Fenrir Unwrapped

First of all I'd just like to express my love for 3D Coat. I've only had a little experience with the program which I thought at first was just a tool for painting onto your model.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

You can also unwrap in it! Pretty damn well too.

Interestingly as well I realized you don't get seams as you paint onto the model, which you'd expect, so this means, I guess, that you could just flatten map your model and paint straight onto it. Of course that would be silly and the pixel density would be all over the place but the point stands that seams are a problem of the past.

Doesnt mean unwrapping took any less time for this as I had to keep juggling it between 3DCoat and Max to make use of symmetry as 3DCoats unwrap also automatically packs them as well, which is just lovely really. Also you can change the size of certain islands, say if you want the face to have more space, then click pack and it packs them according to your knew preferences! I know Max has its own packing tools but I never seemed to get them to work well for me. 3DCoat really takes the pain out of unwrapping. So much so it should be illegal.

This program was well worth the £60 and all I wanted it for was the painting. Yay for hidden gems!

http://3d-coat.com/

Extra Fur

Added some fur geometry which I have no idea how it'll turn out, too late to test unfortunately but I'm positive of the outcome; as so far its been really good.

Still need to add this and that but not too much work.

Fenrir Retop

Caw blimey retopping took a lot longer than I thought it would. I appreciate humans are naturally bad at guessing times but c'mon, Scott. Anyway he is currently sat at just over 7k tris with some geometry to add which I imagine will end up around 8k. 

Fenrir

The wolf is here at last! After some super deep soul searching, considering whether to just polish Thor and Odin or go ahead and make Fenrir I decided it wouldn't hurt to gamble the first day; if I can get the sculpt done in one day, then I'll continue, if not then I'll cut my losses and work on presenting the other two. 

Been a tough day, fighting a lot of doubt but I'm glad I stuck with it because I'm very happy with the sculpt.

Here's a turnaround of my complete sculpt. The fur on the back was just a test and I'll most likely just model the fur clumps in max which will be easier. Also going to add some fur sticky-outy bits to the elbows and knee as well as work on those bits on the tail. Really Z-brush was used to detail the head and, predominantly, to work out the overall form and proportions; having never created an animal while also lacking comfortable knowledge of canine anatomy I figured sculpting would be the best way to pull out forms and shift things around until they were right.

Odin is Odone.

Really happy with how this turned out as this was what I was aiming for with the overall style. Real simplified look (no crazy armour or intricate details) with a strong, bold colours.

Ended up filling in the belt as I figured since I had the texture space it'd be a shame to leave it blank and pretty glad I did. Got the deathknot in there again (also on bracers) and had a go at making a scabbard which started off looking like a UV map error. Adding the specular really helped as well. I've used photo-textures for the specular which I'm not sure is some cardinal sin against hand-painting but I really liked the outcome of it. 

Yeah so pretty stoked about this just need to decide to spend this final week either polishing up the two models I have or trying to bum-rush Fenrirs model out. Either choice is bad and I'm not sure which is the lesser of two evils. After today I'm half-inclined to go with polishing the two I have as I'd at least like what little I have to look as good as I could make it. 

Butts... I mean boots.

Been dabbling with gradients a little. I've endeavoured to put them onto all the objects to help lead the eye towards the face. This image below shows the difference on the tunic; left has no gradient while the right one does. On top of hue variation, gradients just add that little extra that helps bring it together.

And boots. I'll add detail to the foot bit later but I've done the actual shoe part now which turned out nicely as I had my doubts looking at how boxy it was untextured. Still boxy, but you know, looks nice n stuff.

Finally an update.

 Not updated this in a while and Odin should have been done by now however the labs have been closed for a couple weeks now which was incredibly inconvenient as I struggle to work at home, so progress has been very slow.
Nevertheless it should all be steaming along as normal now and I'll endeavour to post regular updates.

