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Sumea Modeller Challenge #9

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Submitted by souri on

Sumea Modeller Challenge #9 - The God of War Challenge







The Sumea Modeller Challenge #9 is sponsored by The Academy of Interactive Entertainment and Qantm



Competition Rules: Open to Australians and New Zealanders only.



STARTING DATE: Sunday, 1st of July, 2007.

CLOSING DATE: Sunday, 4th of November, Midnight. 4 months Total!



THEME:



Design and model your own God of War / fantasy Greek mythology character. Think Kratos from God of War, or the gods and heroes from Greek mythology. Your character has to look unique, superhuman, tough, suited and battle ready!



RULES AND GUIDELINES:



CONCEPT AND STYLE
:



The character for submission has to be an original design of your own creation, and so cannot be a direct copy from any other games, films, or comics etc. Your God of War must be bi-pedal (two arms, two legs), and male or female.You could choose to have an animal head or animal features on the head of your character if you like (think: Minotaur or Medusa). Hand / combat weapons / shields are optional, but some form of fighting weapon is recommended. The armour, clothing, and weaponry for your character *must* be influenced by the ancient Greek period. Sumea recommends the watching of films like 300 and Troy for some inspiration!



MODELLING REQUIREMENTS:



1 Normal mapped character



Contains:

required (model) : 6000 polygon (tris) maximum (one single mesh).

Optional (model) : weaponry (swords, hand combat weapons) Weaponry will add to the model count.



required (texture) : one normal map, and one diffuse map (all textures are to be either 1 * 1024 x 1024 or 4 * 512 x 512)

optional (texture) : any other texture passes you want (specular, gloss, alpha, emmissive, translucence, reflection etc)



Note: No cannabalism of old models.



FOR SUBMISSION:



1. 1024x512 pixel picture of default software lit orthographics of character (front, back, side, 3/4 view). (*yourname*-1.jpg) ** Taken from basic scanline render

2. 1024x512 pixel picture of untextured wireframe of character (front, back, side, 3/4 view) (*yourname*-2.jpg) ** Taken from basic scanline render or viewport grab

3. 1024x1024 uvw wire layout of character (and weapon if you modelled one) (*yourname*-3.jpg)

4. 1024x1024 your normal map for your character (and weapon, if modelled) (*yourname*-4.jpg)

5. 1024x1024 your diffuse map (and weapon, if modelled) (*yourname*-5.jpg)

6. 1024x1024 money shot which can be lit and posed (or unposed) how ever you feel fit. You can include a background. Basic scanline render -- no light tracer, no skylight, no vray, no mental ray, no brazil etc; just vanilla scanline and your flare for presentation.



Please include your name, the polycount of your model, what extra maps you used (specular, gloss, alpha, emmissive, translucence, reflection etc) and your model's name in the picture. (*yourname*-6.jpg)



JUDGING CRITERIA:



Character concept, modelling work, texturing skills, and general aesthetics of the model.Souri2007-07-24 23:10:10

Submitted by PeterDavis on Sun, 01/07/07 - 3:30 PMPermalink

interesting....

to be honest, i wasnt expecting something so....narrow in scope.

but, its going to force everyone to do some research and think outside the box, otherwise all the entries will be very similar. unless i can think of something pretty killer, i might sit this one out (although i did want to make a spartan for my own projects =])

seriously though, is it all possible to make it just 'god of war', without the greek limitations? i guess not.PeterDavis2007-07-01 05:31:14

Submitted by souri on Sun, 01/07/07 - 5:22 PMPermalink

Like you said, if you don't be creative and you submit something like a simple muscle bounded guy with a toga, then you run the risk of not standing out from the entrants that do go that bit further with the concept.

But I think there's plenty of room to be creative, with plenty of possibilities with the character features, armour/clothes/helmet designs and weapons.

Submitted by CoyoteNinja on Mon, 02/07/07 - 12:43 AMPermalink

Hey fellow insomniac artists

Finally Sumea Forum let me register!

