Ghost Nova (Starcraft 2 Fan Art)
polycounter lvl 9
Hey Polycount, here is a character that I have been working on for the past couple of weeks.
Paul Kwon was kind enough to give me permission to have a go at modelling a beautiful Ghost Nova concept that he painted.
I have just about finished the base sculpt (Very lumpy and rough), so it is time to start the hard surface fun times. I have never really made anything substantial with hard surface modelling so this will be a challenge for me. Please feel free to shout at me if you think that there is something I am missing
I should be able to get some hard surface updates on here in the next couple of days.
Paul Kwon was kind enough to give me permission to have a go at modelling a beautiful Ghost Nova concept that he painted.
I have just about finished the base sculpt (Very lumpy and rough), so it is time to start the hard surface fun times. I have never really made anything substantial with hard surface modelling so this will be a challenge for me. Please feel free to shout at me if you think that there is something I am missing
I should be able to get some hard surface updates on here in the next couple of days.
Replies
The main issues are with proportion and face shape currently, definately don't proceed into hard surface stuff until you get the proportions and silhouette nailed.
When it comes to female faces, it's all in the subtlety, you really have to make the forms look right without adding much in the way of creases, because attractive female faces are very smooth. Currently your model makes her look a bit ugly, and old. You've given her a lot of mass in her cheeks, and the nasal labial folds are very pronounced (and also anatomically wrong, they should come from above the nose) whereas in reality, nasal labial folds are pretty subtle, especially in younger women, look at this photo:
see it's very subtle here. Also, see for the outline of the face in 3/4, it should be smooth and shapely, I think hazerdous went into this stuff in that guide he made on here somewhere... Take a look at this girl:
The way the face shape moves from the eye down to the mouth is much more shapely and smooth. Also watch the shape of the eyes, they're currently a bit unshapely and oval, wheras if you look at the above pic, they should be more shapely!
For the body, check out the starcraft model:
her physique is more cartoony, with a stronger female silhouette, small waist, shapely legs etc, try and mimic that with your model. I'll do you a paintover of the face if I get a minute after dinner!
The biggest thing here is use more reference for the face, especially of attractive women! It's something I have a very hard time with too, it's easier to make men for sure. If you post a side and front shot i could do a paintover for some slightly better proportions hopefully also
cheers
Those examples are great, I will also try to dig out the Hazardous article that you mentioned.
The eyes have been bugging me as I had a much more oval shape at the start but the concept seems to have much flatter eyes so I changed the shape. I have never really been certain about the shape as I couldn't put that down to her looking down or slightly squinting, either way I will take your advice and correct them.
Here are the front and side views that you requested.
In terms of propoertions I they are both pretty similar apart from the breasts and hips which seem to be higher on the in game model. I think I could do with making the waist slightly thinner. The calves on the in game model seem to be a lot thicker as well so I might have add some mass to the tibialis anterior.
How's the snowboarder girl coming on by the way?
as you can see, i smoothed over a lot of stuff, made the shapes more feminine, and removed a lot of thickness from her face and neck etc
in the body view, she looks ok, you should move her hips forward in the profile view, and try and make those shapes more angular and interesting, and try to avoid making her too even, you want those shapes from her armour etc to read in her silhouette. this paintovers pretty crappy, but it gives you an idea:
EDIT: here's 1 more for the road:
Here are some changes to the proportions, pose and silhouette. (Ignore the back of the boot,I have already made the high poly which has more of a curve to it, along with hard edges)
I did a paintover for you, I think the face needs more refining...
[edit] Love the eyes btw. great work so far!
Right now, she's too tall, her chest and shoulders are too large and her legs and arms are too... "fat" (you get the idea)
Here is a quick before-after image so you see what I mean:
I really wanted to make some progress on this so I decided to go ahead and start on the high poly, after making some small adjustments to the proportions.
To do list:
Sort out the head proportions and add fine details to the head.
Add metal skeletal frame details to the back of the hands
Correct smoothing errors throughout the high poly model.
Add floating geometry to the shoulder pads, such as small holes.
Take some parts of the model back into zbrush and rough them up.
Add rubber-like grip patterns to the bottom half of the gloves in ZBrush.
