Dwarven Fighter
polycounter lvl 13
Latest Update(s)
Original Post
Lately, I've been blessed to be kept busy working on a lot of heavily realistic models at my part-time job (medical simulation) and on some freelance with an industrial/mechanical vibe. I really do appreciate working in that style, but I'm itchin to get in the creative swing of things again, so I'm going to start working on a fantasy Dwarf in the spirit of D&D or any other tolkien-based universe. The proportion differences and liberties of working within the 'fantasy' genre should give me the creative challenge which I've been longing for.
I first drew this up to accompany a character for a D&D group I'm a part of, but now I'm thinking it would be the perfect modeling project to work on in my free time. Some things about the concept I would like to elaborate upon in the modeling phases, namely all of the gear. I don't want to go over the top with the ornamentation, but I would like to include a little bit of flair into the final design. My drawing skills are a bit rusty, so I didn't even attempt to lay all that detail down in perspective in the concept. At this point, its pretty safe to say that I can model it out quicker than I can draw it, but if I do happen to sit down and figure some things out with a doodle, I'll be sure to include that here.
Really, the four main things which I like from the concept and want to capture in the model are the overall stature, facial layout, arm bulk, and contour of the leg armor. Aside from that, I sure there will be a lot of freestyling when it comes to some of those other design decisions.
I scribbled out a quick blockout tonight using Dynamesh, which I will now take into Max and begin building up those armor pieces.
I realize I may be posting a little too early, but I'm excited about this project. And the existence of this thread will push me to make time for the model and hopefully get a solid portfolio piece out of it so I can keep moving towards my goal of landing a game gig.
Even tho there's not much there, if anyone has any thoughts at this stage about the concept or the blockout, I'd be more than happy to here them.
Thanks for looking, and it feels good to be posting again!
Replies
Thanks for looking!
dogzer: lol, sorry to disappoint, but this is just a side project I started up on my own.
Here's an update on the armor. I'm through with all of the major plates of armor and have done a little bit with hinges and rivets. Still have to get all the straps done, and then I plan to experiment with some different ornamental trims.
While positioning the rivets I was reminded of a 'problem' I encounter often when instancing objects, such as the rivets in this example, along a spline.
My current method of doing this is to select an edge loop > 'Create Shape' > path constraint for object along new spline > 'Snapshot' to intermittently capture the keyframed object traveling along the spline.
Inevitably there is a lot of clean up that has to be done after the objects are positioned - mostly rotating the objects to face the correct direction since the 'bank' settings on path contraint are difficult to control at times.
This workflow seems a little round-about, and certainly laborious if you're working with a good amount of individual splines. I remember seeing a technique somewhere a few years ago which didn't utilize 'Snapshot' and that cut out a step or two along this process, but for the life of me I can't recall what it was. So, ff anybody has a better workflow they would like to share, or any other suggestions, I'm all ears.
But regardless, thanks for looking, and any thoughts are appreciated!
Of course, I could just look into the living room and tell you this, but I figured I'd put it here so others can see it.
What would I do without you? :poly142:
Hello ppl. Finally back with an update. Yesterday, I finished up adding the straps and other minor details to the armor and then made a pass at the fleshy bits - just basically getting most of the symmetrical forms in. Going to do the same for the pants here in a little while, and then start the detailing process
It's a little discouraging when other obligations and life stuff get in the way of working on this, but I'm dedicated to seeing it through. I'm going to be relocating to the Los Angeles area in about a week, and I'm really excited about that, so we'll see if I can't make a big push to get a lot of this project taken care of before the move (prolly not gonna happen lol).
As always, C + C are appreciated!
and this armor is way too epic
I bet you ask because of the wild differences in line weight/quality? That can be explained by my impatience, lol. Initially, I was just going to make this an illustration to practice my painting skills, but the more I worked on it, the more i wished i was just modeling it, heh. So the face is the only thing which I "refined," and the rest is just kind of leftover from the blockout stage. I may actually go back and finish up the drawing and subsequent painting once I finish up the model, cause I still need the painting practice.
Keep rocking, can't wait to see more updates.
:poly142:
lol, if I keep this pace of a weekend of work each month I might be able to finish by Christmas! But srsly, I haven't been a total slouch, I promise. I just finished up a bit of freelance which I received permission to show to aid in my job search, check it out in the WAYWO thread if you want: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1570640&postcount=4757
But that leaves me plenty of time to commit to this project for the immediate future! yaayyyy.
@Polygoblin: Thanks man. I've taken another swipe at the thumb, and lowered it a little bit. Hopefully that feels a little more natural. It's tough cause I want to maintain that stubby, sausage-finger look, but I think I am infringing on ridiculousness. I'm planning on going back to the fingers in general to further define some of those knuckles, so I will look at the thumb again.
@Donavonyoung: Thanks sir!
@nyx702: Sup Nick! It's been a while. I hope things are good. I've been following your Tyranid thread. It's great to see you posting!
Here's where I am now:
From here, I'm going to do some work on the head hair, and then start adding some history to him.. scars, damage to the armor, etc.
I'm going to use this project to practice some things which I need to really brush up/ improve upon. One of those focuses being painting flesh tones, and the second being alpha-ed hair. I have never really done it, so I'm going to pick small areas like the mustache and maybe arm hair or something to give myself a chance to really experiment and figure out what works.
I tried going in with some alphas on the arms and other areas such as the pants, but wasn't happy with the results I was getting. I may attempt this again, but I have to really practice this, since I don't want to distract from the higher level forms.
I'm not really pleased with the folds in the back of the pants. I will be revisiting those... and I just noticed that they are on a a low subdivision in those renders -__- Sorry about that, lol.
That's it for now. Thanks again for looking and any comments are greatly appreciated!
Keep going! *subscribed*
If anybody has any suggestions in that regard, I'm all ears. What first comes to mind is the criss-crossing method sometimes seen in afros and frizzy hair styles. I'll have to look into this more, because you don't see it used all that often, and I always assumed it was because it was taxing on memory with that many layers of opacity.
On that same subject, something which I forgot to mention in my last post, is that the chainmail on the sculpt is there just sort of in placeholder. I modeled those strips out flat in 3dsMax, and then simply applied a bend modifier and shifted it around in Zbrush a bit for the sake of displaying the HighPoly. In the low, they will be baked flat to a plane, and then the plane will be wrapped around the armor in the same fashion. Just so that it wasn't thought that I was going to bake those sleeves onto the arms or anything.
And yea, I'm curious as to how the details on the armor will look as well. LOL. I haven't really explored my options there yet.
@DGB: yea, I have it on the to-do list. To figure out some sort of subtle ornamentation - prolly along the lines of a celtic trim. I had also considered a crest of some sort, but I think I am going to save that for the shield.
@Mitch: That's a good question/observation. My reference sheet I put together definitively had a variety of grizzly middle-aged men, and a lot of them being dark-complected. A skin tone I had in mind while sculpting this, was a deep tan, similar to what you would find in your stereotypical American Indian.
A desaturated look could be interesting, but I still do want to introduce some deep reds and purples into the skin tone to give it an almost flushed look. I stumbled across this random photo online at some point while Googling reference, and I really like the purple and red hues of that guy's face.
Those colors really help to accentuate his eyes and nose, which gives a similar look to what I was hoping to achieve.
Currently, as you can see in the image, I have all of the base strands of the braids/locks/whatever modeled, and at the time I was trying to figure out a transition into the ponytail portion. This concept shows 3 distinct elements of the whole shabang, which I think will make this pretty easy. The first being the base, which I already have, and then the 'cap' - the coil bit at the very top, and then the ponytail.
I began by just trying to free-ball it on the model, but realized that this was not getting me very far, and I took a step back and tried some things out with a paint-over.
How are ppl feeling about this direction?
I like the gusto the beard adds to the guy, and definitely think it's something I want to incorporate now. I don't know what I was thinking before.... lol. All of those neck wrinkles sculpted for nothing! :poly127:
I also think he could stand to have bushier eyebrows. Hope this helps.
Now that you've brung up that curly fry comment it's all I can see! lol. But I think I'm going to stand by the twists becuase I do (currently, not shown in the last update) have some of the traditional 3-strand braids in there as well. I think that will break up the pattern a bit, and in zbrush (most of this is just splines in 3dsMax at the moment) I'll give some random variation to the diameter of the cords, which will hopefully make them look more realistic and un-curlyfry-like.
