[WIP] Hojo Lifeform

[WolfMan]

Sorry I have been so absent lately. I have been prepping for school. I will be going to Full Sail University to obtain my masters in Game Art. Hopefully I can get on with square after I graduate and threaten them to let me head a team to remake FF7. LoL. All BS aside, I have a new model I started on yesterday...
First was the sculpting with a little painting


Then Got into anatomy and more texturing


Finalized the texture and anatomy


Then decimated from 2.58 million polys to 10.2k polys


All that is left now is to cut and import. Ill update soon

[LeonhartGR]

A new project! Nice!

[WolfMan]

Almost done.

[WolfMan]

Finished.

[halkun]

Did you really need 10K polygons for that? I probably could of make one with about 800-1000 tops. 3D art isn't about getting the most detailed. It's about getting the most out of your triangles. It's kind of like golf, the lower, the better.

[cmh175]

lol wow, your rude response isn't very encouraging for artists and modders to post their work here. I didn't expect such negativity from a staff member. Also, 3d art is clearly about detail. If we aren't here to add more detail to the game than what the hell are we doing here? Kind of negates the whole point to the Graphical Mods forum doesn't it? 

[WolfMan]

Well I guess everyone is entitled to their opinion. Lol. I don't recall seeing any of your work halkun. I use zbrush to create high poly work. Then reduce 2 million polys to this 10k. 3d art is about nothing but detail. Wait till you see my next project. And yea if you have some negative criticism just pm me. No need to be rude in public.

[Kaldarasha]

3d art is about nothing but detail.

That's true, but video games are a compromise between detail and performance. So every polygon count. Let's take the new frog models as example, why having super round legs if you can't see the detail? Lots of details are eaten up by the low FPS in battle anyway.
I would even say that my Barret model use too many polygons too. The face mesh is quite OK but the body and the gun could had been realized with a lot lesser polygons. In the end is the detail of texture more important as detail of the mesh. See as example how low poly the riped models of Cloud are from the PSP/PS2.

[sl1982]

The whole idea of redicing polygons to a bare minimum makes sense in modern games for sure. But with ff7 running on decent modern hardware with maybe 8 models on screen at a time tops i doubt even 100k poly per model will cause any significant slowdown. Especially since we have no real shading or lighting using up gpu resources. The thing we have to remember is many of the new technologies that are in modern games to add detail without adding polygons are not part of the ff7 engine. Honestly if i could model I would be curious as to how many polys the game could actually handle before crumbling. I know it is 65535 polys per part. So i guess it would depend on the amount of body parts involved.

[DLPB_]

Did you really need 10K polygons for that? I probably could of make one with about 800-1000 tops. 3D art isn't about getting the most detailed. It's about getting the most out of your triangles. It's kind of like golf, the lower, the better.

I do agree, though.  And sometimes being negative is part of good feedback:P  As bizarre as that sounds. The model also has to fit in with its surroundings, and a ton of polygons is overkill for such a simple model. There is always a tendency to go overboard (like 1000000000 HP for enemies).  I didn't find the above rude...  it was just disagreeing. That said, I think the model above looks quite good.

[WolfMan]

Problem is that with hand made models you have to get in to the millions of polys to hand paint the model. Then reduce it while havin uv maps. It's very tricky. That's as low as I could go without shredding it. Here's what I'm working on now.

[Luigi Brosse]

Will you eventually release it?

[DanTsukasa]

Problem is that with hand made models you have to get in to the millions of polys to hand paint the model. Then reduce it while havin uv maps. It's very tricky. That's as low as I could go without shredding it. Here's what I'm working on now.

Hey thats looking pretty nice, really liking the silhouette there.

I don't understand the part about needing to get into the millions of polys to hand paint the model though, if you're painting straight onto the 3d model in Zbrush using UV's then yeah your subdivisions need to be pretty high, but if you're just painting the UVS in photoshop then your polycount doesn't matter its only your UVS that matter.

Are you Uv mapping straight in zbrush too? Or do you start in Maya/3dsmax and then import into zbrush to sculpt in your real details?

I do personally think 10k is way too high for that model, but if it runs fine in game, and animates well, then theres not really any difference what the polycount is.

[WolfMan]

I am going to release it when I get life and death re colored. Yes I am painting directly on the model. I do everything in zbrush. I sculpt the model. Add alphas for texture. Cut in all details. Then paint. Then bake in the matcaps for shading. I  UV map in zBrush. Cut the model and fill holes in zBrush. Then go directly to pcreator. CMH and I are going to start a zbrush thread.

[cmh175]

Hey thats looking pretty nice, really liking the silhouette there.

