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jheffel
10-06-2010, 02:23 AM
Hi guys, I'm new to CG society and thought it would be a good idea to get your opinions on my work. I'm in my last year of an Industrial Design degree, and for this semester I'm doing a self directed project to make a video game character. I plan to do the whole character from the concept and eventually importing it into UDK. I'm hoping to use this thread as a place to bounce ideas off you guys, and get some help if I run into any problems along the way.

I'm currently near the end of the concept stage which is probably the most important one, as well as the one I have the least experience with when it comes to working with characters.

Before I began I took the concept of the battleroom from "Enders Game" as a starting point and tried to branch out from there. This design is based around the idea that the character is moving around at high speeds in zero gravity so he needs protection on his neck in particular. Specifically I was trying to design it as if it were a military training course for zero-g combat. I'm not making Ender or any of the characters in the book because I found I could make the design more my own if I wasn't using specific characters, as well the armor suit I have here is for an adult. I'm not the greatest 2D artist so please let me know if you have any ideas about what could be improved either conceptually or technically, I'm a bit worried that this is maybe too "busy".

I have a more detailed idea in my head of the hand lasers, and a very messy napkin sketch so I'll try to get some pics up of that in more detail soon.

Photoshop sketches:

http://i56.tinypic.com/2rf6ds0.jpg

http://i51.tinypic.com/2z5masn.jpg

If you've ever read the book the suits they use freeze up to disable the user when they are shot by the flash gun. This is how I thought I could indicate an area is frozen by lighting up the mesh red.

http://i56.tinypic.com/25irq4h.jpg

thanks for looking
Prominence
10-12-2010, 11:17 PM
Looking pretty good. I think that the neck area, if it's supposed to be particularly protected, needs to be a bit more bulky. The rest of it looks fine, although the back looks markedly less protected than the front. Then again, I've never read the books, so I'm not sure how that works. As for busy...eh, I can see why you'd think that. Streamlining the design a bit wouldn't hurt, but I think it looks alright as is in that respect.
jheffel
10-17-2010, 08:43 AM
Looking pretty good. I think that the neck area, if it's supposed to be particularly protected, needs to be a bit more bulky. The rest of it looks fine, although the back looks markedly less protected than the front. Then again, I've never read the books, so I'm not sure how that works. As for busy...eh, I can see why you'd think that. Streamlining the design a bit wouldn't hurt, but I think it looks alright as is in that respect.

Thanks for the feedback. I tried to make the neck area more bulky while I was blocking it out in Maya. The whole suit is a little bit bigger, not much because I wasn't thinking when I made the concepts and made the suit the size that the body should have been.

I basically spent all day today blocking out sculpting geometry. Next time I get a chance to work on this I'm going to start refining the meshes in zbrush, and eventually adding detail. The topology isn't ideal, but this is the highpoly so I can fix it later when I'm making the in game model.

Any comments / critique welcome.

http://oi51.tinypic.com/3450ppk.jpg
jheffel
11-01-2010, 01:14 AM
I've done some sculpting on all of the pieces in zbrush. I still need to do some detailing and fix up some areas but I need to start building the low polygon in game mesh. Could someone point me in the direction of some good tutorials on how to do this the right way?

for in game meshes are you allowed to have separate pieces, or does everything need to be in the same mesh?

If anyone has an effective workflow for how you go about doing this I would love to hear from you. Should I start by just stitching my sculpting geometry together, or does everything need to be build in tri's from the ground up?

http://forums.cgsociety.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=157325&stc=1
Yorgo12345
11-09-2010, 06:37 PM
James, this looks very promising, any progress since your last post?
jheffel
11-10-2010, 05:19 AM
Thank you

I've had a busy last couple of weeks but am going to have some more time in the next few days to work on this. Right now I'm working on the low polygon mesh (in-game), still a WIP. I don't really have much experience with animation so I'm pretty sure I'm going to need to rework areas like the elbows, neck and knees.

my process so far has been to export all of the base meshes from my subtools from zbrush and stitch them together into one mesh in maya improvising where necessary. I've been trying to keep it in quads as much as possible but in less visible areas I've been more lax about tris.

If I want the shoulder piece to move depending on what angle the arms are moving should I keep it as a separate piece? Also I know the poly count of a character is generally based on its intended use, and how many are visible at a time etc. So far I have ~2700 faces is this in the right ballpark or should I be trying to use less? I'm planning to build a face into the mask that is illuminated from within as well so that should probably add roughly another 1000 or so?

If anyone sees anything really bad topology wise please feel free to markup this image:

http://i53.tinypic.com/11snn6v.jpg
jheffel
11-16-2010, 07:17 PM
I've been working on the uv layout, it probably needs some more tweaking because the grid texture kind of rotates and is distorted in places. Is this heading in the right direction? The topology has been modified slightly from the last post mostly just adding edge-loops and getting rid of some tris.

http://i55.tinypic.com/288sbd5.jpg

I'm also having some trouble transferring my high polygon mesh onto the low one because it is made up of so many pieces. In zbrush I've been trying the project all option but keep getting jaggies and vertices that jump across the model. does anyone know of some more reliable methods to transfer the high resolution details? Would it make the most sense to just bake a decimated high poly onto the low poly in maya?
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