Killzone Floodlight
polycounter lvl 7
Hi everyone,
Having recently finished my Sci-Fi Server Room environment, I wanted to create a hero piece type prop that I could really go to town on before moving onto a new environment. After some searching around the web I finally settled for this awesome concept of a floodlight from Killzone 3:
I'm currently on blocking out the model and getting the proportions correct before I start to sub divide everything. I feel like I'm about 90% there with the blockout so I figured now would be a good time to get some feedback.
Goals of the project:
- Improve at asset creation and texture work in general (Unfortunately Eutechnyx is a very outsource heavy studio so I don’t get to work on assets as much as I’d like)
- Improve on my high poly modelling (I plan to really push the detail with this asset)
As always feedback and crit is welcome and thank you for your time
Current Progress:
Having recently finished my Sci-Fi Server Room environment, I wanted to create a hero piece type prop that I could really go to town on before moving onto a new environment. After some searching around the web I finally settled for this awesome concept of a floodlight from Killzone 3:
I'm currently on blocking out the model and getting the proportions correct before I start to sub divide everything. I feel like I'm about 90% there with the blockout so I figured now would be a good time to get some feedback.
Goals of the project:
- Improve at asset creation and texture work in general (Unfortunately Eutechnyx is a very outsource heavy studio so I don’t get to work on assets as much as I’d like)
- Improve on my high poly modelling (I plan to really push the detail with this asset)
As always feedback and crit is welcome and thank you for your time
Current Progress:
Replies
Keep going! Can't wait to see more.
Here's my current progress, about to start finishing up the high poly model:
What are your plans for this going forward? Are you going to make a game-res version?
From there I will simply replace the wires in low poly form using the already created high polys one as a guide
On the other hand, how do you plan on baking out stuff?
I did this exact model not too long ago, and not even a 2K texture map was enough, I had to cut out sooo much stuff, that it stopped looking like the original thing, especially since you have scale up the smaller pieces to make all those bolts, holes, etc appear.
I had to use one cable, with enough polies that I could later on duplicate it, and morph it around as I saw fit.
Symmetry as many pieces as you can.
Try to throw in a few support loops on the bigger pieces so you can instance them too (while the other half of it clipping inside the mesh).
Vertex colors are you friends if you plan on adding some different colors to the cables.
Don't be surprised if you have to push 2 textures at one point to keep all the information. Especially with tiling involved on the cables.
EDIT: Ninja'd, seems like you know what you're doing
I haven't played Killzone 3 and I'm not too sure what role it plays in the game but I want to treat the asset as if its usable by the player and I will aim to have pretty similar specs to a vehicle or weapon in a typical PC shooter, i.e roughly 6k - 10k Tri's and 1x 2048 x 2048, possibly 1 or 2 additional 1024 x 1024 textures if I feel like I'm struggling to keep the resolution up.
I plan to flip, mirror and reuse as much of the texture space as possible so hopeful a 2048 texture will be adequate
I've been sent my DDO licence for being one of the earlier testers so I'm going to be using it on this model, can't wait
I'll also be putting the model in CryEngine shortly
As always feedback is welcome
Also here is my normal map and the diffuse (currently just a cavity map and occ map combined), Not that the spare space is left for the wires
Could you show the normal map without the UV Snapshot screened on top? Cheers!
@Sugus Thanks mate, here you go, just for you:
I've seen this in the flesh and can attest to it's quality.
My comment would be less technical at this stage and more aesthetic, I have mentioned this already but I think you could maybe get a little more character from the asset if your were to rotate and pitch the lamp a little! Just a little thing but I think as a piece of art it would be a tad more interesting once it's textured and in am engine! Make it seem a little more functional, and I know your not an animator! Lolz
Not sure what you or any others really think , maybe I'm just being romantic haha.
Can't wait to see the ddo work though!
@TheMajor Thanks Tom. Your probably right about the pose, I might play with this abit
Huge fan of your stuff!
