Looks alot like Jason Statham
I know, right? Completely unintentional, but I'll roll with it.
You're right about the detail. I'll give him another pass of darker blemishes and veins. I'll have to paint thing like dirt in Blender though since HD geometry apparently doesn't support layers. Thanks!Trying to improve the quality of the skin:
I can’t seem to properly paint the speckled pattern that looks like tiny blood vessels. I tried to make it apparent on the ear.
@AlexAndrieL
Thanks! He’s an accidental Jason Statham orc-a-like.
Now lest I forget that this is a sci-fi piece, I did more work on the cockpit. I redid a few models, most notably the front control thing, and added a few more bits and pieces. I stuck some sticky notes to the controls, as if someone thought that those would be enough to teach an orc how to fly a starship.
Added a size stand-in for the orc to see how much space he takes up.
I also started texturing the cockpit. I’m starting with the UV-independent methods of texturing first so that I have a bunch of basic materials that I can slap onto any object without having to UV map every tiny bit of geometry. I’ll work on the unique details later. I still might have to bake everything to texture though since I noticed that this method is really slow to render.
The bump map is a little too strong on the paint material one. I’ll have to adjust that.
I tweaked the modeling of the cockpit a bit more. I realized that the original model had no seat belts, so I had to change most of the seat to accommodate them. I also changed the exterior of the ship and added frames for the glass. I think this works better for the composition since there are now lines pointing to the general area of where the orc’s head is going to be. I’m going to focus on texturing now.
Texturing update:
I’m still using projected textures at this stage, though I had to bake out the edge wearing texture on some of the objects. The curvature shader I’m using is doing something funky when not baked and I’m still trying to solve it so that the base shaders are more procedural.
Update (click to view full res):
I’m thinking of just getting rid of the gun. It might just be in the way.
I’m going to start baking down the textures to bring down the render times (this image took 3 hours…) and then I’m going to go back to working on the orc (retopo and texturing of the clothes, teeth, gums, eyes, nails).
I think the modelling of your orc could still be improved a little. The mouth, in particular, bothers me a bit, because it just looks like it was modelled that way, as opposed to being open because he’s, well, opened his mouth. Does that make sense? I guess it’s a lack of tension in the facial musculature that we’d expect to see with a screaming/scared expression. I’d also expect to see wider eyes to accompany that. Perhaps doing a stronger sculpting pass would help to define the facial muscles a little better for this. I agree with an earlier comment that he does rather amusingly look a bit like Jason Statham, heh.
Textures are coming along but they look a little low res to me. What sizes are you making your maps? I’d also watch out for some of the detailing in the foreground; it looks little generic in my opinion. Try to motivate your textures so that their placement has a sense of purpose, as opposed to detail added simply for the sake of detail.
I think this could be a great image when it’s done, provided you take the time to do each stage to a very high level. It’s a cool concept, but to me, it looks like you may be rushing things a little in your excitement to finish. Take your time.
Hi, Leigh. Thanks for the detailed comment.
I can see what you mean about the mouth. I tried to model him with a neutrally-opened mouth so that I could easily model the teeth, gums, and tongue. I was trying to get a neutral expression in case I wanted to rig him in the future, but after making faces at a mirror for a few minutes I think I see the problem. Apparently, getting the corners of the mouth that low involves a lot of neck muscles which just isn’t present in my sculpt. For now, I think I’ll make the mouth more neutral since I was planning on working on the facial expressions as I worked on the pose.
As for the textures, may I ask if they look low-res in general or are there specific areas where they look low-res? I used blended box mapping and procedural textures for most of the current update, and it’s a new workflow for me, so I’m still fumbling all over the place. I checked my textures and the smallest one is a 1k tileable texture. I think I may have scaled one of the smaller ones too large. Fortunately, it’s an easy fix is this is the problem.
I did a test bake for the diffuse map of one of the foreground elements. This is what it looks like baked to an 8k texture:
(noticed a few UV problems on this one)
Again, thanks for the reply. It was really helpful.
As suggested, I’m doing more work on the textures of the foreground elements
Here it is with everything else for context (low quality for now). Too much?
Damn. One month since my last update due to work. Progress is happening slowly, but at least there’s progress. I’ve started to bring the orc into Maya.
Update:
I’m going to have to fix the hair penetrating the armor and the low res-looking cavity maps from Zbrush. Up next are the cloth bits, the boots and the tiny metal and rope bits.
Started working on the cloth bits.
Might have to add more thread on the fringes. I was also thinking of covering the cloth with a layer of fuzz.
Excellent work! I love the fantasy/sci-fi aspect. Right along the lines of the project I’m working on.
Thanks, LitheriaRising! Good luck on your project.
Here’s one of the background ships fighting in the distance. It’s going to be very small, so not a lot of details on it.
It seems that I’ve hit a bit of a road block and I could really use some help with this. I did some background studies and now I’m having some trouble deciding which direction I should take this image: epic space battle or the cold, uncaring void of space. I’ve been ctrl+tabing between these two studies for two nights now. I’d love to hear some opinions.
Does this guy have any back story as to how he ended up in the ship to begin with? Without knowing why and how he got into this predicament its kind of hard to decide on one or the other in a vacuum. The space battle would lend itself more to his immediate panic I think, I’m not sure that guy would understand the true gravity of his situation quietly lost in space until he got hungry.
I prefer the left one, but that is mainly due to differences in lighting/colors. You’ll need to decide for the story.
