Plague Doctor Mask

Nosslak

Hey, all! I'm remaking an old plague doctor mask that I made a year or so ago. I'm remaking it because I felt it had great potential, but it was ultimately let down by my (at the time) poor modelling, baking and texturing skills. Hopefully it will turn out a lot better this time.

Here's the old lowpoly model:


Here's some of the problems with the old model that I hope to fix:
- Few interesting details in the highpoly. There were exacly zero folds in the original model to indicate that it was made of cloth (leather in this case), only some stitching which IMO won't cut it.
- Very flat and boring texture. The leathery parts will just look like noise from further away and there are no bigger forms there at all.
- No dirt at all, just some scratches on the leather.
- Bad baking, especially on the tip of the beak as that looks very flat (might have edjust my newer version too, will testbake before I do any major work on that).
- Too lowpoly (only ~300 triangles). The original model was made for a Doom 3 mod called The Dark Mod so I didn't use as many triangles for it as I would've done for a newer engine. I intend to display this in UDK or Cryengine so I'll use a bit more triangles for this.

Here's the new and improved highpoly model (before sculpting):


And here's where I'm at with the sculpt:


I will make some similar stitching on the new model as on the old one, I am just trying to make some more interesting bigger details first (folds in the cloth currently).

The sculpt is missing the tip of the beak because ZBrush (4r4) started complaining about encountering errors while importing my file. At first I thought it was because of n-gons or perhaps some non-manifold or loose geometry but I've checked/fixed all of those problems and are now coming up empty handed. I've tried to turn off all my modifiers as well, but that really didn't change anything. I am trying to export from Blender 2.66. Do anyone know how to fix this problem or any workarounds?

So what do you think?

Nosslak

Bump.

thepapercut

Sadly I can't tell you the solution to your problem, but that is a lovely looking mask though!

Steve Schulze

I've had Zbrush flip out in the past when there were corrupted UVs on the model. Just throw an automatic unwrap, or whatever your Blender equivalent is on there and see if that makes it happy.

LlamaRider

You should check normals of the model are not reversed. CTRL+N or W>Flip Normals on the tip part should help.

Nosslak

Jackablade wrote: »

I've had Zbrush flip out in the past when there were corrupted UVs on the model. Just throw an automatic unwrap, or whatever your Blender equivalent is on there and see if that makes it happy.

Yes, that was it. Thanks a lot for the help!

thepapercut wrote: »

Sadly I can't tell you the solution to your problem, but that is a lovely looking mask though!

Thanks!

Nosslak

Here's an update on the mostly finished highpoly (just got some small details left):


The lowpoly is also pretty much done:

It landed on about 1770 triangles.

Here's the unwrap for it as well:


I'll bake the belts flat as that'll (presumably) give me less distortions.

So what do you think?

Nosslak

Progression has been pretty slow as I've been having some problems with the baking but I've worked through most of them.

Here's what it looks like right now:

I need to work a lot more on the leather as I want to make it look way more worn and old. Other than the leather I am pretty satisfied with where it is headed so far.

I'll also need to rebake the belts so that's why they weren't included in the render.

Some feedback would be appreciated.

mospheric

Not a bad foundation. I think your edges could use some pop in the diffuse. I recommend baking out a cavity map and overlaying over your diffuse. You could always download Gnald and give it a go pretty quickly.

Nosslak

mospheric wrote: »

Not a bad foundation. I think your edges could use some pop in the diffuse. I recommend baking out a cavity map and overlaying over your diffuse. You could always download Gnald and give it a go pretty quickly.

Yeah, you're probably right. I saved the edge highlights mostly for the specmap but I should probably have some of them in the diffuse as well. I just used a cavity map from nDo, but I will render one in xNormal as well (along with a curvature map).

Also what is Gnald? I tried a quick google for it and the most relevant I found was this very thread.

Amsterdam Hilton Hotel

knald, with a k - http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=119084

Nosslak

You could always download Gnald and give it a go pretty quickly.

Amsterdam Hilton Hotel wrote: »

knald, with a k - http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=119084

That looks great, thanks for the recommendation!

Not a bad foundation. I think your edges could use some pop in the diffuse.

Yeah, I baked out the missing maps (cavity and curvature) and tried out Knald and it really helped. So thanks for the suggestions.

Here's todays progress on the texturing:


C&C is very much appreciated!

mospheric

Looking better! And yes, it was Knald with a K. Sorry for the typo!

