I was kind of burnt out from work after the stupidly busy weekend I had last week, so I spent a lot less time on these, and a lot more time away from the computer. So they look much less impressive. XD But I think part of being professional is being able to work even when you don't want to, even when you're not "feeling it", so here's the result. >_<
Been drowning in another batch of contract work, so to feed my soul I've been doing a fan art thing for one of Legion Ink's challenges, which was to do a sketch of a woman from a fighting game. Some wip! Wanted to take a break from the sketchy, concept-art, speed-paint kind of stuff, and try and do the soft shading I see in a lot of Chinese, Korean and Russian game artists' work.
You see, you're going to have to be very careful here. Someone is going to throw large amounts of cash at you to do their game art or they might abduct you like in Steven King's "Misery" and force you to create awesome like this for free! Hey, there's an idea! :)
Screenshot of the wip for the demon hunter sculpt. Mostly cleanup, especially on the shoulders and the buckles, and just generally making things less lumpy. Next up, cleaning up the corset and refining the hood, depending on my mood. XD
A Blizzard tech artist who worked on Diablo 3 "liked" it on Facebook! :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
Took a break this week to try and understand light better. I know the physics and how light works, but actually applying the theoretical knowledge to a 2D image is trickier than I thought. I had a couple of artists I highly respect think that it was a 3D render earlier on, which I thought was a great achievement. XD
Also I lost my earphones recently, and I missed them for serving me well, so I scribbled something sentimental.
The knitting monster, ugh. I painted his head, then decided no thanks, and photo-bashed his body and hands. Still took a little while to massage them in and make them not look bashed, but it was a lot faster. :D
@garethf At first I thought the hair on the knitting monster was *too* perfect, but then I realised it was a GRANDMA monster... duh.
Even though @Elyaradine refers to "her" as "him"? ("his head"). I am curious now... :) (Edit: unless those are chop-sticks or some kinda implements of death - no the expression is fearful... frail - Okay, I am confused - *me curls up in a ball, what does it all mean?*)
Haha! I kind of imagined him as being this guy who actually likes wearing a wig, knitting and stuff, but how he's embarrassed about it, so he does it in private. But in the painting, he looks so surprised/guilty because of how the viewer's walked in on his private moment.
@wogan: It's hours burnt well into the night, much more than it is some magical talent pill. :P
I only painted the water on this one.
-- Also, I'm entering the Riot contest on polycount. :D
I'm taking that Irelia illustration I did last year, reworking it a bit, and turning that into a 3D model. I'm skipping the sculpting, going to hand-paint the textures straight up instead, and also planning to rig, animate, add fx, and have a playable Unity web player demo to go along with it. Because I'm stupid and ambitious. But also because I can actually do it, and I'm going to damn well show the world I can.
@wogan: It's hours burnt well into the night, much more than it is some magical talent pill. :P
I haven't always realized this but now(since I've seen the hard work it takes) it's seems even more magical. :D Good work man, I love the house. Where does the bucket go to though? Does it fetch water from some stream far below?
@Rigormortis: It actually feeds the art monster who's living in the basement. (He's kept all the way down there to avoid ambient light from giving his monitor screen glare, or ruining his colour calibration.)
Also, that's the last of my painting assignments with Sam Nielson. So it's actually one of his sketches that I just coloured (although I made tiny changes where I felt it'd be cool).
@Kobusvdwalt9: Thanks! Yeah, two or three were studies of screenshots from the series. :)
@Boysano: Well, technically nothing on this last page is game art yet. :P (The Irelia model will, at long last, be another game model.) These are all just practising, because I'm already very comfortable with the technical side of getting things working with a realtime renderer, so I've been focusing a lot more in the past few months on being a stronger artist. The painting especially helps a lot when it comes to hand-painted textures, which is something I'm excited to get to do in the Riot contest.
