Archangel

[dpizzle]

hey i think this looks pretty damn good dude.

what is the rest of his armor going to look like?
same color?

[Cooper]

Thanks dude, Yeah it will, its going to take a ton of time I expect. I'll keep ya updated!

[FatherGlory]

Heya good start with Knight. I love the massive sword style. The shoulders and hip plates are nice but its making him look too sknny in my humble opinion. You may want to beef out the chest plate a bit. One thing on painting gold. Gold isn't really that yellow, it may help to have some various color blends with some oranges and browns in there as well. Here is some good ref maybe for some gold on armor (not the best but I thought it looked cool in GW).

http://guildwars.gameamp.com/modules/gallery/uploads/3859.jpg

[Cooper]

Oh sweet, thanks man! I had been doing a brown, but not a orange. sweet.

Thanks dude

-coop

[Augh]

Strength, brother. We shall crush those demon monkeys.

I mean, cool, an archangel ^_^ More angels are always needed with so many demons running around o_O I like the "nnnngggyaaaaaggghhh" pose especially. Siegfried would be proud. Alls useful I'd really have to offer has already been posted; Gold works nice due to a good proportion of oranges and browns in there, tis certainly tough to do. If you picked out a few straps and buckles in a leathery brown it might help play this up too.

Best o luck with the rest ;)

[Cooper]

heres a update on the boots i textured.



http://www.cooperr.com/stuff/stance1.jpg

http://www.cooperr.com/stuff/lunge1.jpg

[TwitchyHamster]

I just wanted to say...

Wow! What a crazy sword!

Neato! Now can you export that sword into WoW for me? My paladin could use. She is "holy" afterall! *grin*

-Twitchy

[Cooper]

Haha, You know. I used to have a Horde priest, and me and some friends HATED pallys, so when i made this guy, they now call me a pally lover. That makes me sad=)I'll have a update soon :)

[Dreamlord (Blender)]

You sure the sword is big enough?

[Cooper]

yeah.


-coop

[shoujoboy]

Awsomeness

What are u modeling this with ???

[Mastahful]

Great poses, love the sword, but I think he would benefit from a larger torso..

[blz]

great work indeed.love the concept.

[cuzzo]

nice motion :thumbsup: ...cool model, and i love the hyper exaggerated sword...cant wait to see the final results

[Cooper]

Heres an update, i rigged him, sooo i'll post some more poses soon :)

http://www.cooperr.com/stuff/Float.jpg

[Cooper]

And another, I'll do some more later, Time for some well deserved food.


http://www.cooperr.com/stuff/Slam.jpg

[kOmoo]

His armor is fine and so is his sword, but the wings looks a little bit to cartoony. Whats is wrong with his hand, the one not holding the sword, it looks like its crushed or something.

[Saramago]

This is a great character. Poses are just right but you should spend some time working up those textures as it would really lift the piece. Very cool so far

[Dyrn]

The character feels very busy, I think. If he were moving, I don't think I'd be able to tell what was what- he'd dissolve into a noisy blur of grey and yellow pixels.

I'd also suggest a polished edge to the sword, just to clarify that it is, in fact, a sword. At first glance I thought it was some kind of shield.

The guy's great, but he doesnt' read easily. I have to study him to make out what's going on.

[Cooper]

I'm not sure what to do other then the highlights, How do i make it so its not so busy? Delete some of the textures?


As for the hands, they are fine, i can't hide the bones, so it makes it look funny when i bend his fingers, that might be why the wings look cartoony as well.

As of now im going in and saturate and contrast adjust the gold. And doing highlights.
other then that , like i said. I'm a total n00b at texturing.

[Saramago]

You need to look at gold or brass images and see how large the range of colour is. You want to paint in some good hightlights and shadows. I agree with Dyrn, the pattern is to noisy. I would remove some of the details but mainly you need to work into the texture and getting some good reference is key.

[Cooper]

I'm on it=)

[Cooper]

okay im giving this a wack. I may have gone a bit over board on the high lights, lemme know what you think.

edit: its only on the sword.
http://www.cooperr.com/stuff/thisit.jpg

[Cooper]

Welp, I think this is it. I dunno. Heres the last update untill i finish animations

http://www.cooperr.com/stuff/stance2.jpg

[LuckyDevil]

hey man, thats a preaty damn cool lookin guy you got here, good job.
did you start with a reference pic or you just started out of scratch cause i would love to see a illustration of your guy.