I'm contemplating making the orb and glasses a semi-transparent material so that it would create nice refractions, I would also be able model the little lights etc that you can see within the orbs in the concept.
My only concern is if it would be justified by the performance costs, what do you guys think?
It has been a while since I last posted any progress on this.
I have been busy creating the low poly and unwrapping it. I still have to make the little metal skeletal armour for the back of the hand and unwrap that, then I can maximize the efficiency as there are a lot of empty spaces at the moment.
As you can see she has a fairly high tri count, I am aiming for around 50 - 60K. (I need to delete the polys on the back of the head aswell)
The head, hair and eyes are going to use separate textures so I need to get that sorted as well.
I am also contemplating giving the shoulder pad unique UV space, as I don't want to risk there being any lighting issues with the mirroring when I get further down the road.
There is still lots of work to do to the textures, the spec is literally just the diffuse with a couple of adjustment layers.
Big thanks to PauP and Harford for their ongoing critique which has taught me a lot and made me have to redo much of the work which is why I haven't updated this thread in ages lol
I am in the process of sorting out the material definitions whilst adding wear and tear. The grey fabric and the skin spec need a lot of love as the skin spec is just a grey scale with no additional work so the lips look really dry.
(Ignore the duplicate images, the new ones had the same names as the older ones!)
I will get some extra high res images soon.
First issue I see is with the scratches. The bigger, more 'pattern like' scratches stand out and make the viewer notice the symmetry. It might be better to use more subtle scratches, unless it is on an area like the side of the model where the viewer won't be able to see the symmetry from that angle.
Also be careful with the shadowing below the corner of the lips. This is making this area far too pronounced. Find out what is causing this strong shadow (possibly light map or ao) and reduce it.
Keep up the good work, and we can review your textures in a hangout at some point if you'd like
I see what you mean about the damage being obvious on the symmetrical parts so I will sort that out over the weekend hopefully.
I think it was my poor lighting that made the shadows really pronounced by the lips. At the moment it is only using the default daytime lighting setup in UDK so it is only using 1 directional light.
I managed to spare a little bit of time during my lunch break so I made some small tweaks to the eyes and face. I have managed to get the gradient shadow working and to add some wetness to the lips and general specular highlights to the face and eyes.
I still need to sort out the eyelashes as they are not touching the eye lids in some areas and the low poly ones are intersecting wuite badly which is why a lot of them are not visible (I think). I also need to sort out the specular wet strip at the base of the eye as it has no gradient for the highlights to fall off
(Please ignore the spec and the reflections on the body, the texture itself is still very much a WIP)
Looking at it from the side on the sculpt you originally posted it is far too flat. If you look at something like this you can see the planes of the face easier.
http://philippefaraut.com/store/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/f/e/femaleplanes1_2.jpg
You are right man, I guess I kind of ended up moving away from the concepts face and making it more like the reference imagery that I used.
I ended up almost completely resculping the head as I was really unhappy with the bone structure and proportions.
I will try and get some pics of the new sculpt on here over the next couple of days.
It has been a bit of a pain as I have been working on this whenever I can spare the time ,at work and at home, so the files are all over the place lol
-- UPDATE --
Here is an update of Nova in UDK
There is still a lot of tweaking to do but the armour is almost there.
The hair and head also need a bit of work but I am trying to get the armour finished first then finish the others off.
Smoother!
Here is an update of the body with the flattened back and some tweaks to the spec map.
I agree with the jowls and I think the lighting didn't help too much. Either way, I have been revisiting the head and following the female head planes image that LRoy was kind enough to link me.
Here is an update on the new head sculpt.
Firstly she is looking bug-eyes, as in the eyes are too big and look like they are popping out of the head. Try and measure them so that you could fit around 5 of them from the left side of the face to the right. At the moment it looks like you can only fit in 3, possibly 4.
The line on the upper lip is very pronounced, you should reduce that a bit. Even for stylized this is a bit strong.
Try and define the zygomtic bone, especially around the cheek and eye, leading back to the ear.
Her ears are looking really lumpy and thick in areas, so try and smooth this out, and check ref to get the right thickness.
I can see you're trying to define the arch above the outer eyebrow, but I feel this is a bit too strong and makes it look like she has not muscle around the temporal bone. You could probably reduce the harsh dip and get some more volume in there.
