Character: Thai Boxer

[Mrdes]

Update: Started with the rigging. Pretty tough so far :hmm:

http://img206.echo.cx/img206/6199/riggingstart4uq.jpg

[nattnewman]

Hey there,

Looking good so far. And nice ideas for the textures. Overall the character is starting to look good and quite sharp with a reasonably nice silohette.

However, one or two crits. Did you mean to exaggerate his proportions a little? Imo i seems as though his arms are a little too long. Also, did you use reference when modelling his head? Something about his head seems a little off to me - perhaps the nose is too short and the brow is a little too high? One last point, are you giving us a quad count or tri count?

Keep up the good work,

Cheers,

Nathan.

[Mrdes]

Thankya. I did mean to make him look a little exaggerated but long arms was unintentional. I'll fix it up today. And yeah the face did look a little off to me too. I'll fool around with that today as well and look at a better reference.

And I'm not sure how to check the quad or tri count :sad: How would I go about doing that using 3ds max? I thought # of polys was basically everything before. I'm new at this hehe.

[Mrdes]

Tweaked the arms a bit as well as other parts. I've been looking at it for too long and i can't really tell what's wrong with it heh. but theres a few things that I think might be a little outta whack. Here's a pic with reference.

http://img241.echo.cx/img241/9474/frontwithref0xe.jpg

[ArchangelTalon]

Yeah, I think the traps are a bit too big and his head could do with a just a wee bit of scaling up.

His shoulders/chest looks a bit odd, too. They're horizontal, almost sloping down towards the shoulders. The "line" there should be angled slightly downwards towards the centre of the chest and higher towards the shoulders.

[hypercal]

I think that the hips and/or waistband may be a bit too low. The thighs look to be a bit thin as well (as you suspect). It's a problem I tend to have myself, but you should try to picture what's under the cloth and giving it its shape.
I'm looking forward to seeing more, especially if you slap a scar on his chest and put him up against Ryu. Good luck!

[johnwoo]

Hey Mrdes...

Not bad at all for someone new to low polygon work...you've got a clean mesh there, the chracter sheet you got there is good reference:thumbsup:...couple of things I noticed tho'...
I would widen the neck and scale up the head subtly, cos' as it stands his neck looks a bit weak...try tapering it out gradually into the "traps" also on the ref image (not sure what the muscle is called?) the muscle that graduate from his ribcage is much wider than shown on your character mesh, by doing what is shown in the ref image will contribute and define the proportion of the character...

As for the look of this character, he could do with looking a bit more Thai, also worth adding the head band that they wear, and sometimes take off before they fight (do a search on google "images" for "Adon" from street fighter..you'll see what I mean....seriously not a bad start, just needs some refining:)

TIP: If I begin to create an agile character, before getting the stage of weighting, I always find it best to pose the static mesh in a star shape pose, as I found it's more of a neutral pose and easier to deform (also depends on topology) when the stage is reached to begin weighting...

keep up the good work:thumbsup:

[Mrdes]

Scaled the head up a bit and scaled down the traps. Angled in the collarbone area a bit too. Also widened the ribcage/torso area and pulled it down a bit.

http://img241.echo.cx/img241/7523/frontrevised4ie.jpg

Yeah, beginning the model in more of a T pose woulda helped a lot. I started rigging and it's been pretty difficult heh. Here's some more progress.


http://img241.echo.cx/img241/2532/rigging456df.jpg

Ya I was just about to get to making the headband too. It's funny you mention street fighter though because the first time I ever really found out about thai boxing is when I was a kid and my cousin told me about how Saggot from Street Fighter was a thai boxer heh. From then on I've been a pretty big fan of the sport. And yeah I'm definitely gonna have to tweak the face a lot if I want it to look Thai.

Oh and I still haven't figured out how to get the number of quads/tris using 3ds max heh. Any ideas?

[Nibby]

nice looking model dude. the crotch looks a little snug (as in trousers too tight) but i think youve refined the mesh to look nice and neat. i'd like to see another wire of how the mesh looks now ;0)

[hypercal]

Click the utilities tab (should look like a hammer on the far right) and the button that says "more..." There should be a polygon counter there.

[Mrdes]

Ok, so far he's weighing in at 2268 tris and 1281 polys. Is that alright for the amount of detail I have? Not too many unused polys or anything? Here's a wire of just some random pose. I think I wanna start texturing soon.

http://img193.echo.cx/img193/8812/update15th29sk.jpg

btw thanks for all the comments and crits so far. It's been really helpful.

[kosinus]

in 3d realtime, you don t have to care about polygon count. only about triangle count...
maybe you could remove some edges loops around the mouth and make the edges of the head rounder

[Mrdes]

Instead of taking out an edge loop around the lips I just tweaked them a bit to define that area more and make it less flat. And I never realized how boxy the head was hehe. I fixed that up a bit too.

