A Moment Of Victory

[robo3687]

So I'm currently taking part in a 2 month Hardcore Modeling Challenge over at CGtalk (come and join in: http://forums.cgsociety.org/forumdisplay.php?f=208 ) and the current subject is 'Sports in Motion'

I've decided to cross post my progress over here as well since it's been a while since I've had an ongoing thread here at ZBC.

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Chosen Sport: American Football/Gridiron (I'll probably just refer to it as football form hereon in)


Idea: The plan is not to recreate a specific player but rather create my own. For the challenge I'll be creating one image, a 'moment of victory' as the player is running down the field to score a game winning touchdown.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to produce a model that I'll be able to rig and pose several different ways (and I guess animate as well) as I'd like to make several images (not until after the challenge though, unless I have time) covering my created guys entire 'career' from college to the Hall of Fame.

Deadline: 1st October 2012 (eep)

My Reference 'Mood Board'

I've had this concept of doing a series of images covering a 'career' for a little while now, and I needed to try and find my guy. I didn't want to recreate an existing player so I fired up NCAA Football 13 on my PS3 and created my guy that I would base this challenge on.

So without further ado



Tyvonn Tanner (aka T2, or 'The Judge') is a running back, playing for the Oregon Ducks (not sure who he'll play for in the pro's yet).



I've been playing through NCAA 13's Road to Glory mode with him for a week or two and will eventually recreate him in Madden 13 to play out his professional career. The real kicker is that this year in Madden they've got EA's Gameface tech implemented so I'll actually be able to import the face I've created for Tyvonn into the game...which is kinda mind bending....lol...


But first I have to create his face, which is what I tackled yesterday afternoon/night soon after the challenge went up.


Here's where it's at currently:




For about 4-5 hours work I'm pretty pleased with it, I can certainly see improvements over my last few attempts at heads, especially in the speed department. I reckon I had the main bulk of the head sorted within an hour, and just spent the rest of the time fiddling...lol...

[robo3687]

3rd August Update
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Spent some time on the helmet this afternoon, trying out something new.

You may have heard of Autodesk's 123d Catch (http://www.123dapp.com/catch ), it used to be called Photofly. Basically you take a bunch of pictures of an object and it takes them, stitches them together and creates a reasonably accurate 3d model.

Now I actually own a Riddel Revolution Speed helmet, so I thought I'd give it a try. Basically it didn't work so well, the program seems to have issues with shiny surfaces. The model came out like a bullet ridden piece of cheese.

But it did actually line all the photos up correctly. So I was able to export a scene with about 50 camera's all with a reference image (almost) perfectly lined up. It was like the ultimate set of blueprints, even if every picture didn't match up just right, it seems I'll have enough to model the whole helmet out.

this is the setup in max



and the finished base model for the helmet




and i also brought the head into max for a quick render



6th of August Update
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Head Progress


Tweaked the shape of the head a bit, he was kind of leaning a little towards a Chad Johnson (nee Ochocinco nee Johnson) kind of look, so I wanted to change it a bit, make him a bit younger looking. I made the lips bigger, pulled them out a little, changed the nose slightly, straightened the brow, softened some of the wrinkles and adjusted the shape of the jaw a bit.


I also did a rough texture and did some quick hair/eyebrows/beard...just trying different looks



EDIT: i am aware how noisy the renders are...a combo of low settings and brightening up a render that was too dark...and being too lazy to re-render...lol
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Helmet Progress


Did some work on a few little greebly bits for the helmet.





This facemask clip was a little bugger to work out, after false starting a few times trying to eyeball it I ended up getting out the ruler and measuring every possible angle of it. As I measured I built spline guides and I ended up with this nifty little framework.



from there the modelling was fairly straightforward, just a case of building within the framework while keeping nice clean topology.



and a few more little accessories, including the Riddell forehead nameplate, chinstrap clip and padding inflation valve.

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[Ehren]

Great modeling man. Love the way you modeled the helmet.

[robo3687]

8th of August Update


Helmet Progress


Made the chincup and chinstrap for the helmet.




and here's the helmet with all the little nick-knacks i've done so far on it.





Shoes


The shoes I'll be making are the new Nike Vapor Talon Elite's



Since I own a pair of these and they're a very complex and involved shape I figured I'd try a combo of the methods from modeling the helmet and helmet clip.


The model that 123d catch generated was again a globby bullet ridden mess, but again the photos were lined up great. So i set about placing a metric crap ton of splines....and after about 3 hours I had this





I haven't gone near the sole yet...i'm going to have to eyeball/measure it or something...




9th of August Update
Shoe Progress
started fleshing out the shoe upper





I'm not entirely sure if this approach will work for the shoe as far as producing a finished product...might just end up being an intermediate step...i guess that's what i get for making it up as i go along...lol




Body Progress
I made that start on the body, doing it in a separate subtool for now and i'll join it up later on when I retopo...




i'm feeling like its a little wide and blocky/flat at the moment but I'll fix that up tomorrow....


Head Progress


Not much in the way of sculpting changes, main thing is a new texture and playing with the render.... I got a bunch of reference from 3d.sk and did a test of a head texture. Pretty happy with it so far, even if I will eventually have to redo it once the body is attached...

[Dmonk]

Looking good! 123d catch is very particular in my experience. I always got very mixed results.