Allow me to introduce myself and explain my purpose :

I'm an animation student, soon to leave the school. Even though I learned 2d animation, I'm still doing a bit of 3d now and then.

I was looking for sample low polys models, and then found Polycount. You guys really mean buisness .

What I'm trying to do is to start an amateur 3d fighting game. I do not expect to make an actual job out of this, just to have some fun aside of my "serious" work. Nonetheless, I'm willing to improve, so maybe a programmer or four would give me a hand on that.







For information, the woman, Belisama, weights roughly 400 Tris and the man, Taranis, 300.

Textures still in progress, They need at least some shading or something.

Comments and knife twists in open "you're doing it wrong" wounds welcome.

BTW, the bulbs and neon heels of the girl are really lame, and transparency was defenitly a bad idea...

Hey, these are really cool, I like the solid texture style. Interesting proportions too.

The poses feel a bit "stiff" but I guess if you're going to animate them, that's not a problem.

Texturing wise, I would consider bumping up the self illumination and maybe trying the ink and paint shader (if your using Max). It seems as though that stylized approach might showcase your models better rather than the default shading.

interesting! i like the art stile. cant wait to see where this goes.

Love the style! Kind of a Lego look in a strange way The arms on the girl look a bit thin.

They look cool! I like the texture treatment.

The ribcage shadow on the girl-bot is kind of strong, maybe model in some of that detail?

The cord running from one forearm to another is probably going to cause problems when you start animating. It's either going to clip horribly into the body, or need to be rigged up on its own causing it to be very stretchy and destroy the texture.

As a general rule of:
- Cords/wires that cross a joint that rotates on a single axis (elbow, knee, spine to spine) are pretty safe.
- Cords/wires that cross a joint with multi-axis rotation (shoulder, wrist, ankle, head, thigh) its going to get ugly without a rigging miracle.
- To disguise the texture stretching you often want to stick to solid colors.

Thanks for the critiques and advises.

I was already using 50% self illumination, it seems it wasn't enough. Anyway, I tried ink and paint as suggested, with the following results :





These use a "light" texture and a "dark" texture.




While the one on the left still uses the same methods, the one on the left uses a 2-tones shade with 30% opacity. I realsize they don't have the same light, so it's not really easy to compare them...

I have two concerns about this :
First I tried to use a compound material so the powerchord would still have transparency, but it Max refused to render the ink and paint material. I didn't find a way to make ink and paint manage transparency by itself.

The second one is to know if real time game engines will be able to render de ink and paint shader properly.

A teacher helped me set up and rig my first character, and I do hope I'll be able to do the same. As I did the modeling and most of the rigging the mistakes are on me and it seems like I'll have to do a bit more of work on it.

Material is ink and paint texture + rough bump map




Friends at scool told me he looked very effeminate, so I did the last posing for fun.

As I started to plan my animations (just the character moving and taking hits), it occured to me that I had lots of them to do and that my task would be made easier if I could dissociate upper and lower body...

I know I can copy-paste the animation keys, but is it reasonable to make all animations or should I wait until I could speak with a programmer about the possibility of making at least a bit of this procedural ?

The ribcage shadow on the girl-bot is kind of strong, maybe model in some of that detail?

The cord running from one forearm to another is probably going to cause problems when you start animating. It's either going to clip horribly into the body, or need to be rigged up on its own causing it to be very stretchy and destroy the texture.

I agree about the ribcage (in fact it's supposed to be a carapace. I think...), and I think I'll have to rework it a bit

As forthe cord, I've already figured it's going to be a pain to work it out. I'm not too scared, and since characters are going to be seen from a certain distance, I'm not too scared if things don't look all that good.

At the very least I'll try to work this until the end, and see if I find the courage to fix quirks later.

Hey Lord Fryingpan, I really like the texture style it has a nice comic book feel to it. I don't really understand why you modeled the characters the way you did though. The T pose makes sense but the pelvis on both characters seems awkward. I don't understand why you would model their pelvises as if they were leaning forward like that, is it part of the character designs? I think thats why your getting the effeminate look comments for your male character. It looks like he's trying to show off his booty. It also seems like it would limit the range of poses you could put your characters in and still have them look balanced.

There's no real way to tell what shaders you can or can't pull off until you have some sort of rendering engine. I've seen similar looking effects pulled off though in No More Heroes and Madworld on the Wii there's also Borderlands which has a cool outline shader and thats in the Unreal 3 engine. Good luck on getting this thing put together hopefully you find a programmer.

