Pixelation

Critique => 2D & 3D => Topic started by: Jakten on June 06, 2009, 08:26:28 am

Title: Automaton W.I.P.
Post by: Jakten on June 06, 2009, 08:26:28 am
Coming up with some ideas for a game and this is a character I came up with. His arms extend like grappling hooks. They can be used as, well, grappling hooks as well as whips or just for punching. He's got guns in his heels which i stole inspiration from bayonetta. I plan to texture him to look similar to mega man legends. I've got to touch him up a bit more before I am ready to texture though. Currently he's weighing in at around 2500 tris.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v206/MANDRAGGANON/roboton.gif)

All critiques welcomed  :)
Title: Re: Automaton W.I.P.
Post by: ptoing on June 06, 2009, 02:17:16 pm
Looks quite nice so far. One thing I would change for sure is the feet.
Not change so much but give them a hinge or something for when he walks. Stiff feet always look really awkward.
And if you do it without a hinge the feet would be the only bit on him to deform I reckon (in which case I think they would need a few more loops to do so nicely)

Edit: Looking at it a bit longer it does not look like you thought much about animating this fella. The shoulders don't look like they can animate nicely without odd looking intersection with the body (if you wanna do anything other than move the arms back and forth).
Same goes for how the legs are connected to the hip. You will have bad interesection there if you keep it like this.
Title: Re: Automaton W.I.P.
Post by: Jakten on June 06, 2009, 05:18:10 pm
Thanks for the comment  ;D

His arms and legs are separate pieces of geometry at each joint. I was planning to only really bind the torso to the skeleton and then just group the arms and legs so they wouldn't have any deformation and hopefully make him look a bit more mechanical.  I'm not sure if it is always wise to keep the whole model as one piece or not.

I definitely have to fix up his feet though, im noticing his legs look odd from the front as well.
Title: Re: Automaton W.I.P.
Post by: TrevoriuS on June 06, 2009, 05:23:18 pm
I think the point of Ptoing was... Shoulders are ball joints, so are hips, consider that you will need those, and don't have them.
Hips could go I guess, but it's just much nicer if you make it fit together. You could even make three hinge joints at different angles to create your own 3-axial rotation which simulates a ball joint more mechanically interesting.

Also, the triangles are reasonably neatly spread, but then around the ears there's this huge clutter, you can most certainly lose some of that, as it completely doesn't match the overall detail like this.Then if you only wish to put joints in the torso, what's with these hands, will you rig them? Or are hyou going to change those into some (perhaps more basic) mechanics as well?
Title: Re: Automaton W.I.P.
Post by: ndchristie on June 06, 2009, 06:24:13 pm
yeah the ear-balls seem like total overkill to me, they don't even stick out enough to have the silhouette mean anything, and you could lose 20 tris in the hands alone without noticing a loss of detail.  I mean hell, if it's megaman legends you're going for, you could even texture some of those details flat (although you'd also have to come back when your model is more like 500 tris :P)

I'm less concerned about joint construction though, i think it's easy to come up with some simple ways to make them reach:

(http://xs140.xs.to/xs140/09236/examp670.gif)

guns in the heels is a neat idea, but i think that these are too clunky and will impede walking (or at least make it harder to animate.)  I was going to suggest mounting the guns on the ankle, not the heel, and then looked up bayonetta and it seems that's exactly what they did, too.  It also makes the sprite slightly awkward.
PS: what's all the hype about Bayonetta anyway?  the overall design just seems atrocious, with no regard to current or classical asthetics?  It just looks like someone was gaven a really bad high school sketchbook, huge budget, no artists and instructions to remake devil may cry.  Fil showed it to me a little bit ago and i was just like, :/.
Title: Re: Automaton W.I.P.
Post by: Jakten on June 09, 2009, 06:52:17 pm
i went through and removed a lot of unnecessary polys and cut back about 300. It's still over 2000 though. i'm unsure what to do for his shoulders though. I like your idea ndchristie but it might be a head ache to rig that way. I think i fixed up his hips though and I changed his legs entirely. I figured I could put the gun on his heel and just texture the end of a barrel.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v206/MANDRAGGANON/robotonrevised.gif)

Title: Re: Automaton W.I.P.
Post by: TrevoriuS on June 11, 2009, 01:25:07 am
2000 still seems an awful lot for what it represents right now. You'll have deformation in the feet, hands, waist and neck as far as I can tell, and the rest is solid objects rotating around eachother. I'm fairly curious on seeing what it is more interactively so I can identify possible causes for that better if you want; though 2000 could be just fine for your intentions with this. These small outpointing cylinders at the main elbow cylinder, as well as these dents coming from the shoulders into the chest can probably be worked around with using textures though. I'm curious how this will turn out with textures too =)