Elod Horvath - Environment work

Elod.H

Hello guys,

Just made this thread to put all of my environment/prop stuff into as I make them.

I've recently done a little asset creation practice. I took a Blizzard sketch and made this axe. This is a shot taken from 3DSMax viewport (no specular) and I was hoping to get a little feedback on the general look and the topology as well before I take it into UDK.









Thanks!

ZacD

That uv map looks way too broken up, every uv split is extra tris when you import it into a game engine.

Elod.H

Hello ZacD,

I was debating on this matter a lot actually.

The reason behind why I've split it up like that is the suggestion from Alec Moody in his "Baking Normal Maps" tutorial.
He recommends having a UV split at each Smoothing split in order to have a better Normal Map bake.

This results in a lot of separate UV islands and the texturing part in PS becomes a bit more complex. And now that you mention it.. also means extra tris as well in a game engine. Any suggestions?

ZacD

UV mapping is its own monster, you have to manage uv splits, distortion, and stretching, and have to balance all of them. Typically when creating smoothing groups a good place to start is by planning where you want your UV seams first. The obvious starting place is any mirroring needs a split, and any edge sharper than 90 degrees probably should get a split. I'd suggest posting a screen shot with the uv seams so we can suggest what ones aren't needed.

Obscura

Add different materials to different elements, and try "hit only matching materisl ID'S when you rendering maps. And yeah, the uvs are too breaked+this weapon have a lot of potential for symmetrying.I also sent a pm for you.

Elod.H

Here are my UV splits. They are 100% based on smoothing splits.
Regarding mirroring: where would you have used that on this weapon? I felt that if I mirror texture information on the big elements on the top of the weapon, that would have been too obvious.... but I feel I am wrong .

ZacD

Yeah there's a lot of splits that coud be removed, I'd mirror the front and back sides, I'd mirror the side that faces you and the side that faces away. The blade part doesn't need a split where the edge starts to slope in (it still needs one on the actual edge). The trident shaped 3 shape that goes over the blade could use a lot less splits, it probably only needs one along the edge that is close to the actual blade.

Quack!

I think you went about smoothing groups wrong.

Your low poly doesn't have to look good with smoothing groups. In fact, if you use a synced workflow / handplane your smoothing groups will make your low poly look like shit.

You should use as few smoothing groups as possible to lower the vert count of your objects. Along the same lines you want to use as few islands as possible to do the same. This is one of the trickier parts of normal mapping for games as it takes quite a bit of trial and error to understand the balance between smoothing groups and uv shells.

I would say you could use a small handful of uv islands total for this object, where you have dozens upon dozens. More islands and splits also has the downside of wasted texture space. You could eek out a ton more texel density with better layed out uvs.

I would start back with the low poly, connect and cut everything together, instead of having them seperate subobjects like you have, and then work on re-uving this to have only a handful of large islands.

tristamus

Quack! wrote: »

I think you went about smoothing groups wrong.

Your low poly doesn't have to look good with smoothing groups. In fact, if you use a synced workflow / handplane your smoothing groups will make your low poly look like shit.

You should use as few smoothing groups as possible to lower the vert count of your objects. Along the same lines you want to use as few islands as possible to do the same. This is one of the trickier parts of normal mapping for games as it takes quite a bit of trial and error to understand the balance between smoothing groups and uv shells.

I would say you could use a small handful of uv islands total for this object, where you have dozens upon dozens. More islands and splits also has the downside of wasted texture space. You could eek out a ton more texel density with better layed out uvs.

I would start back with the low poly, connect and cut everything together, instead of having them seperate subobjects like you have, and then work on re-uving this to have only a handful of large islands.

Very sound advice. Agreed, it is tricky, but it is very necessary to be conscious of your UV layout and the efficiency of the way yourmodel is laid out.

Elod.H

Thanks for the help guys.

I've finished the Dishonored weapon in the meantime. Rendered it in Marmoset, has 7k triangles with 1k maps applied. Can't wait to start my next project as I understand a lot more about the issues I had in the past.
Thanks again for the tips!

Dishonored Weapon Turntable

Elod.H

Started working on this shield here:



I've finished the High Poly and blocked in some main colors via Polypaint. Working on the LP at the moment.

