I'm Going To Make A Free Character Asset For The Community, Any Suggestions?

[Patrick]

I'm looking to make a free fully textured, rigged and animated Alien / Creature asset for the community, but I am having a little trouble figuring out what you guys and gals might like to see, so I'm making this post to kind of ask.

 

So far I have been fooling around sculpting up concepts and ditching them but I'm going to take a slightly different and much more organized approach... I'm going to sort of brainstorm a little design or idea here and take the feedback and work off of that on a concept sketch and once finished I will take it further and start blocking out the model in Zbrush.

 

The model will be completely free for anyone to use, for either personal or commercial use, and I own my Zbrush commercial license so it's all legit. This won't happen over night as I still need to work on art for my project and I have a little freelance work, but I will do chipping away at this and want to get something finished for everyone and to see it in the engine sooner rather than later! I won't just be making the model as I plan to Unwrap and texture it, retopologise with nice animatable topology as well as optimize the poly count for a game. I will release the model once that is done and then I will work on a rigging it and then animating it and release that. The one thing about this is, I own and will be using Maya 2012, the rig will be a custom control rig that I will use for the animations and I will provide the core files for anyone who wants to get in and tweak or add to the animations, but you will need Maya. I will include a rigged fbx and maybe update a version for Blender as I know the joints and skin weights will transfer but the control rig won't. Unless someone else wants to take that and look at my control rig and recreate a Blender version.

 

Here are the two base Ideas that I have so far, and I am happy for any suggestions or ideas:

• Little Quadruped Alien:
  The idea behind this would be something small and fast that would come at a player in masses or something, similar to the little face hugging things in the Aliens movies and games.
  
• Bipedal Alien:
  I quite liked the weird looking enemy in the demo video but I was thinking something a little less... Creepy unless creepy is what people would want?
  

 

So far I don't have much to go with because I was hoping that maybe some members here would take part in helping me with some ideas for me to base a design off of. I am capable of creating disfigured things and ill proportioned characters, I will likely update this post with a few previews of sketches and sculpts when they come about, but I won't start on anything just yet, I would like to wait for a few replies while I think a little more on which idea to go with and then elaborate on it myself too.

 

Final model will likely include a diffuse, normal and specular map. A nice rig and some decent animations although I am unsure how many I will be adding, maybe when it comes to that I will ask people what they may want in addition to the basics.

 

Here is a sample of something I did for a friend in Sculptris, I was too lazy to go through my emails and contact pixologic for my info after performing a clean installation of windows:

http://i.imgur.com/Ytgjm8o.png

http://i.imgur.com/KIfVi5U.png

 

Its always nice to take a break from something like my game art or work and just working on something different when you're stuck and going back to what you were doing with a fresh mind and that is what I'd be doing with this and why it wont be as instant

 

 

**I'd prefer to keep the model mostly organic with perhaps some hard surface skin detail of some sort, no insane scifi armour, I have little experience with creating such things in Zbrush at this stage..(hard surface stuff that is) I'm not afraid to try though **

 

 

 

Best Regards

Patrick

[Patrick]

I'm going to store all of the sketches and information on the process here in this second post and the actual content once finished will be edited into the above post for everyone...

 

 

Nothing special in the vid yet though as I am very tired but its a start

https://vimeo.com/84009954

 

Here is a second sketch video, I scrapped the ones I liked in the first video as they admittedly looked a lot like the images posted below from Natural Selection 2... Here is the second video link:

https://vimeo.com/84168438

 

 

 

Regards

Patrick

[gamecreator]

That is a very generous offer and I know it will take a lot of hours of work. I wish I had a game project I could make use of this for. Also, don't know if you've ever played an older game called Star Control II but that's what popped to mind when you mentioned creating an alien. And, of course, Starcraft II. The sketches look nice, by the way.

[codeape]

Cool, I might have use for it ... so thanks ...

[Guppy]

Looking at the 2nd sketch I kind of expected his lower body to be an arachnid - mostly because that would be super creepy xD

[shadmar]

+1, I have a ragdollscript on my list for this

[DudeAwesome]

looks like a fade and skulk from natural selection 2

 

 

what software are you using? i´m looking for purchasing silo 2 but dont know if its powerfull and easy

[Patrick]

looks like a fade and skulk from natural selection 2

 

 

what software are you using? i´m looking for purchasing silo 2 but dont know if its powerfull and easy

 

Oh wow... I guess I will scrap those two then I have Natural Selection 2 but I have never played it

 

Looking at the 2nd sketch I kind of expected his lower body to be an arachnid - mostly because that would be super creepy xD

 

I have a hard time with these types of things lol, I have an immense fear of insects / spiders... So I try to avoid the overly insectoid like creatures simply because when it comes to creating a detailed image or model I have to gather reference on such things, it sucks because that type of stuff is what REALLY helps with aliens and creepy monsters, but I just can't stand even looking at the images of them The third sketch is the most insect like I think I will get (most likely)

[DarthRaff]

Nice sketching, what program are you using for ?

[Patrick]

Nice sketching, what program are you using for ?

Thanks, I was using Art Rage 4.

[DarthRaff]

Thank you, very good modeling too

[Patrick]

I've uploaded a second set of sketches, one with a more arachnid type thing and some other stuff, I like about two of them... Any feedback would help a fair bit

 

 

Regards

Patrick

[Guppy]

I've uploaded a second set of sketches, one with a more arachnid type thing and some other stuff, I like about two of them... Any feedback would help a fair bit

 

 

Regards

Patrick

 

http://vimeo.com/84168438

 

goes "VimeUhOh could not find that page", still uploading?

[Patrick]

Try again in two mins, it takes sometime to convert with Vimeo...