it a less serious and more brighter look wich I guess is a bit more courier like than the lowered eyebrow/serious look. wich could almost be hero or NPC like. Both things work, it's all about what you feel is better. Personally, I like the cute one more^^
a few days tearing my hair out sorting out a rig for this
zooltoolbox, which i used successfully last time, had a bug which meant it couldnt create a dogleg rig preset, which was pretty much essential for this character
so i had to go back to PKD rig - i managed to achieve roughly similar results but the process was pretty long-winded. Got there in the end though
Next is 2 seperate rigs for the bagpipes and flying pipes - i'm hoping to reference in what i need and then merge everything together for export.
That last bit is what worries me, so theres still plenty of testing to do before going back to making the proper lo-poly model.
a few days tearing my hair out sorting out a rig for this
so i had to go back to PKD rig - i managed to achieve roughly similar results but the process was pretty long-winded. Got there in the end though
Next is 2 seperate rigs for the bagpipes and flying pipes - i'm hoping to reference in what i need and then merge everything together for export.
That last bit is what worries me, so theres still plenty of testing to do before going back to making the proper lo-poly model.
you are demonstrating your great skill! what program do you use? interface reminds me 3D's Max. If so, could you help me? I admit some blunders during the export animation. I have some blunders during in export of animation. http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=124377
sorry about this spamming... but i can't found man who can answer.
you are demonstrating your great skill! what program do you use? interface reminds me 3D's Max. If so, could you help me? I admit some blunders during the export animation. I have some blunders during in export of animation. http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=124377
sorry about this spamming... but i can't found man who can answer.
um, posted a reply in your thread, not sure its very useful though!
is that the final mesh or is it just a crunched down version for animation testing? because i don't get some of the shapes you modelled it :O
last time, for various reasons, i did whole process > highpoly > lopoly + textures > rig > animate
this time i'm able to do things a bit differently so going to test the design on the rig before committing to final lopoly
So, yup, this is a very rough mesh - just took a decimated mesh from zbrush and zootoolbox has a cool tool that cuts up a mesh for you and attaches it to the skeleton. Great for quickly testing things out!
so last couple of days were sorting out and testing various rigging related issues.
Not fun! But i think i can get everything into game now, so thats something
As a result, looks like i can afford to have some more detail in the face area, so going to go with a slightly more elaborate facial rig - opening mouth and everything!
So went back to my sculpt and spent an evening digging in a new mouth. Pretty annoying, and more time consuming than i would have liked. Selecting things *inside* other things is never pleasant in any 3d package...
But done now!
Next:
- final detail polish pass in zbrush
- polypaint
- lopoly + uv's
- baking
- texturing
Finally! After a bit of a break to focus on some other, non-game related things, finally got round to finishing up this long gestating courier!
Probably be the last one for a while - great fun to do, but so much time needed!
And thats one thing i just dont have enough of right now
Holy shit the amount of detail you gave to him and his facial animations (and animations overall) makes me feel like he's alive... This is insanely good man! Kudos!
1) On the ground_run animation, the bagpipes and arm are stuck in worldspace a bit, they are missing weight and are not reacting to the movement of the torso.
2) Bring out the face more - separate the face from the hair in terms of color space. The whole body is in more or less the same color which I think is a huge missed opportunity. Two solutions I see are give the face more color (more human like) or give the hair on his head a darker color to create contrast that way. As Insanephobia said, I love how expressive the face is in the animations, it just looks a bit too doll-faced for my taste and is lacking the vibrancy in the texture that is present in the model and the animations.
Yeah i agree with point two above. I feel like it needs some contrasting colours to draw interest to specific points. Darker hair or some tattoo's or designs on the skin could give some interesting focal points. You could also try and make the Legs and Hooves a darker or different hue gradient, perhaps blues, to draw attention to the face.
Impressive work you should be really happy with what you have here.
Holy shit the amount of detail you gave to him and his facial animations (and animations overall) makes me feel like he's alive... This is insanely good man! Kudos!
learnt quite a bit from doing the first courier, mok, so was able to get a bit more out of the process second time around.
