Thoughtful Alien

[E4sY]

This is some character i made up. Suppose to be for this race of artificial telepathic aliens. They've gone insane, killing the species that created them, and stalk the universe for more prey. XD They fight with an eye toward espionage, mind control, and other CIA like ways. Im going for menacing but also diplomatic for the look. Will use maya, zbrush, and photoshop. Any and all crits, comments would b cool.

[strict9]

looks nice allready...don't forget the thing in his forehead.
are you going to rig him as well?...I'm curious how the shoulder pats will go when his arms move.....will have to get to that problem myself some day so i thought i'd ask

[E4sY]

I finally got the character in zbrush. still alot more zbrush time needed, but here is update so far.

strict9 - yes, i plan to rig. my first thought is to add extra handles, but im not sure either. comments and criticism is ok.

[E4sY]

Here are more updates. still working on normal map atm.

[poopipe]

Originally Posted by strict9

looks nice allready...don't forget the thing in his forehead.
are you going to rig him as well?...I'm curious how the shoulder pats will go when his arms move.....will have to get to that problem myself some day so i thought i'd ask

the simplest way is to just skin them to the upper arm bones.

A better way would be to bone them separately and drive them using the reaction manager/driven keys/whatever the equivalent is in your app of choice

He's an interesting shaped character, I rather like him

Unless you've got a specific reason not to I'd suggest retopologising at least his face and thigh plates to account for the shapes you've added in zbrush - the sillhouette doesn't match.

[E4sY]

here's another zbrush update.

poopipe - thanks for advice. i tried to stear the hi poly mesh back toward the low poly mesh shape. Also started the textures.

[E4sY]

hi, here's an update on color map. trying to bring out dark and light areas. any crits or comments are good.

[E4sY]

Another color map update. I'm sure its noticable that my strong suit is not texturing, so I'm trying to make more time for this part of the project. there are seems still showing, but they'll be cleaned up.

[E4sY]

Think this will be final updates for this character. I'm getting used to a new workflow. Also, I learned a lot of what I should pay more attention to in the future. One area is silhouette. I should of modeled a few more of the features so the characters silhouette woud flow more correctly. Was thinking of adding weapons. For now I'll leave it be and get started on something new.

[poopipe]

I think you could finish this and get a really nice character out of it tbh but I know where you're coming from.

The main reason I've switched to a zbrush based workflow is to avoid some of the issues I think you've had on this guy. Unless you're working to a very detailed concept and you don't stray from the design it's difficult to plan the low-poly mesh layout.

Next time - by way of an exercise more than anything else, can I suggest doing the sculpt first and building the low-poly later?

I found that way of working very liberating because it means you're free to create without worrying about topology and it saves the drudgery of building the low-poly for the end when your enthusiasm is waning anyway.

[E4sY]

Poopipe - i want to try the work flow ur describing. Im guessing i could start in maya w/ low poly mesh and export it to zbrush then make sculpt. Then I would have the sculpt ready and proceed to creating the low poly from the sculpt. After this things get cloudy. When would I create the uv map?

[poopipe]

the best time would be after you retopologise and create your low-poly from the sculpt.

retopologise
export the low res mesh to maya
unwrap and export
import to zbrush
project your sculpt onto the new mesh.

yeah - that's about the best way
head back to maya for your final optimisations and tweaks.

[Lucysmith]

Good creativity and also nice job, well done !