Jolty's Game Art Thread

Joltya

CRITIQUES/FEEDBACK GREATLY APPRECIATED!

I will be putting the finished/most completed pieces here.










---

Original post:

Hello Polycount! I've been learning how to model for about a year now and I think I'm getting the hang of it. Although I my school focuses more on movie quality pieces, I am more interested in game art, so I figured I'd come here to learn more about how to make those types of models. I'll be using this thread to show my progress.

Although it probably isn't well optimized to be made as a game asset, I thought I'd go ahead post and my nail gun I made to show what my level is right now. This was the first really complex piece I made and there are a lot of things I did wrong on it, so I'm not sure how/if I could really push forward with this piece.

URL]http://i.imgur.com/0qOdWHW.jpg[/URL
[http://i.imgur.com/opG4mWe.jpg]

BARDLER

That is really funny. I modeled a nail gun for my 1 year anniversary as well, lol.

If you are wondering what the next step is in order to turn this into a game asset you should really read through these threads.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=81154
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=107196

You need to make a low poly, set your hard/soft edges, UV it, and bake a normal map.

Joltya

Thanks for the info, Bardler! I've been looking at those and although the concepts aren't perfectly clear yet, I do have a better idea of what I can expect as I'm move forward.

Joltya

So for my first actual piece that I'm going to do a low poly and bake is this little turret. Here's the blocking stage so far. It's about 60-70% there right now.

Joltya

I assembled a reference board of the turret I was working from. The name of the gun is the Browning 1919.



I started to put more details on the body. I hope to be finished with blocking by tomorrow.

DWalker

Why in the world do you have so many height segments for the barrel sleeve?

You are also missing numerous details - most obviously the trigger assembly - but that might all fall into the 40% undone part. The scale also seems off in some areas - the hand grip, for example; this is a common enough weapon that you can find very accurate dimensions to use as a guide/

Joltya

DWalker wrote: »

Why in the world do you have so many height segments for the barrel sleeve?

You are also missing numerous details - most obviously the trigger assembly - but that might all fall into the 40% undone part. The scale also seems off in some areas - the hand grip, for example; this is a common enough weapon that you can find very accurate dimensions to use as a guide/

The purpose of the height segments on the barrel was to try to see if I could space out the length properly when I go into add the ports on the sleeve. Also, when I started, I was only going off of a single image and I didn't know what the name of the gun was. After I found it out, I was able to get a much better idea of what I was doing.

After a long while of figuring out the dimensions, I think I got a pretty solid block form down. Now I'll move onto working on the highpoly stuff.

jeremiah_bigley

DWalker wrote: »

Why in the world do you have so many height segments for the barrel sleeve?

You are also missing numerous details...

Whoa dude... Chillax. He just started blocking it out. lol

Joltya

I'm a bit behind on my intended schedule because I've been studying workflows and tutorials on how to do high poly models for normal mapping, but I feel like I'm finally ready to pump this thing out.

Here are my main notes I've learned so far on normal mapping. If there are things that I'm not aware of or if I am mistaken on some things, please let me know.
1. Keep the hard edges loose as the bake will lose a lot of the smoothness.
2. Anything that is projecting at a 90* angle from the surface on the high poly will not be seen from the projection. Likewise, surfaces that are parallel from the high poly to the low poly will appear to have the same depth.
3. When unwrapping, make sure that the surfaces on different smoothing groups are not stitched so that the normals have a bit of buffer room.


Here's my high poly so far. I know it's not a huge leap since my last update, but I figured I'd go ahead and post this so that I could get feedback from more advanced modelers. This is the body of the turret. Although I'm doing the high poly on these plane type models, the low poly will be a block. the bottom piece will also be it's own model and won't be normal mapped.

Joltya

Finished most of the body. Now off to work on the legs.

