Well, count me in.
I’m a regular reader of the boards, but havent posted that much - this is gonna be my first challenge entry.
I’ll post some scribbles for the prop as soon as I get my hands on drawing some.
Good luck to all the other entrys!
description of game genre -
The Game is going to be a third-person adventure with jump & run parts .
ok, i got my first scribble.
My prop will be the destroyed head of an ancient statue, halfway sunken into the soft jungleground. Theres a huge Plant growing over a crack of the head. Enough words, just take a look at the picture and tell me what you think.
I’ll add some more artwork soon.
shot out another one with a bit more colors on the jungle plants - I’ll start adding detail artworks now and might start modelling tonight.
started modeling.
i’m currently at 278 triangles. the mesh is very very rough and nothing more than a sketch, but i think i’ll work on it and add more divisions where needed, saving a whole bunch for the finishing touch when i add grass and hanging roots etc.
still need to clean up the meshflow a lot, but im happy about any feedback.
I like the simplicity of the mesh. It looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun texturing. I’m pretty new to low poly so I don’t have much in the way of crit.
made a reapproach of the face.
since i think the expression of the half face, especially the eyes is very important for the mesh i decided to rework it, adding quite a lot more polys to it.
The mesh below counts 320 tris, a lot of them can be simplyfied.
last post for today, i gotta make some nice dinner for a friend of mine.
Im currently at 675 Triangles. I’ll add a bit more of mesh details and move some vertices here and there … then on to some alpha planes, add texture and i’m done - hopefully i’ll get to post some further updates tomorrow.
so far it is nice 
but i’d kick some polygons from the small faces of the tree in the lower half (or on the backhead) and put them into that heavy branch on top of the tree… but you’ve still got enough polyspace so go on
thanks for the input Neox.
i allready did my work on the polys on the model, its now at 998 triangles. I mostly did as you suggested, added polys to the big parts of the root on top and some on the base.
Im finished with the low level mesh now,I’ll switch to Zbrush and try to improve my skills on normal mapping.
i still would kill or optimize the shape of the back of this head…
look onto my attachment, currently there is no need for the 2 loops so you should use them to get a rounder shape
This looks like a very solid mesh. I have one idea for your piece, and one crit.
Right now the half buried face is totally without emotion. And my idea is that you may consider giving the face some emotion or expression that would perhaps set the tone for the piece. This is just an idea.
My crit is that your vines encasing the head are ambiguous to whether they are roots or branches. Seeing as they are coming from the ground I would assume they are roots from some tree growing over this half buried statue that got in the way. However, if that is the case then why do the roots at the top arch up and reach outward into the atmosphere? That is a very branch-like behavior. And if those roots are reaching out to the sun because they are becoming branches or a separate tree (which roots can do) then why are there no leaves growing out of the top of these “branch roots”?
I think it would behoove you to make those roots growing out of the top seem like they have a reason for growing out of the top. Like if they had leaves sprouting from them.
But, overall the mesh is very solid, and both those ideas are minor touches you could add. In my opinion, of the pieces I have seen on this board, yours looks to have the most promise. Keep it up.
the only thing I whould add is a single frame poly comming off of one of the faces eyebrows in order to have some room for an overhanging moss or branch to come down in front of one of the eyes in order to push the concept of the jungle owning that head just a little bit more.
Another Idea that comes to mind is to spend some polys to hack apart that head and chip it up a bit. If its been in that terain long enough to have overgroth all over it, then you whould genuinly assume that little nicks and peices whould have fallen off due to the weather and local enviorment constantly beating against it.
Comming along great though.
Douglas.Costello: thanks for the input! I think I’ll push the expression of the face with texture later on. I’m still not sure whats really growing over the head, if its a small tree itself, gnarly and thick, or really some kind of mutant root from a huge tree nearby.
I’m currently experimenting with ZBrush to find a structure im happy with.
Shadow Slayer: I still havent really worked on the alpha planes, just placed some where i think they will be most likely needed. As soon as i get to the details i’ll worry about those.
Same with the face, im still not sure if i even want to touch it with ZBrush, the ‘organic’ effect of normal maps doesnt fit to the stone material, and adding more polys on the real mesh is a definate no go. I’ll tweak a lot of things in the face with texture, as i mentioned above.
Heres my first attempt at the normal map, please ignore the face i didnt touch it on normal maps yet - and maybe never will.
I’m not really happy with this first attempt, too much of fizzly fuzzly stuff there, im loosing the original form of the roots. Will do another one right away.
