Planetside 2 helms im working on

so ive been done in animation 2 for a long time now and ive been working on my side projects on the slower computers at school when I am there. finally finished rendering my final proj for after effects class. It took forever.

anyways. I have designed a Wolf helmet, I am unsure of how to incorporate the lower jaw into the design, now I have a glass shield with teeth in it, which I will revamp when time is allotted. I started designing it for my planetside 2 outfit TIW ( the iron wolves). So the chances I can at least sell 20+ of these is pretty good. help with the lower portion would be appreciated, im not sure where to go with it. Other than that it needs to be textured. now it just has a iron texture and some other composite metals at materials. Its made to fit a 6f tall biped until the actual stats are released.



This next one is the troll face we all love . I tried making a work path and extruding it, but the thing was 800 polys before I made one change to it, so I had to scrap that idea and make it from a box.
I'm going to make a standard PS2 helmet to go around the back of it. I haven't made it to scale yet.



once again. go ahead n be mean. Im thick skinned.

also... I am modeling a GUY FOX helm. Thing is I don't know if it can be put into planetside 2 because the design is most likely copyrighted by DC comics. The question is , if SOE makes DC universe, they must have rights to use DC comics likenesses, so the question becomes does that extend to other games ? if so , it would be an excellect helm to have. if you have any idea about the legalities of something like this I would like more information. thx

No the DC universe rights would not Transfer, Licensing rights for games are very specific and controlled.

I also wold not bother with troll head. Keep your stuff relevant to the universe.

i would suggest going back and doing several more versions of the helm for practice. work more on cleaning your geo up nice, dont get married to a model, dont be afraid to scrap it and start over. the last thing on your mind now should be getting one of these ready to go into playerstudio. work on refining your craft and getting better at making these.

yeah I already re-did the whole bottom half of the wolf. cracking at it now trying to get it to match the top/ look like a scruffy timber wolf / look like a helmet and not some kind of Daniel Boone thing. what better way than to use this forum and selection process ?

as for the troll thing, its not relevant so much as something, I feel, a lot of players feel akin to when they are destroying an enemy squad single handedly. Players with a high kill to death ratio would love it. I see you use a TR logo. I'd thought you'd appreciate it. I'll put the megaman rear end on it and submit it. If it fails, I still got a megaman helmet ready to go when I remove the troll face.

well planetside 2 is the only game on playerstudio (well maybe someday on) that i play so i'm really hopin they get it up soonish.
its not that people don't enjoy trolling, its just the troll helmet does not fit in the game. also with mega man helm thats even more copyright issues. i would strongly suggest sticking with original ideas like the wolf helm.

no megaman, more like megamanish. regardless I made a short vid of the wolfhelm in scanline to see what it loks like so I can get a better feel for what im missing in the viewports and can take a fresh look.

I know you are probably getting tired of me jumping in here, and all you have to do is tell me no thanks that you don't want my input and i'll bugger off.

there is really no point in rendering scan-line renders of your model, the view port with a decent max shader turned on is much more representative than a render.

the common practice when showing art assets is to use a neutral background, or an in game environment
http://gameartportfoliowall.com/
a medium grey is probably the most common, that insane skybackground distracts from what you are actualy trying to show,

when you do a turntable animation of your model (really only needed after the piece is done and even then.. not needed at all) try to avoid zooming in and out as you rotate around it just leads to motion sickness.

do you have any plans for normal maps with this? thats a big part of planetsides look. I'm not sure if this piece is suposed to be the high poly that will be baked down, or vice versa, overall it is much much much too low poly to be the high poly, and theres a lot of little grooves, like in the nose that would be better served being in the normal map.

keep at it

I actually appreciate that someone has any input of any kind. at first I was unsure if you were trolling me, but probably not.
anyways. I finally got a decent idea of how to texture something , so here is some textureing done after some minor tweaks to this low 600's poly model. unsure of tris didn't check. Its textured for the nc with a messy greyish camo. which is the standard if you don't have one equipped. the blue/red/purple will remain the same.