I don't understand the part about needing to get into the millions of polys to hand paint the model though, if you're painting straight onto the 3d model in Zbrush using UV's then yeah your subdivisions need to be pretty high, but if you're just painting the UVS in photoshop then your polycount doesn't matter its only your UVS that matter.

Are you Uv mapping straight in zbrush too? Or do you start in Maya/3dsmax and then import into zbrush to sculpt in your real details?

I do personally think 10k is way too high for that model, but if it runs fine in game, and animates well, then theres not really any difference what the polycount is.

Polypaint in zBrush requires roughly a million polygons, per piece. That's pretty much why it's superior to using photoshop and other applications for textures. The game doesn't seem too concerned with the poly count as long as it's within 100k and 4k textures or less. As this is pretty much the same with current game models that's pretty acceptable. Wolfman and I have been working on refining an upscaling and sculpting process in zBrush to dramatically increase detail to the original models. I'm not sure about Wolf's Jenova, but my models low poly subdivisions are roughly 45-52k.   

[DanTsukasa]

much prefer zbrush

[cmh175]

It all comes down to preference. Personally I don't think anything comes close to zBrush's tools. There are something's I wish were better, but there's a lot of things in Zbrush I wouldn't be able to do else where. High poly meshes is a good point, but when a projects completed we can decimate it to nearly any level. Honestly we just aren't interested in 10k models. If I was doing professional work I'd import a completed model to Maya to clean up and optimize the edge flow, but just doing this in my spare time I'm more concerned about detail.

I have one model that's nearly done, actually just waiting on finalizing the texture map (we're working on a method of baking materials). Otherwise yes, I use Multi Map Exporter and the final model will have displacement, normal, and ambient Occlusion. Otherwise I have another that's detailed and just needs to be painted, and a few others ready for detailing. As of now there isn't a full scope for the project, it's more about just doing the models each of us wants and practicing with the zBrush UI. I have a few ideas but waiting to see how everything plans out first.   

[DanTsukasa]

It all comes down to preference. Personally I don't think anything comes close to zBrush's tools. There are something's I wish were better, but there's a lot of things in Zbrush I wouldn't be able to do else where. High poly meshes is a good point, but when a projects completed we can decimate it to nearly any level. Honestly we just aren't interested in 10k models. If I was doing professional work I'd import a completed model to Maya to clean up and optimize the edge flow, but just doing this in my spare time I'm more concerned about detail.

I have one model that's nearly done, actually just waiting on finalizing the texture map (we're working on a method of baking materials). Otherwise yes, I use Multi Map Exporter and the final model will have displacement, normal, and ambient Occlusion. Otherwise I have another that's detailed and just needs to be painted, and a few others ready for detailing. As of now there isn't a full scope for the project, it's more about just doing the models each of us wants and practicing with the zBrush UI. I have a few ideas but waiting to see how everything plans out first.   

Alrighty.

Well best of luck to you guys, if you need any tips give me a shout, but you're probably a little more versed in zbrush than I am, I only use it once every few months when freelance requires it.

One thing I'm curious about though, is skinning/weighting, how does it work, are you just completely reweighting the models before importing them back into the game, I don't remember much about hojo or that jenova form, I think hojo had some animations but Jenova was mostly static if I remember rightly.

One small tip, if you're after making the model lower but having more control over the final quality and polygon count then instead of decimating you could use retopo, I don't know what version of Zbrush you have but its a good tool, if not a little cackhanded at times. Thats what I've always used in the past if the changes I've made in Zbrush are too drastic compared to the low poly imported mesh.

[cmh175]

Alrighty.

Well best of luck to you guys, if you need any tips give me a shout, but you're probably a little more versed in zbrush than I am, I only use it once every few months when freelance requires it.

One thing I'm curious about though, is skinning/weighting, how does it work, are you just completely reweighting the models before importing them back into the game, I don't remember much about hojo or that jenova form, I think hojo had some animations but Jenova was mostly static if I remember rightly.

One small tip, if you're after making the model lower but having more control over the final quality and polygon count then instead of decimating you could use retopo, I don't know what version of Zbrush you have but its a good tool, if not a little cackhanded at times. Thats what I've always used in the past if the changes I've made in Zbrush are too drastic compared to the low poly imported mesh.

Oh no I agree, zRemesher is much better than Decimation master. It has a very clean edge flow and retains a lot of detail with less polys. It just needs to be used before detailing and painting because the uv mapping gets stripped. For the animations, the models just import right over the originals. The pieces are roughly the same size and still fit the skeleton. The models will animate the same as before.