[Cooper]

Thanks man, No he was straight up scratch. it was just a whim that i made him. my next character though, he has art work done on him :)

[the_podman]

Hey, nice project. Awesome design work. Kudos to you.

To get the character to "read" better like one of the above posts stated, you simply need to change up some of the hues or tones of the different sections of him(head, arms, legs, etc.) so from a distance you can pick out the shape of his head. A darker tone or different hue on the head from the chest peice will do this easilly.

For armor peices, I painted quite a few myself :), there's this little trick I use to get the fake specular to work well. Just find a nice gold/metal overlay, use it as an alpha or just plain overlay. Make a combined merged layer on top and play around with PS lighting effects(filter>render>lighting effects). You can make some pretty convincing armor without having to paint every little bit of light. You can even change up the light type, color, direction, intensity, etc. I use the lasso tool with a feathering of about 5 and work on "sections" in PS lighting effects.

[Cooper]

Thanks duder, I'm doing that now, I'm redoing all the gold. I'll post a update soon.

[Cooper]

okay after a bit of playing around, im redoing the gold. Heres an update with the text on the sword.

http://www.cooperr.com/stuff/newsword.jpg

[the_podman]

Getting there, dude. There is still too much green for it to be gold. What you need for the trim is a nice gold base to work from. Then pull out the highlights and glints from it. Try this tutorial:

http://www.photoshoproadmap.com/links/go/490

Here's what one of the gold base textures looks like in UT2003. From the barrenarchitecture.utx package:

http://www.rodbrett.com/gold03ba.jpg

The effect is kinda subtle, but there's also some slight bump rendered on it. Get some scratched metal and greyscale it. Place that into an alpha channel and render an omni light with that Alpha selected. You should get some little bumps rendered in there for a nice gold base.

Anyhow. That's how'd I do it. You may be thinking of a totally different approach which is cool. Hope I'm not too pushy.:shrug:

[Cooper]

Hmmm, Your right. Thanks duder. I'll try this. Awesome, Your not being pushy at all.

-Cooper

[Cooper]

Which one is better looking?



http://www.cooperr.com/stuff/thisit.jpg

[the_podman]

I like the left one but I think you need to run the Sponge tool(Saturate mode) and give it a once over the lit areas. It's lost some saturation and looks like a more dulled out gold. Also, instead of doing a drop shadow around the trim, you might want to try and create some kind of gradual merge with some breakup of the solid line you got going that seperating the two(metal and gold trim). I don't get a sense of what's extruding, the trim or the metal. The cool color of the metal helps to push it back some though so it's ok.

[the_podman]

After looking over your textures for a moment, I think I'm beginning to see the main thing about it that needs fixing, imo. There is only one general value.

Here's something you can do that gives you a quick fix.

Copy merged on the top most layer in PS. Make a duplicate of the merged layer, and greyscale it by going to EDIT>DESATURATE.
You should see this:

http://www.rodbrett.com/archangelfix1.jpg

Now that you are free from the distraction of color, you can focus on tonal variation. See how everything just became unreadable? It's hard to pick out the individual shapes.

Now, for a quick method(it's better to do it manually, though), press Ctrl+L and adjust the levels. Tweak it so there are sharper contrasts and more tonal variation. Like this:

http://www.rodbrett.com/archangelfix2.jpg

Now, set THIS layer style to "luminosity" on top of your old color layer and you'll get this:

http://www.rodbrett.com/archangelfix3.jpg


This is just a quick mock up to show you what I mean. There's a little too much constrast now, but working on a greyscale is great for getting the tones correct. You can also adjust the opacity of the luminosity layer if it's too much. By setting it to luminosity on the top instead of the bottom with a color overlay, you don't get the color dulling you would get working in greyscale. Because greyscale is simply to achieve sharp and variation of contrast.

-pod :)

[Cooper]

Oh sweet goodness, Thanks dude, thanks alot, I'ma give this a try. Thanks!