But here's my big problem - UVW mapping. I am horrible at it, and I've also encountered some crazy problem. My workflow for mapping the uv's is usually as follows: add a mesh select modifier, select the particular body part, add a uvmap modifier (I usually do a huge series of planar maps for each part and sew them together at the end), and then add an unwrap modifier. So basically I do piece by piece. And then at the end I do one last mesh select and unwrap and everything should be there in one map just as I laid them out, then I start sewing it all together. BUT for some reason a ton of vertices from each parts are dragged to 0,0. No idea why. I'm new to uvw mapping too, and my method is probably horrible and is the cause of this problem but I dont really know any other way to go about it. Any suggestions at all would be greatly appreciated as I am quite lost at the moment heh.

Anyway, here's a pic of what I'm getting.

http://img250.echo.cx/img250/4024/uvhelp8ta.jpg

[Goemon]

Hi,

Nice progress on your character.
That method you are using is one way to do it, but really the Unwrap UVW editor has come a long way, and in my opinion its more flexible. If you want to manage your texturing in smaller chunks, why not just detach them and apply unwrap UVW piece by piece? That’s the method I typically use, to make complex things more manageable. For example detach his lower leg and foot, unwrap that, then continue to another piece of your character. Just make sure to place the unwrapped area out side of the square in different areas, so once you re-attach you can easily organize them to fit neatly on your texture page area. There is this tutorial that many people like for 3D Studio Max, that explains some methods using the Unwrap function.

http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorial..._an_object1.asp (http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/max/UVW_mapping_an_object/UVW_mapping_an_object1.asp)

Its a little daunting at first, but just using the Unwrap Modifier is really the better way to go especially for realtime models.

[Mrdes]

I couldn't figure out what exactly caused my previous problem but I managed to sort out that huge pile of mess and get things back on track. I briefly tried the detaching and reattaching method of mapping, but I must have been doing something wrong because everytime I edited any of the model's geometry and went back to the uv map it would just totally reset the whole map. So I just went back to my slow method heh. I really gotta learn a lot more about uvw mapping. I don't even know how to mirror uv's to the other side of the model so I had to manually map out both hands separately, both feet separately etc. Ah well. Here's my sloppy map so far.

http://img164.echo.cx/img164/7915/uvstart4xr.jpg

So 512 x 512 maps are the standard thing for most games currently, right?

http://img164.echo.cx/img164/8137/uvprogress4jr.jpg

[Por@szek]

If I have good reammember here http://www.planetquake.com/polycount/resources/general/video_tutorials/video-tut-list.shtml You can find some video tutorails about unwarping, and if You want some about skinning also. Model looks nice I'm waiting for some samples of texture.

P.S. Could You send me Your checker becouse its better then normal, standard one and I see that You arn't only person using it.

[Mrdes]

Yeah I've found a ton of good material from polycount. Great site. btw I just E-mailed you my checker texture for uv mapping.

Anyway started texturing and here's what i have so far. I've only really done work on the torso and neck so ignore the arms, hands, pelvis etc. Tell me what ya think.

http://img194.echo.cx/img194/2240/textureprogress22fs.jpg

[Mrdes]

Still texturing some more. It's my first human character I've tried to texture so it's been pretty tough but I'm learnin a lot. I've only done work on the front torso, neck and back so far.

http://img194.echo.cx/img194/4422/textureprogress35wi.jpg

Anything look odd or incorrect? Or just plain bad?

[johnwoo]

Try to minimise the seams between the arms and shoulders, as you may run into problems sooner or later, btw the detail is getting there...

p.s...Interesting method of painting in greyscale for the base detail...:)

[Mrdes]

By minimising the seams you just mean make them less visible, right? I haven't started on the arms or back of the neck yet so that's why the seams stick out so much there. I've only done the torso and front of the neck really.

I think I read somewhere that starting textures in grayscale is a good way to go but I dont even really know why hehe. I figured I'd try it though.

I made the traps and neck much smaller and shorter. Never realized how long the neck was. Something I just noticed is that the hands are way too big too.

http://img194.echo.cx/img194/9168/foru21su.jpg

Started working on the face. This one has meshsmooth on it.

http://img194.echo.cx/img194/6356/faceprogress8gx.jpg

[Mr.Toast]

for a bare torso like your model, it would be a lot more convenient for you to attach the arms to the chest in the UV map to prevent seams, it may get a little tricky to deal with the warping though doing this, one good solution is to use deepuv's relax tool which pretty much automatically minimizes the warping, heres an example pic to show what i mean:

[Mrdes]

Yeah you're right, the seams are driving me crazy. I'll definitely remember to sort em out properly the next time.

Still haven't even managed to hide the seams very well but heres some more progress shots. This is taking forever and It's not turning out as well as I wanted heh.

http://img286.echo.cx/img286/4637/textureprogress41ta.jpg

http://img286.echo.cx/img286/33/textureprogress51lz.jpg

[Por@szek]

The texture start looking nice. Only my I think that the head is a bit smaller then it should be. Keep it up, good job.
p.s. I forgot. Thanks for the checker.:D

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