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
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
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.
"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.
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?
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
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?
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.
"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
/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
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
[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)
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.
Some links which may help ppl...
Greek gods..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Greek_gods
Greek goddesses..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Greek_goddesses
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...
WOOOOT!