Nosslak

Sorry for the long delay, but I got busy with schoolwork. Here's a new update:


I defined the materials a lot better (imo) and obviously added a mannequin head and a hat. It all clocked in at 2000 tris (about 1500 for the mask and another 500 for the hat) with a 1024^2 texture set for the mask another 1024*512 texture set for the hat.

The model is pretty close to finished but C&C is still very much appreciated.

Nosslak

Bump.

_DeadPixel_

Right now I think the leather looks more like suede because it's so smooth, try adding more cracks and texture.

Di$array

I'd also suggest adding a copy of your normal map ontop of itself and have that layer on overlay. That should pop the creases out more around the seams of the mask, Then I would try what Deadpixel suggested and add cracks to the leather texture.

Nosslak

_DeadPixel_ wrote: »

Right now I think the leather looks more like suede because it's so smooth, try adding more cracks and texture.

Yeah, you're right. I do have some cracks in there already, but I'll make sure to crank up their strength and add some new ones as well. This is really good advice, so thank you!

Di$array wrote: »

I'd also suggest adding a copy of your normal map ontop of itself and have that layer on overlay. That should pop the creases out more around the seams of the mask, Then I would try what Deadpixel suggested and add cracks to the leather texture.

I'll try that. Though I have heard that you really shouldn't mess with the baked normalmap (other than overlaying some detail textures that is). Thanks for the advice!

Nosslak

Alright, here's the new version:

I'm a lot more happy with the leather on the mask now. So thanks again for the advice.

I'm not so happy with the material on the hat, but I really can't seem to get that it to look as good as the mask. I am thinking that maybe the normalmap is too flat and I should just sculpt the wrinkles with a bit more depth, but I'm not sure.

Di$array wrote: »

I'd also suggest adding a copy of your normal map ontop of itself and have that layer on overlay. That should pop the creases out more around the seams of the mask, Then I would try what Deadpixel suggested and add cracks to the leather texture.

I tried the your trick but it didn't really work out. The shading looked pretty weird in several places (especially the glass), so I'll just stick to what I had. Thanks anyway though.

_DeadPixel_

Sweet, looks much better!

Another thing you could try is darkening the sections where the leather joins together. That way you wouldn't notice the meshes intersecting so much and also it's a natural place for grease and dirt to build up anyhoo.

Nosslak

Thanks! And yeah, you're right I really should add more dirt. I've done this on the mask already but it could be pushed a bit more and I made it way too light on the hat. I'll fix it before the next update.

leleuxart

Looking nice! I think it's still missing the depth in the texture, but I don't think you did the normal map trick? Di$array forgot to say toggle the blue channel off on the second layer. So, duplicate the final normal map, set the copy to Overlay, and then in the Blending Mode options, uncheck the Blue channel. It's probably a good idea to merge those two layers and then normalize the values. You can do that with the XNormal plugin.

Nosslak

Sorry for the delay again but some things came up that I had to deal with.

Here's the latest progress:

I had to re-unwrap the hat to paint in some of the dirt, but it was worth it because it's now a bit more efficient and have less seams. I'm pretty happy with how the hat looks now. I also darkened/strengthened the dirt on both the mask and the hat.

Do anyone have any more critique? Otherwise I think this piece is pretty much done.

Looking nice! I think it's still missing the depth in the texture, but I don't think you did the normal map trick? Di$array forgot to say toggle the blue channel off on the second layer. So, duplicate the final normal map, set the copy to Overlay, and then in the Blending Mode options, uncheck the Blue channel. It's probably a good idea to merge those two layers and then normalize the values. You can do that with the XNormal plugin.

Thanks for the tip, but I already knew how to do it and had tested it and it didn't really work out for the mask. I did try it on the hat though and it worked pretty well there.

Nosslak

I've started working on an older model to bring it up to snuff (much like the plague doctor mask) and was wondering if it's worth using an alpha map for it or not. Here's how the model looks:

The model is pretty lowpoly (156 tris) and the 1bit alpha is what gives it a very smooth outline. Should I model it all out instead or just keep it alpha-mapped? There are pros and cons for both alternatives, but I'm not sure which I should go for.

Alpha:
+ Smooth outline
+ Less polygons
- Potentially inaccurate shadowing
- Paperthin
- Probably more expensive

No alpha:
+ Actual depth
+ Probably cheaper
- More jagged edges
- More polys

I will re-model the lowpoly in any case as it is a bit, well, too lowpoly atm.