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Character Design - Chaos: King of the Tenth Circle of Hell

Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2014 7:46 am
by riley1389
Here's my first character Design for my graphic novel that I will be illustrating using Indigo Renderer renders. This is the character concept for the series' final antagonist: Chaos. He's going to be the physical embodiment of all chaotic influence.

The render itself took just a smidgen over eight hours to complete. Now this is because of an overclocked I7-4770K with some assistance from a AMD Radeon R9 290.

Anyways, I'd love some feedback!

Software Used:

- Make Human v1.0.0
- SketchUp 8 Pro
- Blender v2.69
- Adobe Photoshop CS6
- njob
- and of course, Indigo Renderer 3.6
Kaos-2_2.jpg

Re: Character Design - Chaos: King of the Tenth Circle of He

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2014 12:46 am
by Zom-B
Interesting concept you have here :)

Regarding character lighting I would suggest you go for some more dramatic 3 Point lighting setup with colored emiters, maybe using some HDRI, check out the factory catwalk here: http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html

I gave MakeHuman a try once too, but am quite unhappy regarding model + texture quality and posing possibilities.
If you have some money to spend I would give Daz 3D a ride.
Check out this two as a start:
http://www.daz3d.com/michael-6
http://www.daz3d.com/men/freak-5

At the moment there is a 40% sale so its maybe a good opportunity to invest

Re: Character Design - Chaos: King of the Tenth Circle of He

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2014 1:54 am
by riley1389
Thank you for the tip! At first I wanted to make the orbs above him glow different, each orb a different color. But for whatever reason even though I gave each one an R&B emission with 10000 lumens each in a nighttime environment, no light seemed to emit at all, whether I'm just missing something or it's a bug with Skindigo, I don't know. I've also just very very recently (last night) started to look into HDR litigating, but I'm a poor college freshman, so I can't afford actual HDRI maps with backplanes. I've been trying find some for free, but I've only been able to find maps without backplate, and using the map itself with no backplate just looks all foggy and washed out.

Regarding Daz3D, I have tried it, and I had actually spent $50 on plug-ins and they never gave me the codes to activate them, and they also wouldn't give me my money back either. So I have pretty much boycotted Daz and its subsidiaries.

However, MakeHuman has been maturing greatly rather quickly, and when I first starting using it, it was still in like 0.46 or thereabouts. Also, the MHX format is incredibly useful with posing when you import it into Blender, because all the bones and armature are pre-linked to the model itself; so I don't have to spend hours mapping and articulating the parent-child bone structure. And the Catmull-Clark subdivision algorithm works flawlessly with MakeHuman models. I have no idea whether or not Indigo Renderer uses Catmull-Clark or a different algorithm like LS3 Loop or something, but whatever algorithm it uses, it works just as well. And with the models, when they're subdivided, they don't just make things smoother, the muscles and subtle indents in the body become much more defined. The model in this is the basic, non-smoothed, MakeHuman model, with a subdivision factor of three and subdivision smoothing enabled.

For the skin maps, my brother bought OnOne Photo Suite, which has Genuine Fractals upscaling algorithm, which is far superior to any other I've tried. And I use it to upscale the included maps from 2K to 4K (not in this case because I was more interested in trying the normal map I made for the skin rather than the upscale diffuse.)

All in all, I'm still figuring things out, but I'm a relatively quick learner.

Re: Character Design - Chaos: King of the Tenth Circle of He

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2014 8:22 am
by fenerolina
hi,
The chest and arms are ok but the hands are too big!
Also I think the character shoul be more 'atemporal' (if chaos related) so I don't like the trouses but don't listen to me. :)
Using indigo for a graphic illustration is very interesting, I'm a wood worker now but I studied illustration and it's an idea that comes often to my mind but have no story to tell :lol: . So all my encouragements. Keep posting.