Mortal Kombat HD Remix with MUGEN

I use normal maps, because I can work with more detail. If I use a morph, I'd keep the mesh as low poly as possible for working speed and easy skinning.

We can do a mix, model morphing for global changes, and normal map blending for high frequency detail.
 
Gah! Sooo many posts, I can't keep up with it. It's like everyone became available for this project again at the same time.

I got in touch with Demonseed and he says he'll have time to get back to working on Sonya soon.

As for Scorps strike anim: LOOKS awesome. Don't overthink it. I'd move on to Victory arm raise.

Hey Gojira: Shang looking awesome! Lui Kang looks a little too bulky. I think in general is muscles/body type should be closer to Bruce Lee. I know he has more muscle on him than Bruce Lee did but he feels a little too juiced right now.
 
Hey Gojira: Shang looking awesome! Lui Kang looks a little too bulky. I think in general is muscles/body type should be closer to Bruce Lee. I know he has more muscle on him than Bruce Lee did but he feels a little too juiced right now.
100% agree because liu kang was also inspired in bruce lee and jackie chan Ed Boon said
 
Got a little work done on Kano at least... I've been having second thoughts about how to go about making his body, so I put that off and started working on sculpting his head instead. Here are the results of an hour or so of ****ing around in ZBrush:

kano_wip.jpg


I didn't have any reference in front of me as I was working so to be honest I have no idea if the likeness is better or worse than before, but it's some form of progress at least. I'll make sure to continue working on him over the weekend, and I'll try to slap some kind of texture on there and see if that helps with getting the likeness right.
 
Cool, just keep at it, I would't try to make it so smooth before the general form is close in likeness. Stay on the lower sub D. levels for a while.

Classic modeling would be good for the body, later adding detail with Zbrush.

The Win pose is blocked out, I'm working on the second pass now.
 
Reference is key man! I learned the hard way to never draw/sculpt from what's in your head, only what your eyes see. You'll get much better and faster results. Already, the form looks off mostly because of the crests and valleys. You'll see if once you pull up an image to work of. And yeah, what bleed said about getting in the details at lower resolution is extremely helpful.

Finished Tsung's face sculpt. Didn't really do much to his ears, or anything really beyond his face. Their going to be covered up anyways. Texture is still being played with, blocking in his outfit now.

shang2.jpg
 
Hi Gojira,

You are soooo fast. That being said, Shang's nose doesn't appear sharp enough and his eyes as you mentioned could probably look a bit more asian looking.
 
Mortal Gojira, Shang looks amazing! very well done.

About shang the hard part will be the cloth and how to make it move realistic.
 
Yeah I wasn't actually planning on doing a lot of sculpting, mostly just getting the mesh exported to ZB and making sure everything worked, which is why I didn't bother digging up my references... but then I got a little carried away, lol. As far as the likeness goes I was quite happy with what I had in Max, but once I started working in ZB I'm sure I inadvertently made a lot of subtle changes to the shapes. I will definitely consult my references extensively before doing any more work, and make sure I have it in front of me as I'm working.


As for the body, I had originally planned sculpting his body as one piece (ideally merging it with the head somehow) and then doing each layer of clothing and accessories on top of that. I have a basemesh that's ready for sculpting, but I'm thinking it might be a better idea to split everything up from the beginning, just extending the head mesh a bit towards the chest and shoulders, making the arms separate, and so on. Normally I would've just made a complete basemesh from the get-go, but since I started the character off trying to model the head in Max to get the likeness right it somewhat complicates things. Do you guys have any tips or suggestions?
 
Got a little work done on Kano at least... I've been having second thoughts about how to go about making his body, so I put that off and started working on sculpting his head instead. Here are the results of an hour or so of ****ing around in ZBrush:

kano_wip.jpg


I didn't have any reference in front of me as I was working so to be honest I have no idea if the likeness is better or worse than before, but it's some form of progress at least. I'll make sure to continue working on him over the weekend, and I'll try to slap some kind of texture on there and see if that helps with getting the likeness right.

Nice work man! Really nice indeed, but if you want to redo the face, I think this may help.
25068_1253668866802_1381957783_30654111_7227867_a.jpg
I found it on his Facebook. . hope that'll help ya. . ^_^

Not too sure what you mean by sharp enough, but went ahead and messed with it. Here is a mock up of what he looks like now

View attachment 2788

Awesome work! Nuff said! :D

Changed the strike a little on the impact and moved the hand closer to the center.

TYM-Focus-Loop_08.gif

Excellent! Looks perfect to me! ^_^
 
Yeah I wasn't actually planning on doing a lot of sculpting, mostly just getting the mesh exported to ZB and making sure everything worked, which is why I didn't bother digging up my references... but then I got a little carried away, lol. As far as the likeness goes I was quite happy with what I had in Max, but once I started working in ZB I'm sure I inadvertently made a lot of subtle changes to the shapes. I will definitely consult my references extensively before doing any more work, and make sure I have it in front of me as I'm working.


