Unvanquished Forum

I will hopefully, with no objections, be moving forward with the model tonight, retopping, adding more detail, and painting.

Any crituqes are welcome, also my workflow in Zbrush is more... unrefined... than I would like it to be, so if there are any Zbrush masters out there tips or advice is always welcome :)

hope you guys like the model so far!

needless to say W.I.P. :P

Looks so... zergish :) To my mind, those teeth and eyes are unnecessary, OM can see and bite through the eyes and teeth of his minions :) Waiting to see it in color ;)

Since you haven't gone too far, have you considered any other concepts of OM?

I like the concept, but I would like to see the surface more detailed, riddled with cavities and irregularities. The matter should be largely more brain-like and less muscle-like (it currently looks more like the latter).
Anothers thing that bothers me is that the overmind has no use for those fangs (they suggest a predator lifestyle, which is generally hard to imagine if you are a big rooted blob of brains in charge of an alien empire).
In my opinion, the teeth and the oral cavity could altogether be replaced with some sort of a (perhaps gill-like in appearance) vocal apparatus (usually employed as a backup short-range signaling system in case direct telepathy fails or so).
The vocal apparatus idea could also see some usage in the singleplayer plot, as I imagine it. For example, we already know that for whatever reason the overmind cannot assert control over humans' minds (not a single case reported in the history of Tremulous, unless I missed some particular piece of fanfiction), and no common alien classes seem to be capable of truly intelligent vocal communication (which they don't really have a need to — they are combat troops, after all, and should have as obvious a combat role as possible, even if that includes baby polar bear screams), therefore the overmind's secondary vocal means of getting his point across could be useful for, say, declaring «resistance is futile» a thousand times into the comm screens of the human kind (seeing as that is a popular sport among extraterrestial intelligence).
Eyes, as gavlig highlighted, make little sense on their own too, but I propose we leave them as-is. They make determination of which side is «front» much easier, not to say that the overmind as we see it might not always been the same organism — evolution is key. The eyes could be a leftover feature of the overmind's evolutionary process, a parochial back from the days it was a more or less independent lifeform; as an example, see our own body — our foodway crosses our airway and there's no particular reason to it, it's just a minor enough annoyance for it not to be counted against other things that make humans humans so it did not get washed away in our evolution.
tl;dr I approve with minor changes to construction

I think you chose the wrong color when you made the lobes green in this shot :).
It honestly makes the model look worse than I imagine it will when it is properly textured/colored.
Mainly because the shade of green makes them look soooo out of place.

I was told at one point that the OM would be fed victims from the lesser minions, which was the reason for the teeth and mouth. If it can see and bite through it's minions, is there some sort of nutrition that it is gaining from them? I personally like the the mouth and eyes, I did see him as once in need of these functions but has now evolved massivly.

The green is for me mostly just to see where the major contrast will be when fully painted

The bigger brain looks better.
Maybe let it go a bit down on the back to show how heavy the brain is.
http://www.urbanexcess.com/images/produ ... -BLK_1.jpg

The Overmind is a big, lazy and can't move. The only thing he use is his Brain.
He's something like Jabba the Hutt with a monsterhead.

Osiris wrote:

I was told at one point that the OM would be fed victims from the lesser minions, which was the reason for the teeth and mouth. If it can see and bite through it's minions, is there some sort of nutrition that it is gaining from them? I personally like the the mouth and eyes, I did see him as once in need of these functions but has now evolved massivly.

As I said, the eyes could be assumed parochials and left alone.
But the fangs still have no purpose — they serve in predators for capturing and holding prey, something the overmind would never need.
Fangs aren't really a good example of a parochial either — they can be safely reduced in species not needing them.
Regarding the alternate source of nutrition — creep (the obvious choice). The question of how would «seeding» a suitable location with a lone overmind for producing a colony work is resolved by understanding the initial overmind «seed» is, obviously, not a fully developed instance, therefore can be contained in a chrysalis with enough nutrition packed in (the aliens already have eggs; why not exploit the concept?).
So far, only the mouth concerns me.

I would reduce the tentacles too. Just have 2 that can be seen as "swiping" with some nice claws to make it look like it can attack.

Hell yeah, that's an awesome reference, thank you!

The brain is a bit sagging in the back already, I will show you guys a couple different views on the next update. And I will go ahead and work on those tentacles.