Ghoul

[riidom]

Hi all!

I picked the ghoul from the list and have the modelling (probably) done. Have to look at it again after a little break, and maybe you guys have some ideas for improvement as well? Feel free to criticize, just keep in mind, that there is quite much still to do, like unwrapping, texturing, rigging and animating (and my skills get worse in exactly that order), and its just one guy from one faction.. so yes, here is a preview:

ghoul preview

Let me hear what you think!

[TheAncientGoat]

Oh wow.. That's really good! How many poly's is it?

The only problem I can see is that it is a bit similar to the concept art in the wiki, which isn't ours It isn't /too/ similar, but the artist might take offence if he where to stumble across his piece of art and then see it adapted to a model without permission. If we remove the concept though, it wouldn't be as obvious.

But anyhow, still a really nice model

[Skorpio]

Hi riidom, welcome to OD. The model looks good already, but the forearms are a little too thin. I would also change the region where the spine is connected to the legs, the transition looks a bit abrupt in the front view. Maybe you could make the thighs thinner and the spine thicker. And the claws should be bigger. That's all for now. Oh, and the poly limit for common creatures is 1000, so maybe you could reduce the count a little bit.

BTW we still use Blender 2.49b, because the new version isn't stable yet and there could be problems with the OGRE exporter. I think the author of the exporter wants to wait till the new version is stable before he will update it.

[svenskmand]

Wow, that is really nice riidom I have added three more pictures to the inspiration for concept art. I can try and make an actual concept art from the four pictures I have posted, and the work you have been doing so far

It is awesome

[Skorpio]

I really have a bad feeling about using other people's concept art, especially if it's unfree. Even if it's only for inspiration, I find it kinda lame. We should make our own stuff and try to be as original as possible. Of course in most fantasy games there are always the same stereotyped creatures, but we should still establish our own style.

[svenskmand]

Of course we should make our own stuff, but I do not see why we cannot get inspiration from others? No one can ever be truly original. All we can every do make stuff that is inspired/derived by mixes of other stuff, we learn from our environment and some of that makes up our imagination, and then we make stuff up as if it where truely our own, but it is never that. That is what we are doing all the time for all other stuff also. I mean are we not making a game that uses many elements from DK, and Evil Genius, and now also Diablo 2 and Sacrifice and so and so? That is not copying, but merely inspiration. As you say yourself there is allot of stereotypes in fantasy, which means that for our project the Undead, Elves and the Humans will be very stereotypical. But the Corpars, Constructs and Mercenaries is where we can show more originality.

I have attached my initial attempt at a Ghoul base on riidom's render and my general imagination of a Ghoul which is inspired from my image searches on the net.

riidoom: I think your Ghoul should have more of its ribs and the surrounding tissue, the first image on the wiki almost only has ribs, our should have almost all its chest, but with some holes where some ribs can be seen. I like the head, I think the Ghoul should be bald like in the second picture on the wiki, this one: http://bloghogwarts.com/wp-content/uplo ... -ghoul.jpg Also regarding the feet: the back spike should be moved to the heel, and the toes should have long nail/claws. Also could you change the form of the foot so that is has a bit more resembles to a claw like this: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p-D236RojRo/S ... lefoot.jpg So there is 80% of the stuff you already have and 20% of the claw in the picture?

[riidom]

Reducing face count by half plus all these changes seems impossible to me, so I decided to start from scratch again. Thanks for all the concept art, but I decided to make a freestyle attempt this time. Though there are some elements I like that will make their way into the model.

The old model is available on http://opengameart.org/content/ghoul , but only the 2k quad one, I did make a reduced one, but it didnt look good so I deleted it.

[svenskmand]

Ok. I think the head was very suitable for the Ghoul, you should keep some of that

[riidom]

Ok, here is another model:

It has 1118 faces.
I decided to make it a bit more decent in the appearance, as it will be a quite common creature, I suppose. I am just wondering if it maybe would serve better as a zombie... to me it looks more like a "weak fighter" than a "strong fighter" (descriptions from wiki)... what you think?

A few questions:
The facecount for common creatures is 1000, as it got stated before.. what will be the limit for the rare ones?
About textures:
- what texture size is allowed/recommended?
-what maps will be used (color/diffuse of course, how about normal and specular maps?)