Yes. I honestly enjoyed unwrapping the most when I was doing 3D modeling stuff back in the day. The feeling of having a model sort of "come apart" and then laying it out on the texture sheet, figuring out the best way to cut it all up and figure out where you want extra texels, that speaks to me somehow. Especially when it's all folded back together and now suddenly you've got a working texture map... Magic :)
@dislekcia: Wow, okay. :D I don't really enjoy unwrapping, but I've been lazy enough times -- and therefore gotten screwed over by it enough times -- that I take my time and do a good job of it now. It helps that unwrapping tools have improved a crapload over the years, especially with the introduction of the LSCM-based algorithms. :3
-- A colleague at work pointed out that my texel density wasn't great, and I agreed. I run a normalization script on my UV islands that's supposed to take care of that, but it seems that it was failing in this case. Rescaled and repacked, and started experimenting with the new Photoshop CC2014 3D painting tools for blocking in colour (though nothing worth showing yet).
Also started a basic rig. I'd like to animate everything myself, but there's a chance that if I do, I won't finish, especially given that I'm planning to do way more animation than they need for the competition. (The comp requires two, but for a set of animations that I can run in the game, I'd need more like... 6 or 7.) So... I'm thinking about roping in a friend to help with the additional ones. Not as cool as saying I did everything myself, but I'll still get enough done to enter the animation comp I think.
Sure! The topology's unlikely to change, but I may still massage the forms some to get a bit more structure, especially out of those lumpy-looking feet. Sitting at 5,567 triangles for just her, and 8,683 triangles in total.
Hand-painting specular's way harder than I thought. Especially considering spec is camera-dependent, so sort of need to paint spec that doesn't really have a direction I think... I dunno, still figuring it out. XD
As for specular maps. If you figure it out please share some advise. Just started my own journey on specular maps. Trying to find some cheat methods as opposed to hand painting every single section.
Even though i know what specular maps are intended to do. Actually looking at reference images and deciding which parts require more specularity is damn hard for some reason.
I don't struggle with specular maps. It's painting the specular -- which is a phenomenon that's based on view direction -- onto a flat diffuse, which I'm struggling with, because it isn't true specular. I end up having to stylise it into some sort of ambiguous, view-independent thing. >_<
I updated the build last night with textures and a run animation that's still wip (and other animations are missing, so lots of sliding T-poses :D ). For some reason, it doesn't run in my Chrome. I wonder if it's just me, or if it's breaking on Chrome in general... seems to work fine in Opera and Firefox, and standalone and mobile builds work fine. :/
I can feel some stiffness, but I'm not sure which parts you're still animating - for instance the hair in the GIF has way more bounce than the hair in the demo, and looks better as a result. One obvious area for improvement in reducing overall stiffness is the thing floating behind her head. It should probably oscillate its yaw a little, and strafe a little from side-to-side. Also the green flaps should be fluttering about. But as I suggested, I think this is something you were probably going to get to anyway. So which part is stiff that you're "done" with?
This is so cool man!! I love her chest plate :D The stiffness is a result of things happening at the same time, so overlapping action is whats gonna get you away from that robot feel. Her left upper arm has a little bit of it, but her lower arms seem completely locked, if you try run the way she is, you'll quickly see that your arms feel really awkward locked. so too with her wrists. You could also try lifting the shoulders and then dropping them a frame or two after the feet make contact. Her knees looking like the popping. Her general up and down is quite timid and that might be on purpose, but in game view you can hardly tell. One last thing that can help make it look less "cycley" is to duplicate your frames over to make a double or triple length normal cycle and then play around with the paths the limbs so that you get a more interesting movement. but seriously if you haven't yet, take a run around in her pose and then pay close attention to your different limbs and how they move, naturally. Looking forward to seeing your final entry man it's looking really cool.
Comments
Been drowning in another batch of contract work, so to feed my soul I've been doing a fan art thing for one of Legion Ink's challenges, which was to do a sketch of a woman from a fighting game. Some wip! Wanted to take a break from the sketchy, concept-art, speed-paint kind of stuff, and try and do the soft shading I see in a lot of Chinese, Korean and Russian game artists' work.
(Snuck another update in here.)
This was done from the female demon hunter concept art from Diablo 3.
A Blizzard tech artist who worked on Diablo 3 "liked" it on Facebook! :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
Also I lost my earphones recently, and I missed them for serving me well, so I scribbled something sentimental.
More!