-Cooper

[dpizzle]

very helpful pod...
thanks for taking the time to do that!
:thumbsup:

[Saramago]

This is looking much better but I would let a bit of the yellow of the original texture push through. The gold on it's own is a bit dull even with the highlights

[the_podman]

Hey, no problem! Glad to help out.

It's all about tonal variation. This concept was very hard for me to get at first until I removed "color" from the equation and it clicked in my tiny little brain. My first game model has very flat textures and it took me a while to realize that it wasn't "color" that was the problem. Unless, you're doing a normal mapped character's color map, then it's going to be mostly one tone, seeing that the Normal Map is handling all the light information.

Before you start painting in the details, make a value breakdown of the tones. Here I have created a light to dark gradient on the right.(be sure not to use pure black or pure white) Then, I took that gradient and copied it and "posterized"(adjustments>posterize) it at a level of about 7 or 8. This breaks down the gradient to 7-8 tones.(If you can't see the different levels, it means you gotta crank up the brightness and contrast of you monitor, I go with 100% brightness and contrast)

I went in and "picked" the different tones from the greyscale and painted in which sections are popping out and which are pushing inwards. It's kinda like those old comics back in the day(well, back in my day at least) that used "zip-a-tone" to achieve depth.

So, you use this as a starting point:

http://www.rodbrett.com/archangelfix5.jpg


This also has an added benefit of a bump map as you can use it to extrapolate your bump information. Here's a quick little lighting effects(Render>lighting effects) with this image pasted into an ALPHA and one omni light at the bottom....

http://www.rodbrett.com/archangelfix6.jpg

[Cooper]

Damn dude, Thanks for all those tips, I worte them all down. But in the End, I'm not liking my orignal design. Sooooo. I'm redoing everything, as i go that is. Heres a picture of the boots. Tell me what you think so far.

http://www.cooperr.com/stuff/newshoes.jpg

[TwitchyHamster]

Those look alot better. I think you are getting the hang of the gold now ;)

-Twitchy

[Saramago]

That is looking much better. Glad you decided go push it with this one. I wouldn't make it too futuristic as the original concept was ace.

[Cooper]

small update before work.


http://www.cooperr.com/stuff/newshoes1.jpg

[Cooper]

I finished the boots, I'm moving up the legs now. Heres a small update.

-coop

http://www.cooperr.com/stuff/newshoes3.jpg

[wootwoot2000]

Always cool to see this kind of model! Did your guy go to the same outfitters as my guy?(check my wip pages) I think we can swap shoulderpads.lol.

Cant wait to see the finished model. I would add a few more polys to round out the sword. As its the largest most dominant piece, it should have a rounder sillouette.

nice concept!

[Cooper]

Haha, Thanks man. Heres a Update on the legs, I'm done with the lower body...I think.

any crits?

thanks
-Cooper

http://www.cooperr.com/stuff/newshoes5.jpg

[djkaneda]

wow this is lookin bitchin, keep it up man

[proudclod]

Very freakin' nice! Can't wait to see more :D

[Cooper]

Thanks guys=), Heres a update!

-Cooper

http://www.cooperr.com/stuff/Newarmor.jpg

[SHEPEIRO]

been following but not posting for a while, those textures are looking way better.

r u going for very new/clean look, or are you going to add some dirt in there

[Prs-Phil]

I like the idea, but the texture now has a strong contrast and seems a bit underlight. Try to paint with a stronger lightsource from one position. The colors don't come across well at the moment.

The waist seems a bit to thin (the legs to) and the thumb a bit wrong (sausagelike).
It would be cool if you could post some wireframes so that we can take a closer look.

I also don't like the sword. It looks a bit like a lollypop, the way it is shaped and feels. Just to cute.
With the new version you are killing all the color. It also has the same color as the armour wich I personally don't find so cool esspecially when he is holding his sword infront of him.

Cool idea anwhooooo hope the cirt helps

[Mastahful]

Your on the right track, the textures are looking alot better, keep it up!

[TwitchyHamster]

Ayap!

This is looking soo much better.

Keep it up! We want to see the finished product!

-Twitchy

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