Early in-game render test

I thought I'd post this little screen cap. This is a character from a game-in-progress that I'm collaborating on. She's our first fully textured and skinned character so far, so I couldn't resist throwing some lighting and a blob shadow on her to see what we'll actually be able to pull off in-game.

 

Congratulations,

Looks great, hope to see the rest

 

Beautiful character Mr. Animator! Any chance you could reveal some info on the game?

 

Very nicely done. A lot of character in that character.

-Jeremy

 

Very impressive. The design is interesting. The modeling is expert. The texturing is very nice and subtle. Can't wait to see her in motion.

 

Thats a really great character! Looking forward to seeing more of this game.

 

Great inspiration. Please post more!

 

Thanks for the compliments folks. She's one of about 9 or so character classes for an old-school RPG we're workin on. Who knows if we'll ever get it to a playable state, since we're facing a mountain of asset creation. So far we're just charging forward with the player characters and a few monsters so we can start putting together a battle system. There's a lot of design elements still in flux so I can't really say much more, but right now its something like a combination of 'final fantasy' and 'the oregon trail', if that makes any sense at all.

 

Excellent absolutely excellent. I bow down to your modelling and texturing skills (where your is second person plural).

 

What kind of poly count are you using for your characters? I am going to start on my first ever character and I'm not sure what would be a good standard to stay within. Your character looks so professinal.

Thanks from a noob.

 

She ended up just under 6000 triangles. For characters, I think the key is to keep the mesh manageable not so much for rendering performance, but more for keeping your skinning under control. Not only can it get very processor intensive to have a skinned mesh with LOTS of verts, but the actual process of weighting the mesh in your 3d app of choice can become a nightmare. I try to keep the mesh topology as simple as possible wherever the character will be able to bend/twist, so I don't have to worry about careful weighting of tons of points.

 

Yeah, 6000 is pretty high-end, I burned a lot of geometry on her fingers and hair that I probably didn't need to. In my defense, we're not planning to have very many characters on screen at any given time, and we don't plan to use any normal/specular maps or fancy lighting, which is what the real killers are in FEAR at least. Also, by the time we actually distribute this thing, your average video card will have a few gigs of VRAM .

3000-4000 is probably a good number to shoot for. The characters in The Sims 2 are in that ballpark, and I wouldn't consider them too cutting edge.

 

That looks amazing!

Just wondering, what program did you use to model that in? Also is that shot from Unity or from in the moddeler?

Wow.

Ghost

 

That's looking good. I really like the soft, cartoony quality of the texturing and modeling.

 

Almost reminds me of the look from Final Fantasy 9.

 

Man, that character has a lot of personality. I keep looking at it every now and then. It really goes beyond a 3D character man, the design, modeling, colors, everything is very tight.

-Jeremy

 

Hi,

the hair reminds me of a character in a video i've seen lately: http://www.gametrailers.com/umwatcher.php?id=264

Well, for the polycount, if you can reduce it without destroying the look it won't hurt for sure but before you destroy it, i would first think over if it works fine with your the game concept and if so just let it be.

Some backface problem with the cape? There is some grey area above her left shoulder. The silhouette of the ear is a bit too lowpoly compared to the rest of the character. What i dislike is the colour of the lips.

Anyway a pretty nice character! :O)


Regards,

taumel

 

Good catch, Taumel, we're shooting for a kingdom hearts style of texturing, very simple, soft and clean. Final fantasy: crystal chronicles is another example of a style we liked. It's also something I'd have a hard time getting away from simply because my drawing style is decidedly 'cute'.

Yeah, there's no interior polys to her shawl/cape, so there's spots where you can see through it. In game, the model is not likely to be seen from an angle where its apparent, but I can probably patch it up later if it becomes an issue.

She was modeled and rigged in maya, the texturing was all photoshop+wacom. That screen cap is directly from unity.

 

>>>Good catch, Taumel, we're shooting for a kingdom hearts style of texturing, very simple, soft and clean. Final fantasy: crystal chronicles is another example of a style we liked. It's also something I'd have a hard time getting away from simply because my drawing style is decidedly 'cute'.<<<

For some games i've worked with a graphican who also always had to draw cute stufff. But that's what he simply does the best...so... ;O)

As you mentioned Final Fantasy..have you seen their e3-trailer?! I love their darker more grown up look a lot.


Regards,

taumel

 

Crystal Chronicles was a marvel, both technologically and artistically. The art direction was increbly varied, yet unified, and few companies pushed that system effects wise like Square did.

 

Just curious how this game was progressing. Is it still coming out? Any screenshots?

 

Well as expected, progress has been nearly non-existent. The only stuff I've really had time for is little isolated tests and bits of code (a menu system here, a 3rd person control script there) so asset creation has been put on the back burner. In a perfect world I'd have my whole cast of characters built and ready to go, but when it comes down to working on my own games or the games I actually get paid to work on... the paycheck wins.