[model] Horned Demon

[arhurt]

I started this with the objective to learn the hipoly -> Lowpoly character creation workflow. I struggled for a long time with his anatomy, but in the end I wanted to finish it otherwise I'd drag in it too long and eventually lose interest.

Here's the final sculpt:

The low-poly at 4.8K triangles. I'm still not done with it, and it deserves some better loopings on his shoulders and hands, but I wanted to make a test bake of the maps to see if I'd run into any major issues.

And here is said test. I'm going to work on a better UV layout and render a higher resolution normal and AO maps. I also want to learn how to properly rig and skin a character with this.

Not bad for my first character right?

Your feedback is very welcome

[Corwin]

Great stuff Ahurt, love how much detail you put in the high poly model. The only thing that strikes me is the legs. The "foot" is quite small compared to the mass it must hold, and I find both legs to be a bit far apart from each other, etc. I don't know, it just looks a bit weird and I can't say if he could stand and walk on those, let alone run. Great work nontheless of course, especially for a first try Looking forward to see what you create after that!

[the0rthopaedicsurgeon]

i think the lowest part of the leg is too big. in humans that would be the foot (hooves are the toes), so they should be mostly bone and a lot thinner. i have this model which has a similar lower body, or you could use horses as a reference.

[von*ferret]

All your surface detail is so fine in the brush you used to show 'pores' and 'wrinkles' that when you rendered it down to a game asset, you lost 90% of your detail. When you added the diffuse with the baked normal, you see very little detail other than the over arching sculpts you did. Because of that the final model becomes very flat and boring. I'd paint in more extreme details focusing on getting more depth in the demon's surface, but not from only the skin brushes.

Also the horns look really weird to me.

[arhurt]

Oh I have redone his UVW coordinates to have more resolution overall (I planned to have his face not symetrical, but tossed the idea away)

Here is the current progress:

[e-freak]

Hey Arhurt,

first thing off before I give C&C - I think it's really great to see you got into zBrush and uv-Mapping and try pulling a character of sorts all the way through.

However - and this is the C&C - I'd suggest you go back to Pen&Paper first. There are quite a few things to say about the model technically wise, such as the wasted UV-Space or the not-so fitting Low-Poly to your highpoly (The sillouette reads really hard in the Lowpoly). Also the zBrush Pass really doesn't add too much of real detail but alot of noise. However - and this might be the most important thing and why I suggested Pen&Paper is anatomy and proportions. It seems the whole character is streched horizontally and has a very unnatural pose. Also the individual body parts don't really relate to each other.

From the first imagesearch page ("Anatomy for artists") 2 examples:

every muscle in a body constraints another pair and should feel like it's a branch of a full body. Right now it looks (as harsh as it sounds) like a tank on leggs with attached arms and a whobble with handle-bars. I think I can sense what you aimed for and you got all the techniques to do it. Just get the concept right - you can do that aswell!

[arhurt]

Thanks man!

Yeah I know he's all messed up, but I rather go all the way and finish this one to start another instead of going back. I'll definatelly take on someting simples though, like a simple human figure like the one you posted. Monsters are hard for someone with no experience

I did try to "unstrech" him horizontally a bit to try and give him a slender figure, as well as moving some polys around to try and have a better definition of his muscles. Hopefully it didn't end up that bad.

But I'm going all the way with this one so I can learn the pipeline and be better prepared to fix problems early on with my next one. Here's the final state of his textures, rendered with Xoulishader in Max Viewport:

He also has a glowmap at 128x128, and the final normalmap has his eye properly projected as well.

I'm workin g on his rig now, almost done, just having a bit of trouble finding a good methog to animate his hands.

[arhurt]

Yep, gonna call this one finished and move on to the next project.

Ok, maybe I'll make a walk/run cycle for him, maybe

[Gloglebag]

I have question about something relating to this, it's about vertex splits due to UV mapping and shading.

I recently read about it on a blog: http://www.ericchadwick.com/examples/provost/byf2.html

The gist of the story is that UV mapping and shading can double or triple the amount of verts for your model due to extra splitting at the UV and shading boundaries.

Is this so? I used to think all someone had to worry about with UV's was not stretching and maximizing UV space, but this adds a whole new level of worries.

[arhurt]

Yeah that's true. Each engine will have it's own way of working and it really ends up on a case by case basis I think.

Here's the promised walk cycle, not as hot as I expected, still pretty good.

[Bunglo]

It looks like he's constantly moving forward without the help of his legs/arms. Almost as if you created the animations and then just used the move tool to make him go forward. Try and get it so it's his arms and legs that are propelling him forward.

[arhurt]

Yeah I'm working on it, this is already better: