[Character] Headcrab

[Deadalus]

from the name i was expecting somting relaed to HL.
Cool model but the concept is a bit drab...
if you compare to the flying head from doom3 you can see theres something missing in you concept. maybe the colors scheme wich is a bit desaturated or the silhouette.
http://www.nei.ch/gallery/d/2798-2/doom3_1.jpg
- 3450 and a 1024 is pretty high for the detail.
maybe after seeing the wire i could be wrong but it seem to me i could be done with half that spec.
- the rust is eating everypart of it. its hard to discern wich part is what. if you use different tone of rust maybe it would be more "readable"
Same for the flesh and blood.

still it a good first try . the next will be better.

[jfalconer]

I like the mechanical bits and your texturing but the face doesn't creep me out at all. I would revise the face by giving him a tortured expression if you are going to showcase him, afterall if my head was surgically removed and attached to a freakish little spiderbot's body, I'd be pretty upset about it - assuming he's not comatose but is controlling the robot's functions with his brain.

[weasel.acuh5o]

from the name i was expecting somting relaed to HL.
Cool model but the concept is a bit drab...
if you compare to the flying head from doom3 you can see theres something missing in you concept. maybe the colors scheme wich is a bit desaturated or the silhouette.
http://www.nei.ch/gallery/d/2798-2/doom3_1.jpg
- 3450 and a 1024 is pretty high for the detail.
maybe after seeing the wire i could be wrong but it seem to me i could be done with half that spec.
- the rust is eating everypart of it. its hard to discern wich part is what. if you use different tone of rust maybe it would be more "readable"
Same for the flesh and blood.

yeah, the concept definitly isn't anything groundbreaking new. but I always wanted to create a cheesy quake style model, so here it is.

as for the detail - like I said, the texture maps aren't done, so you can expect more detail in there in a later version. I totally forgot to link the wires (sorry), so here they go:

Wire 1 (http://weasel.acuh5o.com/posted/2006_07_02_headcrab_03.jpg) / Wire 2 (http://weasel.acuh5o.com/posted/2006_07_02_headcrab_04.jpg)

I could have saved polygons in the facial area and in the hole in the back of the head... as for the face, I wanted to keep it somewhat animatable (probably not going to do it), so I didn't want to go too low poly. as for the hole, I figured this is a decent (maybe somewhat to high) level of roundness. it could definitly be done with less, but then again... nvm, I just lack experience. I'm curious what the others think of this issue, feedback on this specific issue would be more than appreciated.

and I just noticed that I could have saves a few dozen on the ball joints on the legs... meh... stupid me.

I like the mechanical bits and your texturing but the face doesn't creep me out at all. I would revise the face by giving him a tortured expression if you are going to showcase him, afterall if my head was surgically removed and attached to a freakish little spiderbot's body, I'd be pretty upset about it - assuming he's not comatose but is controlling the robot's functions with his brain.

sounds like a good idea... once I redo the face, the 'regular' expression will hopefully show a bit better - a blank stare, no expression at all. if I'm ever going to animate it (never tried that, but maybe I will) I'd like it to go from that to a crazed 'must eat brains' once it's coming for you.

thanks for the feedback guys, much appreciated :)

[ElFuego]

Cool! with good texturing it would look really good.

Designwise I'd make it a bit more aerodynamic. The back side is really interesteing and dynamic but the face/forehead is too vertical and creates a static feeling. I think a creature that small would need speed to attack and manouvre.

I would also half the texture sizes to *512.

waiting for more updates! :>

[ArchangelTalon]

Looking good.

I think some fiddly extras would be needed, though. Various lenses on mechanical appendages that could flip down over the eye(s) and other arms with tools or grippers on them. It's a bit of a useless design, just now, only a head that can walk around.

[weasel.acuh5o]

Designwise I'd make it a bit more aerodynamic. The back side is really interesteing and dynamic but the face/forehead is too vertical and creates a static feeling. I think a creature that small would need speed to attack and manouvre.

