L4D Custom Character
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Up till now all my work has been mid to high poly, so its time to do something low poly. This will be my first character that i'll be creating specifically for a game
so it will be interesting to see how tricky it is to stick to a strict poly limit.
I decided to go for a custom Left 4 Dead character as the source engine is a pretty solid base to work to and something I actually like to play. I decided I wanted to use
the current characters as my polycount target, give or take 1000 tris. I imported the Zoey character to check the detail level and the character us 13k tris. So my personal
target was to remain below 14k tris for this task.
I wanted to jump into this project fairly quickly so used photo references for the style I wanted to go for rather than working on original drawings. I'd just
recently watched the new DJ Hero trailer and thought doing a dancer / club style character would be interesting so started off with that.
This page will work as a basic blog for this piece of work. Not that it really needs it but I have got into the habbit of documenting projects.
I always start with the legs, I thought i'd keep things as simple as possible at the start so hopefully I will end up with left over polys so I
can spend my time detailing up rather than dropping things down.
Adding some more details, also changed the shoes to something a bit more feminine.
I thought i'd try blocking out some colours at this point to get an idea how I might want to do the textures.
Working my way up, added a belly button piercing.
Moving onto the arms and head, I attempted to box model the head, I found this is still a technique that I haven't quite got right yet for the face
so ended up deleting the face and modeling that normally then just using the box modeled head for rest.
Did an AO render this time to see how it would look.
Spent some time refining the face, I often have trouble clearly defining the shape of the nose and resort to throwing extra polys at it, but this time
I needed to keep things simple so took some time to research topology to try and get the most out of it.
Next I got the hands and hair in, giving me a fairly complete base model, there were still a few gaps and objects that weren't attached but at this point it was
starting to look like I was close to the first milestone.
At this point the character was coming in at around 11.5k tris, so I had managed to stay on target and still had a small amount to play with for filling in the
gaps that still remained in the model and potentially getting a bit more detail in.
Before progressing anymore with the model I decided to get the character into the default pose the Zoey character stands in so I could get a better comparision
of proportions to see how well it is going to line up to the bone system.
Just doing a quick soft select edit to move things around, it was clear my characters arms and hands were way to small so I needed to scale these up, the kind
of mistake that is probably a result of working without drawings as guides but easily fixed at least.
One of the reasons I didn't do any drawings is because I wanted to get into the project fairly quickly, but I also wanted to be able to change my mind and keep things
dynamic so I would be open to options as things progressed rather than seeing a specific target result from the start.
And this happened to be the point where I decided I would go for a change in direction.
I thought to myself maybe pyjamas would make for an interesting character and seems quite possible for the game, someone wakes up in chaos and finds
they have to run without having time to get changed so end up stuck in their pyjamas.
So this lead to some more research as I had a specific look I wanted to go for. After some time working out what I wanted to do I started editing the character
to fit the new look.
The chest area needed a fair amount of work, and still does, the shoes are no longer high heels, but the base design is still the same, after making the
adjustments it was working out to be a less detailed model so the polycount dropped by a reasonable amount for this version so I have more options for detailing
if needed.
While I don't consider the model finished, and will still be tweaked, I wanted to try putting together a quick texture so I could visualise the character better
so I cleaned up a few more odd ends and did a quick unwrap and knocked up a basic texture.
Here I have used soft selection as well to get it back to the default pose and stuck it next to zoey for a comparison shot.
Once I got to this point, I was sure I wanted to go ahead with the pyjama version, at this point I have not done any normal mapping so I will
tidy up the mesh a bit more, chest is unusually high for some reason so need to fix that and then get it into zbrush.
Next update doesn't seem like a huge chance as it is mostly tweaks, few mesh tweaks and texture updates. I am tempted to add detail to the feet and
model the toes but it could take the polycount to far if im not carefull.
At this point im quite tempted just to do a quick skin and see how it looks in game then look into polishing things up after seeing how it
looks in engine.
Went ahead with the quick skin plan, and got it in game, had to make a few extra adjustments to align with the bones but didn't get things quite right
as playing the game exposed a few issues that need to be resolved. At the moment the character is missing the specular map as I haven't found out how
to get that working yet so the character lighting looks a mess so I took a screnshot avoiding to much light.
Going from this test version it gives me a good idea what areas need to be improved, so I put together a to do list.
- Get the specular maps working.
- seems the head is to far forward making the neck look really weird.
- Shoulder looks weird when holding shotgun, maybe due to clavicle skinning.
- The hands / fingers seem screwed, probably a skinning issue as I didn't do the fingers properly.
- The hair goes transparent under direct light, this was unexpected and since I haven't added an under layer to the hair this makes
the character look bald in places, this is probably a engine material setting, I will either disable this or adjust the texture so it
looks like their is hair underneath.
- Face animation is gone, would like to get eye movement and blinking working if I can find out how.
- First person mode, while not tested will probably not be working properly.
- Feet / toes need more detail.
- Add more detail to normal map.
After some hunting around I discovered the specular maps were hiding in the alpha channel of the normal maps, this seems to be working but
currently giving a bit of a bleached look so will have to adjust the levels, but its a definate improvement over the plastic wrap look with
the default phong shading on the model.
The model has a problem I did not notice before, the model doesn't case a flashlight shadow, but it does cast a level light shadow
for some reason.
Also attempts at applying a environment map to the eyes caused them to go 100% bright white so I had to remove that for now.
Todays progress was a little disapointing, a lot of problems still unresolved, now the specular is working I will focus on the hair and skinning
as the fingers are still a mess and the hair is the main major issue that is noticed when using the model.
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