Malvon LP character

[capone_adam]

Ok, aiming to model and texture this for Monday. I've roughed it out and already I see I face 2 challanges. Firstly I am going to have problems with modeling the hood in such a way that it deforms ok and secondly I want to do a robotic hand like in the image below but not sure if to make the finger parts seperate objects which are linked and pivoted correctly etc?...is that a bad idea for a LP game character?...I just cannot imagine how you would make a single mesh hand deform in a way that makes it look robotic...anyone has experience of this or have any thoughts on these two problems? Also crit in general appreaciated, thanks.

[capone_adam]

Just about done all I can with the modeling within the time I have, I start unwrapping tommorrow. Still mega worried about the hood animation, I have put in quite a few polys in that area for deformation...fingers crossed.

[sk3tch]

I'm nub as far as modeling goes...but that looks sweet to me!

What program are you using for that and what mod is it for?

I've never heard of Malvon LP.

[capone_adam]

thanks, I use 3D Studio Max 7

[Acumen]

woa these fingers O_o

do you really think you should put that many segments in them ? That looks really weird, thinking of this model in general being pretty lowpoly. And I don't think too many people will notice all these little segments visually but perfomance-wise ^^

One thing I also noticed on this and your last model, is that the legs always have these totally straight segments, that doesn't benefit to the model, imo :/

poopinmymouth referred to this naming it tube syndrome

tube syndrome is when the cross sections remain perpendicular and the fibers remain parellel to the original cylinder

With changing that your model would look much much better, as the edgeflow would be greatly improved, with just rotating and moving some existing vertices.

Also all these segments in the ellbow area could be moved and changed around a bit, so that the shoulder area gets some nice segments for deformation, as well. 3 rows for the ellbow should be more than enough so you can easily move the upper 2 of these 5 ellbow sections to the shoulder to shape it a bit more and alos make it easier for animation.

You can also cut away 2-3 vertical rows on the "hood" cause they don't really add anything to the overall shape and you can put these save polies, like, in the boots to give them a nicer shape or in the eyes, cause they are really rounded on the model sheet but rather blocky on the model and going inwards instead of outwards.

mh, maybe thats a bit too much :/ sry, didn't wanna sound offensive or anything, but the model is really good and those are just some minor changes, that should be worth realizing, before you head over to uvmapping, though i can imagine, you already finished doing so so just ignore my post ^^

[OL]

the gun is tiny but i really like the character design

i cant really coment since i dont know organics at all but it looks good to me

[capone_adam]

Thanks , good crits...I will spend a hour trying to adjust it before mapping it. With the hand though...I thought you needed 3 rings for every joint to deform well?

[capone_adam]

Done...I'm going behind shedule so need to press on with UVs. I have gone over the whole thing more or less making little changes and generally getting the count from 3376 to 2838 (bout 500 tri down)

The eyes...That sort of circle shape on the mesh is not the eye area, I'm planning on doing it all with texture work and using bump map to bring it out a bit. Tempted to have a go at normal mapping for this but never done it before and its too late now. Might do it for a tree character I will be doing in a few weeks...

[mike-0]

i like the gun.

[Acumen]

now that looks much cleaner and organized \o/

I like it a lot with the changes you made. Good job

[Evert]

looking good, hard to say much when not textured though.

[capone_adam]

Ok, layed out the textures...will spend a few hours tonight adding more detail and cleaning it up a bit. Let us know your thoughts...

btw, that bloody hand... :x ...most sinister uv wrapping involved with that...took me over FOUR HOURS to unwrap just the hand...and that was just to a ok standard...

Texture mapping includes spec map, colour spec and illumination...I found that these sort of make the eye appear less flat which is ok, so I might just keep it as it is.

[marque_pierre]

To give the illusion of a robotic hand made of metal, you might want to put some more metallish highlights on your textures there... Is that jeans? You might want to add a fair ammount of texture to them, so it looks more like denim and less like a flat shade.

I gather that this is supposed to look like an unfriendly and threatening character, but later turns into an ally, right? I think the colours are bit too saturated at the moment. Too friendly. The design is good, but you might want to tweak the saturation. Also more dirt and rust on that mask to give that threatening look.

Your scene is going to take place at night, right? Are you painting the textures for that, or are you keeping them neutral and letting the light do the rest? Right now, they kinda look like the first. You decide...

[Evert]

It looks nice, but some more details on the pants and the hand would be very nice.

Also try and have a sharper line around the eyes to give them more depth, atm they look a bit blurry and 2d.