Frankly, I'm just too far deep! I probably won't get it posted tonight, but I'm almost finished with that whole portion of the hair, and it would be a bummer to have to re-do all of that.
Like I said, I have some of the 3-strand stuff going on at the moment, but I will work it in more, because it's obviously lacking in that regard.
Thanks again for your input. I certainly don't want to come off as if I am disregarding your concern, but in this case I think for time's sake and for what I now have planned, I think I'm going to hold steady on that particular detail. But trust me, your post has got me re-brainstorming some alternative ways to appoach this, so I apreciate the help.
Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how things turned out, and I think it will bake well enough. You'll notice some weirdness at the point where the individual strands intersect with the scalp. I created a series of alphas which were meant to emulate the point where the free hair was drawn up into the coil. I think they worked out nicely and will look fine in the end, but at the moment, they are sculpted onto a "bald cap" if you will (just the scalp geo duplicated) so that it was a separate piece of geo which I could assign a different material to it when baking out my color masking maps to differentiate between skin and hair when I begin to the texturing process. For the final renders of the sculpt however, I will probably just project that detail onto the head subtool, so that there isn't that weird clipping occurring.
There is also a quick block-in the the facial hair volumes on the far right of the image. But like I've mentioned before, I will attempt to handle that with alpha planes on the final Low-poly model.
Also, before I included that carved horn thing on the end, I had played around with some more elaborate and ornamental designs. The one which I tried for hours to get to work, but ultimately gave up on was a ivory clamp, carved to resemble a stylized dragon skull - similar in style to what you might see on a totem poll. Functionally, the idea was that the teeth of the dragon would serve to hold the braid, but it always came out looking really cheesy and doubly looked as if the dragon were deepthroating the braid.... soooo, I axed that and went with something less provocative, and included the dragon element in the little stick holding the bun in place. It's still pretty corny, but I think it definitely goes over better than before.
But anyway.. thoughts? Does this hair style sit well with people? I was aiming for a very eclectic look to the back end, with some metallic and ivory-type things thrown in. I realized I've deviated from some of the traditional Middle-Earth Dwarven tropes, but hopefully it isn't too offensive. but if there is something that absolutely needs to be changed for whatever reason, I'm all ears.
[ame="
And on a sidenote: How in the SAM HILL do you set a pivot for zbrush turntables!!?? A google search didn't yeild much, and most things I found were dead threads from 5 years ago on CGsociety. It seems like it should be so easy to dictate, so I'm sure I'm just missing something.
Thanks for looking, I'll be back soon with more updates. Any C&C is much apreciated!
Hair being organic the way it is, I imagine some modulation / noise in the geometry would go a long way.
Well, I've had a nice productive weekend, and I'm to the point now where I think I'm just about finished with the sculpt of the dwarf himself, and am going to focus on the highpolys of his shield and hammer next. Comments and crits are still welcome for the sculpt tho, cause I won't be starting the low poly for any of these until I've finished with the Highs for everything, so there is still plenty of time to go back and address things with the dwarf should that need be done.
A quick summary of what I've done since my last update, since some of it may not be immediately apparent:
1. Attempted to address the telephone cord-iness/ curlyfry-osity of the hair which was brought up in previous posts by going in and adding some variation to the individual strands of hair. I will also be doing a lot in the texture of the LowPoly to help break it up a bit.
2. Some scarring and stretch marks (difficult to see those on the sculpt) on the arms.
3. Because of the asymmetric elements added to the arms as mentioned above, I included the arm-guard so that I could still instance the hand, and would have a place to hide a seam just in case. I think this makes sense anyway, and won't make his arm look so bare in comparison with the shielded one.
4. Created some rings for the belt straps to define where the holes were for the buckles.
5. Moles and a few other very small details were added to the face. Was fooling around with facial scarring a bit, but didn't like the way it was competing with some of the existing details, so I cut it.
6. Reworked the pant folds
7. Ornamental detail on the armor. Honestly, this was the most time consuming and difficult thing for me this far. I'm still not 100% on it, but what I wound up doing after a great deal of tinkering, was settling on one tileable alpha, and one stamp-type alpha, and then I used the 'tracks' brush to lay them down on that lower portion of the breastplate. Here, I'll just show the alphas which I used for each one since it isn't apparent in the renders:
Those thumbnails link to the larger .psds. Feel free to take them and use them if you want. Maybe there is some other application for them.
