Platypus_Green - The Slayer - ?

[platypus_green]

Going with a contempary slayer, using mostley contempary weoponary (maybe with artifact enhancement).
Not too sure where I'm going to head with this, but got some things blocked out to try things. Thinking along the lines of a slayer with traces of a demon bloodline.

[Joseph Pomeisl]

smooth.

[Identity3d]

Really cool idea cant wait to see what you come up with she is looking great so far

[chris_solo]

sexy!

[hellkorgi]

Cool start and idea! Look forward to see more.

[platypus_green]

Still at the doodling stage, trying things out.
I know it's just about two weeks left for this contest. Must hurry.

[setschaos]

I always look forward to your work. Always very detailed, even in the very first stages. GL with the time limit!

[platypus_green]

OK, since I will have no time left if I keep on procrastinating at the concept stage i'm going to leave the concept at this and start the 3d model now.

[spindraft]

Great concepts man. It's interesting to see your progression from the first painting to this, totally didn't see it coming.

Can't wait to see the execution. ;)

[platypus_green]

Starting to block in the basic forms. I think i'm going to try and model this completely in Blender, texture map baking probably with xnormal.
(Hands are temperary hands from another model imported just to check proportions)

[platypus_green]

And another small update.

[xxxcubanxxx]

Great design man, and the model is looking sweet so far. Make sure you get those thick legs on the concept over to the model, really like that. :wave:

[pogimonz]

wow! that concept art is amazing.. if you could get the 3d version close to that, hands down dood!.. she kinda has that resident evil look, I like it..

[chris_solo]

great progress so far and fast!!! keep it up.

[mies]

You work fast! and its looks very nice ^^ keep it up.

[platypus_green]

xxxcubanxxx: Yeah, legs are something I find really hard to model. Especially the thigh/hip area.
Pogimonz: Gah, it does have the Resident Evil look. no time to change things. Ah well.

[platypus_green]

Small tweaks and such.
I think i'm fairly happy with the placement of the basic forms now so I think it's about time to start the detailing.
I also need to do the weapons, not too sure about those yet.

[xxxcubanxxx]

forms look good dude, kick some ass on the detailing & and this will rock.

[chris_solo]

nice progress, you did everything in Blender, I would have liked to see the progression in Blender, it would have served to learn, I'm starting over but I love this soft :)

[platypus_green]

Blender is ace. I'm really liking it atm. When I first looked at it some 8 years ago I couldn't make head or tails of it. but a year ago I took another look at it and loved it.
The 'solidify selection' script in mesh edit mode is really ace for making peices of armour and giving thickness to things like clothing.
Blender's keyboard shortcut based modeling system really is fast once you have taken the time to learn them.

Sorry for not posting all that many updates, but I kinda get into the flow of things and not think about much else than modeling.

[platypus_green]

Trying the blender sculpting tools. They are not that fast, but can produce fair results.
Not sure whether to go with tight trousers as in the concept or more loose as i've sculpted here.
Leg proportions still needs some work. This was only a test.

[xxxcubanxxx]

I think either way looks good, I prefer the tight ones anyways you are always gonna have a bit of wrinkles even if it is super tight.

[avishek]

looking good. I think a little loose on the trousers will look cool. Like wise, the Left leg is OK. :)

[platypus_green]

Working on the boots.

[platypus_green]

And another boot update.

[chris_solo]

oO! very nice details! I would like to know Blender as well!

[platypus_green]

Checking the scale of the main weapon. It's supposed to be large.
Modeled the glove details in and cleaned up bits here and there, probably unnoticable. Also reworked the legs, still not happy with them, but probably will never be.

Blender is a great application, I really like it's modeling tools. There are few programs where you can work in one single maximised viewport and do most of your modeling without having to show any toolbars or options windows. Using shortcut keys to do things like extrude, bevel, join faces, cut, smooth, etc. I'd recommend taking acouple of hours to try to get to grips with the modeling tools. I initially found the whole right click selection a bit awkward at first, but now it's second nature. (also there's an option to make it left click select instead for those who really dont like it).
Pity Blender (I'm using Blender 2.49b) currently can't handle high polycounts all that well. But it is being re-written atm with Blender 2.5 (currently in testing); which is supposed to have better optimisations for sculpting and the opengl viewport, here's hoping that it does handle large polycounts better.

[platypus_green]

Starting on the main weapon. Sorry to all the weapon fanatics out there as to the poor design, i'm kinda improvising as I go.

I'm thinking that the clips will contain some sort of biological weapon infused projectiles that are deadly to demon-esque beings. Will probably make the clips glow a bit. Will wait for the texturing stage to play with that.

I'm always slow at hard surface modeling, but hope to get this done in the next day or so. As I aim to get all the high poly model done by the weekend. Then have a week to do the low poly and baking/texturing. Isn't really all that much time left.

[xxxcubanxxx]

dude gun is looking sweet.

[platypus_green]

OK, pretty much done the main weapon. Smaller details I'll add in with the nvidia normal map filter in photoshop during the texturing stage.

Guess it's onto the fine details on the clothing now. I'm probably going to split the model up into seperate files so blender won't freak out about the poly count. So I can use the blender sculpting tools.

[chris_solo]

...brilliant! love the gun!

