Gift to the Gods - Carnage - Cordero

[Cordero]

Hey all!
My second entry for this month.
The idea:
Some cultist guys have to "donate" a gift to their "main" god. Which is a lion headed god of war.
Unfortunately, the presentation of the gift was not perfect, and because of that, the God of War instantly slaughtered all the cultists around the altar, after he appeared to take his gift.
So what i'm gonna do:
-lowpoly game model of a god, from waist up. (because he will just reach out from a pool, so his legs will not be seen)
-lowpoly game model of some cultist, adding some differences to each one of them.
-lowpoly game model of a leader "priest" who will be the only one alive on the scene (besides the god) crawling for his life on the ground, surrounded by his dead "friends".

The scene will show, the rage of the lion, some really cool motion in the picture, and to add some feeling to it, the leader cultist will be defending him self desperately. The final picture will also contain a lot of dead guys, each of them with a different personality, and a different pose.
The cultist's clothing will be the same, like a uniform for performing the gift.

Hope you like the idea, and here is the first gray image of the god, and some coloring, which i'm not really good at:D I might go with something darker shade of these colors, so it will fit in to the final scene.

What do you think?

[Tarik2d]

Character looks ace, I really like it

[paulius-st]

nice. looks promising. i like the sketch. that looks more like a king of war gods.
good luck. :)

[chris_solo]

coOl concept! keep it up.
the lion is my sign!

[Cordero]

Thanks guys! I'm happy that you like it so far!
Here is the concept for the guards. I think I'll add some more armor in 3d.

I also added two pictures: one from starcraft 2 cinematic trailer, and one is Imrod, the winner of dw3. Both has the same body type, and i'm going for that with this bull too.

So i'll draw the cultists now. i think they will be goats:D those creepy animals always remind me of black magic:D

[andrewhall1234]

cool, are you going to do both ideas or just one? What software will you use for it? 3D?

[Stoneking]

Hey Cordero!
Very nice idea, keep it comming
Cheers

[Cordero]

here is the answer andrewhall1234 :I'm gonna do it in 3d, and i'll actually do 3 kind of characters, one god, a guardian, and a "summoner". The Lion like guy on the picture is the god, and the bulls will be the guardians, 4 guardian will be on the final picture. I will also model a guy with a goat head, that will be the base of the cultists.
And finally, i'll put all this in to one 3d scene, described in the first post.

Thanks Fernando! I hope you like the new updates too.


So, some quick update now. This is the lowpoly models. Somehow i like this approach better than basemesh -> sculpt -> retopo. maybe i should go with the popular way.. i don't know. Maybe this way has it's benefits too:D

I'm not satisfied with the heads, and the hands. I'll probably tweak them a little. The armors are not too fancy i think, but i suppose it'll fit in to the final picture, since it's not that distracting. What do you think?
I'll post wireframes when i finished them completely.

The symbol is made from the concept for the lion god. I put it on the hammer. (which will be the weapon of the bulls) I actually modeled a whole human leg, and when i almost finished it, i realized that i wont need them, because the lion wont show his leg's on the picture... funny..:D I actually thinking about adding a crown to the lion based on the comment of paulius-st. We will see how it looks!

I'm moving on to the goat guy until i have some crits from here ;)

edit: and yes, the back part of the lion's pelvis armor is kind of... you know.. it will be fixed XD

[Cordero]

I've got a question here.
As far as i know, usage of a triangles on a lowpoly model is not a good move. Why is that?
Because i think, that if my whole character would be made of triangles instead of polys, it could be done with less tri count. Somehow triangles defines shape more accurately. Maybe it's just me.
Does anyone have the answer?:D

[Tarik2d]

Im not a master of lowoply stuff so dont know sorry. But your image is looking good, youve got him done fast

[chris_solo]

good progress, I like the lion.

[Dann-O]

Like the start I would finish the legs on the lion so he can be a useful asset later wen you want to make a render or if you change your mind on the concept.

[Stoneking]

Hey Miklós!
Wow, you really are fast man,
Love the concept, and the models are looking great,
Cannot whait to see the final shot!

Keep on Rocking!

Cheeeeeers

[animationutz]

good work. cant wait to see them fully textured and lit

[gauravcg]

gr8 progress.....keep it coming!

[Cordero]

Thanks Tarik! It means a lot that you like it.

I'm glad you like the lion chris_solo! I've done a side view symbol of the lion for further use on textures, i hope you will find that entertaining too!

Thanks Dann-O for the tip! I didn't have time to finish the legs now, but next time i'll do all of my characters fully, in case if i change my mind. (as you said)

Thansk Fernando! I'm doing the best i can to finish ;)

animationutz: Thanks! I have some nice moody scene in my mind for the final lightning setup. I hope it will be nice!

