I just want to show you guys what i am doing and if you have any tips or advice just comment below.
Me David and my friend Kris are making this new game. the purpose of this game is breeding dodo’s you start with 2 dodo’s a male and a female i am not going to much in detail because some things might change in the end. so i started sculpting the male model. i looked up a lot of references and our goal was to create a cartoony funny dodo.
i didn’t put to much effort in high details because we would not put normal maps on the character that would be to much detail.
after the sculpting was done i started with the retopology so i can animate the character i chose to do it all in a T pose because to model a character in a other pose an then going to the T pose to adventually going for retopology will take too long for us. (pixar would not approve hahah).
in the second picture is the retopology done. as you see the model is less detailed and we tought this looked a lot nicer.
after the retopology i color painted and put feathers on the character. after some tries and watching tutorials i ended up with the second picture. i am not happy with the feathers on his head and his tail feathers also the feathers overal have to cover his body better and his wings. so i am going to change that in the future
But wouldn’t a particle system with feathers be way too much for a mobile game? Or are you going to use pre-rendered sprites?
As for the feathers, you could use a particle instance modifier (on the feather model, not on the emitter) and then a shrinkwrap modifier below that (Use a vertex group for more fine-tuning or to reduce the effect). This works pretty well to avoid clipping issues with the feathers. Or if you’re looking for an easier solution, just puff up the feathers a bit more.
You could add a second particle system with narrow feathers for the head to make a smoother transition. Or even a hair system.
I’d also match the foot color to the beak color, and I think that the dodo would look even funnier with a slimmer neck and generally more exaggerated proportions.
Out of curiosity, could you post the tutorials you used? I’m working on a similar project with a feathered character.
you are totally right mobiles can’t handle these particle system we are going to use pre-rendered sprites.
the dodo’s will be very small and you will not be able to see all the little details. but i still want a great hq model we might need it for a teaser. i think i am going to add some extra feathers and puff them. (i will also for practice reasons try the thing you said)
yes i might try the narrow feathers on his head i already tried the hairs but we will be using that on the baby dodo. i didn’t even see the difference in the feet and the beak i am writing that down!!!
the main tutorial was : creating piero it is 15 dollars (short film Character production in blender)
it might be outdated on some points but i learned a lot from it!!!
i also watched some zbrush tutorials just on how to sculpt because the blender users dont have a lot of tutorials on that topic. and i used those techniques inside blender.
as you see the proportions on the little guy will be more exaggerated. also non of these models are final and i am currently not working on the characters because other things in the game have their prioritys at this moment.
(the hair, face bumpmap, and shaders need some work on this model)
