o_o

Hungover still from my 21st, i did so much last week before my birthday and was out all over the weekend. I'm only 21 once though but i didn't get chance to get much work done however i have pulled it together today with fresh eyes and finally sorted my bloody armour out to a stage that i finally like. I have her pauldrons done, neck peice and now doing her boots and the back of her breastplate is also done. Lacks a proper specular, normal map but it'll come soon i'm going to work my ass off on her this week along with my dissertation. These last few weeks will be full of my dedication to her and the ostrich, i will hopefully be completed. I have almost everything done except her helmet, the ostrich only needs his legs doing i have unwrapped them.

Female Helm

Heres her helm design. I didn't really have a concept of it, this is more of a sketchbook thing just blocking out the shapes and design of the side of her helm. It'll help me with the 3d version of her helmet next week.

Update, skull.

I worked into the skull a bit and now i am going back to my character to see if i can sort her shobby texture out. Hopefully i can, i wanna push myself so much to get her looking brilliant. I have been observing in games how they get the Armour it's kinda difficult to tell by eye what their unwrap would look like with the flat texture. Most of them seem to be flat colour ect. I am going to research round more and fill up more and more folders for my work. I think my best bet is to look at artists who maybe work on online games ect or people who mod oblivion amours.

Hope you guys like this progress so far, i'm thinking of having his lance cracking the earth beneath him and lava coming up beneath the lance however i'm not sure it could be to much but it's worth a test to see and might give nice hues against the armour. I also am actually trying to figure out the positioning of his arm because the skull is rather large. Should i decrease the size of it? I'm also having a few issues with his stance but i have a duplicate underneath with a fuller chest which i think looks better but it's hidden until i get his other arm in.

Update

Just blocked in some colour, needed to see if it'd work well.

Must go on!

I recently had a accident with this drawing and managed to recover i don't have time to start again. I like the idea of the guy being demonic, i like the face i drew too it can be removable but i actually think it add's nicley into the drawing. The eyes need more work i want them to glow. Currently in process T_T needs loads of work.

Bad guy update

Heres a quick update of some of the drawing i did on him @_@

Max = craps

Haha it nevers look as nice as mudbox does when you add it into max however a lot of the body is armoured ect i just aint got that in yet. Thats more of less my last minute fun after my character is done my main priority is to not add anymore but texture what i have. I unwrapped the top parts of the legs, deicidng whether to use a material for the pipes and make a really nice interesting chrome look to them. I unwrapped it's jacket and now it's looking a little bit 'steampunkish'.

Ostrich

Texturing via mudbox. Hopefully i wont come out with nasty errors again cause its really distressing letting my hard work go to waste. I managed to fix a dodgey error i got when importing it in, it messed up my uv for no reason whatsoever. Heres the Ostrich! Need loads of work, photoshopping and not to mention feathers which will come in a while. I'm debating the legs at the moment maybe ill add some bruised pinkess where the bolts are going into the leg of the ostrich.

Rethinking ideas.

I came in on Monday and Stas had a look and said i need to really push stuff so i have rethought some of the leg area, i am still thinking on ideas for the feet and have added thigh armour. I also started to make feathers for the ostrich.

Quick pics

Heres some more pics slapped together for my final hand in these will obviously be more professional looking. This is just to show what im doing.

Ostrich Biped

I actually started to skin this thing but it all fit really well. I still need to model some more bits to the ostrch armour wise and then texture the armour and feathers. Coming along well though :D Tail and wings work suprisngly well, i researched a little into ostrich anatomy and the way they use their wings. It's to slow them down ect. But yeh i got some work out and Marmoset finally works on my pc for some nice final renders. I've been debating maybe a small animation too of the character mounted and the ostrich speeding into a run then pounce.

Ostrich Progress

Progressing with the ostrich, clearing my head with the character a little bit. I've done the legs just about the same as my concept and the orginal game. I have added in these longer thin wires it was for a idea of gliders as the ostrich jumps because a Ostrich can't fly and it would be nice to have the Ostirch maybe glide down to platforms within game. I was even thinking of going as far as having some sort of controller on the saddle that the player uses to on the keyboard/controller to controll jumping. Ostrich still needs more work but heres the almost complete thing. I need to armour some of the main assets of the Ostrich body though.

Tweaked

I tweaked some of the colours. i know the orginal Jouster was in pure gold armour but i'm not sure i can pull this look off well so to still stay with the golden colour i will add it as a sheen over the armour. So when light hits it shines gold. Heres a quick render of what i have so far, it's a bit lumpy, messy and jaggedy but aslong as i have the basics down i can get the basics out the way and sort the mount out.

More pics

Advice be great, LOL. I think she looks a bit...scraggy and no depth atm i geuss i should wait until i get the normal maps in before i judge. Gona cut that pattern down i think on her legs it seems to much but no problem to fix. :(

Any Advice?

I think i may have to redo the characters chestplate. Anything i've done in the past 10 hours ive been sat here isn't working for this character at all. She either looks terrible, overdone or stretched and i have gone in and tweaked. I think the bottom of the breastplate is to complex. If anybody has any suggestions or help or any information on how i can possible get a decent looking texture going on this character it would be great! I'm stressing like crazy cause i've been at her for hours trina figure out why any normal maps i do look awfull LOL along with me having to use xnormal cause Max got assey with the render to texture technique :(. It's a shame cause all this time i'm putting into her just isn't showing in any of my work and I am really trying but struggling aswell cause of mudbox breaking on me (some sort of conflict i was reading up, i tried reinstall ect but can still only use the older version which sucks). I know i could have her done really soon i tried hand painting the texture but i'm not sure if that would be enough for a fmp project? I would think photographic images would be involved ect. Any advice would be great anyway I have looked around at how artists texture armour and it's all highly professional cg artists and half the stuff they do is blank to my mind and not really achievable unless i go back to modelling and thats time i don't have. @_@ I think my previous characters look more professional than what i've done with this character and it's highly disappointing because i really want to prove myself.

Anyway i can only try my best, i have tried several ways of texturing so far. Photographs look ok but still they just look really shoddy, unclean even if i do spend 4 hours shading out all the crazy reflections. I tried reflection maps ect. I think it could be coming down to the lack of a normal map. I don't get whats gone wrong but since my mudbox broke it's been a horrible pain in the ass with my normals i sometimes get the error during normal rendering too so i'm not sure if this is actually a issue. Crazy haha.

-_-;

Mudbox decided to break again, including the older version this time. Getting these runetime errors for no reason whatsoever. I fixed the older mudbox but its still a bit unstable but i have no choice to work in it. I tried the beading Dean mentioned, it just keeps coming out like childs work and it's frustrating me. No matter what i do it looks a complete mess, it looks really stretched or wonky or just looks ablsolutley awfull. I'm gona sleep on it anyway. the character is fully unwrapped and ready for texturing but getting going on this process with her again is just really putting me in a bad mood because she looks so bad when textures im starting to think my model is to blame.