What I had first tried with the detailing of the armor was a sort of relief panel, depicting dwarven warriors defending their mountain fortress from all sorts of monsters - very skyrim-y. I didn't think it was looking all that bad in terms of style and execution, but it became pretty ridiculous in context of the rest of the armor. So I abandoned that and went with the more common way I found in history that European armor was ornamented.
8. And finally, I dinged everything up a bit - Dents in the armor and such.
But yea, I'll stop blabbing, and get back to work, heh. Thanks for looking, and like always, C+C is appreciated!
By the way, how did you do those belts and belt buckles? Did you do them in Max or did you work from Zspheres or something?
@DGB - Thanks for the kind words. For the belts, I normally just use the 'create shape' button with an already existing edge-loop of the armor selected. From there, i take that spline, render it with a rectangular cross section, and then collapse to edit poly. Pretty quick and easy. The buckles were just box modeled and placed by hand.
Long time, no free time, heh. I have been blessed with the opportunity to intern with The Foundry for the past few months, and it has been an awesome experience learning some of their software and getting to help out where I can, but it has definitively consumed all of the spare time i had outside of my job so I haven't blazed through this guy like I had hoped. But I am still going at it, lol.
Here is a lowpoly with baked maps applied. There is some weirdness going on near the knee which I assume is just a skewed vert on the cage, but in addition to that, you may be able to see those thin black lines (i don't know what else to refer to them as) running along the seams at the wrist and top of the forehead - I have always interpreted these as simply a hiccup within the Max Viewport, but I figure now is as good as time as any to clarify that opinion. like I said, those lines are occurring along UV island seams where I also have split smoothing groups - so basically, every UV island, but most seams are tucked into obscure places so the black line is not noticeable.
This is displayed using XoliulShader2, btw. And captured with Ravenslayer's Grabviewport script.
I'm gonna do most of the texturing for this guy in Mari since I've been using it on almost a daily basis for the last several weeks. At my internship, I work mostly with super high-res stuff, so it will be nice to experiment with a lower-budget model for a change. It's such a great tool, and I'm excited to see how it becomes more widely incorporated into game pipelines as texture budgets increase and the program itself evolves new game-oriented features.
Oh, and also, the LP sits at around 18,300 tris. That gives me plenty of room to experiment with the alpha planes for the beard and still keep it under 20K.
But yea, so Obviously I've just begun the texturing process, and tomorrow I'll move forward with the hair, and then the armor elements.
PEACE!
// Oh, and btw, these are just screens straight out of Mari. To this point, everything is handpainted. This program is such an awesome tool, and helps things go so fast! And some of the new features for upcoming releases will make it a lot more applicable to Game Studios' pipelines. I'm excited to see how the landscape looks in a few years in terms of texturing software!
I have heard that Mari takes really high system specs to run. Do you experience much lag? I have a pretty good computer but it still sorta put me off.
What is the learning curve like?
Yea, it does require a bit of juice to get it to run optimally, but in my experience you can get by with what would be considered a mid-tier gaming machine (what I have at home), especially for game rez work. Where the difference is really evident is the time it takes to 'Bake' each projection. On my work machine, which has like 60 gigs of ram, it runs like absolute butter, so I can bake regularly without even thinking about it - it feels fluid, almost as if I'm painting in zbrush. But on my home computer (laptop, 6 gig RAM, dated mediocre gaming card, i7), the process of baking becomes more of a chore, since it can take a few seconds to happen, and can kinda make it difficult to 'get in the zone' with ur work, when you have to pause for technical reasons every once and a while. My machine is barely over the minimum specs of the program, however, and I think a any respectable desktop machine purchased within the last year or two should be fine. If you have reservations, you could always to the 15-day trial to see how it fares on whatever you currently running on.
With all of that being said, I still prefer a laggy Mari to any other texturing app out there, lol. The learning curve isn't too bad. This dwarf would the 4th major project for me in the program, but I think I pretty much had the process down after my first series of experiments. It is very similar in approach to many other painting apps, with the brush system being akin to PS, so anyone familiar to texturing techniques in general won't have any problems picking it up.
