Frosty Barbarian - C&C Needed

Anthricus · Jan 2015

Frosty Barbarian!

Here is my initial sculpt, all Dynamesh/ zRemesh apart from the axe.

Initial Sculpt:

Current Progress:

Full Project Progress:

Detailing: Done
Retopo: Done
UV: Done
Texture: In Progress
Presentation:In Progress
I look to forward to any critique and hope you like what I have got so far

Anthricus · Jan 2015

Sculpt is just about finished so i have popped up a little render before i head into retop.

Im really excited to test out my hand painting texturing skills again once he is all unwrapped.

Critique welcome as always guys, dont be shy

Anthricus · Jan 2015

Quick update, hes retopod and unwrapped and i have started texturing but feel like im getting a bit stuck looking at it with the same eyes.

I have tried to use green and purple tints on the skin to make the barbarian look cold so hopefully that comes across.

Any paintovers or critique would be much appreciated.

Also whats the best method to render hand painted textures? im using mental ray and have tried marmo but cant seem to match the look i have in 3d coat on unlit mode.

Cheers Lads!

Lockewood · Jan 2015

Looking good man, I like the idea of adding in some more colours into the skin. Perhaps try adding in a more variation with mottling of the skin tone. I feel the weakest part of the model right now is the textures feel a bit monochrome/bland. I'm certainly no expert on hand painted texturing but most of the strongest pieces I see stand out because of the vibrancy of colours and brush stroke texture of the diffuse map.

If you haven't already given this a look it's definitely worth a read.
http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/workshop/Dota2CharacterTextureGuide.pdf

Rendering wise, again hopefully someone with more hand painted experience has an answer for this, but I do know marmoset has a selection of more ambient IBL maps that you could use for a flat effect and combine it with a couple of strong lights to pick out the details.

Looking forward to seeing the finished model!

Anthricus · Jan 2015

@Lockewood , cheers for that dude i totally forgot about that awesome resource from valve.

I have added in some point light maps from my high poly and mixed up the lighting and i think it is starting to look better

kind of losing the cold skin feeling now but that was always going to be a challenge.

If you have any other examples i would love to see them and try and push my work as far as i can.

Update:

Keep the critique coming and i really appreciate your responses

Anthricus · Jan 2015

Tried to finish this up and am gonna try and pose this up soon!

I think the colours are starting to pop a bit more and marmoset is starting to do the model justice

C&C still welcome as always!

Lockewood · Jan 2015

Nice, it's definitely getting there. I think you could benefit from getting some stronger contrast in the overall render though. Are you using a specular/gloss map? Would be nice to see some highlights from the normal map picked up with the lighting inside marmoset.

http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/character-lighting
Is a very good tutorial for studio lighting within marmoset. Depending on how much of a 'flat' style you want the final render to be, will determine how far you push things like rim lighting and deep shadows, but even a very subtle back light with specular highlights should make your model pop a bit more.

Lastly I can see you've got AO information within each part of the model, the body, the fur ect, but have you considered getting an AO pass for the whole character? As in, the fur on his back will cast a very subtle shadow onto his arms and so on. This should help the various parts sit better and bring some depth to the render. Be careful not to push it too far though as you don't want to blow out texture information with AO shadows.

Looking forward to seeing it posed!

Frosty Barbarian - C&C Needed

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