So I am in....

a clarification if I may:

"Weaponry will add to the Poly count... "

does this mean that 6000 is the limit, including weapons?

Submitted by shika on Mon, 02/07/07 - 2:04 AMPermalink

"Your God of War must be bi-pedal (two arms, two legs), and male or female.You could choose to have an animal head or animal features on the head of your character if you like"

does that mean the body has to resemble a humans? or is there scope for animal features in the body?(tail, wings,hoofs, etc) so long as its bipedal.

Submitted by immellmann on Mon, 02/07/07 - 3:19 AMPermalink

Finally it starts...I think I might do an Amazon, couldn't sleep last night thinking about what to do, so hopefully I stick to it...What's everyone else leaning towards? We can post concepts and work in progress here right? Happy modeling everyone!   

Submitted by palantir on Mon, 02/07/07 - 4:55 AMPermalink

Cool brief, I like a lot.

Just wondering though:
"6. 1024x1024 money shot which can be lit and posed (or unposed) how ever you feel fit. You can include a background. Basic scanline render -- no light tracer, no skylight, no vray, no mental ray, no brazil etc; just vanilla scanline and your flare for presentation."

Why no fancy lighting setup for the money shot? I understand why not for the other images (so the model/texture can be accurately judged), but isn't the money shot, with the posed character and environment, all about having a bit of fun and showing off just how brilliant the model can be with no restrictions?

Submitted by shika on Mon, 02/07/07 - 5:34 AMPermalink

I can understand not being able to submit vray/brazil/mental ray renders with fancy shaders and lighting when its supposed to be a game-art challenge.
It also helps level the playing field when most of us are game artists and wouldn't know the ins and outs of an offline renderer.

edit: I got the impression from the last challenge that many people would even be happy just being able to submit viewport screengrabsshika2007-07-01 19:37:29

Submitted by DarkAngel on Mon, 02/07/07 - 7:18 AMPermalink

THEME: Design and model your own God of War / fantasy Greek mythology character. Think Kratos from God of War, or the gods and heroes from Greek mythology. Your character has to look unique, superhuman, tough, suited and battle ready!

Does this mean that it has to be an existing character from greek mythology? and you do your version of it. Or does your model have to look like it would fit within the realms of greek mythology?

Submitted by GuyBrave on Mon, 02/07/07 - 4:03 PMPermalink

I was wondering the exact same thing, some clarificatin on this would be a good thing to get before starting.....

Submitted by PeterDavis on Mon, 02/07/07 - 4:20 PMPermalink

haha. there is ALWAYS somebody who asks for clarification straight off the mark. pretty funny.

Submitted by souri on Mon, 02/07/07 - 4:52 PMPermalink

Shika, yeh, I was hoping challengers would not head towards making their character too animal like. I wanted to restrict any animal features to just the head area so that we don't get the challenge turning into a monster / creature themed competition. So yeh, just the head area and probably a bit below the neck line if your character needs it.

You could come up with your own Greek god / hero or base it off existing ones. However, if you do choose to base it on an existing character from Greek mythology, please do make them more fantastical. The ones that you see in the illustrations are pretty simple and bare (like muscly guys with a toga for example), and I wanna see some kick ass characters.

Submitted by souri on Tue, 03/07/07 - 2:33 AMPermalink

Ok, I've just updated the challenge guideline to include a note that this Sumea Modeller Challenge is sponsored by the fantastic people at The Academy of Interactive Entertainment and Qantm who will be putting up prizes for it!

