The Road to Normal Mapping

I started to work on this guy today, and think it has turned out pretty decent. I wanted a cleanly modeled object to try normal mapping on, and just using a cube seemed lazy and boring.

Next step is take it to Mudbox and sculpt all the details there. I have only created normal maps for simple flat surfaces with Photoshop before, so I'm viewing all this as a workflow learning experience.

I have no idea what to do with his face, maybe I'll leave it as it is. I'm hoping to get inspired once I'm sculpting the detail in.

For those with a 3D fetish just like me, here's a wireframe screenshot ( the model ended up at 2588 triangles ).

It was my first time trying to keep everything as quads, and it can be a frustrating experience sometimes. It sure looks more tidy though :)

Bonus image:


This is the face of the main character of our game ( The Teddy Incident ). You can see some concept art featuring him in previous posts.

I've been working on the character head together with one of our artists ( he has done the whole body too, but I don't have images on that ).

...I can't wait to see the little dude alive with animations, running and jumping and chopping off heads.