Encouragement Needed!

[entity]

Posting some work in progress on my character, he is not clothed yet, but 90% of the phenome poses are done, 1% of facial poses, and the "hair" is complete... I should have the model clothed in 4 weeks--

 

week 1: finish phenomes

week 2: finish facial moves

week 3: rework rig/shoulders

week 4: finish/ test clothing + any textures

 

The first renders are of the head from the modeling window (Each was 1280x960 and reduced and composited together in photoshop):

(Note: Textures are 4000x3093...(Color/bump/diffuse/specular intensity) Head, torso, right & left arms, right & left legs, right & left hands (color only), and feet are not texured. The reason I have seperated textures for limbs is because I may want to add tattoos or scars to only one side, so I need individualized texures for each part.)

 

 

The next renders are of the head rendered with Skycast plus two lights. Rendered at 1280x960 and reduced in photoshop. And I worked on beefing up the structure of the ears a little, before these renders.

 

 

And One body shot:

I got suggestions on another thread on this forum to make the shoulders bend at the proper proportions because the width compared to the hips is wrong.

 

[mtpeak2]

The only thing that really stands out is the size of the head compared to the body, it's too big to my eyes. It could be the shoulders are not broad enough. Everything else looks great though.

[JTalbotski]

Rich,

 

The close-ups really show how hard you worked on this model. Excellent texturing! A realistic model is a massive undertaking and you've done a very good job so far.

 

There are a few areas that could use some tweaking. The outside corners of the eye sockets seem pulled back too severely. Maybe the indentation can be softer. Also, the way the nostrils blend into the moustache area seems too soft. There is "usually" more of a division between those areas. Your live model may not have that, and if not, please disregard.

 

Thanks for sharing your work,

 

Jim

[JohnArtbox]

Hi Rich

Very impressive model. I'd agree with Jim's comment about the soft transition of the nostrils to the upper lip and there's some texture smearing where you've mixed different photo angles , but these are very minor points.

[entity]

This is what I modeled from...

 

I "traced" him, literally from photo reference, the only problem with that is when you model a character you are doing it with an orthogonal view... the camera the actual model was shot with has perspective... I've tried different camera angles and settings and find that this is normal depending on where your camera is and what your focal length/angle is... I may have pushed the virtual camera outside of the real world limits... so things got distorted. Realism is a B*tch.

Edited August 14, 2004 by entity

[entity]

I cheated on the nostrals... I took away lotsa patches that held the original shape of things because I was running up to 10,000 patches (lag city)... without teeth gums and tongue. By the way... his gums are connected to an inner lining of the mouth... yes I modeled the inside of the mouth completely attached, but I had to give up the finger nails to do it.

 

Heres the UV-Head_color map/ head wire map. The ears and teeth have their own maps. Using alpha map to blend between the edges of some of the maps.

 

 

Thanks for your comments... I can "see" a lot better now.

[KenH]

Man that's good! I hope you didn't shave your head for this project!

If that's the inner mouth, it looks a little patch heavy to me. Especially as it's rarely seen in detail.

Keep it up!

[entity]

So far the textures alone are 1.26 gb! And I didn't waste much of that. It takes my computer about 20-30 mins just to load texures ... no problem though, because the render times are short thereafter; about 2 min.(full figure) to 5 min.(close-up) per frame depending on how close the camera is to the model. But then again I usually run other things while I render, so that probably slows A:M's rendering a little.

I plan to use cloth simulation... just to test and see "what I can get away with". If it proves too time consuming to do, then I will just replace the body with unibody clothing+rigged with dynamic bones.

 

edit: The texture maps I included to show what they look like but they are about 5 times that size... I was inspired by the work done on the HULK movie... I think those were 5 times larger than my textures... but they have a render farm!

Edited August 14, 2004 by entity

[entity]

I hope you didn't shave your head for this project! 

If that's the inner mouth, it looks a little patch heavy to me. Especially as it's rarely seen in detail.

Ken-- HUH? , I got from 10,000 down to 7,600 patches and lost a lot of detail... I formed the gums to wrap around the teeth... it was necessary to keep that detail, in my opinion. Without it, you have teeth growing out of a bump.

[ypoissant]

Excellent job. I also agree with the comments about the nostril. And the ears need more details too. I think those are the two most disturbing features on your model which break the illusion of reality on an otherwise quite realistic model.

[entity]

Confirmation from Yves... it breaks the illusion so MUST be fixed... Thanks. Details on the nostrals and ears... argggg! That means re-texture.

To quote Dr.Smith:

"Ohhhh, the pain!"

[KenH]

Ken-- HUH?  , I got from 10,000 down to 7,600 patches and lost a lot of detail... I formed the gums to wrap around the teeth... it was necessary to keep that detail, in my opinion. Without it, you have teeth growing out of a bump.

 

Ah...the gums are in there too! Talk about attention to detail!

[entity]

OKAY! I worked on some of the problems with the model... The nostrils have more definition and the ear, well... I guess I'm just not good with ears at all, but I tried...

 

 

Think I'll go to bed now...

[KenH]

Big improvement! I have a pretty decent ear if you ever wanted to use it. But it would probably be alot of hassle to stitch if into the mesh now that it's all textured....Is it me or does the end of the nose look like it has a lump on it? I can see you have a few patches there, so maybe that's intended.

[entity]

I don't think I could handle another ear transplant... I ended up with and error deletion... which is when you delete a part of a hook but not actualy the whole hook and A:M thinks it's still a hook there even though you deleted the other end of the hook... had to delete more than I wanted and replaced more than ears and ended up with about 4 more 5 point patches, modeling H*LL if you ask me! I'd have to be crazy to attempt another. But thank you, I think it gives him character to have incomplete ears...

[entity]

P.S.

Ken-- I still want the ear, so I can install in the female character next. I will credit you an ear... anything you would like in return for your ear?

[HeadlessBill]

anything you would like in return for your ear?

A nice Van Gogh, maybe.

[entity]

HeadlessBill:

You are the king of sarcasm. Thanks. <_>