Mortal Kombat HD Remix with MUGEN

k, time for critique


I may have to do some post work in Photoshop to try and blend the animations. If not, there will be a snap when he plays the stance animation, because the normal map and model is mirrored.

MK1_Scorp_StandTurn.gif




I really like the background, the melody threw me off but after a while I got used to it.

I don't think there's much to do with music though, sounds like most of it has already been taken care of.

woah! He's doing the Hokey Pokey ! ! Amazing for me ! !

Ok, fixed alot of things,

-added texture to foreground stone elements
-darkened background floor coloring to brownish color
-added pink highlight to door frame
-softened and lightened shadows

and a few other things I can't remember right now. I've got to get some sleep.

TEMPLE_SHRINE_SHOW_B.jpg

good! But I want to add some crits . . Uhm. . The sky is so normal, I suggest to try adding a gradient of it to make it more cooler . . And I'm also curious about the height of the Masked guards . . And last I prefer the old stone texture . .
 
SONYA work in progress 001.jpg
work in progress. So far just getting a bit of detail on the body. The modeled pieces for clothing are placeholders, just checking for some proportions. Shaders and colors are also placeholders. The skin is not going to look bright or cartoony like that in the final version.Soon it'll be taken into Zbrush where I can start sculpting in the abs, biceps, deltoids, and add in pores. What I'm thinking of doing with the cloth is modeling it in Zbrush then retopologizing in topogun. Does anyone have a clear picture of how the arm gauntlets are supposed to look like? I still havent figured out the details from the images I found.
 
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Ok I understand that some folks won't like shadows in the scene since they weren't in the original, but if you look at Throne Room and the New Pit Bottom, I've decided early on that the presence of shadows add dimension to backgrounds. To me the shadows re-enforce that this is a 3-Dimensional space rather than a Photograph that the characters are playing on. In short, the Shadows are necessary since (a) I've used them in two other stages already and (b) they offer an improvement in my opinion.


The red wooden railing are there. Could you be referring to an old version of the image? Am I missing something?

The faces on the statues were almost impossible to see before. I zoomed in at 500% in Photoshop and made out the details the best that I could and this is pretty accurate to what is there. I'll be redoing the robed guards at one point or another and perhaps at that time I'll also revisit the statues. For now, they are fine.





Palace Gates looks much better now, just think that shadows aren't really need. And you can make statues' faces with more serious expression.)


You right, they aren't exist..
 
Hi DEMONSEED !
When i first time see MK on arcade , Sonya alwals was for me Cynthia Rothrock
In these years, she was hit,big movie star, was on top of the wave and everywhere, I'm sure Ed Boon had it in mind when he made the game.
 
Okay here's another update -

Remix:
mk1hdmenubeta.png


Reference (upscale):
mk1menuref.png


In the original, this was just an Insert Coin screen that would pop up in the attract/idle mode. But in our version this will be used as the main menu, and the blank middle area will be filled with options and other things. Upon pressing start at the title screen or attract sequence, it should take you directly to this screen. I always thought the scrolling portraits were really cool so I'm glad it's being put to use.

As you can see I've chosen to fill out the sides for 16:9 instead of cropping, and I think it works much better like this. As for the texture, I'll be the first to say it isn't identical to the original, and TBH I don't really know what the original's is (apart from some kind of stone). I did make many different textures and experimented a lot, and while this may not be the closest thing, it definitely looks the best out of everything I made. I did my best to match the colors, again they're still not identical, but personally I'm happy with this.

There is still some work to be done on it, the lighting/shading still needs tweaking, and the text still needs correction. The same texture and box style is being used for the VS screen too, which I'll be finishing up probably tomorrow and posting.

Anyway please tell me what you guys think.
 
Nice work DEMONSEED, Sonya's body is looking best. Her face could improve over time, but you have some great progress so far.

"Thumbs up"
 
Looks perfect to me. I was wondering, Bleed do you have After Effects and the Revision Effect Reel Motion Blur Plugin? It'd be perfect for these animations. It adds motion blur to fast movements by using an algorithm. Much faster than running motion blur in 3ds Max. If you'll send me a sample character sprite I'll show you how it might help us out.

k, time for critique


I may have to do some post work in Photoshop to try and blend the animations. If not, there will be a snap when he plays the stance animation, because the normal map and model is mirrored.