So over the last few days I've been working on getting my asset into CryEngine and fixing any normal map and ambient occlusion issues. Here's the latest updates. I've included a character because I think quite a few people were thinking its a small asset.
I'm at the point now where I'm fairly happy to start texturing this up.
Also the awesome guys at Quixel have asked me to do a DDO tutorial or a feature based on this asset so is there anything you guys would like me to cover?
Below I've also generated a colour map, this will used in DDO to define all the different material definations:
Was the colour map a render to texture based on what you saw in the concept or have you made many changes to hoe the materials are distributed?
Colour map really reminds me of the VW Polo harlequin
http://majorgav.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/vw-polo-harlequin.jpg
Looking forward to see what you can do with dDo
Did you render the color map from the highpoly?
If not I would recommend doing that, at least splitting the screws into it's own material group.
Stromberg90 Thanks mate I'm glad your liking it. Well spotted about the screws, yeah I did render the colour map from the high poly, however I kept them the same colour because I was thinking of doing it as if its been constructed and then painted so that the paint would go over the screws. I might change my mind though if it doesn't look right.
The UV map job seems like an automatic job though, It's really nonsense. I would spend time redoing the UVs. Tops of cylinders don't need to be curved. You can unwrap them like a cut cylinder tube. They might slightly stretch, but it's easier if you have to go in and hand edit the texture. Also you have pieces L shaped that are at like a 32 degree angle. Those should be kept to 90 degrees where possible. It's much easier in Photoshop to just hold shift to get a straight line on those pieces. It also seems like once you fix those issues you can cut down on all the wasted space you have.
That all said you're talking about doing a write up using dDo. So I don't think all that will matter much. Beginners that might look at it as a quality or style bar might pick up on the quick UV map job and think that should be what they should all do. UV nitpicks aside I'm anxious to see the dDo texture work.
Can't wait to see it textured!
@MrNinjutsu Thanks mate, I'm glad you've learnt something from me. One day I want to get into teaching so these are my first steps.
Well what I meant was this:
Most of your UV seem to be like the upper half cylinder. At least I see a lot of those in there (I might be wrong, if I am sorry for this tangent). Where as if you warp them slightly like the bottom one you can pack them in a lot tighter and reduce wasted space.
Again I'm nitpicking. This is otherwise killer. I'm really anxious to see this finished up. So hurry up!
Anyway like I said, I've re-unwrapped my asset and I'm much happier now, I saved about 20% extra space so I've essentially got more texture res
Also hope you guys don't mind me posting these as there quite basic but I've got all 5 maps rendered out that I'll be using for DDO and I figured it would be worth posting for people getting started with DDO. If anyone has any questions, I'll be happy to answer them.
Sorry that it's been a while since there's been an update, my partner has been in hospital several times over the last few weeks so work on this project has been quite slow. I assure you that I'm still plodding along with it though and I'm also currently about half way through writing some tutorials / documentation in colab with the guys over at Quixel.
Anyway I'm still not 100% stuck on a colour scheme for the project and I think that's one of the things that's holding me back so tonight I've gone back to basics and put together a few quick test schemes, hopefully you guys can help me choose one or give me some ideas for a scheme that isn't represented in the image below:
Despite all the schemes been solid colour, I was planning on incorporating camo style patterns on select areas of the model
Anyway let me know what you think.
Love the model, very clean
I'd go for 4 or 7. Muted, industrial surfaces, but not completely without interest.
I think you can get the same variation in surfaces that you would get from incorporating camouflage by including different surface materials (ie metal, plastic, painted metal etc.)
Also if you wanted you could remove the waviness in your normal map in a few seconds like this:
Just sayin', it's minor but just trying to be helpful.
I would say 2, 4, or 8. Bakes ran through nicely. Looking forward to seeing the rest of this.
the Helghast are heavily inspired by WW2 german tech, and the concept shows this aswell. Id go with colder tones than you have on your examples.
It's not a fix. It's a hack. It makes your normal map look better from one angle and worse from another.
Coming along nicely.