Aspiring Character Artist.. Need advice

[Kickflipkid687]

Hi,

I am currently trying to figure out what I should focus on to become a better character artist. I know I need to work on my traditional art skills more, and work on hand painted textures. But I am now wondering if I should work on learning zbrush and applying normal maps, or hold off on that?

I know I need traditional art skills the most, but I feel I need to learn Zbrush now too, and know how to do normal mapping to get a job out of college. They havent taught us normal mapping or Zbrush, so I am doing it on my own. All we have left to do before portfolio time and interning is finish up a Torque 3D game, and do some advanced programming stuff.

So my time is running down before I need to make my demo reel and set everything up. So I would really appreciate what you guys think. I hope I put this stuff in the right section of this forum too.

My website is http://www.matthewlichy.com if you want to see my work and give some advice.


thanks alot,


Matt :brick:

[MM]

At your current level i would suggest that you work day and night looking at as many art/photo reference as possible. create your own library of inspiring 3d/2d art and every time you are on internet look for more and add more to that library.

it is mostly about training your eye to see more into the art. try to compare your art with someone else and more you look at things the more you will notice the difference. it seems like you are in a rush and to be honest there really isnt any easy or fast way.

btw, it is obvious that you one would need to know normal mapping if they want to work on next/current gen game art BUT that knowledge would be useless if you dont have good art to normal map.

[Kickflipkid687]

Well I am not new to 3d art at all. But I am somewhat new to character art. I have been collecting tons of 2D and 3D art almost daily the last year or so from cgtalk and other sites of ppls work I like that inspire me. I also got a 3D.sk account a while ago and got a couple GB of images for references and textures. I have folders for clothing, hair, shoes, and other sections. I also have stuff like skeletons and muscle charts. I have collected tutorials and other things from people like Ben Mathis.

I am not trying to rush things, but I sort of have to. But ya I know the saying, you cant rush art. But.. in the gaming industry you almost have to sometimes. But thank you for the advice. I will keep collecting stuff as I do now.

[Kickflipkid687]

I guess maybe I didnt make sense in that post, or you misunderstood. I know that I cannot rush art, or try to do all these things at once. But I am just wanting to know what the best things to learn right now would be. Or better yet, what would benefit me the most further down the road.

Below I made a list of things I think I need to work on, or are important in the character development process.


Traditional art skills
Learn about human form and anatomy
Photoshop skills (hand painted textures)
Model topology/siloette/proportions
Normal mapping
High poly modeling
Learn to use Zbrush or Mudbox or both.

[MM]

Well if you are looking for a priority list then modeling and texturing are separate paths so i will suggest separate priorities for them.

For improving your modeling i suggest your priority be something like this:

1. Learn about human form and anatomy(pay attention to every part of the body including pinky fingers and toes, not just the torso and the face)
2. Model with good topology
3. High poly modeling AND Low poly modeling
4. Normal mapping + efficient UV layout
5. Learn to use Zbrush or Mudbox or both. (Note: Mudbox is faster to learn and has better sculpting tools in my opinion)

For improving texturing:

1. Learn about human form and anatomy(this is very important here as well because i believe it is impossible to make a good head texture if you dont know the facial anatomy first, and this translates to other areas as well.)
2. Practice some traditional drawing. (You dont need to be a hardcore traditional artist).
3. Practice painting in photoshop preferably with a tablet pen.
4. Learn more about color (hue, tone etc.)
5. Look at photos to learn how things look in real life. Consider color bleeding, lighting, surface texture and physical property, etc when painting textures.

[Kickflipkid687]

Ok, that's more what I was hoping for :). Do you think I should try and model or duplicate game characters to see if I can do it. Or try and come up with my own concepts? I would think copying someone elses work would be better so then it would be easier to get comments?

I've learned alot already about topology of the body, but still have to learn more. I can UV map pretty well, but could always improve it. But I'm really not familiar with normal mapping since I've only done a little for GoldenEye:Source a while back. I wish I could install Roboblitz (UnrealED), but my computer won't handle it. But I think my family's computer can, so I might have to buy it and mess with it.

I have read Ben Mathis's tutorials, and watched his videos on skin painting, and also read Pig Brain's stuff. But I think skin painting will be one of the biggest challenges for me.

[MM]

i would suggest that you do some anatomy study models first before trying to copy any model. many times i have seen artists copy something so blindly that they forget to check basic anatomy or proportions. it is important even if you model a character from the Incredibles movie.

as for normal mapping if your video card supports it you could try just normal mapping in max, rendering to texture or xNormal which is currently a free beta.

tutorials are always great to see since you get to know someone else work flow. but it is important to know that the work flow in any tutorial may not be the best way of doing it, it might be something that works well for that particular artist only, so do not get stuck to any tutorial work flow.

[Kickflipkid687]

Ya, I rarely take something from a tutorial and use it as is. I take ideas and combine them with my current workflow to improve it. I have used realtime shaders in max for direct x and whatnot, so I'm sure max can support it.

I installed the roboblitz demo on the family pc, and it runs. So I might eventually use the editor to import my stuff for presentation, but not until I do alot more studies. Thank alot for the advice you have given me. I appreciate anything I can get.

[shokan]

Hi,
I have been trying to find out without luck if Mudbox renders real-time in its viewport using DirectX. I realize that the program is OpenGL-based, but some programs such as 3DMax and trueSpace use the DirectX for real-time rendering and UI. I need to know because I want to use Mudbox with a 3D LCD monitor that can only display stereo for DirectX rendered content. Not interested in DirectX output/final renders.
Thanks.

[omnicypher]

if you have zbrush, using zmapper is almost too easy to normal map things. and although its no were near as good, the photoshop nvidea normal map plugin is pretty good for small details like fabric stiching and zippers. plus zbrush has its own built in tutorials that will walk you through most of the important stuff. but it relys on the fact that you can sculpt, so working on some fine art should help.

[Athey]

You're models seems to be at a decent enough level, you just need to tackle textures more. Definitely start mastering some hand-painted techniques, but also make sure you get really good at making textures from photo ref as well.