MK1_Scorp_StandTurn.gif




I really like the background, the melody threw me off but after a while I got used to it.

I don't think there's much to do with music though, sounds like most of it has already been taken care of.
 
Looks really nice man! Keep at it. I know this is just stage one of the process. It's really going to come to life in zBrush.
 
Looks perfect! Want to see the VS. screen next.

Okay here's another update -

Remix:
mk1hdmenubeta.png


Reference (upscale):
mk1menuref.png


In the original, this was just an Insert Coin screen that would pop up in the attract/idle mode. But in our version this will be used as the main menu, and the blank middle area will be filled with options and other things. Upon pressing start at the title screen or attract sequence, it should take you directly to this screen. I always thought the scrolling portraits were really cool so I'm glad it's being put to use.

As you can see I've chosen to fill out the sides for 16:9 instead of cropping, and I think it works much better like this. As for the texture, I'll be the first to say it isn't identical to the original, and TBH I don't really know what the original's is (apart from some kind of stone). I did make many different textures and experimented a lot, and while this may not be the closest thing, it definitely looks the best out of everything I made. I did my best to match the colors, again they're still not identical, but personally I'm happy with this.

There is still some work to be done on it, the lighting/shading still needs tweaking, and the text still needs correction. The same texture and box style is being used for the VS screen too, which I'll be finishing up probably tomorrow and posting.

Anyway please tell me what you guys think.
 
nice to see we have another character modeler, good job so far DEMONSEED! the big challenge now is match the quality between the 2 artist.

now some feedback about palace gates:

the floor: i made a quick test and removing 75-80 pixels from bottom to top, the floor looks right IMO.
some days ago i made a scaled version of goro's lair for badmouse. the original version have 16 extra pixles (when jump etc.) and scaled the total of pixel is 765. so taking this in account then you see if you move some things or make it bigger (walls etc) to fill this 765 pixels.

the shadows: i think the shadows are very big. IMO only if the sun is behind the temple we can get such big shadows.

the guards: ok this problem is present in the arcade version, the guards looks tiny, it's supposed to be far from the action but the side walls of the stage don't look like that

the left gate: i don't like the actual rock texture
 
Hi calactyte, I've noticed few things on your nice looking Palace Gates, some of them are
ridiculously minor (and I apologize for that) but I'll list 'em anyway;

As someone already said, you're missing the red railing on the far left of the screen
I'll post pics so it's easier for you to see what I mean (these are all cropped from
the pics in original aspect ratio of 1.57:1)

30uprwk.jpg


You're missing some walls around Buddha statue, left and right of his knees;

2zdqdy9.jpg


This one is really minor, but on the original statues you could tell they have
mustaches, I just think that would give them more of a Asian look.

dg42gx.jpg


Your right corner statues look too fat, here they are in the original aspect ratio:

534h85.jpg


2eb61zb.jpg


And here's compared to yours:

21afdxu.jpg


Also, the Buddha statue is obviously still a problem, I think the head is too small
compared to the original, and he's flat looking in the belly and hands area.
 
I may have to do some post work in Photoshop to try and blend the animations. If not, there will be a snap when he plays the stance animation, because the normal map and model is mirrored.
Hey Bleed, can mirroring even be avoided without you doing all the moves/animations again for the opposite side?
For example, will we have Kanos' metal faceplate shifting sides every time he changes direction like in the original? Or...?

If you're going to mirror it, maybe do it in the middle of the turn, say in this frame:

2pq45n9.gif
1zmh4xf.gif


Maybe the snap will be less noticeable that way?
 
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I'll fix what I can. The statues being slightly too fat doesn't bother me than when they were too thin. I'll get that railing in there. I didn't notice that it was missing. I'll get the back wall in there too. The mustaches thing I'll have to look at it. It's subtle but I might be able to edit in photoshop so I don't have to render everything.