(And the hair on your knitting monster, omg. What a pain that must have been. ;) )
The knitting monster, ugh. I painted his head, then decided no thanks, and photo-bashed his body and hands. Still took a little while to massage them in and make them not look bashed, but it was a lot faster. :D
Even though @Elyaradine refers to "her" as "him"? ("his head"). I am curious now... :) (Edit: unless those are chop-sticks or some kinda implements of death - no the expression is fearful... frail - Okay, I am confused - *me curls up in a ball, what does it all mean?*)
I only painted the water on this one.
--
Also, I'm entering the Riot contest on polycount. :D
I'm taking that Irelia illustration I did last year, reworking it a bit, and turning that into a 3D model. I'm skipping the sculpting, going to hand-paint the textures straight up instead, and also planning to rig, animate, add fx, and have a playable Unity web player demo to go along with it. Because I'm stupid and ambitious. But also because I can actually do it, and I'm going to damn well show the world I can.
@Rigormortis: It actually feeds the art monster who's living in the basement. (He's kept all the way down there to avoid ambient light from giving his monitor screen glare, or ruining his colour calibration.)
Also, that's the last of my painting assignments with Sam Nielson. So it's actually one of his sketches that I just coloured (although I made tiny changes where I felt it'd be cool).
@Boysano: Well, technically nothing on this last page is game art yet. :P (The Irelia model will, at long last, be another game model.) These are all just practising, because I'm already very comfortable with the technical side of getting things working with a realtime renderer, so I've been focusing a lot more in the past few months on being a stronger artist. The painting especially helps a lot when it comes to hand-painted textures, which is something I'm excited to get to do in the Riot contest.
Also been dabbling in Unity and getting something going... :)
http://techartjon.com/projects/riotcomp/__Build.html (~225KB)
I also realised I haven't budgeted for sound. Going to have to ask someone for help with that in a couple of weeks!
Soooo much :)
@dislekcia: Are you serious? :P
--
A colleague at work pointed out that my texel density wasn't great, and I agreed. I run a normalization script on my UV islands that's supposed to take care of that, but it seems that it was failing in this case. Rescaled and repacked, and started experimenting with the new Photoshop CC2014 3D painting tools for blocking in colour (though nothing worth showing yet).
Also started a basic rig. I'd like to animate everything myself, but there's a chance that if I do, I won't finish, especially given that I'm planning to do way more animation than they need for the competition. (The comp requires two, but for a set of animations that I can run in the game, I'd need more like... 6 or 7.) So... I'm thinking about roping in a friend to help with the additional ones. Not as cool as saying I did everything myself, but I'll still get enough done to enter the animation comp I think.
As for specular maps. If you figure it out please share some advise. Just started my own journey on specular maps. Trying to find some cheat methods as opposed to hand painting every single section.
Even though i know what specular maps are intended to do. Actually looking at reference images and deciding which parts require more specularity is damn hard for some reason.
http://techartjon.com/projects/riotcomp/__Build.html
I can feel some stiffness, but I'm not sure which parts you're still animating - for instance the hair in the GIF has way more bounce than the hair in the demo, and looks better as a result.
One obvious area for improvement in reducing overall stiffness is the thing floating behind her head. It should probably oscillate its yaw a little, and strafe a little from side-to-side. Also the green flaps should be fluttering about. But as I suggested, I think this is something you were probably going to get to anyway. So which part is stiff that you're "done" with?
I like how this is coming along. Keep it up! :D
The stiffness is a result of things happening at the same time, so overlapping action is whats gonna get you away from that robot feel.
Her left upper arm has a little bit of it, but her lower arms seem completely locked, if you try run the way she is, you'll quickly see that your arms feel really awkward locked. so too with her wrists. You could also try lifting the shoulders and then dropping them a frame or two after the feet make contact. Her knees looking like the popping. Her general up and down is quite timid and that might be on purpose, but in game view you can hardly tell. One last thing that can help make it look less "cycley" is to duplicate your frames over to make a double or triple length normal cycle and then play around with the paths the limbs so that you get a more interesting movement. but seriously if you haven't yet, take a run around in her pose and then pay close attention to your different limbs and how they move, naturally.
Looking forward to seeing your final entry man it's looking really cool.
TONIGHT SHE WILL BE AWESOME