Luchador Freaking Batman

[Swizzle]

Und leetle update:

Taking it in a slightly different direction.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3257/2662153499_273843b46c_o.jpg

[Swizzle]

Here's a paintover showing how the final should look:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3293/2662895177_a200530373_o.jpg

[ScudzAlmighty]

I'm freaking loving Luchador Freaking Batman

the only thing that stands out to me right now is the gloves on the new version, there's no obvious seam and it gives the outfit a slight one-piece/footy-pajama type of vibe

[Swizzle]

Don't worry, Scudz, I'm going to be adding some seams to the gloves. Need to break up them big shapes a bit, donchaknow.


http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3278/2668616827_7e0ecfb00b_o.jpg


I've made various adjustments to the high-poly version, including thickening the fingers, refining some of the folds and wrinkles and fixing some issues with blobby crap on areas that should be smooth. I need to give his legs and boots some lovin', but that's nothing huge.

What I'm mainly concerned with right now is whether I'm making it detailed enough... or not as detailed as it should be. On the one hand, I know there are a lot of things—like the gold seams and stuff—that I'm just going to paint into the texture and then use the Nvidia filter to put them into the normal map. On the other, though, I'm trying to figure out if I should add a bit more wrinkles and maybe a bit more muscle definition. I don't want it to look like he's wearing spray paint, but maybe a bit more definition could help?

[Shade01]

I love the proportions! Makes me want to see a DC character conversion for TF2 ;)

[ScudzAlmighty]

i think the level of detail you have right now is pretty good,aside from the legs and boots.

if you're just going to pose him, then having the right muscles a little more defined would be good (biceps and whatnot) but as he is now, he reads like guy in suit and it works

[Swizzle]

Thanks, guys.

Been messing around with the low-poly version. I think I'm going to do a bit more sculpting to refine some edges and put a few more subtle wrinkles and folds in there, maybe suggest more underlying muscle definition.

This is certainly not a final bake. I'm just seeing how well the normals will hold up, seeing if I need to do more optimization. It is, admittedly, a pretty heavy mesh, but it's still well below the limit even with his belt, cape and other accessories included.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3159/2675472081_b035fdff01_o.jpg

[utchamp]

hmmm.... i think you need to love those legs a little more :P

** although im not entirely solid on what luchador means so .... **



i also think you should work on the face a tad... it looks as if thats just cloth over his head, so put in some bone definition like on his cheeks and his brow line, make his jaw more prominent etc.


looking good though !

[Swizzle]

Utchamp:
I'm going to give the legs a bit more lovin', though not too much. I don't want very much definition other than on the folds of the fabric.
As for the face... well, he's wearing a mask. :D


Anyway:

Since I already have a rough UV layout (which will change once I start doing a bit more work on the model) I spent a little while and roughed in colors and spec to see if things will work out as I've intended.

Whatcha think?

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3119/2678596394_b4398c5e8f_o.jpg

[Buzzy]

freakin sweet! I can't wait to see some real textures on there....that yellow is too highlighter.

[J-RBeans]

Haha, that's pretty good.

You should do a matching Joker. The movie was really good.

[Swizzle]

Buzzy:
You're right about the yellow. I thought it was kind of cool at first, but I think I'm going for more of a gold fabric look now.

J-RBeans:
I hadn't thought about doing any other characters like this, but that's not a bad idea. I may just tackle the Joker after this is done.


Here's a little update on the normal maps. I think I've added all the detail I want to aside from the seams and other stuff I'm going to paint in. His belt and buckle currently need some love as well, but those are easy. I've tried getting it to look like there was more muscle definition under the fabric, but it just wasn't working out so hot.

There are still a bunch of normal errors that aren't very obvious in these pictures but would be pretty evident with different lighting and angles, so I still have a fair amount of painting to do, but things are coming along nicely. I didn't think I'd get this crisp of detail out of a 1024, but I guess mirroring helped a lot.

Any critiques and comments are more than welcome.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3144/2685018444_5c1c758f2e_o.jpg

[Swizzle]

There is method to my madness.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3271/2687499264_1f0e5e9a52_o.jpg

[SpiralFace]

Its starting to come together.

The color map would makes it look like the bat symbol would be fabric layered on top of the grey jump suit, and not so much just a painted symbol on it, So if you intend to have it be fabric, I would make a fake bump for the symbol, convert it to a normal map with X-normal, and then Overlay it on top of your existing normal map to give it the look that the fabric for the symbol is layered or sewed into or onto the guys costume, That or change it to make it look like its "Painted on" the normal map you've got now.

I think the shinny materials are starting to look like velvit. Not sure if this is what your going for, but when I think Luchador, I think more "plasticy" material as opposed to velvit. I would not made the base dark color so dark, but still keep the highlight bright like it is now, to give off more of a "plasticy" look that I personally would expect from a lucidor, and not so much the "velvit" look

The yellows are looking better, but I think suffer from the same issue, the contrast between the light highlighted yellow and the dark parts of the yellow just seem too extreame to me. And the bright yellow itself is so rich in color that it kind of looks like cartoon shading (Which might be what your going for.)

