This is our enemy unit how it looks with its normal map and diffuse color map in Elemental Shifters. I have learned how to use the cycles rendering with blender where you need to allocate your nodes to be able to see your UV maps which you have created. I am going to improve this character and get it to look like a "Muk like" character improve the normal map so that the model doesnt have flat edges which it shows on the rendering.
The soft light on an infinity plane looks pretty great!
If you're going for something like Mukk, it might be worth checking out some Mukk-like figurines for how they translated the 2D Pokemon forms into 3D. (I searched briefly for whether there was any Mukk in the later Pokemon games, but I didn't see any.) Even if you're not trying to be that close to the Pokemon one, it could be worth looking at them anyway, to try and understand what sort of shapes and proportions make the character appealing.
A similar thing maybe worth checking out is Zak from League of Legends, who's got a gooey look to him. I think it'd be helpful to try and see what it is about his look at makes him look like goo.
@Elyaradine That Zak character is exactly what i would love for our slime monster, but unfortunately I don't have the skills yet to do something like that which i don't know how to, i will look a bit into that character and see if there is someone that did a model more or less the same.
I did look into Jello making yesterday, but that doesn't give the effect i want if i give my character a glass node and a glossy node that will eventually make him look like Jello [INSIDE BLENDER] but how to get that outside into unity would have also have been something to learn, as making nodes for a model doesn't really go along with your character when you export it.
I am even struggling with the creation of textures from scratch, im sure if i did better texturing to this character, it would look 100x better than plain solid colors. And it doesn't let my Normal map i made stand out which i have worked so hard on.
I was actually looking at a Muk picture, which brought me to the conclusion that i need to make the eyes not go as normal but from the sides and give him a wider mouth and tongue. I have not formed the mouth properly as i wanted to, and i maybe should have made more randomness to his general body as well and not just a cupcake top like shape. But i was thinking of how bad the re-topology would be afterwards. I want my models to have as little vertices as possible.
Thank you for the feedback and the information, I will definitely look into getting my character to look like that one day. Seeing that this is the second time working on the character, it will only be a future update where I will focus on improving his looks. :)
@Sonicay, if you save your blender file within the assets folder of your unity project, unity will automatically do the FBX export for you. You can achieve some really good effects with unity's standard shader which is quite easy to use.
Yeah, I don't think the problem's to do with getting the blender file into Unity, so much as how the shader node setup he's got for Cycles for the jello is likely not to work real-time.
-- The Zac character's got some interesting things going in its tech, but it's almost all to do with his rigging and effects. His actual character model and textures are relatively simple (LoL's shading is really simple in general), with only a darkish diffuse texture of gradients, and a cube map with some bright specks of light to make him look more wet. There isn't really anything fancy going on in the shaders otherwise afaik; it's all just painting great painting of textures (or great sculpts to bake from). You can check out his diffuse on LolKing here: www.lolking.net/models?champion=154&skin=0.
I don't know what you're using for your textures, but you might have a better time using a 3D painting application. Photoshop's got a basic one, while 3D Coat, Mudbox, Mari, Cinema 4D, Substance Painter, Quixel Suite and ZBrush provide some alternatives, some of which are relatively affordable or offer cheapish educational licences that you might want to check out.
@petrc yea I do know about the importing of the whole blend file in unity which we already do.
@Elyaradine I have checked that diffuse of Zac before you mentioned it, nd i saw that it was plain, but the character still looked good, thats where it all came down to. Thats why i had to actually improve the model itself, and the painting of the textures itself is something i really need to study more, because i am not clued up on how to do all of the painting from scratch, i do put in time for art in blender every day, doing some practice for painting, will eat even more time. So i think this is a nice learning curve on how ill learn to do things, tonight i am going to sign up with CGCookie and check out all the tutorials they have to offer about blender and watch that during the week while i work and on the weekend and also take a bit of extra time to learn about the concept art part as well. Because making good models and finishing them isn't just blender alone. * It's putting in the time * Thinking out the box if something is 2D * Being artistic * Doing Tutorials * And understand as much as possible about art.
Thats why big companies normally has it like departments like animations department, concept art department, texturing, modeling, etc.
But thx yet again for the input. But when i do post a update for the character, then i will dump it in this blender dump for all to see, and share my experiences of how i learnt to do it.