Submitted by tojo on Tue, 03/07/07 - 5:30 AMPermalink

"Shika, yeh, I was hoping challengers would not head towards making their character too animal like. I wanted to restrict any animal features to just the head area so that we don't get the challenge turning into a monster / creature themed competition. So yeh, just the head area and probably a bit below the neck line if your character needs it."

i was planning on doing a kinda satyr entry with armour... bipedal but with goat legs... this is really dissapointing..

i was wanting to detail a human head,(i dont really want to do just a straight human??) but was really hoping to be able to put animal reference in elsewhere...

wouldnt it be more fun to be a bit more open for interpertation? seems restrictive...tojo2007-07-02 19:38:40

Submitted by GuyBrave on Tue, 03/07/07 - 5:39 AMPermalink

yeah, and satyrs arent the only greek mythological figures you are counting out by only allowing the animal features from the neck up

Submitted by farmergnome on Tue, 03/07/07 - 6:28 AMPermalink

/agreed, not that ill finish or anything, but its fun to watch the comp :), but a little animal influence should be there, like... some of the popular characters in Greek history have animal features, It also means people have more ideas to play with than muscles + weapon + toga + optional red tattoos.farmergnome2007-07-02 20:29:18

Submitted by benny s on Wed, 04/07/07 - 2:24 AMPermalink

Yeah I'm disappointed, I wanted to have wings on my guy. It's a pretty big restriction when its supposed to be based on greek mythology

Submitted by ENBE on Wed, 04/07/07 - 2:33 AMPermalink

Ill jump in for some toga fun. I agree that the subject matter is quite restrictive & has been seen in various medias alot recently. But i guess its a challenge to present something fresh, so good luck everyone.

The god i will be focusing on is Chronos or Aeon......that guy who controls time.

Ill try and get some concept work up over the next few weeks.ENBE2007-07-03 19:45:06

Submitted by CoyoteNinja on Wed, 04/07/07 - 5:10 AMPermalink

What? No wings? where does it say no wings?

Edited: This is/was a joke - no hard feelings!CoyoteNinja2007-07-03 22:47:04

Submitted by shika on Wed, 04/07/07 - 5:37 AMPermalink

"I wanted to restrict any animal features to just the head area so that we don't get the challenge turning into a monster / creature themed competition"

just cause you cant have animal features in the body doesn't mean you cant come up with a cool original character, use those artistic noggins :)

Submitted by souri on Fri, 06/07/07 - 4:04 AMPermalink

[QUOTE=farmergnome] /agreed, not that ill finish or anything, but its fun to watch the comp :), but a little animal influence should be there, like... some of the popular characters in Greek history have animal features, It also means people have more ideas to play with than muscles + weapon + toga + optional red tattoos.[/QUOTE]

Yep, there are a lot of characters in Greek mythology that have animal features, or are even half animals. But they're usually villains or whatnot, not gods or heroes. I want gods, people! I did, however, leave it open for some animal characteristics on a tiny scale, but like I said, I don't want this challenge to get into a creature competition. Like someone has mentioned before, and it's something that has been brought up in the past, we need to have a more level playing field. I wanted a challenge where all the entries looked like they used the same theme. If the challenge was left open like was suggested, we'd have creatures with double jointed limbs up against humans.

I'm not going to be a judge for the challenge, of course, but I'd love to see people really take this theme and push it as much as they can in terms of meticulous costume, armour, and weapon design, and a really charismatic figure to go with it. I think it's such a cool theme to tackle, and it's not something we've really gone into before in past challenges (fantasy, sci fi, etc etc)

Submitted by souri on Mon, 09/07/07 - 3:27 AMPermalink

We migrated the forum to a new server a while ago, and the new server doesn't have upload components installed. It also doesn't store sessions for very long, which means people have been having trouble changing their forum info, or even registering a new account.

So, we'll be staying on this new server until our lease is up, and then migrate everything again to another webhost which should fix all the problems. For the time being, if you want to show your images, you can either upload them to an image hosting service, or preferably, upload them to you Sumea profile account and upload them there. You can then embed them in the forum here.

Submitted by immellmann on Tue, 10/07/07 - 8:26 AMPermalink

Hey all. Here is my first early concept. I'm sticking with the Amazon. I probably won't keep her as cute as in the picture. I want to keep her sexy, but tough at the same time (clich? I know). I just need to find the balance or choose one way or the other.

I also read some stuff that the Amazon's would cut/burn a breast off so they could archer and or throw a spear better, I'd like to incorporate it into my model, which I think would help me make her look really bad ass...

