Female Armor - Part Five

 

I'm still making updates on this model. Hard surface armor modeling is tough. I've usually worked minimally with armor on my models and focused more on organic features, so constructing a character where armor is covering a majority of the body is proving to be difficult.  I think I'm getting better though.  Although the process could be snappier :)

I only have a couple weeks left this month, but I hope to have her done by September so I can start my Steam-Crunk character and go on to complete my demo reel sometime in October. If I hadn't mentioned it before, I've cut down on what's being included in the reel due to lack of time. I now plan to have Steam-Crunk head up the reel, following by the girl above, which will then break down her gun as well, and then end it with the boy and dog.  But in order to make the reel work, I have to make this girl and my next model the best fucking models I've ever created.

The biggest time suck recently is my incessant wanting to draw (which really isn't a bad thing!!) Since getting my Cintiq I've been wanting to just draw things all the time. So recently I've been going back and redesigning some of my comic book characters and posting those on Deviant Art. However, I'll probably end up forcing myself to stop drawing until I can get my demo reel models done.

Female Armor - Part 4

Updated progress on my armored, spy girl character (I need to find something better to call her)
Currently I am roughing out the armor shapes and starting some of the high poly work. The hard-surface armor pieces I am doing inside of MAX just because it is easier to control edges. I'm retopping her body in preparation to take it back into Zbrush to do all of the organic suit details. Once all of that is done, I'll bring everything back into MAX for a final retop of the model as a whole.

I've been trying to determine whether I want to retop the whole body (including the armor) as one solid mesh, just because when it comes time to skin that may cause certain armor plates to maybe bend with the rest of the body, whereas if I left the armor plates separate from the rest of the body, they could be skinning to the bones and more independently without bending or deforming. Although that way would rack up the poly count. DECISIONS!

I also must pay close attention to her silhouette as I think she may be a little too stocky at the moment. I hope to use the armor and some belts as a way to make her shape a bit more interesting. Her hair will be pretty important as well! I can't wait for that. I can't even predict the amount of planes I am going to use.

Recently I have been taking a break from the freelancing while I wait to hear about that projects status. Work has also bumped up to 50 hours a week instead of 40 which is going to limit my portfolio time all the more. Modeling work-related stuff for 10 hours straight only to come home and model more stuff is difficult. But THIS stuff is what I really want to do, so I can pull it off. :D

I just hope this all pays off.

I think it will.

Freelancing

I've been forced to take a break from the new demo reel, but it's for a good cause! I'm working with a talented concept artist on an independent game. He's asked me to create the character models for a project of his. I can't go into much detail of what it is, but it looks pretty exciting.

This is the first model I created:

Female Armor - Part 3

This past week we had a huge open house at work. Needless to say, I didn't get a lot of work done on this character. I really don't know if I'm going to be able to finish her by the end of the month like I intended, and I don't really want to rush her because I want this model to be better than my last.

I did however manage to get a base sculpt for her body done. I'm currently going to retop it and then work on the armor pieces which will be done hard-surface in Max. I'm then going to throw everything back into Zbrush in order to add all of the organic details on the suit.

 My other goal on this model was to post its progress on a forum. I picked Game Artisans and have yet to receive any advice or criticism.

http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/showthread.php?p=374553#post374553

Female Armor - Part 2 "head sculpting"

Made some progress on the girl's head. I'm getting some Natalie Portman vibes from it, but I swear I didn't use her for reference at all. Must have been subconscious, or else every woman on Earth looks a little bit like Nat P. Who knows!

I'm going to raise her forehead up a little more. Once her hair planes are on there, it should look a little better too. This week is going to be busy, but hopefully I can get the body blocked out. That's the next step.

Female Armor - Part 1

Got off to kind of a slow start with this new character. I wanted to have her concept done on the 1st so I could start modeling this past weekend, but I got caught up on the concept itself. I decided to go in more armored direction with her. Some discussions with my friends lead me to add more armor to her chest than originally intended, but it makes more sense to have her wear body armor than to have an open chest area that is fully unzipped.

The concept progressed further and now I've decided to go for a shorter hair style. Short hair is a challenge, but one I haven't tackled in a while, so I thought I'd go for it. I was also somewhat inspired by Emma Watson's current hair styles, so I'm using some current photos of her for reference.

 

The colors are still up for debate, but as of right now I am sticking to the yellow that I started with.

I managed to start modeling the head a little bit this evening. I look forward to really diving into this character and hopefully getting it close to complete by the end of this month.

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Boy & Dog

Finally finished these guys up. You can check them out in more detail here

 They both turned out pretty good. This is also the first time I've gotten Marmoset Toolbag to work out well for the final render. I plan on using it for the final shots of all my stuff from now on. The biggest problem I had with Marmoset in the past, I've found, is I've always forgotten to export my .obj meshes "with" their normals. Because of that, the models always showed up with unsightly seams that I couldn't get rid of. All I had to do was remember to check "normals" in the exporter and BAM, the models come in looking great!
Toolbag did crash numerous times however while trying to apply materials and stuff, but that's probably due to the size of materials I was using for this character (2048). I probably could have scaled those down to much smaller and it would have looked just as good.
Also! When working with Marmoset Toolbag, remember to flip your Green channel on your normal map. I learned that from working in Unity 3D and it's the same in Marmoset, so I'm assuming a lot of engines need that done as well. It's kind of a pain though because 3DS Max doesn't need the normals flipped so I basically have to created two separate maps.
This project is also the first time I've made one of those cool little turn table environment platforms for a character! I think it turned out alright. Making dead dandelions is hard though. They could have turned out better, but overall, I think it adds to the piece nicely! I plan on making one of these for all of my characters in the future.

And so starts the month of June! My goal of making a character a month is going pretty well, to my surprise. The boy and the dog took about a month (started on April 20th). The next project is the leather suited, spy girl! I mentioned in my last post that I'm planning to add some more armor type pieces to her suit. Here's some roughs I did the other day: