Game Model (C&C Request)

I've found myself with a little more time on my hands, so I wanted to share with you some screenshots of a model that is a WIP for our current project.

Some Screenies:






The model has 1,341 polies made up from 2,046 tris and is a closed mesh complete with seperate legs, torso, left and right arms as well as the seperate head mesh.

I have 90% completed the high detail head skin and 50% completed the body skin. Normal maps are included.

You can checkout More Pix Here

Please offer any C&C you feel inclinded to offer TIA

Heya indiGLOW

i like your model very much, im sure you put quite an effort in it.
however, here my crits:

-make the silhouette more interesting... its to smooth

-the textures quite good but could need a little more work. the blood stains are very blurry and the light brown shirt under the jacket needs a little bit more variation. (cgtextures.com has some great blood-splatters)

-the polyflow is good... but you will need to add at least one, better two edgeloops at the knees, elbows and shoulders in order to get nice transitions when animating.

-maybe you can get rid of some polys on the shoes, so the polycount will stay the same when you add those edgeloops mentioned before.

-useful for a model-c&c-request is also a printscreen of your UV-layout (watermark it before).

cheers

sinnlos

Really appreciate your comments sinnlos.

First here are some pix of the UV mapping for the body and head:



The unwrap appears a little messy in places, with the wound section above the feet having several model parts laid out over it. Also a small ammount of the polies for under the trousers are laid out underneath the main leg area.

I know that this is not ideal, but the location of these on the model is very minor and looks fine.

The head map has a space in the lower right possibly for the bloodied neck stump for if/when models are beheaded.

Anyway I would like to respond to some of your comments



Can you give me more detail please. I presume you mean parts of the model that are 'proud' of the models general shape? The model is being designed as a base template, a human male with additional zombie skins. I hope to generate additional items, backpacks, tool belts and other such parifinalia that would break the models siluette up.

That said, maybe you could suggest some ideas for altering the base model to achieve this?

Thanks



I have spent considerable time with the head texture compared to that of the main body. The shirt and jacket are very new compared to the jeans, boots and other parts so I still have a lot of work to do.

Thanks for the tip about cgtextures, will def take a look.



Yes I expect I will need to create a few more polies for motion as you say. Hopefully I can cut these in as I add the biped and skin control.



When I remodeled the feet for the 3rd time (lol) I was really pleased with the general profile and shape, although I completely agree with you, there are def some polies that can be trimmed out without much noticable change to the models form.

Really appreciate you taking the time to share your C&C with me, its very important we make this model as best as we possibly can. I am experimenting with bones for animating the head at the moment, focused on a simple Jabba-Jabba talk system.

Thanks again sinnlos

the uv layout looks good for me (good use of space)... the only thing i notice is that u have clusters on top of each other...
doesnt this create errors on the normal map?.
since i always bake AO on my textures i always try to have the clusters placed seperatly.

about the silhouette:
what i ment with smooth is that the torso "flows" into the butt which also "flows" into the legs. the same with the shirt and arms. what i like is between jacket and arms... this is something you see in the silhouette.
you mention that you will add items like backpack etc... that will definatly make the silhouette more interesting.


a suggestion for the general shape would be a belt, wich maybe would help to draw a line between lower and upper body.
Also add more depth to the transition between shirt and arm.

and after looking at the screenshots the head seems to be a lil' bit too small... but this can be due to the perspective.

keep up the good work!

cheerio

Yes, usually you would not overlay as it would create issues with normal maps and AO, however the areas I am overlapping on the wound area should not be a problem.

Although I am going to unwrap the underparts of the jeans into the lower 'turnup' area on the jeans.

Obvious really lol.

I'm investing more time in the unwrap around the neck, front and back in order to get a better torso/neck join. I've also tweaked the head forward and down slightly.

I think the size is ok, although he is a little guant.

Thanks for the feedback again

I think you could have posted that in showacse 1 so shall I swap it to that forum?

as to the model.
I really like the model,
well I allways love organic moddeling
because I never could get it done

Regards

Aztec

Ah, I am far to humble to have posted this in showcase, but if you think it would be better suited there then please relocate it

Here's the final shot from texturing, at least until I have rigged the model up:



Here is a picture of both stages for the model:


C&C Welcome

looks nice so far, i think the normal mapping could do a bit more for it than it currently is. It only appears to be diffuse right now. also ther is a small area at the small of the back/thighs that could use a little tweaking of the silhouette as well.

Thanks lostclimate. I agree the normal mapping isn't doing much for it in the shots although running in engine it looks much stronger, still im not happy with it as its not baked, just a quick pass with the Nvidia plugins.

Once I've got it rigged (couple of hours) I will be revisiting the mesh again. Im still not convinced that his 'butt' area is going to be sufficient for good animation.

Thanks for the pointers

totally disgusting (and I guess in this case, that's a compliment :P)
good work. nice skinning!

When I get my new PC setup properly I will revisit this model. Thanks for the nice words and comments.

I am starting to think about how to set the model up for use in game, especially for the 3rd person representation of actual players. I am unsure if I should be using GS bones or mesh animations. Ultimatly the only way to achieve any kind of IK would be through GS bones, but the lengthy time to rig and animate each character is a definate downside.

Any suggestions or experienced ideas on how to approach this would be greatly appreciated. I am thinking that a combination of mesh animations and GS bone rigging would be the best, but can bone animations be stored externally?

Thanks in advance for any help

it is difficult to tell what you should do, and the decision all comes down to you. most of the time rigging is much quicker in the long run either way. doesnt mean you have to export the rig, but whatever native modeling program your using should be able to bake rigging somehow (hopefully) the question about whether to use GS bones is this, do you want to go for ease (vertex animation) or complexity w/extra power (bones).

Thats exactly the point lostclimate

To be at all acceptable / competative with current game trends we will need to support some core features such as rag-doll and realtime IK. But due to the way GS can mix vertex and bone anims (I believe), it is not a choice of A or B, instead a blend of the two.

My concern is workflow. While producing a single game model prototype is acceptably a slower more time consuming process, once the prototype is signed off we will need an effecient pipeline.

Our native modeling environment is 3DsMax, which we have many years of experience using, but with no clear or workable pipeline to get bones from max into GS, some development, i.e game-bone rigging, is considerably time consuming.

I know that the decisions we make here with the prototype can have considerable impact when production is ramped up.

So if bones and mesh anims can be combined, especially when using 3DsMax, what would be the best workflow? Are there ways to duplicate the bone rigs in MED?

How does this affect the models topology, do you have any advice in this respect? Much appreciated

export to FBX -> Import MED; Bones!

it's really that easy, you just need A7 (or get the trial, models of A7 are A6 compatible :P).

regards,

Sorry, are you saying that FBX import into MED (A7) allows for the import of Max Bones? Such as Biped rigs or custom bone rigs?

This would be most excellent news

for those of you reading this thread
just in case no one has found this out yet
if you have multiple models in max each with there own
skin mod for example lets say i have a character and his clothes as seperate meshes both rigged to same body bones
export to fbx and import to med does not work!
you will only import 1 skined mesh and other mesh will not be skined (why this is i dont know however)
there is a fix

at http://www.unwrap3d.com
in the downloads section
there are plugins for max for u3d file format
install those plugins and export your model to u3d
then in unwrap (unwrap3d exports bones as meshes also as well as bones)
you select the model by selecting the materials
then select invert and click edit/delete
this removes the bone meshes
then export that to fbx and then it will import to med correctly
i have done this multiple times without any issues
if someone knows a better way please post it!
otherwise you can email me if you need help
or if i didnt explain something corectly
alienheretic@gmail.com