As for the body, I had originally planned sculpting his body as one piece (ideally merging it with the head somehow) and then doing each layer of clothing and accessories on top of that. I have a basemesh that's ready for sculpting, but I'm thinking it might be a better idea to split everything up from the beginning, just extending the head mesh a bit towards the chest and shoulders, making the arms separate, and so on. Normally I would've just made a complete basemesh from the get-go, but since I started the character off trying to model the head in Max to get the likeness right it somewhat complicates things. Do you guys have any tips or suggestions?

Honestly, it may be just what you're comfortable with. Since we're not worried about polycount, breaking up or keeping the mesh whole is up to you. Personally, I keep the mesh one piece, but that's because I'm primarily thinking about sculpting. From an animation point of view, breaking it up is ideal. So just judge it according to your work flow.
 
Some ways to connect the mesh.

1 = You can blend the body with the head using a solid mesh and projecting the details with "Project All"

Hide the head while projecting if you only want to project the body details.

2 = Use Goz to add geometry to the head model, bringing it back to Zbrush will have the body already attached.

3 = Keep them as separate parts and blend the shapes in a single sub tool using the Clay brush.





About the cloth, I'm confused about how they get it working in real time for video games. In max I have to pre render just to see a preview... It would be great if there was some way I could get some real time cloth animation, and mix it with bones to fix the clipping errors and placement.

Right now I'm key framing the cloth animations and it's a bit of a pain to make it smooth.
 
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I just want to add to what Bleed said above as another method, if you are using 3ds max:

Jiggeh, it's best to do the base mesh as one piece initially. Then you'll select the head down to the neck and you'll detach the head from the body. I generally lay out basic UV's for the head at this point. I then take the body and lay out different UVs for the body. This allows maximum texture resolution for each of those areas. 4096 x 4096 is probably ideal. 2048x2048 for each area works just as well.

Once that is done you can import both pieces into zBrush. Sculpt all your details then texture the body and the head. Generate and export all your maps.

Now export head base mesh then body base mesh from zBrush (or GoZ if you like). Import both head and body into 3ds Max. Now align the head with body so they fit together. Make copies of your head mesh and start creating facial expression (you can also create these morph targets from within zBrush and export them) Once you are done you can apply the morph modifier and start testing the facial expressions.

When you are ready to do full body animation, you'll need to connect your head back to your body. You do this with an "Edit Poly" modifier. Then go in and select the seem between the neck and the head at vertex sublevel and weld the head verts to the body verts to close up that seam.

Next you can use CAT, Biped or regular max bones to begin rigging your character. Then you'll add Skin morph, adjust your evelopes, do your skin weighting and all that.

The beauty of this method is you can move up and down the stack to make changes as needed without disturbing your mesh. Also you get the highest resolution possible for the Face and the Body separately instead of having to share your texture space between the two.

I hope that helps.






Honestly, it may be just what you're comfortable with. Since we're not worried about polycount, breaking up or keeping the mesh whole is up to you. Personally, I keep the mesh one piece, but that's because I'm primarily thinking about sculpting. From an animation point of view, breaking it up is ideal. So just judge it according to your work flow.
 
Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I'm not at all concerned about rigging and animation at this point - that will all take place on a separate model altogether and the way the high poly model is set up likely won't have that much influence on how I do the retopo... but that's a headache for another day, in any event. From what I can tell, trying to rig, skin and animate the actual high poly mesh doesn't sound like a great idea, anyway.

The reason I'm feeling a little lost is simply that I have no real experience with "current gen" character creation; I've done a bit of modelling, I've done a bit of sculpting, but with the exception of a project for school using Maya and Mudbox (one I wasn't terribly happy with in the end anyway) I have never made a modern character model from start to finish. What I know about ZBrush is basically what carries over from Mudbox - the process of sculpting itself, and very little else. Half of the reason I took this on is precisely because I want to learn more about the typical workflow of creating a character primarily using ZBrush. So please do bear with me as I will probably do a fair amount of stupid mistakes along the way :D

tremor_209: Thanks a lot for that picture. I already have a fair amount of pictures saved but you can never have too much reference! This photo actually seems clearer than most of the ones I have, so it definitely helps.

Bleed: Scorpion looks great as always, but one detail just caught my eye, the way you can see "through" him when he extends his arm looks a bit odd. At first I thought there was literally a hole in the model or something, but I suppose it's just a side effect of how loosely the yellow vest sits over his torso. I will say though, judging from the angle of his arm, it doesn't seem like his shoulder would be that far back... maybe? I dunno, the more I look at it, the more confused I get. Whether it's "correct" or not, it may be something worth looking at.

Mortal Gojira: Tsung looks nice. I think parts of his face could be wrinklier still, but considering we never got a good close look at him (partly I'm sure because the makeup probably didn't hold up for extreme closeups) he certainly looks more than passable as far as likeness goes. His hair may be a challenge, but thankfully he doesn't move around a whole lot so it might not be a huge deal in the end.

calactyte: Thanks for the advice. I'll apply as much of it as I can. :)
 
One small detail about Shang.. I don't think he had a beard in MK1, just mustache:

33xvnva.jpg


It was added in the opening of MKII though:

2dlpsut.png
 
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