Polycount Brawl - Killer Instinct - Cinder - MagmaPixel

[MagmaPixel]

I'm reluctantly entering the contest. Not much time left, and I have to learn some new technical stuff in Maya, but hopefully I'll be able to get a good end result.

It's been lot of fun so far. I didn't expect to enjoy it so much. Cinder is my fighter, because he leaves so much room to be creative. You can do all kinds of things with a roughly humanoid ball of fire.

Here's my generalized concept process.




******I COULD USE SOME HELP******
I'm no expert on shaders or different kinds of maps. It's hard to make some things look as good in Maya as it does in Zbrush. I have a basic understanding, but any tips would be appreciated.

Here are some areas I'm interested in.
-Taking Zbrush matcaps to Maya. Is it possible? I want to keep my zbrush shader.
-Any easy ways to make a Maya shader mimic a Zbrush matcap?
-What's the best process for applying texture, lighting, glow, etc, for videogames? Any good Maya tutorials on that?

Basically, I just need more information to make my final output look great in applications other than zbrush, rather than just pretty good. ANYTHING.

[BlueAppleStudio]

This is looking really nice. I'm not completely familiar with the rules of your competition, but I think a luminousity map is something to look at. Paint a black and white map where white defines 100% luminous and black is projecting no light.. That should make the white hot parts of the rocky-lava material stand out.

[MagmaPixel]

I was actually playing around with luminosity maps last night. They'll help.

I guess I'm mostly looking for better methods than my own. I've always felt like there must be better techniques to the technical side of things.

[bbyoshi147]

Looks a lot like Blaze, from Mortal Kombat.

http://mortalkombat.wikia.com/index....e=BlazeArm-jpg