This is our main character in Elemental shifters, dont know why the rendering looks a bit weird on them, i think i made the strength too much on the normal map :) more updates will be incoming
New update on the slime monster enemy, Just need to do re-topology now and texture him up and animate again :). Im thinking of giving it some features like having a stone in the slime to show that its a earth type monster etc
I am going to let it do snail like movement while using its whole body to squish downwards. As if it is unstable. Thats what i think is the most suitable, i will have the animations that i thought about soon on the forums as well :)
Comments
This is the latest update for our "Slime Monster" in Elemental Shifters
If you're going for something like Mukk, it might be worth checking out some Mukk-like figurines for how they translated the 2D Pokemon forms into 3D. (I searched briefly for whether there was any Mukk in the later Pokemon games, but I didn't see any.) Even if you're not trying to be that close to the Pokemon one, it could be worth looking at them anyway, to try and understand what sort of shapes and proportions make the character appealing.
A similar thing maybe worth checking out is Zak from League of Legends, who's got a gooey look to him. I think it'd be helpful to try and see what it is about his look at makes him look like goo.
I did look into Jello making yesterday, but that doesn't give the effect i want if i give my character a glass node and a glossy node that will eventually make him look like Jello [INSIDE BLENDER] but how to get that outside into unity would have also have been something to learn, as making nodes for a model doesn't really go along with your character when you export it.
I am even struggling with the creation of textures from scratch, im sure if i did better texturing to this character, it would look 100x better than plain solid colors. And it doesn't let my Normal map i made stand out which i have worked so hard on.
I was actually looking at a Muk picture, which brought me to the conclusion that i need to make the eyes not go as normal but from the sides and give him a wider mouth and tongue. I have not formed the mouth properly as i wanted to, and i maybe should have made more randomness to his general body as well and not just a cupcake top like shape. But i was thinking of how bad the re-topology would be afterwards. I want my models to have as little vertices as possible.
Thank you for the feedback and the information, I will definitely look into getting my character to look like that one day. Seeing that this is the second time working on the character, it will only be a future update where I will focus on improving his looks. :)
--
The Zac character's got some interesting things going in its tech, but it's almost all to do with his rigging and effects. His actual character model and textures are relatively simple (LoL's shading is really simple in general), with only a darkish diffuse texture of gradients, and a cube map with some bright specks of light to make him look more wet. There isn't really anything fancy going on in the shaders otherwise afaik; it's all just painting great painting of textures (or great sculpts to bake from). You can check out his diffuse on LolKing here: www.lolking.net/models?champion=154&skin=0.
I don't know what you're using for your textures, but you might have a better time using a 3D painting application. Photoshop's got a basic one, while 3D Coat, Mudbox, Mari, Cinema 4D, Substance Painter, Quixel Suite and ZBrush provide some alternatives, some of which are relatively affordable or offer cheapish educational licences that you might want to check out.
@Elyaradine I have checked that diffuse of Zac before you mentioned it, nd i saw that it was plain, but the character still looked good, thats where it all came down to. Thats why i had to actually improve the model itself, and the painting of the textures itself is something i really need to study more, because i am not clued up on how to do all of the painting from scratch, i do put in time for art in blender every day, doing some practice for painting, will eat even more time. So i think this is a nice learning curve on how ill learn to do things, tonight i am going to sign up with CGCookie and check out all the tutorials they have to offer about blender and watch that during the week while i work and on the weekend and also take a bit of extra time to learn about the concept art part as well. Because making good models and finishing them isn't just blender alone.
* It's putting in the time
* Thinking out the box if something is 2D
* Being artistic
* Doing Tutorials
* And understand as much as possible about art.
Thats why big companies normally has it like departments like animations department, concept art department, texturing, modeling, etc.
But thx yet again for the input.
But when i do post a update for the character, then i will dump it in this blender dump for all to see, and share my experiences of how i learnt to do it.
This is the latest update for all our slime monsters with all their skins in Elemental Shifters
This is our main character in Elemental shifters, dont know why the rendering looks a bit weird on them, i think i made the strength too much on the normal map :) more updates will be incoming
The basic animation for the characters and the attacking animation
New update on the slime monster enemy, Just need to do re-topology now and texture him up and animate again :). Im thinking of giving it some features like having a stone in the slime to show that its a earth type monster etc
How are you envisioning the animation here more of a snail like movement or a flopping?