I would also half the texture sizes to *512.

waiting for more updates! :>

true, I never really noticed that. I'm probably just going to make that a bit less obvious by titlting the whole head part to the back (I need to start posting WIPs before I unwrap the whole thing, stupid me... another thing learned). the next batch of renders will include some more usefull views, it's hard to see much on the current ones. stupid day job.

texture size sounds like a good idea, I'll definitly give it a try. I'm still having a hard time judging what will look good enough in the end, so thanks a lot for the advice :)

I think some fiddly extras would be needed, though. Various lenses on mechanical appendages that could flip down over the eye(s) and other arms with tools or grippers on them. It's a bit of a useless design, just now, only a head that can walk around.

while I'm not a big fan of the lenses part, the additional arms could have been nice. I decided against itbecause I liked the simplicity of this design. it's somewhere between human experiment gone wrong and walking security cam (which I like even better, because it seems so much over the top).

I think it would work kinda nice in a dark sci-fi horror game. imagine these dude leaning around the corner every now and then, then trying to run away as you come closer. or swarming you with a dozen of them later because you've cornered them and there's just nowhere to run.


thanks to the both of you, very helpful comments. hope I'm not boring everyone to death with my long answers though.

/f

[blacker]

I think the security camer idea is sort of cool. Why not jab a nice big antenna in/through the head (as a transmitter). Also, if they're capable of attacking, try to give them something a bit more menacing than just a lot of legs.. I'd also try to keep the geometry of the head a little bit generic and really make it shine by having a few different texture maps (so they wouldn't all look like the same head).

[weasel.acuh5o]

spend all day long fixing and changing stuff. I decided to try out most of what you said, here's the result so far.

- I added some new camera-like parts to break up the symmetry a bit. I like it.
- took out some polies to lower the count and instantly spend them on the camera. I don't see a problem with 3500 though, maybe someone working on games/mods could tell me what he thinks of it. it may be a small model, but then again it has way more detail than, let's say, hl2's headcrab, so I think the polycount is justifyable.
- some changes to the legs, once the texture is on there you'll see that they're some blades on there to make the thing a bit more menacing.
- tried a texture resolution of 512. spend about 3 hours resizign uv's, moving them around etc, just to get to the point where I can say that 512 doesn't look good (with about every part that can be mirrored, only one leg in the uvs etc) so I stick with 1024 maps, some input on this one would be totally awesome. google didn't reveal too much, except that hl2 (for example) has a limit of 2048 for textures... but nothing on the average texture size for models. is 1024 totally over the top for this?
- the expression will be meanified (r) in the next few days, just haven't gotten to it. decided to take out most of the 3d detail like scars etc and just do it in PS to make the face more generic. gonna do 2 texture versions in the end.

pose isn't final, the head is basically untouched... so expect some leaning in the end, I just spread out the legs a bit.

I don't want to mess the thread up too much, so I'll just link the pictures instead of displaying them right away... hasn't changed much anyway.

- front - (http://weasel.acuh5o.com/posted/2006_07_05_headcrab_02.jpg)

- back - (http://weasel.acuh5o.com/posted/2006_07_05_headcrab_01.jpg)


thanks to everybody who helped me so far. great place to learn. :)

[weasel.acuh5o]

now then, final version. not done, but final.

there's just so much wrong with the model that I'm not going to take it any further. parts of the geometry don't work too well with the normals, the cage I set up didn't work as good as I hoped etc whine whine.

so I'm not going to work on the maps any more (that's why the spec and gloss sucks so bad). I'm going to book this under learning experience. even I can spot loads of mistakes, so no need to point them out at this point. I'm mostly posting to wrap this up and thank everyone for the input again.

final question for this time: what is a good lighting setup to present game models? something like standard 3 point looks good, but I'm not sure if it's ok to light the model way differently from what it will look like in the engine... especially if it's for a portfolio. I don't want to leave the impression that I try to push the looks of the model with unrealistic lighting, but don't want to give away the chance to make it look better... any thoughts on this? what do you normally do?

specs: 3200 polygons, 1024x1024 maps for diffuse, normal, illum, spec and gloss.

http://weasel.acuh5o.com/posted/2006_07_21_headcrab_01.jpg

http://weasel.acuh5o.com/posted/2006_07_21_headcrab_02.jpg

http://weasel.acuh5o.com/posted/2006_07_21_headcrab_03.jpg

[blacker]

I could be wrong, but I'd put in 2 screen captures with no default lighting so they can see how the texture holds up on it's own, with some larger pictures of what it looks like with a nice lighting setup. :shrug:

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