Rocket Trooper for HMC # 21

[Tea_Monster]

Hey, the good people over at the HMC are running a “Queen of the Rocketmen” themed competion. Being a big Dave Stevens / Rocketeer fan I had to join up. Basically, its all about what if, during the 1930’s, an evil genius had developed high tech and tried to conquer the world. The base ref is “The Rocketeer”, The old Republic ‘Rocketman’ serials and “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”.

Here is my concept art (kind of rough I know) and a few quick progress shots.

Let me know what you think.

Concept Art:

Early Progress:

Where We Are Now:

Next is doing the cloth in Z-Brush. Afterwards I’m going to up the detail on the Jetpack.

[Tea_Monster]

Heres the finals on the comp entry. All sculpted and rendered in Z-Brush.

I’m still going to work on him a bit. I’m going to fix up the UV maps and probably try to get him properly textured. Also, since I’ve sat looking at the renders, I’ve noticed a few things I’d like to fix. Also, I want to do a ‘standard’ sculpt that isn’t dependent on the pose and can be animated.

For my first realistic organic character, I think he turned out pretty well.

Beauty Shots

Orthos

Oh, and here is a detail shot of the ‘Death Ray’ (Blender internal render)

[Nikolaus]

Very nice work!

[Tea_Monster]

I’m going through UV Mapping him and I’ve done a higher-quality set of wires.

Just got to UV Map the weapon.

The idea is that I’m going to do a sculpting pass in ZB to accent the static pose, that way he will be more animatable.

[john_9998]

Hey, that’s very nice!

I really like how well you’ve managed to get the similarities between the concept art and the finished result.

The details in the model and the overall feeling of it is also very nice!

Good luck with the competition : )

[Tea_Monster]

Thank you very much. I’ve got to work on getting my digital painting better. I drew it originally as pen and pencil, scanned it and then borrowed a freinds tablet to do the paint-over. Looking at it now, its kinda ‘ech!’.

OK, got some texturing and lighting done. I want to get some animation done with him, but I’ve been on this for months and I’m gagging to get something else on the boil

Comments on the texture and lighting setup would be appreciated.

[EnV]

Hello, the model looks very nice and well done.
About the textures, at the moment they look more like plain materials assigned to the different part of the mesh; I 'd add some dirt (even very light) and fabric texturing to “break” the color.

[Tea_Monster]

I agree. I’m still in the process of tweaking them. I’ve originally used a ‘game modelling approach’ in that every texture is a flat clay with diffuse, spec and normal maps on top.

I found adjusting highlights on different bits a real pain, so I broke it down to have separate textures on different bits (gloves and trousers for example) but with the same uv maps so its easier to adjust bump maps per material.

I’ve still got a LLOOOONG way to go as you can see, but I hope to get there.

The big problem I’m having is getting the coat to look natural. I could bake a cloth sim, but I imagine it will take more time to set it up, pin all the stuff on the rest of the coat etc. etc. etc…

But that is my main stumbling block at the moment. Perversely, if it wasn’t rigged it would be much easier as I could just pull the verts around. As its all rigged, it has to be weight painted, bones set up and all that malarkey. I might wind up applying the armature and just pushing the verts into the right positions. That will shag it for animation though.

Anyone have any ideas on that?

I’ve worked on the textures (still a long way to go though) and got the pose pretty much where it needs. The lady has suggested a building roof underneath him.

http://i439.photobucket.com/albums/qq115/owen_egan/rocketman_prog_11.jpg
http://i439.photobucket.com/albums/qq115/owen_egan/rocketman_prog_12.jpg

[Tea_Monster]

I agree. I’m still in the process of tweaking them. I’ve originally used a ‘game modelling approach’ in that every texture is a flat clay with diffuse, spec and normal maps on top.

I found adjusting highlights on different bits a real pain, so I broke it down to have separate textures on different bits (gloves and trousers for example) but with the same uv maps so its easier to adjust bump maps per material. That way I don’t have to keep running back to PS to raise highlights.

I’ve still got a LLOOOONG way to go as you can see, but I hope to get there.

The big problem I’m having is getting the coat to look natural. I could bake a cloth sim, but I imagine it will take more time to set it up, pin all the stuff on the rest of the coat etc. etc. etc…

But that is my main stumbling block at the moment. Perversely, if it wasn’t rigged it would be much easier as I could just pull the verts around. As its all rigged, it has to be weight painted, bones set up and all that malarkey. I might wind up applying the armature and just pushing the verts into the right positions. That will shag it for animation though.

Anyone have any ideas on that?

I’ve worked on the textures (still a long way to go though) and got the pose pretty much where it needs. The lady has suggested a building roof underneath him.

Oh, and no raytracing was used.