Hey gauravcg! If you insist, i have some updates here:D

Finished the Goat cultist guy. Also finished the uvw layout for all the three characters.
And rigged all of them correctly, so i can pose them in the final scene without deformation.
I post here the uvw layouts, i'm not really proud of them. This is the second time, that i don't pay attention to this part correctly... so i next time, i'll make them better!

I'm now setting up the final scene, and i ran in to two problems, which i need your help in.
The first, is that i want to "rig" the skirt of the goat with cloth modifier. Which doesn't seems to be working:D Added cloth to the skirt, and i set it to be silk, and active. Then i picked the legs of the biped (which is under the skirt), and set it to collusion object. And when i hit calculate, nothing happens. I might just poly edit the skirt in to the scene, but in the future, i'll be needing cloths, so if anyone has some kind of tutorial for advanced clothing, that would be nice!

The second problem is: i am now using skin modifier instead of physique. And now, that all the characters are rigged, i want to scale them. I heard, that setting the height of the Biped could scale a character, but when i lower the height, my character starts to deform. If anyone knows, how to scale a rigged character, please tell me!:D

So, i'm off to do the textures for these guys. I wanted to do the final scene setup first, but now that i have these problems, i'm skipping it, in case someone has an answer.

[Tarik2d]

neat uvs, keep up the good work, i dont have a clue about riggin characters something on to do list. Looking forward to the lighting :)

[Cordero]

Thanks Tarik! I hope you'll like the lightning in the end! I am definitely going to finish this in time.

So here is some textures. It is really basic now, just showing some colors, and some noise here and there. Simple diffuse map on all of them (2048*2048 each). The Lion, and the Goat also have bump map activated. I decided not to use normal maps for this scene.

I still need your help in the scaling issue of the rigged characters, since i can't put these fellas in the scene correctly. The god should be much bigger.

New questions popped:
What is AO map, and how do i do it?
How can i do a good specular map, which could make the shiny parts of the lion reflect differently from the rest of his body?

I hope you enjoy the new render!

[Cordero]

Well, it looks like my stuff isn't good enough yet to post it all over the challenges:D so i'm off for a month or two to improve, and after my works worth showing, i'll show them on the actual challenge.
Thanks for the advices in the first scene i already finished, and in this. I promise, next time i enter, it will worth looking at my scenes.

I wont finish this one, since i feel that all of this kind of sucks.
Anyways, good luck for all participants, and see you in a few months! :dance:

[MightyReg]

I wont finish this one, since i feel that all of this kind of sucks.

I think you are pretty harsh on yourself, I don't think your models sucks at all, especially when we consider the fact that you already done another entry before and all that in only a month! If I were you I would continue to attend these challenge, for my part I learned much more rapidly from others that helped me in challenges than on my own.

When I look at your characters, I think you already are familiar with anatomy notions and texture painting. One thing I see however is that your models kinda lack a bit of small details that would enhance them further more. Also you see to be strugling a bit with materials, none of these models seems to have a specular map (especially the metal on the lion god)
Anyway don't give up!

[Tarik2d]

Its looking good, keep going :)

[gauravcg]

hey man dont give up.....these models are great and you have good texturing skill too...so finishing this will not hurt!
See you in final entry thread! :D

[Stoneking]

Well, it looks like my stuff isn't good enough yet to post it all over the challenges:D so i'm off for a month or two to improve, and after my works worth showing, i'll show them on the actual challenge.
Thanks for the advices in the first scene i already finished, and in this. I promise, next time i enter, it will worth looking at my scenes.

I wont finish this one, since i feel that all of this kind of sucks.
Anyways, good luck for all participants, and see you in a few months! :dance:

Hey Miklós !!!
Man, i'm not here just to try to make you happy, realy
What i'm going to say it's true,
Your work is really good, and yes it is good enough to submit,
I remember a couple of months ago when by the quality of your render
i asked you help with this, and you indeed helped me a lot,
Please keep it comming Miklós!
I also holpe this time i get some love from the judges, i've never got any love from them also for my work :evil:
Whe artists most times feels like our work just sucks!!
I think the main reason is that, whe just look at it and "live" it for endless hours, so whe know every pixel-poly.... etc of it, and then whe tend to find
only that it sucks LOL

C'mon mate !!!!! you are talented :)

Cheers!!

[Cordero]

Thanks for the kind words guys! It means a lot!
I don't think that i'll be able to finish this piece, since i lost my inspiration for this one.

I have to totally agree with o'Mighty. my greatest weakness is the detailing. So i'll pay extra attention to the start, when i draw the concepts in the next challenge. I pretty much followed my first ideas in this piece, and i think i followed them well. But the first ideas could me more detailed!

Definitely worth joining for this information. (seriously)

One thing that kicks in to me, when i'm on the ground already, is that DW V is re-scheduled to 2011 :(

http://www.dominancewar.com/2010/en_delay.html
At least i have more time to be ace till the next DW!:D
I might post my first entry on the final entry forum. See what happens :D
See you guys in the next challenge! I hope that i'll bring the real pain this time.