Normal maps lead me to another question: I have an old single core CPU (no SSE2), and my graphic cards supports OpenGL 1.5 only ... in case you create in future builds that require more modern systems.. is it trouble to parallel provide a build for an oldtimer like I have?

I start the unwrapping and texturing now, will switch over to 2.49 for rigging and animating later. If someone wants to fork the model, I will upload it on OGA in a pre-finished state, just let me know. Will do same when I see myself unable to create suiting textures and animations.

edit:
About the head.... it had too much faces to insert it into a 1000quad-model, so I made a simpler one for this guy. But it can be used for higher ranked creatures, or maybe as static decoration (on a column, over a door inside a wall, or stuff like this) even.
Oversaw the question about the facecount for the first one.. it was 2200something

[charlie]

I prefer this model. I didn't like the omitted midsection on the other - it looked fragile. The 2nd ghoul looks gaunt but creepy.

If you feel it does not look dangerous, give it longer, sharper claws/fingers. I'm not a big fan of eyebrow-style skull, although perhaps you have a purpose to the shape that won't be obvious until it is textured?

[andrewbuck]

The rules for the polycount are not really rules per se, just more guidelines. Ultimately we need to have people do some checking to see what kind of framerates they get with different numbers of polys on different systems. Even 3 or 4 thousand polys would be fine for something there will only be a few of. Remember too that it is how many are on-screen rather than how many you have so ranged weapon creatures can have more polys since they will be spread out over a bigger area and thus some of them will likely be offscreen.

Also, if you have high poly models, remember you can bake them to produce normal maps for lower res models and achieve most of the effect. Therefore if you are more comfortable producing high poly models you could do that, too.

I like the look of this creature and the first one you posted. Are they meant to be used both in-game at the same time or are both just two versions of the ghoul?

-Buck

[svenskmand]

I think the second one has potential, if the texturing is good. And I do not think it looks weak per se. It will again depend on the texture.

If you feel it does not look dangerous, give it longer, sharper claws/fingers.

Yes I agree give it long sharp claws, that is a must for a Ghoul. But very nice

And regarding the question about normal mapping and specular mapping, yes we will be using normal mapping. Specular mapping I also hope we will use, and I think it is just a question about turning it on in the ogre-material file for you creature (Andrew and Skorpio correct me if I am wrong), so please make both normal mapping and specular mapping for you creature, if you can

[Skorpio]

I also prefer the second version, although I like the head of the first one better. But it's hard to imagine how the low poly head will look like with a texture so probably it's OK. Could you post a wireframe?

And it would be cool if the model had donkey legs like the original mythological ghouls. I prepared a new concept, just for fun, you don't have to use it.

BTW do you have experience with sculpting? Maybe it would be better to model a high poly version first, before you paint a texture. I recommend Sculptris for sculpting.

[svenskmand]

Cool , how did you make it in GIMP? How long time did it take to make it?

[Skorpio]

I use Photoshop and I don't remember how much time I needed to create this image. If you want to learn how to draw, then I could send you some really cool books by Andrew Loomis. They are pretty big, though (157mb altogether).

[svenskmand]

I would like to know how to draw, aided by the computer, i.e. using a tablet/digitizer. That would be cool

[Skorpio]

These books were written before the digital age, but they're still very informative. Send me your e-mail address or ICQ number if you want to read one.

[riidom]

Hi all,
here is a textured version, colour-, normal- and specular-mapped. The brightwhite stuff at the claws at elbow and knee come from specularity map, I am not sure if this is because the map isnt good or my lighting is not set up good. It will probably look different when rendered by game engine anyway, so I will adjust it when there are some ingame screenshots of it.
I try to set up a rig for this guy now, if you think the texture needs serious changes, let me hear!

[Skorpio]

Looks nice. It reminds me of Giger's aliens.

[svenskmand]

I think you should start by making the eyes the same size as the mouth, and make the mouth the same size as the eyes are now. Also make the claws 60% bigger, and longer. It looks more like an alien than like a Ghoul, but I got potential. I like how the its chest, shoulders and upper arms.