I would bring the yellows down in saturation a bit, and if you want it to look more like plastic, bring the base color up so its not so dark.

Its definatly comming together, and I think at this point any comments we could give you really just depend on where you want to take the model.

Keep it up

[Swizzle]

That's a good, solid crit. Thanks, SpiralFace.

I'm still looking at ways I can make the bat symbol on his chest better, so I'll definitely take your suggestions into account.

As for the other materials, I think you'll be glad to know that things are rapidly evolving from the state they were in when I posted last. You were right about things looking like velvet, so I took that into account and decided to work on some gloss and noise to make the materials look a little better. I want something sparkly for the dark, shiny areas and a gold-like material for the yellows.

Here's how it looks right now. This is a render; I simply can't get the effects I want by taking viewport screengrabs anymore. I'll be doing renders for the final presentation of the thing anyway, so this is what I'll be doing from now until the contest is over.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y29/xkostolny/batmanscreen016.jpg

[SpiralFace]

At this point, its getting very hard to tell you how to handle the blacks on the guy because of the background. Change the background to a "Neutral Grey" will definatly help with the presentation, as well as it can help us pin down problems with the dark colors of the character. As its looking like your black is WAY to dark as it is, but against the black background its impossible to tell.

Also, that yellow string on his upper leg.... Iether duplicate it to a few more spots arond the leg or loose it entirely. At the moment it looks more like a "UV seem" then any kind of defining shape. Although it might just be its location on the model.

[Swizzle]

I've adjusted various things in the texture and model, though they're mostly little tweaks. I think the belt looks a lot better now; it's not so rounded looking. I'm not completely sold on the pattern I gave the fabric, but that can be changed out really easily.

Oh, yeah, and I did a quick pose. It's really sloppy and just about everything needs tightening up, but whatever. It gets the point across right now.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3183/2695241522_f858b2f92b_o.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3179/2694423449_3613441e37_o.jpg

[ScudzAlmighty]

i'll say this: at first glance i was like "Freakin nice:thumbsup: "
then i thought, that's not very helpfull, so i steped back to give it a more critical eye.

the pose gets the point across, and probably only needs some minor adjustments so that he wouldn't fall over.
i dont know if it's too late at this point, but you might consider adding in some belt loops. i didnt notice before you posed him but it's looking a little unatural, especially in the first pose. i agree about the fabric being "off" as well, i'm not sure how to explain it, maybe it just doesn't follow the body in the right directions?
other than those things, i'd say you've won this comp so mke the Luchador Freaking Joker already... or maybe a midget Penguin?

[Swizzle]

I'm definitely going to be tweaking the pose—probably even redoing it. He's not rigged; this was just the result of pulling things around in Modo for about fifteen minutes. Since Modo doesn't have rigging tools yet, I think I'm going to throw it into Blender and whip up a quick rig so I can get some basic poses down, then I'll open the posed version(s) in Modo for the renders.

The belt loops are a good idea. I'll definitely give those a shot and see how they work out.

You're right about the fabric not going in the right directions. I think I'll need to rotate and warp the pattern a bit to make it follow the body a bit better.

[mindrot]

That's fantastic Swizzle. I love the combination of characters you've chosen - they work perfectly together.

The renders look great as well. I'm loving that blue shiny surface.

~M~

[Swizzle]

Batman displays his catlike agility:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3052/2698258528_f81baafa9d_o.jpg

[theleast]

Okay, the cat-like batman made me laugh out loud on first sight, so you're definitely doing something right. Great model, great textures - I love the blue material especially. I guess my only crit would be that some shadows around his eyes might help them contrast better with the gold bat symbol in his mask, at the moment they look a little flat.

[ojko]

That looks really sweet, I'm loving the way you've merged the different characters. The cat pose is great as well. :)

The only thing that stands out for me (or doesn't in this case), is the masks eye area. The mask seems to blend into the skin around the eye too much for my liking. The skin is getting lost in the yellow which has a similar tone, maybe darker piping around the edge would help define the eye better.

[SpiralFace]

Its comming together now.

The thing that throws me off is the Black material still.

Given the current lighting you have, your yellows, skin tone, and other cloth is being "Blown out" with some hot lights, but the black material looks ok while the other materials are being blown out.

That leaves me to believe that if you light the model to where the other parts will be more appropriatly lit, then the blacks will be much too deep comparatively.

This is something that should be examined.

Also, the texture overlay on the black materials still seem a bit "big" for me. I think if its shurnk down a bit it might add a bit more scale to the model as a whole.

[Swizzle]

theleast:
Thanks. I've been trying to figure out what exactly to do about the eyes blending in (since shadows on the actual skin aren't working), but I think ojko might have come up with the solution.

ojko:
I hadn't thought about putting dark piping around the eyes, but that's a brilliant way to separate the eyes from the mask.

