DescentBB

Whoa... /just sits and stares, amazed

Okay, so against my better judgement I'm gonna post these WIP helmet textures...





The color map's not finished yet, and the bump map is just a duplicate of the color map to give a quasi bump effect (though it's nowhere near what it should be). No spec map yet either

But hey, it's a start Glad to be done with those UV's!

You sure you're not designing a game for blizzard or something?

Darktalyn, you're one amazingly talented dude
You should be making loads of money with stuff like that

dude, that guy prob lives at the gym. He's huge!

Hey cool. I like the texturing so far.

Thanks everyone for your replies so far! Much appreciated

The last two nights I didn't much feel like working on the helmet texturing so I decided to take a stab at Zbrushing the body. I figured, if that's the only thing I have any desire to work on I might as well - it's better than nothing! Tonight I finished the level 1 sculpt (or came close anyway)

here's some before + after renders:

Before Sculpting



Sculpting Level 1



I still have a couple changes/fixes I wanna do to it (especially on the back foot), but it's mostly there. The eventual plan is crank it up another subdivison and sculpt even finer details.

After that all further detailing will be done with texture maps - I don't wanna tax my system too much when I displace the control cage (after 2 levels of sculpting he'll be clocking in around 240,000 polys!)

So I'm going to have to be pretty careful. I'd like to keep this guy under 500,000 total - that plus all those 4096x4096 texture maps could end up bringing my computer to its knees!

Any comments would be great, thanks and peace out!

Update



Slowly slowly...

Decided to go in a different direction for the helmet textures





Let me know what you think!

amazing
i like the colors and the ornaments.

love the scratch marks. The used look gives it a solid sense of realism.

dude.. wow.

More small steps...

I'm in the middle of moving apartments right now; it's a huge pain in the ass. Last night I managed to do this small update - while sitting crosslegged on the floor because my computer isn't even on a desk right now



Basically I just painted the base-coat for the rest of the armor - nothing fancy. No inlaid designs, no scratches, paint chips, rust... No bump, spec, or occlusion maps. Just getting that intial color on there. A minor but important step.

Then, I tried to render it and Maya crashed every time, even if I removed all my lights. So, it looks like I will be downres'ing all my texture sheets from 4096x4096 to 2048x2048. That resolution still holds the detail pretty well although I'm worried about some things getting a little pixelated

The only way I got this render to pull through was by lowering the texture resolution, and I still don't know if my computer will be able to do the whole guy when it's finished because he's going to need I think 14 texture sheets.

Anyway, I guess there are some render tests forthcoming. I have to figure out a way to get this guy rendering with his full specs

No time now though, tonight I get to spackle walls and clean the oven in my old apartment

Cool! I like Reptiles.

Patience is a virtue I'm having crammed down my throat...

what kind of rig you making this stuff on?

Pentium4 3.4 Ghz, 2 GB ram, GeForce 6600GT

It looks like my rendering issues might be solved...

Converting to a .map format for Mental Ray gets it rendering all those 4096x4096 maps - a coworker showed me how to set it up

Awesome work, darktalyn

Whats up B-moth, you the best D3 player in the world yet?

4+ hours of work tonight = more small progress

Detailing the base coat for the rest of the armor, here's a screencap



Gonna try to get all the armor plates done within the week - then I might tackle detailing his body

haha not sure about the being the best yet, but the models look awesome, good work and patience pay off

Still a little bit more touch-up to go. Once I do that I'm going to convert all my textures to .map format and try some full body renders

I'm also going to try to texture the body over July 4 weekend... That is going to be really tough, but with the armor & body textured it'll all be downhill from there..

still not done fixng up miscellaneous problems but i converted my textures to .map and tried em out... it's still rendering everything so that's a good sign



the pose on the left is just some crap i did for fun; no binding yet.

These are still really early on... there is a long way to go! But hey, it's a work in progress thread, so here's an update

I've dialed everything down in order to get it blending a bit better.



Seemingly minimal progress but I think I'm starting to move in the right direction - Once I fix some of the UV's on the foot & the tail, and add fingernail/toenail maps I think I'll have a decent starter texture to work from.

Then it's back to zbrush for some initial detailing.

the brighter one sure looks better than the dark one although I think it could look interesting if there were some darker areas on him, too - like some horny skin

Thanks Neumaennl for the reply and suggestion, I agree. I'll be continuing to work at it and try to improve it.

Here's an update on the progression

Still continuing to make changes / updates



Up next on my list are to create value variations in the skin, veins, and paint the fingernail + toenail maps.

maaan, this looks NICE so far...

Some more shader/lighting changes + some work on a vein map

somehow the muscle strings on the shoulders and upper legs look anatomically wrong (can't put it in better words / be more specific) I don't think it's a modelling issue, but some lines on the texture may produce this appearance

and it gives me a weird feeling looking at the fingernails having the same texture as the skin (I know that this is already on your TODO list)

keep up the amazing work

Thanks for the comments man, I looked over my anatomical statue and I think I see what you are talking about with the thighs. I will try to fix that this weekend!

I'll also look over the shoulder and see what I can do to improve it... Thanks again

Another night's work



I tried to block out some of the things I want to do on Sunday. so, this is a relatively minor update but hopefully I've laid the groundwork for a big improvement by Sunday night.

Tomorrow I'm hanging out with my family & my girlfriend which will be a great break, but I'll be looking forward to making some real progress on this guy at the end of the weekend.

very nice. i like that a whole lot!

Thanks Isaac!

Still plugging away

looks like there are scars from battle on the thighs - not bad

fingernails and toenails texture should not be so dark - looks unreal - maybe look at a rhino's horn or the toes of a rhino or elephant to get an idea for a texture?

the fingernail should not cover the whole phalanx - it should cover half of it maximum - look at it, at the moment it begins at the joint

and the horny skin that looks like a breast toupet - come on - although it made me laugh I wouldn't leave it like that on the final model

apart from that the texture looks amazingly good - especially on the arms and legs

keep up the great work and tell me if my critics annoy you - at least it's just my opinion and I'm trying to help so you can make it even better

Actually I think your critiques are really good, you've made a lot of good points.

I'm getting a lot of mixed reviews regarding the dark patches on the chest - So I'm still on the fence about what to do with them.

For the nails and toe nails I abolutely agree, I had been working for like 14 hours yesterday when I started them and while the determination was there, I had tapped the creative well dry and my artwork was suffering. I'm going to redo them and I think a lighter color is the way to go.

Texturing this guy is a process of me making mistakes and fixing them as I go. With enough work and rework I hope to get it right

Peace and thanks

Sweet Lord... You have great skills in artistic design there!

Every rendering from the start up until now just keeps getting better and better.

Now if only you worked for a Major Gaming Company!

Woot Woot!

Thanks guys,

I've made a strong push toward completing the textures. Maybe I can finish them in another month or two.

damn, that looks nice!

Jaw droppingly amazing..
Thx for keeping up with this post over all this time DT..i love watching the progression... Yer Aquanaught is wicked..