Don Cheadle/War Machine BUST

[Firebert]

Hey guys. First post here! Taking part in the CGHub Bust a Move 3D Jam. I decided to do Don Cheadle as War Machine. Reference is limited to nill (and understandably so) Here's some of the progress so far.

Base modeled out of Maya
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o127/oglefrogle/war%20machine/base_mesh.jpg

Quick rough in of forms in ZB
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o127/oglefrogle/war%20machine/cheadle_sculpt1.jpg

WIP of armor (still need to model out the back; keep in mind, this is going to be a bust)
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o127/oglefrogle/war%20machine/helmet2.jpg

Just testing some lighting and stand-in materials with some rough procedurals. Still need to map all that out once I finish with the modeling
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o127/oglefrogle/war%20machine/war1.jpg

[PascalR]

:welcome:Firebert!
Very nice start, keep it up!

:beerchug:

[musashidan]

Nice work so far. You got the likeness spot on. Both Cheadle and Warmachine :)

[JohnSG]

Hey Firebert

Great start alright. Just have a few pointers or directional tips

Here is a great close up image worth looking at, after looking at the image for a bit, i noticed your face plate seems to be a bit soft, around the eye and on the side of the face. The eyes in the image seems to be tighter and deeper, (HARDSURFACE COMMENTS ONLY)



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Alot of the surfaces feel like there are combined, with a grove in-between them, if you have not already it would be better to separate every independent piece of metal, it will help in the overall look of the suit.

Here is a great hires side view too

http://www.audioshocker.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/war-machine-iron-man-2-1600.jpg

[El Burritoh]

(Stupid NDAs... grumble grumble...)


I like the direction this is headed. Get it? Oh man, I'm so funny... :-{

Since this is a bust, do you plan to do high-res texturing for it? Don Cheadle looks awesome, and making a photorealistic Human in a photorealistic Warmachine helmet would be pretty fantastic!

I do have on request. Could you post a high-res pic of the wireframe around the faceplate? I've had trouble with similar shapes, especially around the eyes, and I'm curious to see what other people's "topological solutions" are.

[Firebert]

Thanks for all the replies guys! I hope I can really push myself to finish this up for the end of the challenge.

PascalR: Thanks! I'm glad to be here! There's some really top notch stuff at this place, so thanks to you guys for starting it up and keeping the caliber high!

musashidan: Thanks man! War Machine is turning out to be more of a challenge than Cheadle, surprisingly as it is usually the opposite for me. I think this is because I'm really going by a guessing game on some parts of WM.

JohnSG: I have a similar ref pic to that one that I pulled out of the trailer. I looked back at my model around the eyes, and there were some supporting edge loops I forgot to put in around some areas. I remember I took these out to modify the mesh forms easier and must have forgotten to put them back in (the lack of a powerful mod stack in maya :( ). A lot of the model is separated. The faceplate is comprised of two sections, two for the eyes, 4 for the head, the jawline is made of 5, etc. I think you make a really good observation on this though, and I should go back and make this spacing a little more prominent and thicken it up to really give it that weight.
Also, looking at the render and the ref side by side; the shoulders should go up further maybe, and deepen the neck. I already plan on thickening the neck plating.
The biggest problem I am having is sheer frustration because I want to make this thing RIGHT, and the ref is limited (obviously and understandably). Sure I could go and explore my imagination, but this is such a technical piece... :banghead:
The movie is only a few months away, and I can always go back and change things. Modifying the ref pictures isn't much help as a lot of areas are being kept in the dark, and once you tweak them in photoshop to brighten them up, they fall apart and you still can't make out the shapes too well. The neck and the back are the areas that are really slowing me down atm, aside from my 10 month old son :P
Thanks for the crit and feedback!

El Burritoh: I kinda got that vibe from ya on that other war machine post... NDAs and all that. :) It's all good man, I know how that stuff goes from some freelance work I've had in the past. The plan is to do it as realistic as I can get it, textures and all. I'm not so worried about that front as much as I am just making it as close to correct as possible. I attached a close up of the eye area of the faceplate.

Thanks for all the feedback guys... I'll have something more to look at this weekend or Monday or something... who knows, life and all that......

[Firebert]

New light setup, new materials.
Now I am going to go back and texture and refine Cheadle, and then texture the armor. I THINK I'm pretty much done modeling. There may be a few additional pieces I need to add in or adjust, but nothing major nor time consuming.
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[dr.kim]

Nice model.
I am modeling war machine too and its plenty fun modeling one of the coolest characters. I used lot of iron man reference to model him since there aren't lot of war machine reference out there. I do think war machine is way more cooler than war machine tho. hehhe.

I like your topology. nice and simple.

cool model.

[Firebert]

dr. kim: thanks man.

here is the face... now onto texturing the armor and striking a pose/expression.

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[Firebert]

Finished the entry. Had some real fight with the Mia shaders... they're so versatile, but I find them to be buggy quite often. Sometimes the shader would remain the same no matter what was done to the texture, other times, it would be fine... regardless, I found them very frustrating to work with and I'm still not entirely happy with the results.

Attached are my entry stills, and below is a turntable (yes, it's a tad fast, but I didn't have a lot of time to render out enough frames). If you want to download a quicktime of the video (scrubbin' love! :beerchug:), I have it available in RAR format at the following links in my dropbox. I will post this in Finished Work as well. Thanks for the critique guys!

Quicktime Video Download 1 (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1446578/Videos/war_machine_HIGH.rar)
Mirror (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1446578/Videos/war_machine_HIGH%20%281%29.rar)
Mirror (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1446578/Videos/war_machine_HIGH%20%282%29.rar)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBzOdAeX2J8

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http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1446578/head_test.jpg