SpiralFace:
First let me say thanks for consistently good crits; they're extremely helpful and I'm not getting many elsewhere.
I think the main reason I'm getting blown-out highlights on the skin and lighter fabric is because I've been using mostly directional lights to light the scene and make highlights on certain parts of the black bits pop. If I actually took the time to use spotlights and point lights to make the highlights pop, the rest of the thing would look a lot better. Still, I'm going to do some more texture tweaking to get things looking a little nicer, if possible.
I can't actually shrink the overlay on the black parts, much as I'd like to, because it's noise in the specular map. According to the rules of the contest, I can't make maps bigger than 1024 and I can't split them up into smaller maps, either. If I could do the latter, I'd have done the materials a bit differently.

[SpiralFace]

So you can't go over 1024 but you can use procedural shading nodes? :curious: Is the whole body's speculer handled that way?

Here is a trick if your trying to "Skirt" texture limits. Most contestes I've heard of allow you to use Image alphas in your work. Since your design doesn't need an alpha for Trancparency, use the Alpha of your texture map to provide the speculer information.

Obviously, this will mean that you will have to limit yourself to grey scale speculer maps, but its a way to skirt your limits to provide yourself with an aditional map, without needing the extra texture. (Not to mention its a bit more "game savy" then using procedural shading.;))

This should get you the extra map if you want it.

If thats not an option, then there is ALWAYS some kind of option in the texture node that can change the scaling of the texture. You can either change the scaling on the noise layer, or you can change the "tileing" of the texture itself to shirnk down the size of the noise. All procedural textures are tileable, so if you can't shrink the texture itself down, then tileing the texture will get you the same effect.

either way, there are options for you if you want it.

[Swizzle]

I think you misunderstood what I was saying, SpiralFace. I'm not using any procedural textures; the sparkles you see are from noise in the specular map.

Here's what the spec map looks like right now (resized from 1024):

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y29/xkostolny/spec.jpg

[SpiralFace]

Ahh, my misunderstanding.

Just because its noise, dosen't mean it can't be scaled. Obviously, since you placed the noise filter on only certain parts of the texture map means that at some point and time, You masked it off.

Hopefully that layer of your spec is on a different layer. And here is a trick I use.

Assuming that your "Black" layer is keyed to a seperate layer and is transparent.

-create a new folder,
-Magic wand the empty space on the layer with your black parts
-Inverse the selection to select everything in your black layer
-Without deselecting your black area go to the new folder
-Apply a layer mask to the folder.

This should "mask off" all the parts of the texture map that SHOULD be applied to the black parts. After this, you can litterally go nuts with ANYTHING in this layer and not have to worry about clean up on any parts where you don't want the texture to show.

Once this is set up, you can throw new layers in there, Fill the ENTIRE layer, and it will still be masked off from everything else. This should allow you to apply noise filters, Scale them down, Tile textures, Throw overlays, and do pretty much ANYTHING you want in a non-destructive way, without having to worry about having it spill over into any unwanted areas. This should allow you to be able to micro manage and tweek the elements you are applying to the speculer map, without having to worry about clean up afterwards.

yeah, you might need to ditch what you have now, but seriously, by the looks of it, its as simple as having a fill layer with a noise filter applied to it. If you are able to mask off the area as I said, you should be able to do this in about 2 or 3 minutes to good effect.

[Swizzle]

Still puttering about with poses and stuff. I still need to do a bit more work on the textures, but he's pretty much done except for some small tweaks. Still need to whip up a stand for him. Maybe I'll do a wrestling ring.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3099/2708054060_d29752b095_o.jpg

[Swizzle]

Gave him a mouth sock and some stuff around his eyes so they'll read better:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3183/2707913463_49dc274c0e_o.jpg

[Armanguy]

this is pure win, the eyes look alot better now and the pose is awesome! you know you have to make joker now getting slammed :P

[codyalday]

Fantastic job:) Love what you have done to the shinny parts of the model, adds so much 'pow' into it.

[ninjacore]

i rated you some stars cos this is great !! armanguy is right, do the joker getting a big drop or a rick flare 'nature boy' rake to the eyes. wOOO!

[Havoc89]

Haha, very cool and hilarious. Nicely done as well.

Me thinks Heavy Weapons guy from TF2 is hiding under that mask ;)

[sk3d]

Great work! I agree with all comments so far, the eyes and face may need to be defined a little more, just by tweaking the textures, but the specular looks great. with the specular map you used, I see it is giving the colour and noise in the renders, but what are you using to control the specular 'creep' on the model? another map or just the shaders settings?

Cheers!

[antodonnell]

I just had to comment on this, I really like your take on Batman. The subtly modelled muscles look great. Well done

[VanillaChicken]

It looks fantastic, mate.

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