I'd recommend checking out Joe's video on EAT3D about setting up images in ZBrush, I think it'll help you a lot:
http://eat3d.com/free/using-reference-zbrush
Keep it up
I have managed to spend an hour on the sculpt this lunch.
I have tried to address most of the issues that you mentioned, still need to sort out the temple area, the eyebrows, ears and general lumpyness.
it's only my two cents tho
I will see if I can smooth out some of the forms and add more of a feminine touch to her. I should be able to finish it off tonight as I have a few hours free
I think the problem that I usually have is that the lighting and viewing angles are terrible in my progress shots so it doesn't really sell my work at all. I always seem to be in a rush when I post them as well which doesn't help lol
The old unwrapped low poly doesn't match the new shape at all so I will have to probably export the new low poly and re unwrap it.
I am planning on moving onto that at lunch so now if you guys can spot anything that looks wrong please say
Thanks
At the moment it looks too much like your other characters. The concept has a small upturned nose. Check out hazardous' writeup on what helps makes a face attractive. You can see the rest in the vertex book or on his deviant page.
I have kind of gone for more realism in this project by using a lot of real life refernce imagery, as opposed to the face from the original concept.
I will take your advice on board though and see if I can make her prettier tomorrow.
Here are some changes that Paul mentioned earlier which have helped. I managed to sort out the ear and the nose, but there are still more tweaks to make so I will give it another couple of days as I think it will really add to the final look of the character
One thing you need to really focus on is smoothing out the planes of the face more, and paying close attention to the silhouette of her face and the basic forms. Check the shadows and light on your sculpt and try and compare it to your reference.
For example, the first thing that jumped out at me was from the 3 quarters view how angular her face was. You can see a strong highlight running down her cheek area and up her forhead. Now in your reference you can see that's completely smooth there. Always look for stuff like that and try to match things up as best you can.
Also, do yourself a favor and add things to your sculpt to check how she is turning out. With females in particular the hair really changes how they look. You can do a paintover on your own model to get an idea for example or just block out some hair in a separate subtool.
Here is a quick paintover I did...
P.S. I lightened up some of the shadows which would be a bit of a cheat cause that's really what your (im guessing bpr render) is doing. I think you should dial down the shadows so you get a better read on her, and possibly switch to skin shader type materials instead, or at least check her often with different materials.
P.P.S. Avoid adding micro details like skin pores, unless you are 100% sure she is finished. Those details just get in the way and are really a waste of time imo. I would be willing to bet you are less inclined to make changes once you have gone and made skin pores, when in reality you should be open to changes until you get her just right. In other words, I think it will only hurt your progress.
I hope you don't mind. I was thinking it might help you visualize a bit more seeing someone else s take.
about 1.5 hours here.
oh, btw... if you think it might help I can give you the ztool also.
Mega inspiring speed sculpt which has really caught her character! It was that inspiring that I skipped the gym just to put a solid few hours graft into the refinement. It was also really useful to gauge the forms on the face which are quite hard to see in the original concept.
I have came up with a happy balance of realism and stylized, using the real life reference images and the concept art. I was able to take some really useful tips from Haz's Vertex article such as measuring the line from the outer nostril to the pupil to find the top arch of the eyebrow etc.
I am going to use the eyes, eye lashes and hair from the existing real-time model as they will only need to be adjusted a small amount.
I am glad that you like the way I am going with this and I am sorry for the sea of poor updates lol It has been a case of 2 steps forwards, one step backwards.
I have learnt so much already which I can't wait to use for my next female character.
UPDATE
Here is a small update after todays lunch crunch.
I have flattened the forehead, refined the temples and nose. I have also made the face and ears slightly shorted and added in the eyelashes from the main sculpt to make her look more feminine.
I also tried using the Z projection to make the old low poly fit the model but it came out with loads of artifacts so I will have to re unwrap it.
I managed to play around with it for a couple of hours today and I am calling it pretty much done now as I need to move on and get it reunwrapped
(The neck and most of the head will be covered in hair and armour so please ignore the weird shaped neck and the back of the head)
I have made a load of changes to the face, most of which have been to the forehead, eye and nose area.
I am going to have to revisit the eyelashes too as I would like to achieve the effect of clumped together eyelashes like the this example.