[guhhh]

the gun is with a very cool design!! sweet

[platypus_green]

Starting on the sculpting for the clothing now. I think I'm fairly happy with the left leg, not too tight or loose. I'm going to have the legs symmetrically textured to save texture space so only really need to sculpt one of the legs. But if I find that the pattern on the legs looks way too symmetrical I may still leave the normal map symmetrical but make the colour not symetrical. But that will wait for next week during the texturing stage.

The much finer details such as cloth texture and such I will be doing in photoshop with the nvidia normal map plugin rather than sculpting, as my system and Blender can't handle very complex sculpting.

Anywho, hope to have the high poly model ready by the weekend.

[platypus_green]

More cloth sculpting in Blender. Going fairly course for this sculpting as cloth generally doesn't really have much of a specuar highlight to make the details stand out.

Time is fleeting ...

Have to keep control ...

[chris_solo]

really nice work! I should really spend time on modeling in Blender
I can't wait to see it finish!!!!!

[platypus_green]

More weapons.

[platypus_green]

Starting on the low poly. I prefer to triangulate my mesh from the beginning since I feel it gives me more control.
1500 tris, with 900 taken up by the hands.

[platypus_green]

Just under 5,000 tris. Looks to be well on target for polycount, probably will have enough polys left over at the end to add more roundness to the legs.

[BiG ToE-3DT]

looking good.

is the low poly on a seperate layer, or did you photoshop those images.

[xxxcubanxxx]

Low poly is looking clean, very good job man.

[platypus_green]

Big-Toe: I set the low poly mesh to x-ray in Blender, so it shows over all the other meshes. Easier to see the forms by toggling that option, but I turn it off when building the low poly so I can see the surface of the high poly mesh that i'm building over.

xxxcubanxxx: Thank you. Most of it is done by extruding verts/edges and poly pushing. But the arms started from a cylinder.

Working on the weapon low poly meshes now.

[redonix76]

Great work man. I love how clean your mesh is. Can't wait to see the final product!

[platypus_green]

Got sidetracked recently with the release of Blender 2.5 beta0. Decided to model the low poly weapons in it to test it.
Hope they add the mouse gesture system back into 2.5 that blender 2.4x has. so you only need to right click a line to start moving objects. I find this much faster than looking for th 'g' key.

Anywho, about 2,700 tris for both weapons. CAn probably cut this down a little more, but will wait until the wole low poly mesh is done before doing any further optimisations.

[platypus_green]

Blender 2.5 had some issues with the multires mesh for the sculpted areas (Not surprising since it's the first beta release), reverted back to using blender 2.49b.

Got the low poly weapon models done.

Now onto the final bits like the belt and such than onto uv unwrapping and texture baking.

[platypus_green]

Got the low poly mesh just about done.
Have another 1200 tris left to play with, will use them to smooth some areas off and flatten the shading on the mechanical bits.

Now to the uv's.

[platypus_green]

Thinking about what's left to do it's unlikely i'll make the deadline. But I will be completing this model, just may be a few days after the deadline.
At least it'll give me time to test it with the UDK (Unreal dev Kit).

[platypus_green]

Quick normal mapping test for the rifle in xNormal. Turned out rather well for a 1k texture map.
This is without any tweaking of the normal map, I will be baking it from seperate parts instead of baking as a whole as I did for this test, since there are some areas that mapped the wrong parts of the high res mesh. Mainly in the overlapping areas.
Also will bake with a higher anti-alais level in future. Or bake at double resolution the downsize.

[Martin_x]

That's a great bake. Looks like highpoly model at first glance.
And what does anti-alais does? I never raise it when baking my maps.

[platypus_green]

Anti-alaising is when it samples more than once for every pixel it bakes onto the texture map, meaning you get non-jaggy edges on fine details. It makes the normal map look much cleaner but takes longer to bake.

Same normal map again, but with an AO bake added, and different lighting.

[platypus_green]

Just thought i'd show a comparrison between the high poly and the low poly.

[chris_solo]

brilliant!

[platypus_green]

Pity the normals in Blender are not displayed as well as they are in xNormal. Will test how something like the UDK displays this model and normal map to see whether it's an xNormal or Blender issue.

[platypus_green]

Rifle in the unreal engine UDK, shows up similar to how Blender displays it. Guess I will have to figure this out at a later point in time and just go with what's done for now.

[Martin_x]

You may have to test with Swizzle coordinates in XNormal. Standard ones work great for me(I use maya) but maybe not for blender and UE

[platypus_green]

It's not the swizzle co-ordinates. Figured it out.
It's how it calculates the normals (not talking about normal mapping, but the actual polygon surface normal) to display the lighting on the low poly mesh.

It's solved by selecting the export normals option on the .obj export window of Blender. when exporting the low poly mesh to xNormal for baking. Seems that Blender and xNormal calculates surface normals slightly differently. using this optoins overides xNormals calulation.

Again in UDK, it is an improvement.

[Insania]

Weapon looks great. Really good models.:cool:

[lampshadehead]

platypus_green: I use Blender as well and it's very encouraging to see the results that you are able to get with the software. I'm looking forward to seeing the final results of this project. A shame if you don't get it done under the deadline, but still an inspiration for me. Thanks!

[redonix76]

Hey man looking real good!!! Very clean work. Really would like to see this finish on time, good luck!

[pogimonz]

would like to see this one finished as well.. it's just to awesome, great balance and design.