Joltya

High poly done! Going to start doing low poly soon.

jeremiah_bigley

Nice work man! A couple of things bothering me. The connections that are circled look cg. There is no function to them. They are just extrusions. The legs in the reference look so much cooler and a bit more detailed. Really hate that square bolt too. lol idk even if it was real on your ref I would make it not so lame looking. As the artist you can take artistic control and shift things here and there to make it more aesthetically pleasing. Don't feel restricted to the reference.

Really solid model over all. I think it is just the small details like the ones mentioned above holding it back from amazing!

Sorry I have been super busy so I haven't been that responsive.

Joltya

Those are some very good points! I'll be sure to fix those before I start on the low poly version.

Joltya

I fixed some of the things Jeremiah pointed out and started working on the low poly. This is the first time I'm really doing a low poly, so I'm kind of hesitant on getting rid of some of the edges. However, right now, it's down to about 23k tris.

If anyone has any pointers or critiques, feel free to let me know!

Joltya

Finished the low poly! Came down to 4,585 tris.

Joltya

Got some bakes done! Still a ways to go though.

Joltya

Getting those textures done!

DWalker

The texture on the leveling screw thread looks odd; more like a coiled wire than a screw.

The bare metal should be blued instead of grey. (See the reference above.)

The paint along the sharp edges tends to get worn away to bare metal.

Joltya

^Noted and worked on. The bare metal parts still need some work, but I think I'm done with the paint.

Joltya

Finally calling this one done! (Unless there are glaring problems that I can't see).

Joltya

Did some proper staging. On to the next one!

Joltya

The next model I'm going to do is this little lawnmower right here. It's the Honda HRC216.

Joltya

Blocking 80% done.

Joltya

Finished the blocking! On to refining.

BARDLER

You need to work on the spec map on the machine gun. You have no highlights, edges, or scratches being shown in the material.
Check out these textures by Lonewolf for good reference. http://www.lonewolf3d.com/images/Call_of_duty_modern_warfare_3/Call_of_duty_modern_warfare_3_mw3_weapons.html

Joltya

Hey Bardler! Appreciate the feedback. I added the maps I used in the first post. I did have the scratches as a higher spec value, but not the edges. So what you're saying is that I should just paint in more white around the corners of the model, and that that would give it a little more "pop" like in Lonewolf's models. Is that correct?

Joltya

Small little update. Still quite a bit to go, but I think it's coming along pretty nicely.

Joltya

Getting a little bit more of the details out. This engine is going to be tough!

Joltya

There's a lot of really difficult pieces left, so It's pretty much an uphill battle until I can get to the lowpoly stages. I also started messing around with mental ray and rendering within 3DS Max.

Joltya

Finally almost done with the high poly! Just a few more parts to add. I'm trying to work on my presentation/rendering style for showing off my high poly models (as well as the low poly models). If anyone has some helpful crits, feel free to point them out!

Joltya

Think I'm done with the HP for now. On to the LP!

Wesley

Awesome progress! Keep it up, looking forward to the low poly of the lawn mower.

Joltya

The mower was moved to another class, so I'm not going to finish that for a while. In the meantime, I'm working on this little environment here.

This is the control station of the S.S. Nomad (by Lee Yong Yi)

Joltya

Been working on the floor a lot! (I know there some weird stuff going on in the middle with the intersecting beams, but those will be covered by the map table.)

Joltya

Small progress shot. Been working on the map table.

Joltya

Got some steering wheels done today.

Joltya

Here's how the lawnmower turned out from my other project that I had to work on. First time using Mari. It's sooo easy to use. Still planning on turning it into low poly.

Joltya

Here's the room so far.

Joltya

Got the low-poly mesh for the mower done for the most part. Just shy of 10k tris. If anyone has some suggestions or optimization tips before I start unwrapping, it would be greatly appreciated!

Joltya

Lawnmower finished.

Joltya

small update on room.

cody.rauh

Hey Jolt,

Great stuff, are the floor bolts and details normal maps already or are they still added geometry? If so how did you accomplish that level of lift in the look?

Joltya

Thanks cody. And no they are not; everything's still in the high poly stage atm.

Joltya

Coming along slowly. Wish I could spend more time on this.