James Riktor: Starfall

[system]

Hi there, my name is Tony Kidd and I’m a character artist on Starfall – an Unreal III mod being created by the Game Wizards videogame production team. This work in progress is James Riktor – a futuristic centurion. The concept was done by Patrick Loughman and given to me for modeling and texturing. Textures and renders were all done with Zbrush materials, polypainting and Photoshop and are not what the final image will be. Eventually they’ll be imported into engine and converted to material nodes.

[font=Calibri]I hope you like and feedback welcome… peace!

[system]

Concept by Patrick Loughman…

[attach=136129]patrickCENTURION_small.jpg[/attach]

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[system]

Initially the helmet wasn’t capturing the likeness of the concept enough so I brought in an image plane and tweaked the mesh over it as a guide. At this point I wanted a clean version of the meshes like the parts had come straight from the factory. If it was approved then I’d crank up a 3D layer and add some battle damage.

[attach=136133]jr_head.jpg[/attach]

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[system]

[attach=136134]2nd_detail_pass_02.jpg[/attach]

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[system]

[attach=136136]2nd_detail_pass_01.jpg[/attach]

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[system]

I prepared some custom alphas to get the details in the armor using Pat’s concept as a guide for most of the shapes and making black and white height maps in Adobe Illustrator. My bullet impacts came from the Alpha library and a jpeg of broken glass.

[attach=136137]alphas.jpg[/attach]

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[system]

First color pass - My friend Gore called me out for not adding more noise and keeping the arms smooth as a baby while I battered the armor so I was obliged to correct it (lol, thanks)

[attach=136138]1st_color_pass_01.jpg[/attach]
[attach=136139]1st_color_pass_03.jpg[/attach]
[attach=136141]2st_color_pass_01.jpg[/attach]
[attach=136142]2st_color_pass_03.jpg[/attach]
[attach=136143]arms.jpg[/attach]
[attach=136145]j_r_body_diffuse_02.jpg[/attach]
[attach=136146]j_r_helmet_diffuse_work_01.jpg[/attach]
[attach=136147]JR_body_normals.jpg[/attach]
[attach=136148]j_r_helmet_normals.jpg[/attach]

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[system]

I found out today that the mod will be using the Gears of War variant of the UT3 engine and so the back view of the character will be seen OFTEN. Unfortunately all the detail was on the front of the character… I started playing with shapes to add some visual interest to the back - still working on it…

[attach=136149]new_back.jpg[/attach]

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[Rory_L]

Holy Cow! You’ve filled the whole bottom row with your WIP images!

The How to Post Images at ZBC thread says this:-

If you don’t want a specific image to create a thumbnail in the bottom row, change the ATT and /ATT to ATN and /ATN

Cheers,

R

[system]

oops, my bad…

[tommy3d]

Very nice work

I like the alphas

[system]

Thanks tommy3D…

[Rory_L]

Wonderfully elaborate alphas, but why done in Illustrator? Drawing masks directly onto your model in ZBrush gives a far more immediate feedback. Simple shapes like the crotch patch can be drawn on as a mask and then elevated with Tool/Deformation/Inflat. I polypaint more complicated designs in black and white straight onto the model and mask by intensity. If I want to keep te design I convert it to a texture, Col>Txr, and save it out for future use.

You could have modelled the more sculptural alphas onto a poly plane, grabbing the alpha from the document; Alpha/GrabDoc. The skulls and small face alpha would have been ideally suited to this method.

As an aside, the animator in me wants to say that the shoulder pads look like a problem; the big one particularly. To avoid lots of intersecting with the neck and chest, the character will have very restricted movement there.

The hands look good in the rear view.

Cheers,

R

[system]

I use masks and tool/deformation/inflate as well for simple things like the plates and borders on the armor. Illustrator allowed me to not only closely follow the patterns in the concept but it gave me clean lines very quickly. It would have taken much longer to try and paint in those masks with the same level of accuracy (painting/erasing/comparing concept to model). If the details hadn’t been so intricate I would have used the method you described. LOL, you are correct about the crotch patch and the fasteners as well – it was simply due to the fact that while I had illustrator open I did everything there.

You may be right about the pads… I’ll have to wait to see what the rigger is telling me about problem areas and will adjust accordingly. Thanks a bunch for the feedback.

Added detail to the back of the armor…

[Aliasfx]

Hello my friend, model looks good so far . BUT if you plan to go towards mo ingame version you should recosnider your uv’s , you waist to much space , need more optimal unwrap ( give more space for more important pieces wich will require mo fine details ), unless you will only have 1 character. All your details will be washed out by compression during the export once you resize to more realistic size for the engine if you leave it as it is. So keep in mind optimization constraint is very important if you want to build playable ingame model and not just a beautiful zbrush sculpt.
Keep working hard and good luck for your mod.

Al

[system]

The tutorials I found on importing ut3 characters stated that you needed to do some very specific things with textures and the meshes. For example the UVs for all the parts needed to be in the listed areas - which is the only reason I did it this way. The helmet page is mostly blank because I didn’t need/have any of the other accessories. Am I wrong about this or are you saying that I need to still re-arrange in the template they provided?

Thanks for the feedback

[attach=136257]body_template_small.gif[/attach]

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[caffeineandpixels]

The great thing about doing them in Illustrator is that vector art can be scaled up or down without any loss in detail (And you might also need some of those elements as high res art for marketing material and that sort of stuff.). Plus, most logos and such are done in Illustrator as well so it makes complete sense to me. When it’s more organic stuff then I’d use Photoshop or paint right on the models.

[u3190]

I know you did this a while ago, but can you post some images of the final ut3 character?

[system]

How do you make these types of black and white images in illustrator? I have been scouring the net trying to figure it out. I have heard that it was possible but for weeks have not been able to figure it out.

Thanks in advance.

Jimmy