The only real fundamental difference is that notion of a 'projection-based' program. Meaning that you are painting on a buffer and not the actually model, and that you have to project that buffer onto the actual geo. At first this seems cumbersome, but after a little bit, you begin to see the advantages to this method of working. I think it's nice to be able to see and approve of what you have done before baking it to the model.
Sidenote: Mari 1.5v1 released yesterday! That has been the version in which I've been texturing this guy. There are a few really nice new features put in to assist in game asset creation. In my opinion, the most exciting of these features in the 'Height Map to Normal Map' shader which essentially operates like NDo or crazy bump, but is completly dynamic and can obviously be painted directly onto the model using any of the existing paint tools. Pretty SCHWEET!
If you're attending siggraph, stop by the Foundry booth and say Hi! There are all sorts of live demos going on from industry vets, and on occasion I'll be derpin around in Mari on one of the side displays :poly142:
The armor you have created so far is quite realistic as in, it is not like all the fantasy armor we see now a days being made in 3d. It is refreshing.
Though with the realistic armor you are making you seem to be missing a very important part of plated armor. The padding under the metal. Not only would this armor currently be extremely uncomfortable, not even mentioning that it would scorch his skin under it if he was exposed to any harsh hot environment. But the biggest reason to have padding under the armor was to protect when the armor was dented or cut/crushed. If your plate armor is hit with a sword it might dent in, but you have padding so you won't feel the dent in, without the padding that dent is sticking into your abdomen just as if the sword was left there.
Lastly I love the transition between the hair and the scalp that works quite well and was well executed.
Also agree with the padding part!
Dan3d: Great point! A definite oversight on my part. I addressed it by inserting a few chunks between the chainmail and the arm which I hope will moderately satisfy the armor enthusiasts out there.
I realize that a sleeveless padding is pretty ridiculous, but I wanted to show the work that I did on the arms... so yeeaaaa... Thanks for the advice, tho, sincerely.
SCB: Duuuude! You're totally right, man. Thanks for pointing that out. I've darkened up the armor a bit, and I think the padding does help some to define the transition. In the raw textures, The skin is a shade or two lighter before I brought it into Marmoset and started putzing around with the SkinEnvironment shader lol. So I may have to go back and play with those Scattering settings some more to re-establish that contrast. At the bottom I'll throw up a grayscale image for comparison.
So, like I mentioned above, I've imported the mesh into Marmoset, and have also begun the HighPoly of a Hammer/Maul-type thing. Originally, I was gonna go with an axe and shield, but I kinda wanted an excuse to test out some techniques with modeling a big ol' braided hilt. This allowed me that opportunity, lol.
When I get the chance, I will finish up the LowPoly for the Hammer and texture it. Also, I will finally add the beard which I have been rather obviously procrastinating with for no other reason than my personal inexperience with alpha-planed hair (which is no excuse! I'm just scurred). But there is literally nothing else for me to put ahead of it now, so I will just have to sit down and do it already, lol.
I appreciate your patience with me on this guy. It's pretty amazing to think about where I was, both literally and figuratively, when I started this model 6 months ago, and I can't wait to see where I am in 3 years when I finish it! lol. Just Kidding (i hope).
But for real, I've had a fun time plunking away at this project when I get the opportunity, and I have been so blessed to get the chance to work on a bunch of cool things in between my updates on this model. I hope that I can show off some of that stuff in the future, but if not, I'll be back in a month with another tiny update! LOL.
Thanks again for looking, and any C+C is greatly appreciated.
metal parts are too gray and too glossy making them look like plastic.
chainmail could use some darkening and wear, besides holes it looks brand new at the moment.
the hair texture looks decent though.
also, it seems like you overdid the postprocessing in marmoset. some areas of legs are pitch black.
for one there is to much contrast in them, no mid values, mostly just black AO or almost flat colored space. primary/secondary/tatrial shapes are just as important in textures as in the sculpt, and right now your lacking the secondary and overshooting the tatrial.
tone the noise back and work on some color variation, hue shifts and secondary detail. the sculpt looks great btw, keep up the good work!