PhoenixWolf

i love that "gun"

Cordero

cool work!
I like your modeling, and you're obviously good at sculpting!

My suggestion would be that you revisit the colors a little bit. I see in the middle part that you have red, and as it goes up in a gradient, it loses saturation. Thats a good thing to do, and I would recommend that you mix your colors up a little bit, even if you want to use only brown, its always a good idea to mix a little bit of orange in there.. Like in a fire, the core looks almost white, then yellow and then red/orange.. so hue shift is really important in my opinion to sell a piece visually. It's a good start you have here and it could be awesome with some color changes!

I'm guessing you are from Hungary aswell?

keep up the awesome work!

almighty_gir

ZacD wrote: »

That uv map looks way too broken up, every uv split is extra tris when you import it into a game engine.

you mean extra verts, not extra tris, right?

Elod.H

PhoenixWolf: thanks , good feedback from Polycount members is always encouraging .

Cordero: yep, you are definitely right about the colors. I will keep your suggestions in mind when I get to the Photoshop texturing phase. The colors at the moment are blocked in and I will work them out later on. They will need extra care as I need to sell a diamond, refractive kind of look one some parts. Others will be more gold/metalish, but I don't want to only rely on the material properties in UDK. Thanks again for the tips!
And yes, I am from Hungary . Are you as well?

Elod.H

Guys, I would like to know if you have some tips on acquiring selection masks for the texturing process.

I have this HP model:



As you can see, there are several elements (separate meshes) that make up the model.

Here is the LP:



The LP is one solid surface mostly.

Texture so far:



I`d like to know if there is an efficient way of acquiring selection masks based on the HP's separate meshes. I was thinking of baking the elements separately or to just simply select them out in PS, but for example the curvy frame of the shield is very similar in color to the eagle wing detail so it's kind of time consuming selecting them out separately. I`m sure there are more complicated cases where using the Lasso or Pen tool would take up much more time.

Sorry if it's a noobish request, I just want to speed the process up . Thank you!

EmAr

You can give them red, green and blue colors in max and render a diffuse map. This way, you have your selection masks in each channel in Photoshop. If you need more than 3 masks, you may render multiple textures.

Good luck

Elod.H

Hey, EmAr

) ahh I knew this was going to be pretty simple. Makes sense thanks!

beta_channel

If you need more than 3 Colors you can also use secondary colors to give you 3 more colors that are easy to select.

almighty_gir

if you colour as RGBCYMK, then Metalliandy made a photoshop action which separates all of those colours out into separate layers for you.

Elod.H

Thanks guys, will look that action up for my future work.

Here is a render from Marmoset. Can I get some feedback?



Right now I am putting the stuff into UDK and creating a more complex material. I want those blue diamonds to have some Fresnel type opacity and some other features.

Thanks!

almighty_gir

it looks accurate enough to the concept, colour wise. but my personal preference would be to really push the materials a bit more. play around with your gloss map, and really push the gold in the specular.

just me though =]

Elod.H

Thanks, Lee. All right, I`ll focus on that in UDK.

Jeff Parrott

This is cool stuff but your UV mapping jobs are horrible. You need to pack things in tighter and have larger shells. I can't believe you're able to texture any of this. There's a fine balance with UV splits and baking. Some of the blue metal (assuming it's metal the spec doesn't help that) should all be one UV island.

Also all of your materials read like the same material. Your dull metals should read like dull metal not like the shiny metals. Gloss maps will help that. Read EQ's Marmoset Toolbag tutorial for more on that (it applies to UDK or whatever) http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/materials

Elod.H

Hey Jeff,

Thanks for pointing this out. The reason behind the UV islands are 90 degree angles mostly. Where I had them, I've cut UV seams in along with different smoothing groups. The polygons that run along the side of the shield (basically those that add thickness to the model) hat quite a bit of sharp edges so I've cut them up.

Also, I was in a bit of dilemma about packing the UV's. The front and back of the shield can be scaled up to a certain degree, so I was unsure whether I should scale up all those small edge to be huge. The scale of things would have been quite different. For example: I could have scaled up the eagle part to a much bigger size, but then it would have received waaay more pixels than the front of the shield itself, which would have been awkward.