[charlie]

It looks very haunting, very creepy. Interestingly I liked the eyes but didn't like the upper arms - they are the most unnatural bits for me, the shape looks like lumps/bulges rather than muscles.

[riidom]

I fixed eyes, mouth elbow claws and the upperarms a bit on the lowpoly model, but I didnt update the highpoly one or baked a new normalmap, so the changes are really minor. Hope you guys can live with that, its just that the concept of UV mapping requires me to do things in a certain order, and doing changes to the "root" lead to quite much update work.

Plus, I messed up my colour map, due to the weird pack-feature of blender, I "downdated" the actual one, separate saved with an old one from inside blender. Didnt took me too much time, but I would really love to do some progress now, and get that guy done.
Also, I think, he might be the backbone of the undead army, and there are quite a few characters in the hierarchy above him.. so its maybe no good idea to make him looking too dangerous. Better to not push him the scala up all way, so there is some space left for the other, more heavy weighted guys to look awesome evil in comparison.

I read a bit in the other thread about file sizes for media stuff... and noticed, my normal map is 3 MB big.. maybe I have wrong settings, or would another format be better? A suggestion from someone who has a bit clue about image file formats would be great, in case these files are too big, otherwise I would just leave them as they are.

Ok, now the next step... animation. Are there any special requirements for OGRE? As I dont know too much about animation so far, I would be interested in the not-so-special requirements as well

My idea so far is:
- set up a rig (I will keep it quite simple, not every single finger rigged, no facial animation)
- skinning with vertex groups, are there any naming conventions between bones/vgroups?
- are shape keys supported? Facial animation would be possible that way.. I fear, for facial animation with bones the mesh is not suitable in the head area.

P.S.: No screenshot this time, I cant stand this "on-the-toilet"-pose anymore, next preview will be in different poses.

[svenskmand]

I fixed eyes, mouth elbow claws and the upperarms a bit on the lowpoly model, but I didnt update the highpoly one or baked a new normalmap, so the changes are really minor.
...
Also, I think, he might be the backbone of the undead army, and there are quite a few characters in the hierarchy above him.. so its maybe no good idea to make him looking too dangerous. Better to not push him the scala up all way, so there is some space left for the other, more heavy weighted guys to look awesome evil in comparison.

He is a strong fighter for the undead, where the zombie is the low-down footsoldier. But of course the the skeleton knight should be more powerful, and they should all look mean and evil (they are undead). Regarding the investment of time I think we should make each and every model perfect, but that does not mean that it has to be completed all in one go. It is a good idea to work on him for some time then leave him for a while and work on other stuff and then return and work some more on him, what ever you like

I cannot wait to see this guy in the game, great work riidoom

Regarding the technical stuff about the rigging, you should ask Skorpio. And while you wait for him to answer you can always look at the Kobold as it is fully rigged and completely animated.

[riidom]

Regarding the investment of time I think we should make each and every model perfect, but that does not mean that it has to be completed all in one go. It is a good idea to work on him for some time then leave him for a while and work on other stuff and then return and work some more on him, what ever you like

That is very true, it just seems that the definition of perfect differs a little bit here and there. I guess I have to learn to distinct "bug reports", where something is really not good in the model, from "feature requests", that reflect more a personal opinion.
But im learning much by doing this, about going through the character creation process, also about community work

Regarding the technical stuff about the rigging, you should ask Skorpio. And while you wait for him to answer you can always look at the Kobold as it is fully rigged and completely animated.

Thanks for that hint, looking at the kobold answered basically all of the above questions (and opened up an uncountable number of new ones). Until I am comfortable with Action and NLA Editor, I might provide un-animated, but at least rigged models.

___
Question: I have sometimes the feeling, the amount of weight doesnt matter... I paint a vertex with 0.25, and it behaves like 1.0 ... painting 0.0 excludes him, as it should be. Any ideas what this is about?

[oln]

Regarding the investment of time I think we should make each and every model perfect, but that does not mean that it has to be completed all in one go. It is a good idea to work on him for some time then leave him for a while and work on other stuff and then return and work some more on him, what ever you like

I think we should concentrate on getting more models in the game first, as a lot of things are missing right now, and then we can concentrate on polishing them later.

Awesome work riidom!