Credit to the very talented BamberWolf for the animations. He did a great job!
1) On the ground_run animation, the bagpipes and arm are stuck in worldspace a bit, they are missing weight and are not reacting to the movement of the torso.
2) Bring out the face more - separate the face from the hair in terms of color space. The whole body is in more or less the same color which I think is a huge missed opportunity. Two solutions I see are give the face more color (more human like) or give the hair on his head a darker color to create contrast that way. As Insanephobia said, I love how expressive the face is in the animations, it just looks a bit too doll-faced for my taste and is lacking the vibrancy in the texture that is present in the model and the animations.
Yes, point #1 taken - its being taken care of!
Point 2, yes will have a look at some of the points you raised. Will definitely up the contrast, and look at doing something with the hair.
Yeah i agree with point two above. I feel like it needs some contrasting colours to draw interest to specific points. Darker hair or some tattoo's or designs on the skin could give some interesting focal points. You could also try and make the Legs and Hooves a darker or different hue gradient, perhaps blues, to draw attention to the face.
Yup, also agreed. I'd be inclined to do a second skin if theres enough interest on the workshop - maybe go for a darker dire influenced take on it. But i'll wait to see if anyone is bothered about it first...its kind of off to a slow start at the moment
Holy crap those facial animations! The eyes and earsssss. Awesome stuff. Like the others I think a darker or different shade of hair would make this.
Had to do the rigging myself on these couriers, and for this really wanted to push the facial side. Didnt quite pull it off, but its all part of the learning curve!
So good. You actually made me feel sorry for the guy when he died. Can't wait to see this get accepted.
Thanks! As i mentioned, dont know how likely this is to get into the store - theres so much amazing competition on there! And its not exactly being flooded with votes at the moment, so just going to have to cross my fingers and see how it goes...
thanks to some feedback from here and on the workshop page had 30 minutes to make a few adjustments. Worked on the eyes (hopefully made them better) and bumped up contrast + saturation and added a bit of body to the hair. More tweaks probably inevitable!
i've been away from workshop related activity for, oooh, 10 months or so - very rusty, so trying to blow off the cobwebs with a new project
right now, i'm working an idea for a magical cauldron courier chap, this is as far as i've got so far!
not sure if i'm on the right lines, or how likely these sort of things are to make it into the workshop these days, so thoughts etc. welcome...
for a bit of backstory, heres the general, badly written idea;
"The only thing worse then having a magical cauldron filled with gold, is having a very stupid, gullible magical cauldron filled with gold thats easily relieved of its precious hoard
Reduced to poverty, the only way to make ends meet is to render their services as conveyors of precious goods, all the while keeping an eye out for the heathen thieves who made off with their fortune"
So, still a bit of work to be done, mainly on the flying modes - theres a few ideas floating around, but nothing concrete yet...
...thats if its an idea worthy of taking any further - if not, then i've got a few more in the inspiration bag...
A lot of cool concepts pixel,
But I think the original was the best. Cauldron has that 'cute' courier look, and it's gotta be a leprechaun. The pirate hats and whatnot don't fit.
Leprechauns/dota/valve i don't know, but I think that's the best of all.
baddcog - i'm keen for it to be more than just a literal interpretation - whether i've hit that or not is the question! I dont mind it being a more dota-esque magical forest creature and his enchancted cauldron more than one specific type of mythical being.
As well as that, if skateboarding birds still have a chance of making it into the workshop, then maybe theres still hope for this...
funkin sweet. Echoing thoughts on the first cauldron here. I like the idea of the cauldron kinda being the dumb sidekick of this devious mischievous leprechaun. Great idea, nice sketches as well gj!
apologies for super crappy cameraphone snap, but this is a literal back of an envelope doodle
think that could be quite a cool idea for the flying mode - i can imagine the cauldron being quite clumsy, and borderline terrified while doing this. Not that his "pilot" would care, he'd just whack him on the head and tell him to get on with it...
