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Rens and Halo

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grunt.jpg
grunttexturemaps.jpg
gruntzbrush.jpg

spartan.jpg

So as many know.. Halo and I go together like.. a fat girl and twinkies.
Therefor I decided to just start building what I like, because one way or another I will find a way to turn something into it anyway.

A whole thread, me, halo, and the art that follows.

Replies

  • Mark Dygert
    Hahaha cool, nice work buddy.
  • Gav
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    Gav quad damage
    Looking really cool man!
  • Cronotic
  • Skamberin
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    Skamberin polycounter lvl 13
    I demand this be meshbin.com'd
    Great work man :D
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Nicely done, I've always loved grunts.
  • doeseph
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    doeseph polycounter lvl 7
    Very cool. Is this a pre or post Reach conflict grunt? It looks more like the original due to the design of the air pack, but it's not as bulky as the grunts seen in Halo 1.

    Good stuff!
  • Michael Knubben
    That is such a nice sculpt, it's a shame you undid it all in the texture. Not that the texture is bad on its own, but you might as well not have spent any time on the sculpt if you're going to hide the shapes behind such busy texturing.
    Unless you up the spec a lot, I suggest you simplify the colouring a lot, use bigger shapes to support shapes, actively avoid any noise at all even.
    And if you're going to have such mild specular/gloss on the body, you may as well bake in much (!) more lighting, because right now it borders on looking unlit.

    I also find the metal to be very dull. It doesn't stand out from the flesh enough because of a similar(-ish) spec-value, and it could also do with some more interesting variation in colouring, possibly mainly in the specmap.
  • Rens
    Vig, thank you Sir!

    Gav :D

    Skamberin, meshbin ey, hmm we'll see!

    Doeseph, it is actualy a mix between a lot of variations, and a bit of my own for the body work. The armor design is mostly based on the halo3 grunt.

    Pea, yeah there is still a lot wrong with the maps, I'm trying to work those out.
    I added a glossmap now, helps to solve quite some issues.

    Now that I start to spend too much time with this grunt, i find too much mistakes and will redo him some other time.

    Thank you guys for the comments, really motivating :)
  • AlecMoody
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    AlecMoody ngon master
    Im agree with mighty pea, it looks good now but the sculpt is being hidden by noise. One way I like to take noise out of a texture is to sample areas of color and paint on a new layer with 30-50% opacity. Almost like airbrushing skin in a photo but less heavy handed.
  • Rens
    Alec, I use that trick alot, but i found that it took away too much from the character.
    Im using xoliul's shader, and by applying a reflection map i solved a lot of problems. Also turned off the half lambert setting which canceled out bits of the normal map. Most were in the settings rather then the maps.
    The settings are a bit much here and there, giving him some shiney skin effects.

    Got an update on the painting.
    Quite some areas are still sketchy, and it needs a good clean up and details.
    The brush i am using now is just a few hairs thick, and is dried up for way too long. It is like painting with a toothpick. Yet i like it too much to replace it right away :P

    Bits and pieces, bits and pieces.
    connected2011.jpg
  • ıomeen
    Love it!
    MC: I don't like the armoring of the fingers, though. Not sure if that's what it originally looks like but it's going off the style.
  • selentic
    Those are some really hot grunts, mmmm
  • Rens
    Thanks!

    IOmeen,
    I tried to give the gloves a bit of a spin, but it does not fit in well.
    I will be rebuilding a large part of the spartan before even daring to take it further.

    Also, figured i might aswell post it here, little update on my website

    Since my domain is difficult to remember, and it is too fuckn dutch, i just registered www.artbyrens.com
  • IronHawk
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    IronHawk polycounter lvl 10
    tight stuff there bro.
  • Rens
    Hey Jesse, good to hear from you buddy!

    Got a new start,
    25 mil, 400mb zbrush file, .. too many subtools.
    Will make a few changes and work out some more details, so the img below will be updated shortly

    marinezbrush.jpg

    halomarinesubd.jpg
  • XenoKratios
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    XenoKratios polycounter lvl 12
    Saw this on the WAYWO thread, caught my eye. I'm loving the hard surface stuff, especially the helmet on the latest dude.