Last time I posted I believe it was about the fur. Well that's all done now and I've moved on to overall texturing such as adding hue variation to break up blank areas, folds and skin tones (washed out by the light, my bad)
Just finished the back of the boots which I was all happy with until I realised the cape covered them up. Silly of me but ah well. Texturing should be done tomorrow with only the hair, sword, crown and rest of boots to do as well as any final details like the possible addition of some pattern on the belt, however I think there is enough noise around there anyway; I quite like the blank metal sheet.
Once all that's done and dusted I'll rig and pose. Yay.

Here's a closeup of the brooch/clasp design. Odin is known for having two ravens called Huginn and Muninn that go out every day to gather information for him. Again, this guy isn't a god in my story so doesn't have speaking ravens but its a nice reference I think. 

Update on Fur and why I've not posted recently.

Heya,

So I've been having a real problem getting fur to look nice which at first I figured would be pretty straight forward (and it is really) with the use of an alpha however the aliasing was too noticable. After many attempts and frustrations I realised the alpha was going to look dodgy no matter what. I don't have any progress shots, which is a mistake on my part I thought it pointless updating with that though in hindsight it would've been smart to show.

Originally the alphas were very noticable and I was quite sure how to fix this but after seeing some of the new stuff done by Blizzard for Warcraft I think I got the idea! There is hope.

Looks a little chicken-feathery around the belt though I recon thats the scale of the clumps and possibly the colour as well. At least I know how to do chicken feathers I guess. More to add under the belt as well as on the bracers. 

Here's what I was talking about on the new stuff to Warcraft.

Link: http://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2014/april/gromOrc.jpg

Added stuff

Added the extra gubbins and managed to scrounge a ton of tris from other places which is quite embarrassing really that the geometry was that loaded. Still have 500 odd leftover as well which I'll keep on hand just in case.

Here's a screengrab of the sword/scabbard. As I said in a previous post this item is purely cosmetic and doesn't have a blade modelled, just a set-piece.














Oh, and the fur will be alpha'd.

Edit: forgot to mention I redid the belt taking out the chain links. Although it looked nice in my head it turned out looking rather ugly in reality. I could probably have made the chain motif look a lot nicer however the links themselves took a lot of tris which I thought could be better used elsewhere; like making all this extra stuff.

Paintover.

After a major critique I've got a better idea on where to take Odin as he was looking a little bland before.

Here's a list of things I'm changing:

-The antlers have been rotated outward to show more of an angle.

-Cape on shoulder has been beefed up to bulk out his sillhouette.

-Added fur trims to bracers, boots and belt to create a repeating element. The original design had this but I -decided to take it out for some silly reason. Also the trim on the boots helps break up the odd transition from boots to trousers that I had previously. 

-Added quick squiggle designs to boot toe-caps and belt just to see how the clumps of detail would contrast.

-Created hue variation on torso, trousers and skin (will be for all ultimately)

-Whacked a gold trim on tunic to make him look tidier and hopefully somewhat more regal.

-Diagonal straps (with sword) to break up constant verticals, horizontals and general symmetry.

The sword is really there to help balance out the design so I'll likely model it inside it's sheathe (so it wont be coming out) as to be a piece of gear rather than a dynamic object or whatever you'd call it. If I were to give Odin a weapon to hold it'd only be right to make Gungnir.

Base Textures

Seams are showing due to a technique I was using to create a masking layer faster from the UV export; Turned out to not be as good as hoped.

Plan to have texturing done by Wednesday 16th so I can rig and animate over the next couple days and have Odin done by the weekend ready for Fenrir come Monday. I'm not giving Odin a weapon for now. If I have time after making the set-pieces I'll add Gungnir in.

Tomorrow's update should see heavy progress on textures especially on the skin. As well as some possible revisions on the colour palette.

Baked

Some bake:

Some more bake.

Unwrapped and in Engine

Here he is with his wee lad Thor.

Should have the bakes done by tonight so I'll update then.

Retop

Meh