Is the gauntlet design jiving with people? Hopefully it's reflecting the shape languages and elements found on the rest of the character so it all feels unified.
You can use the UV function in zbrush to get some fast UVs and then load a diamond pattern texture as an alpha in noise makeer. Should get most of the job done.
Hair is done? I'm wondering if it need more horizontal partitions to the side. It's intentional the otherside is shaved on the left side of the head. I'm going to see if it affects the silhoutte positively.
Hopefully it looks something vaguely close to the cinematic sculpt of Tracer Blizzard did.
Goggles made. More detailing done on the leather jacket, still seeking critiques about the folds and wrinkles. Deatiled the shoes with wear and tear. Still need to make the understrap for the harness.
Hey, panda, looking great so far. Folds is fine, i think.
Maybe it's just me, but her neck seems a bit too wide and a bit too long.
Hand, thigh area, and especially her butt needed more love.
Here's a quick liquify to show my point.
I'm not great with anatomy, though. So if you think my advice made it looks worse, ignore me, please.
And are you going to make the googles see-through?
because in my opinion, what makes Tracer attractive is her eyes and her expression.
So, i think it would look much better to show them.
@Jimmy: I dig the proportional fix. I'll get on that, to the degree I think it's reasonable. Still iffy about your neck adjustment, I'm seeing it as unreasonably thin.
Goggles will be see through, just didn't want to spend time re-learning how to make a transparent material again in Zbrush. Was reminded about how unintuitive a lot of the menus are when I tried.
The neck is too thick, especially for Tracer (do some measurements on her cinematic model, in-game model or concept on how big her head is vs her neck), JimmyRustler is on the mark with that.
The hair feels unnaturally like it's only one layer, and I'm not sure about how you don't even have a little bit of the spikiness present in the original character. I'll probably do up a super quick redline in a bit regarding what you could do to fix that without having to un-do/re-do any work you've already done, because I honestly don't know how to word it.
The hair, are you talking about why the hair looks nothing like how it original does or something else? What spikiness specifically? Sounds like a quick paintover may solve it.
Her pants in the cinematic model were creaseless and foldless. It was quite strange, but I'm assuming it's part of the overall aesthetic decision. No pubic bone definition! Or vague insinuations of the labia majoris!
I'll concede the neck size then. I guess it's too thick compared to the real character. Or at least the overall character feel.
Nah, it's a different design, you can change it a fair bit to get the point across. But there are some major silhouette differences and... You know what, what I said about redline speaking better than I can.
Now, obviously you can't have this huge-ass spike that pops up in the middle of Original Tacers head, but you can still get that feeling across while still going for something more reserved. This is my suggestion, but you can of course approach it however you'd like. I noticed while I was vectoring the silhouette that you have a lot of odd, stiff curves in the front part of the hair, it would be worth trying to make them flow a bit better.
Also, about the "layering" I was babbling about.
I mean this.
Like... This is boring right now. And not like, conveying drab and boring... just lacking visual interest. There's also some really weird gaps that look pretty unnatural. Are you using a reference for this hair cut? If so, post.
I was going to do a proper paint over for this one for clarity but my tablet crapped out so pressure-less mousemode doodles it is.
And I went and looked up the models of Tracer and you're totally right omg
Not a single detail in that area. Cool.
This is looking excellent. I especially like the jacket and gauntlets. I do agree with Bagel hero that the hair leaves something to be desired. I think his paintover and shown silhouettes of Tracer make some excellent points. I almost feel like you should almost mimic Tracers base silhouette with the hair by adding some more vertically facing clusters like her base model has, while keeping the overall hair style more like yours by leaving the buzzed sides. Not sure if I'm correctly conveying what I mean, but for instance imagine keeping Tracers(Stage Left) side part mostly intact while removing the extra hair from her(stage right) side and lower. Keep up the excellent work, really like this piece.
Not a massive fan of the face to be honest. Look at making her less gaunt. She does have that bitchy Russian ex-KGB sorta look going, but I recommend building upon her masseter or cheek area. Just to give it that sorta width that is in the original Tracer face.
