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Athey — 016 - Models from Work
Published: 2006-08-04 16:47:23 +0000 UTC; Views: 9445; Favourites: 36; Downloads: 233
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These are all about a year old, however I didn't post them because (obviously!) the game wasn't done or released yet. Well the game came out in March and It didn't occur to me to post them until well.... today.These are a few models I made for Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror for PSP.
I made all of the models & textures except for Alima's (2nd from left) Shoes, the ZP guy's (4th from left) hat and gun, and the bystander's (5th guy from left) shoes. We re-used a lot of simple assets like that on multiple characters.... Oh, and the girl's hands. So that's what the * is for. (And just to be all legitimate and such, the shoe and hand textures mentioned above were made by Greg Callahan - the one of the other character artist on Dark Mirror)
The gun... is like old. It was made during Omega Strain so I have no clue who made it - lol.
Anyways, ummm.... These are all fairly low-res textures, and we have to watch our color use because when we res them down for the game, we only get 16 colors per texture map T_T. All the characters were modeled in 3dsmax6. Textures made with photoshop 7 (yes, we were very out of date T_T but we've upgraded now - w00t). I rigged them all too. They're all really low-poly too. All like 1000 polies each.
Since Sony owns everything I make while I work here, these all belong to Sony Computer Entertainment of America. Copyright um... 2005 or something.
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Comments: 44
Well, it was years ago now, but it was with 3DSMax... 8, I think. Maybe 3dsmax9.
Anyway, just standard polygonal modeling, and very basic texturing. Just a diffuse map. No spec or normals or bump. These were for psp, so we had very limited restrictions.
I made a tutorial a while back that basically detailed the same workflow that I used back when I made these models -
[link]
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Dark Mirror kicked ASS!
I only remember seeing Alima in the opening scene, you have to make a character model for the whole cast even if some aren't used? The H-Bar (gun, sad how I know that just by looking) does look older, I noticed its not green as it appears in DM. Great work!
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Hmm.. Well I don't have any wires of them already and I made these about 3 years ago so I'd have to go digging through the network archives to try and find them. Unfortunetly I'm a bit busy at the moment, but if I find the time and remember to, I'll try to take some wireframe pics.
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yeah, that would be great! i've checked out your tutorials and they help a lot! thanx!
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Nice models! wow so u work for Sony? thts pretty awesome. nice seamless textures, apart from the guy on the far right. Unless that's the lighting playing tricks?
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I just bought Dark Mirror--awesome game.
...
you work at Sony!?
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Yup. I work for Sony in Bend Oregon. The sequel to Dark Mirror, Logan's Shadow, is coming out in a month. If you like Dark Mirror, you'll LOVE Logan's Shadow. It's a seriously awesome game and we added a TON of new awesome features to the game, including real-time havok physics.
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you're totally living my dream
...
you know any good free 3D modeling software out there?
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WAH!!!!! THESE ARE SO INCREDIBLE!!!!! *dies* I love the girl on the far left - she looks kinda/not really like me!!! *^______^* You are so incredibly talented with this!! Where do you work???
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WOW!!!!!! That is so awesomely lucky of yoU!!!!! I can tell why you work for Sony, though - your work is so amazing!!!!!!!!!
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pretty good. the models in game look a lot better than those (higher poly models, plus the PSP's 480x272 display helps a lot) but yeah, good anyway. syphon owns.
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These are the in-game models. All of the in-game ones aren't any higher poly then these - we don't get a lot of room for excess polys. And the multi-player ones are a LOT less. These are all around 1500 polys, while the multi-player ones have to be around 800.
But it's true that the tiny screen helps improve the overall look - they were created with the intension of being seen on that little screen, so they don't look as good when rendered at higher res's.
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Very good job despite the limitations of that portable console.
I actually enjoyed the first Syphon Filter game for the PSX but I lost interest in the games after that, since they didn't come out for the PC.
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Eeeek 16 colours per texture map. Was that an engine limitation eg. requirements for separate textures for individual parts with small colour palettes to keep the size down or was that a general limitation of the PSP?
Either way, given how tough it would've been with such a limitation they look excellent. Roughly what res did the textures end up as a whole. Sorry if this a complicated question due to multiple maps
Only crit (and I know you probably don't want to hear this after the game shipping lol) is guy; 4th from the left should have his hand on the handle of that gun not the barrel. Thats the way people hold that particular one ... unless they snap the handle forward (which would mean remodelling / animating the gun).