    Keep it up man, if you add them all in once epic scene, it's gonna be bad ass!
  • ae.
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    ae. polycounter lvl 12
    Post deleted by User.
  • fuxer
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    fuxer polycounter lvl 18
    Very clean modeling on the armor. Looking forward to more updates :)
  • uneditablepoly
    Great work on everything! Love Halo, keep it up! Oh, and that painting is awesome.
  • bbob
    This is pretty awesome. However, the corners of the mouth on the last marine looks a bit off..
  • Snefer
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    Snefer polycounter lvl 16
    Those grunts are pretty fucking sweet man. :)
  • PixelMasher
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    PixelMasher veteran polycounter
    jesus, nice work man! how have you not been snagged up by 343 industries yet haha?
  • Mark Dygert
    Ok you can stop making me have strange and unexplainable feelings for halo... anytime.
  • Xaltar
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    Xaltar polycounter lvl 17
    Nice clean work Rens. Looking forward to seeing these done.
  • ae.
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    ae. polycounter lvl 12
    jesus, nice work man! how have you not been snagged up by 343 industries yet haha?

    yeah i don't get it either, 343 would be luck to have his sexy face!
  • Rens
    Xeno,
    I'm not sure that i will use my previous characters before they have had a good update.
    But the plan is to start building an environment or two around the marine. Since my portfolio lacks quite the props and what not, i thought that would be a good way to keep going and add some new pieces :D

    bbob,
    true story, the head recieved less attention then it needs.
    Will be working it out to make up for it.

    snefer,
    thanks, everytime i look at it though, there are a bunch of spots yelling to be fixed. So i will probably make some changes and redo that texture. It was a nice practice but it can be done much nicer.

    Vig, <3
    I got a few more things in mind but who knows!
    If i'm ever near Seattle, the drinks are on me buddy.

    fuxer, uneditable, xaltar, thanks for the kind words guys!
    I did not expect so many replies all of a sudden :D

    pixelmasher, (I bookmarked your site, got some sweet stuff i will be taking a closer look at)
    ae,
    As far as 343 and other companies go, i will keep running into multiple problems.
    Atleast for a while that is. It basicly comes down to,

    - lack of respectable skills,
    - lack of exp, (i only have 5 months)
    - lack of a portfolio that suits the job, (not ready for characters, yet i have little else in my portfolio)
    - lack of a work visa, which is balls to obtain, and no company will go for it because of the above.

    While i'm good enough to build boxes for in the corner, it is not something you would hire someone overseas for. They have a city full of kids that are able to do that job. Therefor i must prove myself to obtain a fulltime big position, though .. here i get the same problems again. I'll probably start looking for something in sweden sometime soon, cause i just have to face that getting a job working on
    "something official halo something" is just not going to happen.

    Whenever I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story!
  • Rens
    Got it updated now, I think it is about time to start working on a low poly.


    marinezbrush.jpg
  • Rens
    A bump bump bump, that is all i wanna doo---oooh


    First results with the baked ao and normal
    weighs in at 19k, due to shameless bevels.

    Other images and a video will follow when i got some more :)
    Plus some errors in the normal and the ao increasing that, needs a nice cleanup
    Going to try and rebake things with different smoothgroups

    tempmaps.jpg
    marinenormalmaptest.jpg
    marineangles.jpg
  • gilesruscoe
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    gilesruscoe polycounter lvl 10
    nice unwrap o_O
  • ae.
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    ae. polycounter lvl 12
    as i will always say that came out amazing rens!
  • EarthQuake
    use 3ps shader, i'm sure those smoothing errors will go away =)
  • Autocon
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    Autocon polycounter lvl 15
    Stuff is looking great Rens, always loved the painting from the first time I saw you working on it :)


    You do have a TON of areas that can be/should be overlapped on that unwrap.
  • Andreas
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    Andreas polycounter lvl 11
    You're the king of unwrapping Rens! But yeah, you should use the fact that you didn't overlap much to your advantage, get lots of localised dirt/covenant blood/mud on there! :)
  • Rens
    Giles, thanks! It is rather tight, it is recommended to keep a bit more distance. Though im using it at 2048 and i like to stay on the edge :P

    ae, thanks buddy! always great to hear from you :)

    autocon, nice to hear that about the painting! took a lot of love to get that to where it is, specialy cause when i started i had no clue what i was doing.
    as far as the texture goes, yeah there are alot of spots with unique texturespace, and as andreas mentioned, i will try and make everything look different, cause otherwise there are some big areas that will be quite obvious when mirrored.

