I'm trying to better myself at this 3D thing so I'm doing an exercise: create a game character. I'm aiming for around 4k tris.
This is my second shot at character creation. My first character looked like he was made from clown balloons so there's much room for improvement, but I need some guidance. So far I've created the base mesh (no clothing or textures yet):
I need some critique on proportions, mesh flow, how well it'll animate and that sort of thing. I've been modelling entirely in quads but I'm not sure if that was the best idea for games?
To-do list:
- Clean up hair mesh and add cards for strands of hair. It looks like I need to add volume to the back of the hair.
- Model clothing.
- Create UVs.
- Texture.
- Learn to do decent normal and specular maps.
- Rig and weight paint.
edit:
Looks like the chin comes out too far? Fixing that.
update 1:
I've added some details. I'm getting very close to my self-imposed tri limit.
Still haven't added cloths because if the base mesh needs to be changed then I'd have to redo them which would be a bit of unnecessary work.
Here's a quick paint over showing clothing. She's supposed to be a prehistoric shaman type character.
It seems a bit boring but oh well. Decaying animal skins will be interesting to texture and maybe I can use crazy colours or something. Textures can add a lot.
update 2:
Almost done with the modelling side of things, but there's an issue. 4257 tris. Too many. No good.
I'm not sure where to start cutting detail, but once I do it'll be on to UV mapping. And then comes texturing. Although I'm no good at art, texturing is the fun part and it really makes the character.
I have rough concepts of several more characters for a set which should help in refinement of my work flow. I'm thinking of doing an alchemist character next - but that's getting ahead of myself. All designs here ©. Not that they're any good but I may need to draw from previous work some day if I get involved in a project.
update 3:
Fixed the tris issue but I've run into another one:
I can do cylindrical mapping - which stretches but matches at the seams - or trampoline mapping - which is just the opposite. Which is best? Is there a better solution? Are the seams just in bad places? I don't know.
update 4:
I did no work on it yesterday, but I realised something that should have been obvious. If I make the trampoline UVs vertical and symmetrical I can mirror the sides of the texture and it'll match at the seam. This causes a little stretching since the UVs aren't innately symmetrical but it makes for a better solution.
Today I've completed the UVs and started blocking in colours on the texture. Texturing is like a project in itself though so it'll be a while before I have anything to show for it. I was a C art student so this won't be easy.
update 5:
I got caught up in a couple of other projects which are higher priority so I've not completed much. I've been working on a t-shirt design for a friend's uni society thing.
Below is a basic texture blocking out some basic features. Using the black magic of statistics I say it's 5% done; I don't expect any pixel to survive through to the final. A few pointed texturing tutorials would help at this point. This is a PrtScn from Maya so transparency isn't showing.
[Edited by - abstractionline on January 27, 2010 10:39:15 PM]