Has anyone got any suggestions as to how it would be possible to achieve a similar result without having to manually place and scale each eyelash in zbrush?
Thanks
I'm not really good at paint over, that's why I don't usually do them haha
But there is couple of thing bugging me about this new face.
The mouth looks really squished in together, a bit like if somebody was holding it like that. There is a little crease on the top side of her mouth that shouldn't be there. I do think her eyes might be a little too wide themself, and a tad too far appart from each other.
Once again this is not a pretty or correct paint over but it might give you an idea of what I am trying to say.
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I have sorted made some took your suggestions on board and I am now sorting out the lop poly unwrap before baking it down.
I have started making the blade on my lunch breaks to stop me losing interest in the head revisit.
Once I have sorted the blades I will make the rifle and a rifle holster
As for certain part of the face Ive included a few crits that you may find helpful or not, such as try and move the edges of you brow back and bring out the temple area as it seem to be a tad sunken. This should help in giving the sense that the skull is curved. The eyeballs could be lowered to. Also try and smooth out you cheeks as you can see a faint line running down from the brow to the chin that gives the head a box like quality which also highlights the flatness face.
Hope this helps pal as youve put a ton of work into this. Keep at it.
I was on going to bake it out and call it a day but it is posts like that which make me think I have came this far I might as well keep pushing.
Back to ZBrush I shall go. Literally just correcting the UV's of the new head to the old textures so that I don't have to faff too much, then I will project the hp onto the UV'd lp and make some adjustments.
I should be able to get some updates on here soon with the head, but I am working on the weapons while on my lunch breaks at work so the updates will be staggered.
Thanks again
yea, its getting better with every update. No need to rush it. As tits and disarrary said there are a few things you can look at in terms of measurements to get the proportions right.
Main thing is the lips... you want the corners to extend about to the mid eye, if you draw a vertical line.
Also the eyes look a tad wide. Like the whole head could be squished in a bit from the temples. Remember there should be exactly one eye length between the two eyes as a general rule.
Also, if you can, keep trying to round out the face (without going overboard that is). The way the light is transitioning from along the cheeks and forhead around the temples still looks a bit harsh meaning its a bit boxy as tits mentioned. Anyway, you have come a long way with it, I would just push a little further to really nail those proportions.
Thanks for your continued support guys!
I am going to call it a day on the head now as I really need to move on and finish off the body, sort out the hair etc as well as sorting out the blade and rifle. I don't want to be known as that guy who takes a year to make a character lol
(I swear I gor rid of that really dark odd looking piece of hair behind the goggles, oh well, looks like another import)
I have been modelling a clip for the sabres and started the rifle blockout on my laptop. I will get a pic of all of that asap.
I am glad that I revisited the head as I think she looks much for feminine now so thanks for the feedback guys
[edit] I was looking back at your progress here and it seems you have replaced some pics with your latest update? Might be confusing to people, just wanted to let you know.
It's my own fault for saving the images with similar names each time. It would be handy if Dropbox had a notification message that told you that you were about to overwrite a existing with the same name xD
UPDATE
Here is an update of the head with the sabre that I made. It has a cool panning texture that adds a nice pulsating energy effect.
Please ignore the neons I think I accidently saved out the diffuse with the glow in it lol I am still in the process of playing around with the gloss and spec to make the armour look cool. I also need to add the belly button normals into the suit to break it up a bit, and tweak the textures in general.
I think getting the spec and gloss right will have the biggest impact at this stage. Give me a shout if you want any help or crit with it. Can't wait to see the armour looking all shiny and awesome
I was meant to get rid of the other bit of hair that is blocking the 2nd head set arial, but I got carried away with the rigging so I will do that tomorrow hopefully
UPDATE
I have spent a few hours today sorting out the rig and pose. I still need to spend a couple of hours cleaning up the rig but I wanted to get a update up before bed so I will do that tomorrow if I get a chance. Once that is done I am going to get her back into udk and sort out the hair, nostrils and gloss/spec maps.
I was thinking of doing a series of poses for the final pics, so one with her holding one blade with, one with 2, and 1 with the rifle helf with both hands and another whit the rifle pointing towards the ceiling with her goggles on possibly.