@Panda
It looks great, but i think you went a bit too far on defining the facial feature, noticeably at her lips, eyebag, cheek and nose. Basically, you need to smooth things out.
Here's another quick liquify paintover, since i'm not good at speaking things.
About the hair, IMO it needed less strand, and more volume. Yours looking a bit messy, and bit too crowded.
Yeah, as Jimmy has shown, just a little fatter. How else would she survive those cold winter nights? Aside from the head, the work you've done on the clothing is really cool.
Definitely getting better, but could be improved.
Neck should be a little bit shorter, and raise the jacket a bit too, giving it a better silhouette.
Lips still a bit too defined.
Try to keep the eyebrow sculpt simple, so it could read much better.
Eyelashes needed a better shape to get a better grasp on the likeness.
A larger pupil in her eye texture.
Ear looks a bit too large, i think.
Jawline needed more work.
The bottom part of the nose (idk what its called) need to be moved up a little bit.
Hope you're not tired with my paintover yet, because here's another quick one.
I'm going to refuse the changes to most of the paintover critiques because I don't think it quite looks like Tracer anymore with those modifications. And also specifically the neck situation since that may change the proportional length of the character overall. The eyelashes and eyebrows will mostly be texture work in the end with the way I'm planning things. Ear silhouette I'll change.
Did a quick color scheme with polypaint. Are we feeling for the green pants if the emissives will be bright red?
I think the pistols are done? I admittedly am not the best weapons designer, but I'm hoping the shape language of the main character is unified with the weapon here.
I was hoping I did that, with the beveled square on the magnetic barrel panels, as wel as the general hard, beveled shapes. Though the only curved place is the pistol grip and the AK-47 esque back.
Material wise, it'll definitely share the bracer's materials.
At least, that's my artistic reasoning behind the way it looks right now. Does it still not make sense?
To all the character artists who've been doing this professionally for a while.
Am I doing something wrong if I find myself explode baking for normals, and then rebaking over several sets of intersecting highpoly to grab the AOs as precisely as possible?
I have this weird feeling there may be a more efficient way of grabbing the AOs. In my head, the ideal would be everything stays in its place and I don't need to move meshes to do bakes. But if I want to get clean normals, I find myself having to separate the meshes, and then later recombining them.
I've been looking through a couple of the character mesh from the 3D Art Giveaway thread, and I was wondering, Polycount:
Is it acceptable to have floating geomtries between what visually looks sewn together? For example, can I have the head geometry be floating even though the head geometry intersects with the clothing geometry, making it looks like they're sewn together?
If there's one thing I've learnt from numerous question threads I've posted to PC, it's that if it works, do it. There shouldn't be a problem with the floating geometry either. If it bakes well, that is.
Good progress, by the way. I also noticed you changed your profile picture. It's far sexier now.
Replies
Roughly 80% done with the blocking out of the elements.
Moving most of the blocked in elements to ZBrush, making adjustments as I go along.
How's the jacket folds looking? Not sure if it's going in the right direction, or how chunky i need to make it given the game's style.
WIP 10b
Anyone know how to get clean hair clumps, but still maintain the creases?
Hair is done? I'm wondering if it need more horizontal partitions to the side. It's intentional the otherside is shaved on the left side of the head. I'm going to see if it affects the silhoutte positively.
Hopefully it looks something vaguely close to the cinematic sculpt of Tracer Blizzard did.
Goggles made. More detailing done on the leather jacket, still seeking critiques about the folds and wrinkles. Deatiled the shoes with wear and tear. Still need to make the understrap for the harness.
Maybe it's just me, but her neck seems a bit too wide and a bit too long.
Hand, thigh area, and especially her butt needed more love.
Here's a quick liquify to show my point.
I'm not great with anatomy, though. So if you think my advice made it looks worse, ignore me, please.
And are you going to make the googles see-through?
because in my opinion, what makes Tracer attractive is her eyes and her expression.
So, i think it would look much better to show them.
Goggles will be see through, just didn't want to spend time re-learning how to make a transparent material again in Zbrush. Was reminded about how unintuitive a lot of the menus are when I tried.