Amazon_1

Posted by souri on

Sumea Modeller Challenge #9 - The God of War Challenge







The Sumea Modeller Challenge #9 is sponsored by The Academy of Interactive Entertainment and Qantm



Competition Rules: Open to Australians and New Zealanders only.



STARTING DATE: Sunday, 1st of July, 2007.

CLOSING DATE: Sunday, 4th of November, Midnight. 4 months Total!



THEME:



Design and model your own God of War / fantasy Greek mythology character. Think Kratos from God of War, or the gods and heroes from Greek mythology. Your character has to look unique, superhuman, tough, suited and battle ready!



RULES AND GUIDELINES:



CONCEPT AND STYLE
:



The character for submission has to be an original design of your own creation, and so cannot be a direct copy from any other games, films, or comics etc. Your God of War must be bi-pedal (two arms, two legs), and male or female.You could choose to have an animal head or animal features on the head of your character if you like (think: Minotaur or Medusa). Hand / combat weapons / shields are optional, but some form of fighting weapon is recommended. The armour, clothing, and weaponry for your character *must* be influenced by the ancient Greek period. Sumea recommends the watching of films like 300 and Troy for some inspiration!



MODELLING REQUIREMENTS:



1 Normal mapped character



Contains:

required (model) : 6000 polygon (tris) maximum (one single mesh).

Optional (model) : weaponry (swords, hand combat weapons) Weaponry will add to the model count.



required (texture) : one normal map, and one diffuse map (all textures are to be either 1 * 1024 x 1024 or 4 * 512 x 512)

optional (texture) : any other texture passes you want (specular, gloss, alpha, emmissive, translucence, reflection etc)



Note: No cannabalism of old models.



FOR SUBMISSION:



1. 1024x512 pixel picture of default software lit orthographics of character (front, back, side, 3/4 view). (*yourname*-1.jpg) ** Taken from basic scanline render

2. 1024x512 pixel picture of untextured wireframe of character (front, back, side, 3/4 view) (*yourname*-2.jpg) ** Taken from basic scanline render or viewport grab

3. 1024x1024 uvw wire layout of character (and weapon if you modelled one) (*yourname*-3.jpg)

4. 1024x1024 your normal map for your character (and weapon, if modelled) (*yourname*-4.jpg)

5. 1024x1024 your diffuse map (and weapon, if modelled) (*yourname*-5.jpg)

6. 1024x1024 money shot which can be lit and posed (or unposed) how ever you feel fit. You can include a background. Basic scanline render -- no light tracer, no skylight, no vray, no mental ray, no brazil etc; just vanilla scanline and your flare for presentation.



Please include your name, the polycount of your model, what extra maps you used (specular, gloss, alpha, emmissive, translucence, reflection etc) and your model's name in the picture. (*yourname*-6.jpg)



JUDGING CRITERIA:



Character concept, modelling work, texturing skills, and general aesthetics of the model.Souri2007-07-24 23:10:10


Submitted by PeterDavis on Sun, 01/07/07 - 3:30 PMPermalink

interesting....

to be honest, i wasnt expecting something so....narrow in scope.

but, its going to force everyone to do some research and think outside the box, otherwise all the entries will be very similar. unless i can think of something pretty killer, i might sit this one out (although i did want to make a spartan for my own projects =])

seriously though, is it all possible to make it just 'god of war', without the greek limitations? i guess not.PeterDavis2007-07-01 05:31:14

Submitted by souri on Sun, 01/07/07 - 5:22 PMPermalink

Like you said, if you don't be creative and you submit something like a simple muscle bounded guy with a toga, then you run the risk of not standing out from the entrants that do go that bit further with the concept.

But I think there's plenty of room to be creative, with plenty of possibilities with the character features, armour/clothes/helmet designs and weapons.

Submitted by CoyoteNinja on Mon, 02/07/07 - 12:43 AMPermalink

Hey fellow insomniac artists

Finally Sumea Forum let me register!