*WARNING* we did have a nightmare with a previous courier, the mandrill and his rotating propellor anims. We could never get the anims to loop without glitching - eventually after multiple submissions valve figured out it was bug on their end and sorted it out. Hope we wouldnt have to go through that again...
sooo, got pretty derailed due to life stuff, so i was pretty sure i missed the deadline...then it turns out its been extended to the 15th! Which is great, but i *still*dont think i'll have this finished by then - anyway here's what i've been up to...i'll cross my fingers and see how much i can get done before the finish!
As ever the rigging has been the biggest thorn in my side - after a couple of weeks, managed to get something that mostly works
Kept the rigs for the the 2 "characters" separate which should mean i can more easily make changes to either...
blockout animation geometry
And heres the result of me slapping on some very ugly keyframes to see if it all worked (i'm not an animator!)
...i was pretty happy with my progress the last couple of days, things got trickier once i got to the cauldron. Not entirely sure about it, but maybe need to take a step back for a bit and come back at it with fresh eyes!
Replies
Hm... I like it, but it sort of looks a bit too serious. Now, I can't put my finger on why. But I believe it's because the face and the muscles are a bit too defined. It seems a bit too serious. I think it would look better if you tried to smooth some of the forms out a bit or something.
i know what you mean - as i sculpted thats what seemed to come out more
it doesnt help that i'm trying to model in a fairly neutral facial expression, but i'm half thinking that instead of cute this guy could be more sly and cunning. He is goat based after all.
And heres a bit from wikipedia thats inspired him a bit
"The faun is a half humanhalf goat manifestation of forest and animal spirits that would help or hinder humans at whim. Romans believed fauns inspired fear in men traveling in lonely, remote or wild places."
anyway *definitely* going to iterate more on the face, but likely once i've got the full accessory set done too.
thanks for the feedback
next stop, backpack!
Very nice work by the way
i was half thinking of doing 2 versions - one cute, one sly. but not entirely sure.
My inclination is to stick with the more elfin/cute one for now - but that may change!
thank you!
zooltoolbox, which i used successfully last time, had a bug which meant it couldnt create a dogleg rig preset, which was pretty much essential for this character
so i had to go back to PKD rig - i managed to achieve roughly similar results but the process was pretty long-winded. Got there in the end though
Next is 2 seperate rigs for the bagpipes and flying pipes - i'm hoping to reference in what i need and then merge everything together for export.
That last bit is what worries me, so theres still plenty of testing to do before going back to making the proper lo-poly model.
you are demonstrating your great skill! what program do you use? interface reminds me 3D's Max. If so, could you help me? I admit some blunders during the export animation. I have some blunders during in export of animation. http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=124377
sorry about this spamming... but i can't found man who can answer.
um, posted a reply in your thread, not sure its very useful though!
last time, for various reasons, i did whole process > highpoly > lopoly + textures > rig > animate
this time i'm able to do things a bit differently so going to test the design on the rig before committing to final lopoly
So, yup, this is a very rough mesh - just took a decimated mesh from zbrush and zootoolbox has a cool tool that cuts up a mesh for you and attaches it to the skeleton. Great for quickly testing things out!
Not fun! But i think i can get everything into game now, so thats something
As a result, looks like i can afford to have some more detail in the face area, so going to go with a slightly more elaborate facial rig - opening mouth and everything!
So went back to my sculpt and spent an evening digging in a new mouth. Pretty annoying, and more time consuming than i would have liked. Selecting things *inside* other things is never pleasant in any 3d package...
But done now!
Next:
- final detail polish pass in zbrush
- polypaint
- lopoly + uv's
- baking
- texturing
So not going to be finished any time soon then...
did you sculpt every lock of hair or did you use an alpha or special brush?
I love it
Probably be the last one for a while - great fun to do, but so much time needed!
And thats one thing i just dont have enough of right now
[ame="
WORKSHOP LINK!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=195537975
1) On the ground_run animation, the bagpipes and arm are stuck in worldspace a bit, they are missing weight and are not reacting to the movement of the torso.