The hair feels unnaturally like it's only one layer, and I'm not sure about how you don't even have a little bit of the spikiness present in the original character. I'll probably do up a super quick redline in a bit regarding what you could do to fix that without having to un-do/re-do any work you've already done, because I honestly don't know how to word it.
She also needs crotch folds. :V
Her pants in the cinematic model were creaseless and foldless. It was quite strange, but I'm assuming it's part of the overall aesthetic decision. No pubic bone definition! Or vague insinuations of the labia majoris!
I'll concede the neck size then. I guess it's too thick compared to the real character. Or at least the overall character feel.
Now, obviously you can't have this huge-ass spike that pops up in the middle of Original Tacers head, but you can still get that feeling across while still going for something more reserved. This is my suggestion, but you can of course approach it however you'd like. I noticed while I was vectoring the silhouette that you have a lot of odd, stiff curves in the front part of the hair, it would be worth trying to make them flow a bit better.
Also, about the "layering" I was babbling about.
I mean this.
Like... This is boring right now. And not like, conveying drab and boring... just lacking visual interest. There's also some really weird gaps that look pretty unnatural. Are you using a reference for this hair cut? If so, post.
I was going to do a proper paint over for this one for clarity but my tablet crapped out so pressure-less mousemode doodles it is.
And I went and looked up the models of Tracer and you're totally right omg
Not a single detail in that area. Cool.
@Stiris: Is the 3/4 cheek silhouette where you think it should be?
It looks great, but i think you went a bit too far on defining the facial feature, noticeably at her lips, eyebag, cheek and nose. Basically, you need to smooth things out.
Here's another quick liquify paintover, since i'm not good at speaking things.
About the hair, IMO it needed less strand, and more volume. Yours looking a bit messy, and bit too crowded.
Yeah, as Jimmy has shown, just a little fatter. How else would she survive those cold winter nights? Aside from the head, the work you've done on the clothing is really cool.
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1UEa2hQtvW1
@JadeEyePanda
That could be the weirdest thing I have experienced on Polycount yet.
O.M.G... This is the coolest shit I have seen this week so far !
Brian, I think you're onto something new here for PolyCounters :P
http://vocaroo.com/i/s15eFEmPbJ9g
We all happy with this?
Oh, and a while. I'm shit at poetry.
Neck should be a little bit shorter, and raise the jacket a bit too, giving it a better silhouette.
Lips still a bit too defined.
Try to keep the eyebrow sculpt simple, so it could read much better.
Eyelashes needed a better shape to get a better grasp on the likeness.
A larger pupil in her eye texture.
Ear looks a bit too large, i think.
Jawline needed more work.
The bottom part of the nose (idk what its called) need to be moved up a little bit.
Hope you're not tired with my paintover yet, because here's another quick one.
Did a quick color scheme with polypaint. Are we feeling for the green pants if the emissives will be bright red?
The color schemes looks fine btw.
More work done on the pistol. Anyone have critiques on the forms being made? I admit, I'm not the strongest weapon concept designer.
I think the pistols are done? I admittedly am not the best weapons designer, but I'm hoping the shape language of the main character is unified with the weapon here.
Material wise, it'll definitely share the bracer's materials.
At least, that's my artistic reasoning behind the way it looks right now. Does it still not make sense?
The current set of guns you have could be given to any character. How can you make your guns look like they belong to your version of Tracer?
I think I can remorph the side panels as the elbow guards.
Btw, Kyle, how's it going? What's important these days, for ya?
Update to the color scheme.
To all the character artists who've been doing this professionally for a while.
Am I doing something wrong if I find myself explode baking for normals, and then rebaking over several sets of intersecting highpoly to grab the AOs as precisely as possible?
I have this weird feeling there may be a more efficient way of grabbing the AOs. In my head, the ideal would be everything stays in its place and I don't need to move meshes to do bakes. But if I want to get clean normals, I find myself having to separate the meshes, and then later recombining them.
Is it acceptable to have floating geomtries between what visually looks sewn together? For example, can I have the head geometry be floating even though the head geometry intersects with the clothing geometry, making it looks like they're sewn together?
Good progress, by the way. I also noticed you changed your profile picture. It's far sexier now.
Time to fix the normal flipping and AO issues