Wolfs Life Form isn't really an example of this process since it's an original model that he then imported. I actually tested this on the original FF7 Life Form which I already have back in Kimera. The model looks good and the game handles the 50k polys and 4k texture well. It's currently just a texture map while we figure out the best way to bake materials, everything else can be applied in photoshop and gimp then, but I'm confident this wont have any more of a performance impact than it currently does.   

[DanTsukasa]

Oh no I actually meant retopo'ing yourself by hand, that'll get the best results, but it is time consuming.

But your retopo is seen by zbrush as a new mesh, and so it doesn't effect your main mesh, so you would be able to have everything with no issues.

Also another way to be able to retopo is to polypaint and turn off polypaint by uvs.

Eitherway if your method is fast and you're not fussed about how the UVS look then stick with it, I'm used to having to have really tight UVS with all the space used to the max and having full control over it, from what I remember zbrush unwraps and packs, but you don't really have any control over it from there.

[cmh175]

Thanks I appreciate the input. The process is mostly pretty fast, it's mainly slowed down by figuring out the best workflow for these models and what we want to do, and correcting mistakes by working the long way in the mean time lol. For instance my Life Form model was done a week ago, but since the process of baking materials to the texture doesn't work as expected it's been delayed lol. Wolf has actually been able to import and start, and finish, his Jenova model in that time frame lol. zBrush is pretty quick to work with so the potential is good.

There's a few options with the uv's but I definitely agree, it's not like doing them in Maya. There is the option to paint a "Protect Mask" which basically lets you kind of guide where the seams go, so paired with multiple Polygroups you do have a fair bit of control. For what we're doing it works pretty well though. Each piece of the model is it's own polygroup, so instead of unwrapping the whole mesh it's each piece separated. 

[DanTsukasa]

Thanks I appreciate the input. The process is mostly pretty fast, it's mainly slowed down by figuring out the best workflow for these models and what we want to do, and correcting mistakes by working the long way in the mean time lol. For instance my Life Form model was done a week ago, but since the process of baking materials to the texture doesn't work as expected it's been delayed lol. Wolf has actually been able to import and start, and finish, his Jenova model in that time frame lol. zBrush is pretty quick to work with so the potential is good.

There's a few options with the uv's but I definitely agree, it's not like doing them in Maya. There is the option to paint a "Protect Mask" which basically lets you kind of guide where the seams go, so paired with multiple Polygroups you do have a fair bit of control. For what we're doing it works pretty well though. Each piece of the model is it's own polygroup, so instead of unwrapping the whole mesh it's each piece separated. 

A week for that model is pretty good IMHO, I think the pro's can probably do it in a few hours, but I'm nothing like that so it'd still take me a while too, so I think the timeframe there is pretty damn good considering its probably not all day everyday.

One thing I will say though, is that you're lucky so far with the bones and animations, (did FFVII even use bones? Is it not just rotating the actual model parts themselves?) if FFVII really does use bones for some things then you might have some issues with some models where things don't fold correctly for example, so far though it seems everythings fine and considering how lucky every mod has been so far (I've not seen any weight painting type issues in threads) I'm guessing the method FFVII uses is a bit unorthadox compared to more recent games.

[halkun]

Well I guess everyone is entitled to their opinion. Lol. I don't recall seeing any of your work halkun. I use zbrush to create high poly work. Then reduce 2 million polys to this 10k. 3d art is about nothing but detail. Wait till you see my next project. And yea if you have some negative criticism just pm me. No need to be rude in public.

Sorry, I was a little rough on the feedback. I have linked here something I made that clocks in 4854 polygons (When tessellated, 9428 Triangles) I marked the count with the red arrow in case you don't know Blender. I have one picture showing the untextured model and another with the mesh outlined.  I included finger details showing were my ring loops are for bone flexing, I also got a close-up of the face,  and other areas where I could get away with huge polys with little loss of fidelity.




The red lines are where my UV map seams are, you can get away with a lot when you texture. Also the seams are split so I can mirror the texture and save video memory.

I love her shoes <3

[eliwolfe92]

Models look great wolfman. I'm just glad ANYONE is interested in reviving the graphics of this game honestly. Do you have any recommendations for someone looking to learn 3d modeling? I just downloaded blender and I'm wondering where I should start.

[halkun]

Models look great wolfman. I'm just glad ANYONE is interested in reviving the graphics of this game honestly. Do you have any recommendations for someone looking to learn 3d modeling? I just downloaded blender and I'm wondering where I should start.

Good choice on Blender. The awesome thing is not only is Blender free, but so is the manual/lessons for that
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro

you can get the PDF at the top of the page