Spy model...in progress

[Zedblade]

Parts of the normal map have patterns on them (honeycombs on half of the arms), don't you need to match that on the diffuse texture?

not necessarily

anyway, on another note, the green seems to ct ish to me :/

[goodkebab]

added carbon fiber to the armor...fixed the normals.

still no normal map. 

Tubes are not in yet...i have them modeled...but i cannot use them as geometry. 
When I bake the normals, it will include the tubes...which will serve as a guide for the
texturing.

What see now is the evolution of the texturing.  Previously...what you saw was just
a single procedural shader baked to texture and then tweaked in photoshop.

[Overstatement]

Tubes are not in yet...i have them modeled...but i cannot use them as geometry. 
When I bake the normals, it will include the tubes...which will serve as a guide for the
texturing.

Can you "bake"(project) the tubes into the maps without making it look werid? I'm thinking the tubes are a little too far out from the surface of the model to do without any vertices. Just to be clear, I'm talking about the green tubes from the concept art that I haven't seen in any of the models yet.

Also, it really looks like there is no possible way to get in or out of the suit. Maybe you could put a heavy duty zipper on the back of the head and back (I know, you've already modelled it and it will be too much work. Lazyness is a perfectly acceptable reason for me). Maybe that's what that thing on his spine is suppose to be but I can't understand it.

And maybe this would be a good point to figure out where is his gun and holder are.

It's shiny, are you planning one of those fancy specular maps?

Just out of curiosity, how will you animate the shoulders? The shoulder armor is inflexible but the suit below is. You can't just adjust the influence envelope of the bone to not affect the armor, right? Don't you need space between the shoulder and the shoulder armor?

[goodkebab]

no worries about animating....the skin weights should accept 3 bones per vertices. 
The armor is only hard in front and back....the collar is flexible.

The tubes will be in the texture only...and normal map(takes 2 many verts to add...can try if it is really bad).  The same goes for zippers and buttons...again, the normal will serve as a guide for these fine details in the texture map. Once i bake the normal map...i will use it as a guide for accurately painting these details.

You have to understand there is a certain amount of distortion going on in the texture map in order for it to appear distortion free on the 3d model (problem with low poly models).

Same goes for the gun...which i still have to model...it needs the normal map finished first.

[Overstatement]

You have to understand there is a certain amount of distortion going on in the texture map in order for it to appear distortion free on the 3d model (problem with low poly models).

I don't understand.

The tubes will be in the texture only...and normal map(takes 2 many verts to add...can try if it is really bad).  The same goes for zippers and buttons...again, the normal will serve as a guide for these fine details in the texture map. Once i bake the normal map...i will use it as a guide for accurately painting these details.

So there will be zippers? Awesome! (BUTTONS?!)

no worries about animating....the skin weights should accept 3 bones per vertices. 
The armor is only hard in front and back....the collar is flexible.

Won't the hard armor at his front make it hard for him to go into his crouch position since he does bend forward? And a note on bone weights, there is a preprocessing thing programmers can do if you only have 1 bone weight per vertex in the entire model. So if you can, use only one bone weight. However, a character that fills your screen for the entire game is justified to have 3. But for anything else that uses bones (do mercs need 3 since they can't see themselves?), keep in mind that one weight is good, two weights will incur the cost of an extra calculation AND the cost of not doing the preprocessing, 3 and beyond will only add another calculation. So keep it at one if you can. If three will made a visual difference, don't be cheap, use three. Otherwise, if the third will add little if anything, use two.

Also (may not apply as much to PCI-E cards), since graphic cards only take vertices that are the same size (in memory), each vertex will be the size of your largest one. So if you're going to make one vertex have 3 weights, you should make as many as possible have 3 weights. This applies to hardware skinning which I haven't been able to fully understand (so I may be wrong) because I have no idea how to make a shadow volume from a hardware skinned model, tell me how!

[goodkebab]

Rigid binding  (vertice is bound to only 1 bone)  is out of date technology and appropriate only when doing machinery or things that do not bend.  Even the DS accepts smooth binding (vertice can be weighted to 3-4 bones).  Shoulders and Hips require 3 weights....in order to get accurate blending.  Armour will help isolate the deformation problems. Limbs and Head require 2.  Take into account...the weighting between the joints will only blend at the midpoint between 2 joints.  So the entire head will have only 1 bone...but where the head meets the neck you need to blend the weights.

The armor is designed to be flexible, only the ribcage has hard armor.  The vertebrae between your shoulders is inflexible and does not bend....the armor is designed around this idea.

Regarding texture distortion:  Take a low polygon sphere with good UVs, and map a checker texture to it.  You will get texture distortion at the poles.  To overcome the distortion, you have to compensate and actually paint a distorted texture.

[Overstatement]

Out of date technology is my specialty!

Performance is never out of date.

[Lurch]

The belt looks weird (it doesn't go straight around the waist, exept from behind) and I feel the legs aren't tall enough. Hopefully we'll see pockets modeled soon. Or does he carry all his alarm snares in his rectum?

[Valserp]

What happened to the goggles?  :-\

[Tidenburg]

 Yeah I liked the concept goggles aswell and his legs are really short

[frvge]

This isn't the final head AFAIK  ???

[goodkebab]

I have not done anything with the head yet.

These are screenshots with normals.  :)

With textures as well...

[Overstatement]

Did it come out the way YOU wanted it?

[seefoo.]

good stuffs bob.  just one thing that bothers me in all the pix.  the legs look about 2 inches or so too short in relation to his body, maybe its just me.  other than that it looks crazy.

[frvge]

This one has more visible arms. The Concept Art is completely covered and has more green tubes. I miss the OPSAT screen thing. Can we have a more detailed pic of the knees down to the feet?

I really like the plates on the back and the front armor.