I actually wanna thank you for being tough on "art".

http://skfb.ly/mj3g2e1dcb

put it on sketchfab. fixed the 2 normals in the back that were weird. super cool.

still needs work.

i'm going to say again i think the best thing you could do now is just put this helm to the side and start a new one from scratch. This is a learning process and you are not going to get this wolf helm game quality by doing tinny little tweaks here and there, the problems with it go all the way deep to roots. this is a common problem i got into when i started out, you start something and feel you need to keep fiddling with it forever. its like trying out new shades of paint on a house that's not built to code. honestly the best thing for learning is grab a tangible object off your desk, a coffee cup, a stapler, phone.. and model it over and over untill what you are modeling matches your object.

another major flaw starting out, i know this was a big one for me. is i would make something and i was so proud that i was making something that i did not look at it objectively. Take what you are making and truly compaire it to your goal. which in this case is helms currently in ps2,


and keep working untill you are hitting this level of detail .

so in closing, my honest advice would be scrap this wolf helm, make something new, when you get to the point on the new thing where you are just tweaking and making minor changes,, scrap it and make a new thing. repeat untill you know how to make your forms well. till you know how to unwrap well. texture them over and over.

that is the path to improvement

yep. these are nice. that's why I play the game. I've thought several times about going into one of the earlier saves and starting to make improvements from there. I am doggedly working on the newest iteration in the mean-time because I think it can eventually become what I originally envisioned. The main thing is, I have no idea what kind of poly count to try to maintain. While these pictures (above) are very impressive due to the high quality texture mapping, the model itself might turn out to be very dull. I have already spent a few more hours on the model, re-modeling it and that messed up the unwrap. I am new to this so I don't expect to get it right on the first foray. It would be nice to put fur on it, but it might not jive with the ForgeLight engine. My main problem , is getting the bottom to look like a helmet and getting the eyeballs to look like goggles, without making them look like the TR'esque circle goggles. I got 2 weeks off school coming up and I plan on spending a lot of time on it. I am , as I am sure you are, very busy.

FYI
I actually own that helmet on my TR alt - its cool, the darth vader look.
IE does not like sketchfab.com at all.

i was thinking of some snow armor for pside with fur cuffs and trim

good idea. id like to see that. I had thoughts about armor for the infiltrator, mostly ghili (?) suit type things. ive seen it on the forums many times as a suggestion. sometimes you even see sketches there for helmet ideas.

I'm a newbie at 3D modeling and this sort of art creation. CoffeeOutlaw is as he's stated in other strings, very experienced in this stuff, so it is good to have someone with his knowledge and interest available to provide commentary and guidance on making this stuff.

My approach has been to start out very simple, and progress to more complicated stuff. Learning the tools is obviously a big part of this whole process and becoming proficient with it comes with practice and exposure and guidance from others who use the same tool(s). I'm using Blender because I don't currently have $3700.00 to buy 3D Max or Maya which are the industry standards. Anyway, they are all very powerful programs and there is so much to learn to be able to use them with confidence and effectively get the results you intend to within the limits set by, in this case Player Studio requirements.

The biggest challenge I often face is the "how to" part. I know there are tutorials available, but finding the right one is often time consuming and a challenge in and of itself. It would be nice if I had a live in teacher to be here to provide over the shoulder guidance because reading how to do something is often not so good for me since this is a visual art, I like to see how to do stuff rather than read about it.

I know you guys don't need my commentary, but I thought I'd add some so you know others are looking at this stuff too

Rawl, i have never used blender so i cant help with any specifics on software. but anytime you have any general modeling questions, feel free to shoot me a message thru the forums and i'll do my best to help you work thru your problems.

Time Warner actually owns the rights to the Guy Fawkes mask design seen in V for Vendetta, though Guy Fawkes masks (and the British historical figure they represent) date back to a time long before that, and bear no known copyright.

The masks from before V for Vendetta looked like this. [Yes, I like David Lloyd's version much better too. XD]



Though if you really do want to model assets for Planetside, you may have better luck modeling things that look as though they belong in the game, as opposed to using internet memes and ideas that have already been copyrighted.

a good rule is just be original. don't bother doing things from comics, form movies, from internet memes, pull inspiration in from all of these things but don't flat out call your piece a "troll face" "megaman" "guy fox(Fawkes)" if you make a helm that's megaman inspired just make it. and post it if everyone goes "that's megamans helm" then you probably got too close to the reference. if they say "that reminds me of megaman"then it could be ok.
but in general if you idea is you want to make a guy fawkes mask because people will recongnize it and it will get more sells. then that itself is a sign you are making a IP violation.

planetside should get its "GO" on the 1st of august. according to this video. with higby and tyrell
it is a few minutes in. so I hope to have my wolf helm ready by them.

That would be Tramell.. and you can start making stuff now. do you have to details and specs for helmet creation?

no Trammel , not yet. I haven't seen them. Are they on the official Ps2 website ?