I don't know if this goes against the style you're going for, but I would love to see some high lights on those green metal parts (at least I think their metal) I dunno, just to add some pop to them. But, I really really love the designs and style to them, it's refreshing!

>Wilex : yes, the comic touch was pretty much what I was trying to achieve.

And yes, it's part of the design. I do tend to get overboard with this kind of postures, giving many of my characters a bad case of "dat ass". Time will tell if it was a ridiculous beginner mistake, which I already tend to think it is.

Well, I'll make it form scratches after getting a little more experience as well actually animating it.

>Sirdelita : well, it's indeed metal but I don't think it should be shiny : the whole point is to make it a bit grimdark, so that the flashy powers of the character will seem even more flashy.



Have a bit of concept art.

right now I'm making my first arena, I'll post the wip as soon as I have something decent to show.

Thanks for your comments and encouragements.

Conceptually speaking I am not sure if the cords going from one arm to the other actually make sense. If the cord is supposed to deliver energy from a battery maybe you could indicate that by placing the battery on a small backpack. I thing the spiral-old-phone cord weakens the look of the character, maybe a more solid, thick cable would better convey the idea of power/energy flowing to the gauntlet.
The breastplate on the female, as previously pointed out, is a bit too thick and heavy. Making it thinner would perhaps help you to better define the character's female silhouette.
I like the way you are using comic-book-style shading in your textures, but I wonder if you have considered adding a bit more geometry to the models, they look too spiky and angular. Just soften some angles around the face, chest, and shoulder.
The hairline in the male need a bit more definition.

I don't know just yet, What I was thinking was "grimdar yet a bit wacky" characters, so as to stay a bit ironical or something. If the comments toward this outweight my feeling this could be intresting, I'll defenitly do something about it.

As for the geometry, I'm pretty comfortable with the look I gave them. It seems a bit too low poly but I think it works... Once again, it will change in time if it shows it really doesn't work at all.

Also, would you describe what's wrong with the hair a bit more please ?


Anyway, I worked on the first arena today, leading to this :





And made more sketches

stylish!

Nice work so far.

they work quite well in the environment..
me waiting for more .

the art style is INSANE!!!! Amazing work.

Originally Posted by Lord Fryingpan

Friends at scool told me he looked very effeminate, so I did the last posing for fun.

Heh yea I agree. In general archetypal, strong males arch their spine forward and women do the reverse. The shape of his ass also is pretty feminine, guys tend to have more bulk in the upper part of their ass and women the opposite.

Originally Posted by Lord Fryingpan

As I started to plan my animations (just the character moving and taking hits), it occured to me that I had lots of them to do and that my task would be made easier if I could dissociate upper and lower body...

Copying keys is kind of clunky and there are a few ways to handle this. Some rigs and apps allow you to load and save groups of animations.
If you're using 3dsmax Biped is really good at saving, loading and filtering different body parts. You can mimic this with a rig built from scratch just as easily or use a rig that has that functionality built in, like puppetshop. If you're using Maya there are a few ways and half a dozen scripts to get the job done. Just know that copy/paste keys isn't your only option for whatever app you're using.

Originally Posted by Lord Fryingpan

I know I can copy-paste the animation keys, but is it reasonable to make all animations or should I wait until I could speak with a programmer about the possibility of making at least a bit of this procedural ?

ALWAYS consult the keeper of the code before rigging and definitely before doing any animation. You never know if the engine/exporter is going to freak out about gaps between bone pivots or if its going to crap itself when it tries to bake down a controller or constraint. Or if its going to break down and cry about the number of bones assigned to a vert. Who knows maybe they'll implement a HL1 or Quake2-3 set up where you can animate the upper body independently from the lower.

Open up that line of communication and keep it open, never just guess and hope for the best. That's a quick ride to pain and heartache.

Do simple tests to make sure everything works before really digging in. You don't want to reanimate everything or try to Frankenstein a bunch of hack fixes into working.

Hi again,

About the hair in the male model, I just think it looks too much like a decal, I understand you are going for a simplified texture style, so maybe just adding a small contour line that divides the forehead from the hair may be nice. Or some thin lines denoting the flow of hair.
I like the silhouettes in the last sketches sheet you posted, specifically the two on the upper part (spiky male and spiky female).

After a second look at your models, I think the female may look more interesting with a different hair color. It would add contrast and character to the model.