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I'm actually not sure if the 16 colors thing is a limitation of the psp or the engine, but I know all our textures have to be 8-bit.
Dunno about the total texture size. It varried depending on what characters were being loaded. No maps can be larger then 128x128, and a large number of the maps were only 64x64.
As for the gun holding thing - this is just a pose that I threw him in for a render - he's not like that in the game : P
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Cool ... I assumed that could be a possibility for this render. I'm betting it was an engine limitation because I've heard some PS-2 engines required similarly small maps to increase performance and the PSP has a few limitations next to a PS-2. Given the limitations those are excellent characters 
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Hey, these are some great looking characters. Do you prefer to model using a single polygon to start, or a cube?
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For the head, that is...
And also, did you use any training DVDs to learn to character model?
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For low-poly heads I do box-modeling. If it's a high poly head, I use a different technique though. I wrote a tutorial about it a while back here: [link]
I've never used any training dvds for character modeling. I just learned it from practice and from school. I have used CG Academy's DVD tutorial for rigging. It was super useful, it is however very expensive. You could always check them out and take a look at their character dvds. [link]
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Thanks for the reply! I PMed you on Threedy Forums with a similar Question. At work, do you also use that method (your tutorial) for head modeling (if it's high poly)?
Take it easy.
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ah - haven't been on threedy forums in a while
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Texturing looks nice. These are models based on an old engine? Anyway, looks nice.
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Not really old - it's for PSP. It can't honestly handle that much. We just managed to push a lot out of it. The rigging for example, I couldn't have more then 2-3 bones effecting any single poly or else we'd get holes when exported. We couldn't use morphs because of the hit we'd take (plus, we simply had no support for them on psp) And we had to use 8-bit textures and no opacities. The textures shown in the render aren't the 8-bit textures though. They're the 24-bit ones, but I still had to plan ahead for the color res-down.
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wow. that's like a real head against the wall situation there. At least you got it all done
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great!!
are u the same athey who write about edgeloop in 3d total?
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It's a game series. The first 3 Syphon Filiter games were on Playstation, the 4th was on PS2 and it sucked ass. The 5th in the series is Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror and it's on PSP. You can read IGN's review of it here:
[link]
oh, and I worked on it.
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Niccce...yeh i know ive seen those characters before lol i was playin dark mirror, lol i was like oh snap that looks like the characters off the game. by tha way great job with the game i thought it was great. nex time u desighn a game hit me up!!
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wow they're really getting their money's worth out of you huh?
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Duuuuuuude you're good. 
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Athey, ive been a fan of yours for years, and you STILL blow me away. Thats so cool that you have a job with sony and you get to design such big stuff, and stuff people will recognise. Like who doesnt know Syphon Filter?
Anyways, amazing work as usual, and im off.
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eee~ so many questions where to begin..
Sorry I always have so many questions
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Q. do you model the body first then the clothes or do you just model these as one entity?
A. I have done it the first way (having a body first) but rarely. For all of these, I just modeled as it - pants, shirt, etc. I start from the feet and work my way up.
Q. When you model the eye area do you model the area around the eye then delete the inner most faces and replace that with spheres that can be rigged?
A. These don't have actual eyes. They are very low-poly. The eyes you see here are 100% textured on.
For when I DO have modeled eyes, I do sometimes delete the polys where the eyes go, but I usually just have polys that pull back into the head there. Reduces the risk of having holes show up around the eyes.
Q. oh! how difficult is it to make a working mouth or since most of these just are for games do you have a simple face that doesn't move/have expressions?
For these, the only one that even has a rigged face is the girl (1st from the left) We only did rigged faces on chracters that had speaking roles. In the face of the working mouth, it's not that hard, but since they're so low poly it has the whole flap-jaw look to it. Not a lot of variation in shapes. Plus we didn't have a lot of facail bones to work with (can't use morphs oh psp).
Low-poly is much easier then high poly when you're first learning. It makes it so that you focus on the primary masses and get the formes right instead of focusing on all of the small details that come with a higher poly model.
Here's an example of how low-poly the face is - this is the head mesh and texture for the girl on the far left - [link]
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Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, I really appreciate it. ^^ Your work is so good, I love it ^^ I have so much farther to go until I'm as good at you
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