So I am in....

a clarification if I may:

"Weaponry will add to the Poly count... "

does this mean that 6000 is the limit, including weapons?

Submitted by shika on Mon, 02/07/07 - 2:04 AMPermalink

"Your God of War must be bi-pedal (two arms, two legs), and male or female.You could choose to have an animal head or animal features on the head of your character if you like"

does that mean the body has to resemble a humans? or is there scope for animal features in the body?(tail, wings,hoofs, etc) so long as its bipedal.

Submitted by immellmann on Mon, 02/07/07 - 3:19 AMPermalink

Finally it starts...I think I might do an Amazon, couldn't sleep last night thinking about what to do, so hopefully I stick to it...What's everyone else leaning towards? We can post concepts and work in progress here right? Happy modeling everyone!   

Submitted by palantir on Mon, 02/07/07 - 4:55 AMPermalink

Cool brief, I like a lot.

Just wondering though:
"6. 1024x1024 money shot which can be lit and posed (or unposed) how ever you feel fit. You can include a background. Basic scanline render -- no light tracer, no skylight, no vray, no mental ray, no brazil etc; just vanilla scanline and your flare for presentation."

Why no fancy lighting setup for the money shot? I understand why not for the other images (so the model/texture can be accurately judged), but isn't the money shot, with the posed character and environment, all about having a bit of fun and showing off just how brilliant the model can be with no restrictions?

Submitted by shika on Mon, 02/07/07 - 5:34 AMPermalink

I can understand not being able to submit vray/brazil/mental ray renders with fancy shaders and lighting when its supposed to be a game-art challenge.
It also helps level the playing field when most of us are game artists and wouldn't know the ins and outs of an offline renderer.

edit: I got the impression from the last challenge that many people would even be happy just being able to submit viewport screengrabsshika2007-07-01 19:37:29

Submitted by DarkAngel on Mon, 02/07/07 - 7:18 AMPermalink

THEME: Design and model your own God of War / fantasy Greek mythology character. Think Kratos from God of War, or the gods and heroes from Greek mythology. Your character has to look unique, superhuman, tough, suited and battle ready!

Does this mean that it has to be an existing character from greek mythology? and you do your version of it. Or does your model have to look like it would fit within the realms of greek mythology?

Submitted by GuyBrave on Mon, 02/07/07 - 4:03 PMPermalink

I was wondering the exact same thing, some clarificatin on this would be a good thing to get before starting.....

Submitted by PeterDavis on Mon, 02/07/07 - 4:20 PMPermalink

haha. there is ALWAYS somebody who asks for clarification straight off the mark. pretty funny.

Submitted by souri on Mon, 02/07/07 - 4:52 PMPermalink

Shika, yeh, I was hoping challengers would not head towards making their character too animal like. I wanted to restrict any animal features to just the head area so that we don't get the challenge turning into a monster / creature themed competition. So yeh, just the head area and probably a bit below the neck line if your character needs it.

You could come up with your own Greek god / hero or base it off existing ones. However, if you do choose to base it on an existing character from Greek mythology, please do make them more fantastical. The ones that you see in the illustrations are pretty simple and bare (like muscly guys with a toga for example), and I wanna see some kick ass characters.

Submitted by souri on Tue, 03/07/07 - 2:33 AMPermalink

Ok, I've just updated the challenge guideline to include a note that this Sumea Modeller Challenge is sponsored by the fantastic people at The Academy of Interactive Entertainment and Qantm who will be putting up prizes for it!

