I think im giving the legs to much space?

Ideally you'd want the highest texture density around the face so you can paint more detail there, and the rest of the body to be slightly lower, but constant texture density. It's important that you keep everything the same area (ie have the squares on your model the same size) because when you get to drawing the glowing lines on your texture they'll all need to use the same line weight - this is particularly important when you don't have texture filtering.

I have a higher texel density for the face and hair area for my model as well, because I care about the face a lot + details such as eye brows or facial detail are otherwise hard to put into the texture there- if it doesn't provide enough texture resolution.

So I made a mock up texture to test the resolution on the characters face. I really wasn't happy with the amount of detail I was getting in the face. The way I seperated the face in 2 peices is also causing my issues.

Back to trying to make my UV's more efficient.

Working on a basic texture patterns, and playing with glow effects now.

found this high res image today (though it has noise in it)
http://www.fullhalloween.com/blog/wp...2010-photo.jpg

and sliced some textures with TexRipper:

maybe its useful to you

It is and it isn't.. My character is a bit of a hybrid I guesse. Yes, I am doing a Siren from the new Tron Legacy, however I am trying to create a rendition of the concept of the Siren. So how she looked before the movie was actually finished.

I found the new finished Siren model a bit plain and boring to be honest. Shes all white with white lights. I was aiming for more black / grey and adding in some colors like pink or blue.

I've been having troubles with texturing the armor, and I have also been sick for a few days. So I will post my results soon and show you what I am aiming for.

So here is my base texture. Where I am having troubles is with the shading of the grey armor pads themselves. Should I put in highlights and shadows, or use a material? Do I just make them pop out a quarter inch like sitting pads or paint them like metal armor?

I could also add little lines, divits, and tron patterns as seen on some of the other player models. Should I add extra glowing areas, keep it simple, or go heavier with my glow flow...?

Alot of things are going through my head here, not really sure how to tackle this efficiently in a nice orderly check list.

I think if you put a specular highlight on it will make the material feel more plastic and that might help you decide where to take it. A little more glow lines on the back and arms would help.

id say no material, and put it in the texture. If the idea is to be efficient, id assume painted in specs are the most optimized way. Just my 2 cents, looking good so far.

I'd say toss a specular map on her, the rules allow it.

The reason I was thinking a material would be ok, is that an "in game engine" would have sort of shader built in. I don't think that would bend the rules...

The reason I didn't think of doing a spec map, the specs states the following....
USER / PROGRAM - (player model) - 1024 TRIANGLES, 1 512 x 512 (diffuse, spec, trans, env map, fullbright layer).

Isn't my plain flat texture considered a diffuse map? adding in a spec would be a 2nd 512 map wouldn't it not?

I think you get one of each map. So, one 512 diffues, one 512 spec etc.

Yeah, game engines have materials, but then you'd have to make some sort of material map to separate the specularity of the different materials. So you'd be easier off just making a spec map.

And Matt is right, 512² of each texture. the 512 limit means you can't use separate sheets as in: 512 for the head, 512 for the legs, 512s for the body etc. (splitting up in 256²s would be allowed - but not really efficient in this case)

Hey, well my issue with not adding spec is that with the low poly character and no normal map, youll be using the chunky ugly normals of your geometry. So youll have cool specs but as they roll across a character real time, it may look strange.

Preference though and im sure you can make it work.

Nice man! That came out great. What does she look like unfiltered?

Thanks Joshua
Here's my final submission if anyone wants to comment or talk about it.

Tried getting a small rotation to the video spec size before contest closed. But maya took a while to render out those images, then I couldn't figure out how to compress my video to the same qaulity of which it came in as....

So I will redo this video in higher qaulity at a later date. I really just wanted it to show how nice the lighting rolls off the spec... With the qaulity like this it kind of defeats the purpose....

Anyways, may aswell put it in here...



http://www.youtube.com/v/ZZFlQf7vJcQ?fs=1&hl=en_US

Looks like I should redo the lighting too, lol..

I'd redo the eyes: they're really close together and her iris/pupil is way too small.