If you can give any tips on how you would have went about UVing this model, I`m mooore than glad to hear them . Thanks! Will check that link out now.

Here is my diffuse at the moment:

Jeff Parrott

Sure dude. Here's a quick paint over/move around. All I did was move things around. I scaled (slightly) somethings. This is without straightening the strips. I think when you do that you can pack this to a 512x1024 or something.

Elod.H

Ah thanks very much for that!
Yeah, should have crossed my mind to think about a ratio besides 1:1.

Jeff Parrott

Well it's less about that more about the insane amount of waste. UV mapping you need to think about efficiency, ease of texturing, and consistency across the object, level, character, etc. Efficiency is up there though.

BenHenry

@Elod.H: Try looking into pelt mapping, and peeling.

I work with quick peel 90% of the time. As you can see here, I took the entire object, planar mapped the entire thing. Then I put seams on each of the corners, and hit quick peel. then you just want to relax the entire thing, and you're done!
When it comes time to texture in edge highlights and stuff, this just makes it a thousand times easier.

Elod.H

Hey Ben,

Thanks for the tip! I do know about Pelt mapping and other unwrapping methods out there. The reason why I have done those splits are because of my normal map bakes. As I understood, if I have edges with 90 degree angles, I should put a UV split there to avoid seams showing up on my normal map.
Although, now I think that even if those seams would have shown up, they wouldn't have been very visible because of their position.

It seems right now that I should allow those baking seams to exist in areas that aren't very visible for the sake of UV packing efficiency. Does this sound correct?

Jeff Parrott

But if you have a 90 degree angle and you're sculpting on that corner or smoothing the high res mesh then technically it is not a 90 degree angle. At least internally. Your blue finger like things on the blades jump out as being a piece that should only have a seams where they meet the blade.

You seem like you're taking all these guidelines for things very literal. Don't be afraid to try things and experiment for yourself as well.

The edge padding will help your texture seams too. You will only need an edge padding of like 2-5 pixels depending on if you're resizing the texture.

Elod.H

I see, I guess I need to a bit of experimenting and see where i can keep UV's sown together. Thanks for the tips, really appreciate it!

Edit:



Any thoughts on this? I`m thinking that even if I do get seams in some of those sharp edges, they wouldn't be very visible... but I`m a bit confused right now .

Jeff Parrott

Try it. See if it works.

Ell

Hey there Elod, great job on these assets they look fantastic!
The shield is looking great and i do agree about a gloss map and a little more push on the specularity. Adding a little noise or grunge in the spec that doesn't exist in the diffuse may help it as well.

As for Jeffs UV suggestion, he's right but it just takes time to understand what's more important in UV unwrapping.
If you are building an object and generating all your maps from bakes, never really hand painting and your map size is large (all of this never really happens in game development) then you can make perfect UVs with as many uv islands as you want.
Since all game models usually require quite a bit of hand painted manipulation or clean-up, it's best to always have as few uv shells as possible. You would be surprised at how much uv stretching you can get away with.

As a test you could bake something with perfect uvs, and then bake the same thing with it's uvs stretched a bit, you'll find that both versions almost look identical, but the second just doesn't look as crisp.

As for the shield, I would have warped and attached a few more things together and detached the skinny tips of the main shells so that you could uniformly scale everything up a little more to tetris everything in a little tighter.
As well as attaching as many edge pieces as possible.

No need to re-do too much! it looks great which is what matters! just live and learn with every asset brother. Keep up the good work.

Elod.H

Hellooo,

I've started working on a new project which needs some buildings...
Here is the first one I am working on: blacksmith / blacksmith shop.
It is based on this concept, however I'm adding my own twists and ideas to make it look more like I want it to.



Currently I`m finishing the blockout.. there are some areas which still bug me, like the big hammer on the front of the house.. that definitely needs some more attention.
Feedback much appreciated .

