Hey Alien I noticed that you needed some help baking out the maps in Xnormal. I looked at the image above and maybe you could do somethings to fix those issues. The weird hard line could be vertices that haven't been welded together. The nasty artifacts can be fixed by expanding the cage out a little more in that area (sometimes that gives you more artifacts because the geometry is so close together) . The rim around the button can be fixed by adding more geometry and you'll get rid of the jagged look to it around the edge. The low res detail can be corrected but scaling up the UVs in that area or fixing the UVs all together. Remember that theres no limit to geometry or textures in this contest so you could probably create different texture sets to make it look even better. I cant really see whats going on in the lower image there. I tend to over work on my normal map and fix it as much as possible so I dont have issues with the other maps I need to bake out. I hope that helps you a bit. Post up more issues if you'd like more help on this.

Thank you so much for your advice Nico, I greatly appreciate it dude :smiley: ill admit i have cut some corners in particular with the belt having multiple bits of geo for a texture set in an attempt to save me some time as i think it maybe a push for me to get this finished on time. but it seems to have caused me a lot of issues instead hahahaha.

Yeah it happens... but sometimes spending a bit more time on somthing on these things assures you zero issues later on. Its good to catch them in time though. Hope you're able to correct these issues so your character looks amazing :wink:

It may be helpful to bake out some of the chunkier bits directly in zbrush with projection. It gives the most seamless bakes I find for certain organic pieces.
Love how the character is developing!

Hey alien head, why to I end up making freinds with the wierd people, anyways looks good. Did you watch any of the ZBrush summit stuff. And your teddy look so much more agressive then on the skecth - its for the better, I never saw a happy gladiator

hahaha well I'm weird and im more than happy to be friends with anyone on here who's interested https://www.facebook.com/daniel.holland.92

anyway, I know its unprofessional as hell so i wont name any names but i have a client from hell.... glad he left me alone for the day so i got pretty much all my baking done today and painted some stylized maps. thanks for the kind comments and advice guys. Hahaha tell me about it in an attempt to cut some corners and also try my hand at game res i did cause a lot of issues that i had to go back and fix edges, normals and uvs hahaha.

Is this solely going to be handpainted?

Yeah I think it will be the best way to get a child fantasy book like fell which brings me back to should I have texture fur or simulated fur. I also hope I get faster at paiting textires lol.

Wonderful textures! Well done. Hand painted textures are challenging for me. And the shield looks nice and battered.
How would you do the specular highlights, painted on or a specular map blending with the texture?

Thanks rath I appreciate it. Most of the spec you see is painted just using the hard round brush in photoshop but I do have a slight shader gloss and reflection going on too just to help pop a little bit more.
I recently rewatched this video http://polycount.com/discussion/136891/blizzard-style-textures some great tips on painted texture painting the dude works for blizzard best guy to learn from in regards to painted textures :smile:

thanks for the vid

Now ur secret is mine, mine I say!!! MUHAHA

13 days later

thanks for the kind comments everyone, i really appreciate it.
sorry for the long delay with posting but, ill spare you the pent up rant i have lol and instead ill just post my texturing WIP

Nice man! Another good reference is the DOTA2 character breakdown, they talk about their techniques and methodologies, might be a good gander, can't look at your discussion link right now so idk how extensive it is.

agreed! i reference this document all the time. Very well written

I like the hand painted style of your character! Maybe colors of his weapon can be a little more dark for best integration with the rest of the color scheme.

Thanks for the advice, great idea with the dota I'll check that out.
Guillaume- yeah thanks for that it does stand out way too much as of right now.
I also need to teak the other textures too they need to pop more.


Made this little scene fir him, a little arena made from books dvd / game cases and lego

14 days later

Nicely done! Good job!
Like like the sculpted look of the fur.
Interesting idea for the environment!
Make sure to contrast the character from the background in post process.