    Andreas, :D !!
    I spotted a few mistakes, so while i'm doing some rebaking, i might aswell shuffel that uv around for a better fit ;)

    EQ, it came to mind, that the shader i was using had no quality mode,
    nice to see it do its magic all over the place.
  • wester
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    wester polycounter lvl 13
    I love your grunt model! You should really start texturing up some of these WIPS before moving on to the next. Your stuff is really great though.

    I also love your barney stinson quote.
  • rasmus
    Dude, cut yourself some slack, because this is looking good :) With a tiny bit of official-sounding experience under your belt, you're good to go.
  • moof
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    moof polycounter lvl 7
    looking real nice dude!
  • chrisradsby
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    chrisradsby polycounter lvl 14
    Geez, if you're good enough people WILL hire you eventually, just keep going. And this is some sexy stuff man!
  • MEGALOS
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    MEGALOS polycounter lvl 9
    Dude.. This is freaking sick...
  • Spitfire
    Looks awesome, very good modeling, thought i have to say the characters feel alot more bulky than the original counterpart. still looks good though!
  • Spark
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    Spark polycounter lvl 18
    Rens, he's looking good though I am suprised on the unwrap. True you utilized every inch of the texture, which is a good thing to do ( texture space is gold ) But not sure why he is broken up all over the place, I would suggest having it broken up such as the chest and back and legs front and back, and the head seperate. It makes things a lot easier if you have most of it casted together, rather than it like a broken vase that you have to figure out and piece together. True you have a few pieces that are seperate such as the shoulder pads, but the forarm shields could have been casted to the arm all in one. Just a suggestion, not saying re-unwrap again but maybe think about it on the next piece. Keep up the good work, and curious to what you do next...maybe a vehicle:P

    Spark
  • martynball
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    martynball polycounter lvl 10
    AWESOME! I want to do some Halo models like there, I have only done lowpoly stuff in the past.
  • Rens
    Luke, hell yeah! some weapons and an environment coming up.

    rasmus, chris, I like to set the bar way too high and add alot of pressure,
    So me bitching about details and giving myself a hard time, it helps me make progress faster.

    spark, i love you man, i went back and fixed a bunch of things.
    Thanks for always clubbing me on the head when i need it <3

    wester, moof, megolos, spitfire, martynball, thanks for the great replies guy!
    Really nice to hear :)

    quick update on this, I'm pulling the plug on what ever is left,
    For the end result i need a marine that can be stripped and build up with different armor parts, so it will be a place holder for the next few months.

    Time to move on to the scene. Make sure my portfolio fits a 3d artist position.

    I now notice that i did pull the plug fast tonight, i wanted to move some verts around to fix the proportion mistakes going on. It's a bit hard to figure out with that bulkyness throwing it off, Short wrist, weird legs.. perhaps. i will look into replacing the screenshots tomorrow with those fixes. anyway fuck it.

    halomarine01.jpg
  • brandoom
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    brandoom polycounter lvl 13
    I donno Rens, I just don't know.
  • [SF]Three9
    I....this...I just.... :|
    I want to make something this good :(
  • Rens
    I'm not posting any flats :P
    Those textures are half finished and look silly.

    I did try out marmoset this morning, good fun with the settings and lighting, you can create a whole studio lighting to it, awesome.

    Learned alot, specialy about what not to do, so its time to move on.

    and no! im not getting rid of that T pose.

    brandon, nice one :P

    [SF] Just keep pushing it and you'll get there! Besides, it aint that great yet, work hard and youll kick my ass in no time :)

    thanks guys:)
  • Skamberin
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    Skamberin polycounter lvl 13
    That's awesome man, get some SSS on dat skin and some of those tiled detail maps on the clothing for extra sexyness.
  • ae.
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    ae. polycounter lvl 12
    Came out great!
  • TDub
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    TDub polycounter lvl 13
    I like. A lot.

    One thing that does bug me, are the buckles. Especially his belt buckle. They are pretty light, and stand out too much compared to the rest of it. Really distracting IMO
  • Zpanzer
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    Zpanzer polycounter lvl 8
    Awesome work Rens! Only thing is that the image is veeery dark :P
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