Character - Grield v2

[sammael]

Just thought id show a bit more progress, i stoped working on this guy for a while, but now im back into it.
Textures are almost done, ill post a pic of the rigged version as soon.

[sammael]

closer

[bobakabob]

Looking good... great textures! Have you switched shadows on in the renderer? You could make this really atmospheric.

[sammael]

thx bobakabob.... do you mean ray traced shadows? im using a shadow map atm with a lot of blurr.

[hrgiger]

Looking really nice. The only thing I would comment on is it looks like the edges of the pupil and the iris are catching the specular highlights which looks strange. You should be getting most of your specular from the cornea.
Nice work on the textures and the anatomy looks good.

[riki]

Excellent textures. I'm just not too keen on the eyes, they look a bit watery.

[sammael]

i agree about the eyes... just experimenting.

[riki]

That looks better. maybe also the colour tonation should get a bit darker in the corner of the eyes. It looks a little bit flat at the moment.

[drclare]

This character is great! I like the frog like quality. The textures are really good.

[sammael]

bit more.... rigging?!?!?!? just learning and it seems tricky, i think he's getting there tho

[Zarathustra]

oops! Where'd his shoulder go? Rigging's a *****....


My only gripe is the red vein procedural. I'd lose it.
I'd also like to wipe his nose - yuk.

He looks great.

[riki]

uuugggh I wish he'd wipe his nose ;)

[richpr]

The necklace is a bit off in position and too prominent...

[hrgiger]

sammael.

I really like your character a lot. It looks though as if he's losing his shoulder when he raises his arm. You can fix that by placing a small holder bone in the shoulder and parenting it to the bicep bone.
Something else to keep in mind. I know most people model their characters with their arms straight out but if you think about it, this places the arm at it's extreme pose since once the arm gets to shoulder level, the arm is no longer really raising rather the shoulder girdle is taking over(although, there is still a little upwards movement from the arm). This means that your arm/shoulder area looks great in it's rest pose but looks pretty bad in most cases when you put the arm down at the characters side, usually resulting in a pretty good crimping. If you model the arm at a 45 degree angle, this gives you the best possible deormation in both poses. Same goes for the forearm as well as the thigh/hip area. Timothy Albee talks about this some in his character animation book for LW 7.5.

[EternalAnimator]

On that gnome, did you subpatch/freeze the model and then move the parts you wanted to? I have been trying to make muscles and stuff and I have been a little to that??

[tisoy]

I like the texture,very nice.........:D

[sammael]

Thanks for the feedback people!

richpr - hopefully when i texture the necklace it will fix this problem, as far as the position, i think thats where its staying... this character is taking way too long as it is. also im going to model a birds claw to hang off the necklace.


hrgiger - thanks for your handy tips ill add those holder bones. Also i will re-model the arms to be on a 45 degree angle, thats what iv done in the past and it seems to work well, i guess i was just keen to test him out with a simple rig first. I find it much easier to model the arms straight out initially, i have also found that making the arms and legs slightly bent before rigging, helps out when you apply Ik, if not you get some funny problems when the limbs suddenly bend the wrong way... Iv never read any Timothy Albee books but ill definently check some out now that you've mentioned it.

Zarathustra - Im not too shure of the vein procedural myself... i just felt that it added some much needed tonal variation, but mabe i should paint some propper veins instead, im just lazy you know!

id love to hear some other peoples opinions about the vein procedural issue... more pics coming soon, iv been working on the Grields natural envoronment (forest) and i think iv decided that his name is going to be Otto...

[Zarathustra]

I had a couple of people (my apologies for forgetting your names) trying to explain applying displacement layers to the veins to make them more random and organic, but I never got anything I liked. I simply painted a vein tile and use that for a lot of medical stuff I do.

I started with lightning and tree branches before and finessed them in photoshop into tileable veins.