Submitted by tojo on Tue, 03/07/07 - 5:30 AMPermalink

"Shika, yeh, I was hoping challengers would not head towards making their character too animal like. I wanted to restrict any animal features to just the head area so that we don't get the challenge turning into a monster / creature themed competition. So yeh, just the head area and probably a bit below the neck line if your character needs it."

i was planning on doing a kinda satyr entry with armour... bipedal but with goat legs... this is really dissapointing..

i was wanting to detail a human head,(i dont really want to do just a straight human??) but was really hoping to be able to put animal reference in elsewhere...

wouldnt it be more fun to be a bit more open for interpertation? seems restrictive...tojo2007-07-02 19:38:40

Submitted by GuyBrave on Tue, 03/07/07 - 5:39 AMPermalink

yeah, and satyrs arent the only greek mythological figures you are counting out by only allowing the animal features from the neck up

Submitted by farmergnome on Tue, 03/07/07 - 6:28 AMPermalink

/agreed, not that ill finish or anything, but its fun to watch the comp :), but a little animal influence should be there, like... some of the popular characters in Greek history have animal features, It also means people have more ideas to play with than muscles + weapon + toga + optional red tattoos.farmergnome2007-07-02 20:29:18

Submitted by benny s on Wed, 04/07/07 - 2:24 AMPermalink

Yeah I'm disappointed, I wanted to have wings on my guy. It's a pretty big restriction when its supposed to be based on greek mythology

Submitted by ENBE on Wed, 04/07/07 - 2:33 AMPermalink

Ill jump in for some toga fun. I agree that the subject matter is quite restrictive & has been seen in various medias alot recently. But i guess its a challenge to present something fresh, so good luck everyone.

The god i will be focusing on is Chronos or Aeon......that guy who controls time.

Ill try and get some concept work up over the next few weeks.ENBE2007-07-03 19:45:06

Submitted by CoyoteNinja on Wed, 04/07/07 - 5:10 AMPermalink

What? No wings? where does it say no wings?

Edited: This is/was a joke - no hard feelings!CoyoteNinja2007-07-03 22:47:04

Submitted by shika on Wed, 04/07/07 - 5:37 AMPermalink

"I wanted to restrict any animal features to just the head area so that we don't get the challenge turning into a monster / creature themed competition"

just cause you cant have animal features in the body doesn't mean you cant come up with a cool original character, use those artistic noggins :)

Submitted by souri on Fri, 06/07/07 - 4:04 AMPermalink

[QUOTE=farmergnome] /agreed, not that ill finish or anything, but its fun to watch the comp :), but a little animal influence should be there, like... some of the popular characters in Greek history have animal features, It also means people have more ideas to play with than muscles + weapon + toga + optional red tattoos.[/QUOTE]

Yep, there are a lot of characters in Greek mythology that have animal features, or are even half animals. But they're usually villains or whatnot, not gods or heroes. I want gods, people! I did, however, leave it open for some animal characteristics on a tiny scale, but like I said, I don't want this challenge to get into a creature competition. Like someone has mentioned before, and it's something that has been brought up in the past, we need to have a more level playing field. I wanted a challenge where all the entries looked like they used the same theme. If the challenge was left open like was suggested, we'd have creatures with double jointed limbs up against humans.

I'm not going to be a judge for the challenge, of course, but I'd love to see people really take this theme and push it as much as they can in terms of meticulous costume, armour, and weapon design, and a really charismatic figure to go with it. I think it's such a cool theme to tackle, and it's not something we've really gone into before in past challenges (fantasy, sci fi, etc etc)

Submitted by souri on Mon, 09/07/07 - 3:27 AMPermalink

We migrated the forum to a new server a while ago, and the new server doesn't have upload components installed. It also doesn't store sessions for very long, which means people have been having trouble changing their forum info, or even registering a new account.

So, we'll be staying on this new server until our lease is up, and then migrate everything again to another webhost which should fix all the problems. For the time being, if you want to show your images, you can either upload them to an image hosting service, or preferably, upload them to you Sumea profile account and upload them there. You can then embed them in the forum here.

Submitted by immellmann on Tue, 10/07/07 - 8:26 AMPermalink

Hey all. Here is my first early concept. I'm sticking with the Amazon. I probably won't keep her as cute as in the picture. I want to keep her sexy, but tough at the same time (clich? I know). I just need to find the balance or choose one way or the other.

I also read some stuff that the Amazon's would cut/burn a breast off so they could archer and or throw a spear better, I'd like to incorporate it into my model, which I think would help me make her look really bad ass...

Amazon_1