The buddah's head is too small if compared to the original but that might be a phase two change. I may even just remake the entire buddah in zBrush at one point or another. Anyway thanks for your comments.



Hi calactyte, I've noticed few things on your nice looking Palace Gates, some of them are
ridiculously minor (and I apologize for that) but I'll list 'em anyway;

As someone already said, you're missing the red railing on the far left of the screen
I'll post pics so it's easier for you to see what I mean (these are all cropped from
the pics in original aspect ratio of 1.57:1)

30uprwk.jpg


You're missing some walls around Buddha statue, left and right of his knees;

2zdqdy9.jpg


This one is really minor, but on the original statues you could tell they have
mustaches, I just think that would give them more of a Asian look.

dg42gx.jpg


Your right corner statues look too fat, here they are in the original aspect ratio:

534h85.jpg


2eb61zb.jpg


And here's compared to yours:

21afdxu.jpg


Also, the Buddha statue is obviously still a problem, I think the head is too small
compared to the original, and he's flat looking in the belly and hands area.
 
I was picturing the sun was off screen directly in the center of the screen but back behind everything. When you said the shadows are too big..do you mean that they are too long? I can shorten them so they don't cross so much in front of the path.


nice to see we have another character modeler, good job so far DEMONSEED! the big challenge now is match the quality between the 2 artist.

now some feedback about palace gates:

the floor: i made a quick test and removing 75-80 pixels from bottom to top, the floor looks right IMO.
some days ago i made a scaled version of goro's lair for badmouse. the original version have 16 extra pixles (when jump etc.) and scaled the total of pixel is 765. so taking this in account then you see if you move some things or make it bigger (walls etc) to fill this 765 pixels.

the shadows: i think the shadows are very big. IMO only if the sun is behind the temple we can get such big shadows.

the guards: ok this problem is present in the arcade version, the guards looks tiny, it's supposed to be far from the action but the side walls of the stage don't look like that

the left gate: i don't like the actual rock texture
 

Time for a bit of crit -

Firstly, I am loving your progress on it, it looks fantastic. But I feel some improvements can still be made.

Size -
When matching up from the bottom of path to the fence with the original, it appears that your buddha and flags are too large, as well as the backdrop consisting of temple and trees. This may still be affecting the illusion of the guards in some way. If you can easily resize those parts of the stage, maybe try it and see how it looks.

Color -
Currently the sky (which matches the original) suggests a bright sunlit day, but the tone of everything else looks like its from an overcast day. I figure an image is better than explaining it all to you, so here is a rough version of how I imagine the stage should kind of be:

pgedit.png


It's just a quick example, but I think its closer to how it'd look in the sunlit environment that it's supposed to be. The trickiest part is the ground and shadows, the only way I could properly edit it is if I had the PSD, but I guess this still helps to get a point across.

But anyway, the ultimate decider of the time of day/contrast is the lighting of the characters IMO. That should be the priority. Unless different sprite sets of lighting are going to be used - but I assume that's not the case now. So Bleed and all you guys doing the stages should try to find a good balance between character lighting that matches every stage (good enough), while still trying to preserve the tone of the originals somewhat. I don't think it'd be fair for either Bleed or the stage makers to have to change the lighting on all their work after it was finalized, simply because a balance for the lighting wasn't figured out earlier on and created problems later. So it'd be good to discuss this now I think.

One final thing, about the flags. Firstly, I'd personally like to see the dragons on the original flags redrawn. These ones, while more detailed, are very different and look out of place to me. The color of the flag itself doesn't look right to me either.

Okay, that's pretty much all I can think of. I don't know how much of it I'm correct about, but thought I'd put it out there anyway.
 
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Ok, thanks for listening. I didn't realize you guys already someone doing the music. Didn't mean to step on any toes. :P

What is the plan as far as sound effects and voices go? I think part of the charm of this project is the fact that everything is fan-made without using any resources ripped from the games. To this end I think it's a good idea to try and replicate the sound effects and voice overs of the original, if possible. The visuals aren't ripped from the game, why should the sound be? :P

I can help out on this front if you guys don't have someone already on it. Just let me know.

Here's my original MK theme submission:
http://snack.to/oypHrH
 
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