2) Bring out the face more - separate the face from the hair in terms of color space. The whole body is in more or less the same color which I think is a huge missed opportunity. Two solutions I see are give the face more color (more human like) or give the hair on his head a darker color to create contrast that way. As Insanephobia said, I love how expressive the face is in the animations, it just looks a bit too doll-faced for my taste and is lacking the vibrancy in the texture that is present in the model and the animations.
Impressive work you should be really happy with what you have here.
learnt quite a bit from doing the first courier, mok, so was able to get a bit more out of the process second time around.
Credit to the very talented BamberWolf for the animations. He did a great job!
Yes, point #1 taken - its being taken care of!
Point 2, yes will have a look at some of the points you raised. Will definitely up the contrast, and look at doing something with the hair.
Yup, also agreed. I'd be inclined to do a second skin if theres enough interest on the workshop - maybe go for a darker dire influenced take on it. But i'll wait to see if anyone is bothered about it first...its kind of off to a slow start at the moment
Thanks - it's been a bit of slow one getting this done and out the door, so very happy to have it out there in the wild at last!
Will be looking into this!
Had to do the rigging myself on these couriers, and for this really wanted to push the facial side. Didnt quite pull it off, but its all part of the learning curve!
Thanks! As i mentioned, dont know how likely this is to get into the store - theres so much amazing competition on there! And its not exactly being flooded with votes at the moment, so just going to have to cross my fingers and see how it goes...
Forest Faun Courier - Toot by Pixelherder
i've been away from workshop related activity for, oooh, 10 months or so - very rusty, so trying to blow off the cobwebs with a new project
right now, i'm working an idea for a magical cauldron courier chap, this is as far as i've got so far!
not sure if i'm on the right lines, or how likely these sort of things are to make it into the workshop these days, so thoughts etc. welcome...
for a bit of backstory, heres the general, badly written idea;
"The only thing worse then having a magical cauldron filled with gold, is having a very stupid, gullible magical cauldron filled with gold thats easily relieved of its precious hoard
Reduced to poverty, the only way to make ends meet is to render their services as conveyors of precious goods, all the while keeping an eye out for the heathen thieves who made off with their fortune"
So, still a bit of work to be done, mainly on the flying modes - theres a few ideas floating around, but nothing concrete yet...
...thats if its an idea worthy of taking any further - if not, then i've got a few more in the inspiration bag...
But I think the original was the best. Cauldron has that 'cute' courier look, and it's gotta be a leprechaun. The pirate hats and whatnot don't fit.
Leprechauns/dota/valve i don't know, but I think that's the best of all.
baddcog - i'm keen for it to be more than just a literal interpretation - whether i've hit that or not is the question! I dont mind it being a more dota-esque magical forest creature and his enchancted cauldron more than one specific type of mythical being.
As well as that, if skateboarding birds still have a chance of making it into the workshop, then maybe theres still hope for this...
think that could be quite a cool idea for the flying mode - i can imagine the cauldron being quite clumsy, and borderline terrified while doing this. Not that his "pilot" would care, he'd just whack him on the head and tell him to get on with it...
*WARNING* we did have a nightmare with a previous courier, the mandrill and his rotating propellor anims. We could never get the anims to loop without glitching - eventually after multiple submissions valve figured out it was bug on their end and sorted it out. Hope we wouldnt have to go through that again...
they do have that going for them!
and speaking of flying - MAGICAL CAULDRON Rockets!
What if the handles are wings, that just open up for the flying version.
Tiny little comical wings even.
As ever the rigging has been the biggest thorn in my side - after a couple of weeks, managed to get something that mostly works
Kept the rigs for the the 2 "characters" separate which should mean i can more easily make changes to either...
blockout animation geometry
And heres the result of me slapping on some very ugly keyframes to see if it all worked (i'm not an animator!)
[ame="
and got most of my hipoly prepped and ready to sculpt.
It doent look like much, but should be relatively simple now once its in zbrush
Right! Back to work!
*EDIT* If i wanted to include an "Alternate Version" i.e. Radiant/Dire Skins, is that something that can be done?
...i was pretty happy with my progress the last couple of days, things got trickier once i got to the cauldron. Not entirely sure about it, but maybe need to take a step back for a bit and come back at it with fresh eyes!
[ame="