Cordero

yes I'm from hungary aswell! örülök hogy más is van itt rajtam kívül

Blockout looks solid so far! I'm just wondering if making the details on the wall out of texture would be more effective?
some kind of bevel on the bottom part of the walls could look cool, where the wall meets the earth (like you did on the pillars)

I'm looking forward on how this one will turn out!

Elod.H

Hello,

I've started creating the tiling textures for the house you see above. The lower walls will receive a brick texture that tiles horizontally. Here is what I have so far. Suggestions?



Marmoset:

Elod.H

Hello again,

So, another amazingly unique texture which I created was tiling wood. I need it for the house posted above and here is what I cooked up.
The aim was to create a wood texture that has enough color variation to make it look interesting. I`m experimenting with dDo and my main goal was to make it look unique... escape from the "dDo like" look.

AzzaMat

Are all of your textures made using dDo?

Elod.H

Hey AzzaMat!

Yes, the brick and the wood texture started out in 3DSMax, then ZBrush, XNornal and nDo + dDo.

Elod.H

Hello again,

I am currently working on this sword here and everything is going smoothly, but I've came a cross a bit of a baking issue. I thought I had this covered, but I keep getting seams in my Normal Map along the mirrored lines of my mesh.





Here is the High Poly version of the bottom of the sword.



This is the Low Poly + Unwrap (it's a temporary unwrap for test bakes).





I want to texture only one quarter of the mesh and just mirror the rest.

After I've unwrapped it, I've set all of my different UV islands into separate smoothing groups via the Textool function.

Here is the resulting Normal Map. This one is baked in XNormal.



In Marmoset, I notice a seam, especially on the diamond in the front.
If I bake in 3DSMax, the seam is less visible (although it's still there), but this might be because of the lower quality settings compared to XNormal's.




I'd really appreciate some help here, as I can't seem to figure out what is causing this .

NomadSoul2501

Hi,

I think this might help you with your seam
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=51088

Love your work, keep it up!

Elod.H

Hey NomadSoul2504,

Thanks very much, I need to re-examine that thread

Rageleet

hey there really liking the work and that seam your getting is because its mirrored udk is quite prone to this issue as rule of thumb i try to avoid this where necessary or have a object in the middle that breaks up the two mirrored pieces if you get what i mean , you could try the method suggested, or you could join 2 halves together and that will get rid of the mirror.

and in regards to your previous posts i completely under stand your issues with normal mapping with uv splits etc sometimes this can be a pain keep up the good work (y)

Elod.H

Hello Rageleet,

Thanks very much for replying. Yes, joining the two halves seems like a good idea. The seam is really noticeable on the diamond, so I could join that up and leave the rest of the mesh mirrored.

The model won't be looked at from really really close, so the seams might be completely invisible. Alas, I'd still like to know if there is a way to completely remove it .

seth.

Elod.H wrote: »

I`d like to know if there is an efficient way of acquiring selection masks based on the HP's separate meshes. I was thinking of baking the elements separately or to just simply select them out in PS, but for example the curvy frame of the shield is very similar in color to the eagle wing detail so it's kind of time consuming selecting them out separately. I`m sure there are more complicated cases where using the Lasso or Pen tool would take up much more time.

Sorry if it's a noobish request, I just want to speed the process up . Thank you!

you can export the high obj from zbrush with polypaint and then bake out a vertex colour map in xnormal...that should sort that out for you

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvNOCojBRoE"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvNOCojBRoE[/ame]

Elod.H

Hey seth.

Hehe, posted that question some time ago, but a useful video nonetheless thanks!

seth.

oops sorry man, just reading through the thread and didn't really look at the dates

looprix

I like your designs keep it up!!!

Elod.H

Thanks for the help guys!

I've managed to solve my seam issue: turns out it was a very noobish mistake: when exporting the .obj from Max, I've used the ZBrush preset and that does not save Smoothing Group or Normal information into the .obj ... oops.

Here is what the sword looks like in Marmoset at the moment:



Diffuse:



Everything is still very much in "work in progress" stage.. my spec/gloss still needs a lot of work and the diffuse as well. I want to do a dDo pass on the textures and then finish everything up via hand painting.

I'm trying to keep to the concept as much as possible, but give it an extra umph as well... hope I`m on the right track here :icon15: