DoArt.exe: Gladiators Ready!

I finally have finally got around to updating the blog with some 3D work. The latest project we had was to create a Roman Gladiator, this has been complete for a while now but I never had the files on hand to throw them into a post. I'm now back in Leicester and also have a spare afternoon so I can do a quick run down on the Gladiator!

The overall brief was fairly simple, to create a Roman Gladiator. The design of him was completely up to us as well, so this was our first real creative 3D project. As usual the project had resource limitations:

Construction

Character Tri-limit: 2500
Additional Props Tri-limit: 300
Rigging bones limit: 28

Texturing

1x 1024 (Diffuse, Spec, Bump etc.) for the Gladiator
1x 512 (Diffuse, Spec, Bump etc.) for the Props

I done some research into Gladiators and quickly made up my mind on what sort of Character I wanted to create. I wanted my character to be almost like a slave gladiator, with very basic equipment. The image below from Gladiator shows the sort of thing I was aiming for.

A small and dusty Gladiatorial arena. [1]

With an idea in mind I began researching equipment and armor types, it wasn't long until a made a quick sketch of my final character. Luckily we were given the required reference for the actual man, this meant I could begin building him straight away in 3DS Max, the armor on the other hand would need me to get creative with when it came to texturing, but I'll get into that more later.

Only half of the model was actually created, the other half was simply done with a symmetry modifier which helped speed up this stage. The tri-limit was constantly making me judge what details I could keep in or leave out, especially with some of the muscle definition but once I had a rough body constructed I started to model the head. I knew I wanted the majority of my resources focused towards the head, in most games the camera is at eye-level or above, therefore the head will be very prominent.

I now know I made a few bad choices when it came to tri placement. Once I had everything built and I knew I had few spare tris I placed them in stupid places, like under the pectorals, instead of important areas like around the main joints. This leads me onto something else that I wish I knew about during this project and that is topology, I had no idea that this was an entire other skill, like the best way for polygons to be positioned when joints are concerned. Topology is something I need to research more for my future 3D work!

Texturing the armor and props for the Gladiator meant I had to get creative with the different textures I needed, even with a local Roman museum I still had to think on my toes. One example is for the different leather, I used my friends leather jacket and with some Photoshop tweaking you can not really tell it's the same patch of leather repeated. The creases in the jacket also made great looking scares on the Gladiators skin.

Many of the decorative studs I referenced from the local museums

The base of the shield was textured with a simple barrel top

I brought over many of the things I learned from previous projects and also tried to improve in areas that were lacking, while also picking up a decent number of new things that I need to improve on but as this was my first 3D character I am really happy with the results. Seeing the gladiator animate also put a huge smile on face, it was like bringing the model to life for a few seconds! Below are a few renders and a the 3D model viewer if you're interested in the final outcome.