Need advice on low-poly hand painted model (WoW inspired)
Hey polycount,
** SEE FINAL PIECE AT END OF 2nd Page**
I am looking for advice on how to hand paint textures for characters. I'm trying to make an original character that could fit into the WoW universe. I had found some material for learning objects and weapons but I seem to be missing the quality of what blizzard shows in their new models. I start blending colors and highlights and shows but feel like I'm missing the "skin feel" that blizzard does so well.
I am also all self taught and 2d art is still something Im working through. 3D is what I'm more used to. Any texturing advice would be awesome. I can upload more recent pictures later today.
forrestreidbailey.com
** SEE FINAL PIECE AT END OF 2nd Page**
I am looking for advice on how to hand paint textures for characters. I'm trying to make an original character that could fit into the WoW universe. I had found some material for learning objects and weapons but I seem to be missing the quality of what blizzard shows in their new models. I start blending colors and highlights and shows but feel like I'm missing the "skin feel" that blizzard does so well.
I am also all self taught and 2d art is still something Im working through. 3D is what I'm more used to. Any texturing advice would be awesome. I can upload more recent pictures later today.
forrestreidbailey.com
Replies
Regarding making the skin, or any material, feel better and look more alive, I think a lot of people forget to do the following 2:
1) Changing values means you have to adjust hues. Just adding more white or black to a hue doesn't make it feel better. You need to add warmer or cooler colors as you change to highlights or shadows.
2) Splashing in off hues adds subtle noise to flat colors, much like how a human face wll have subtle blues, yellows, and reds in certain areas, even though it LOOKS lke everything is peach, brown, or dark brown.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=113859
Come to think of it, I wrote some texture painting tutorials a while ago, they might be of help:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2167961/q3skn-blackrose-breakdown_face.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2167961/q3skn-blackrose-breakdown_hair.jpg
See if you can apply the same principles to the body, brightening up all the up-facing planes, darkening down-facing planes. If you do another pass on the body, we can give you more specific feedback afterwards.
I dare you to color pick it. See what hue it is compared to the lit skin.
Also, it would do you good to see to identifying, by name and shape, the muscle groups they defined on the Dranaei body so you can understand where to place your muscle groups. You're going to have to sit down and read a textbook for that one.
Regarding your pectorial muscles, they shouldn't hang that low like droopy breasts. The male pectoral muscles' bottom termination follows the line that flows to the bottom insertion line of the deltoids as it goes from the chest to the arms.
KNow your anatomy so you know what you're trying to color.
Also like everybody has mentioned you need some more colors in there.
Something I like to remember, Cool colors go back, and warm colors come forward. You're going to need to change the hue to add some depth.
If you look at Blizzards draenei, he has a vast and vivid range of colour in his body. There's deep violets for the darkest shadows, blue midtones with a tinge of green in certain places, and light blue and yellow highlights.
There is a lot of varying values in the tones of the texture. Lets look at your model next to the blizzard model, desaturated.
Your textures are totally lost. The shadows and midtones are almost exactly the same in value, there is barely any differentiation between the muscle shadows and the 'highlights'. Looks bland and is not punchy at all. Meanwhile, the blizzard textures have great tone values, really strong and bold shadows that are easily recognizable and don't blend in with the rest of the model. Highlights on the face and veins help push round muscle forms and create detail without overwhelming the style.
As well as that, nomatter how good a texture job is, a badly proportioned model is going to ruin it. You have a lot of anatomy and proportion errors in your character. I would suggest that before you continue on with texturing, you go back and review your mesh, give it a good brutal edit with some good human anatomy references on hand. I'm sure that it will help your model look better when you go to retexture it - a good texture always has a good mesh beneath it.
Give him some dynamic forms! More angular muscular forms, he is very soft and round looking but has rock hard abs and is very very skinny, doesn't look right, beef him up to fit the texture style you are aiming for. Rework his arms, his neck and his torso, pecs never sit that low and six backs are not as squashed as that. Quick sketch over
http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/workshop/Dota2CharacterArtGuide.pdf
Update 2: Reshaped mesh. Gotta run to work just added some quick extra colors.
But WAY better. The silhouette is reading strong and muscular.
Attached a black and white version of the image. It's still nto dark enough to warrant a separation that you're looking for betwee the muscle groups.
It's easier to pull back than to inch forward. It feels uncomfortable, but it's better if it's too dark.
That's what I had to learn over the course of a year. Got me a better handle on defining forms.
Also, if you want to avoid doing destructive painting, do all your darken shading on a separate layer so you don't bother the base midtone colors.
In Photoshop? Throw a Level Adjustment layer, make it darker, and paint in the mask. Non destructive painting.
You can still paint, but you can paint smarter and allow for adjustment much more easily. Keep your strokes, but you can affect the values still.
Keep pushing those shadows though! Take your dark shadow colour from the armpits and use it to keep blocking in shadows. If you need to, drop your brush size so you can get small crease and detail shadows in there. Don't forget to start blocking in highlights at some point as well.
Here's another update:
Now get real reference of actual male human bodies (preferrably figure drawing models) and proportionally place where your muscle groups should be.
What would be more effective is if you personally did a paintover and point out where you think the muscles should be.
I can say muscle groups right now are not where they should be, but you taking time to draw over the image in this technical manner will force you think more critically about how you're painting elements of this character.
Also, just so you're prepared professionally in the future, are you separating your shading and pants and other elements to different layers?
Export, erase in Photoshop, reimport.
Time to bake a light map so you can bring attention to the head:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=101248
Also, it's time to spend some time really smoothing out those gradients. I see a lot of unnecessary banding still. Use a brush that has a soft, gradient going outwards from the center.
Here's the paint over, I'm still practicing, but hopefully this helps illustrate what I mean:
Keep this amount of detail consistent with the rest of his body so try and bring it into the fingers, legs, and back.
Keep working hard, and make sure to have fun too. I'll keep cheering =D
Can't wait to see more!
Also, probably make your life easier by just concpeting it out on paper.
Good progress man! Looks like you're really thinking critically about the lighting on the diffuse map.