My First Game Asset: Rusty Boiler

mobkon

Hey guys - Heres my very first game asset created with Maya, Photoshop, nDo2 and rendered out with Marmoset. I know there's definitely lots that can be improved so please, don't hold back! Looking back at it I could probably have gotten rid of some more polys. Used an alpha map for the grate on the front but did not include the texture. Looking back at that Im assuming I should have just added it to the texture sheet? Anyway, please let me know what you think. I learned a ton doing this today!

Thanks!

AlexCatMasterSupreme

Okay, your texture is hella high detail noise, probably all photosourced, the cemement should be sculpted in zbrush, you are wasting texture space by not mirroring your uvs, it's unclear what this even is. The texture has pretty much no specularity, it's very noisey and confusing. Your normals are generated from the texture it looks like, if you did a normal map bake i can't tell. Your uv's could have be saved so much space. you have as many polys on the smaller circle parts as on the massive circular parts, if not more when they could use the extra polys.

I am trying to be brutally honest and helpful. I would keep at it and just take into account for your next model, sorry if it sounded rude I am trying to help since you asked to not hold back.
Sign up for this and watch the third tutorial and do a lot of their tutorials in general. https://www.3dmotive.com/f101201

mobkon

AlexCatMasterSupreme wrote: »

Okay, your texture is hella high detail noise, probably all photosourced, the cemement should be sculpted in zbrush, you are wasting texture space by not mirroring your uvs, it's unclear what this even is. The texture has pretty much no specularity, it's very noisey and confusing. Your normals are generated from the texture it looks like, if you did a normal map bake i can't tell. Your uv's could have be saved so much space. you have as many polys on the smaller circle parts as on the massive circular parts, if not more when they could use the extra polys.

I am trying to be brutally honest and helpful. I would keep at it and just take into account for your next model, sorry if it sounded rude I am trying to help since you asked to not hold back.
Sign up for this and watch the third tutorial and do a lot of their tutorials in general. https://www.3dmotive.com/f101201

Exactly what I was looking for. I'm here to learn so honesty is most important. Thank you! To clarify a few things...yes all the textures are photosourced. I took a couple different metal materials and used a grunge map on some of the textures to dirty things up. I looked at a couple tutorials and both of them used straight photosourced images for their assets. Is this not the way to do it? And yeah the normal map is generated straight from the texture. I modeled low poly and only low poly, there was no high poly to bake a normal map from.

I want to keep at this one so I will take your advice for sure. I noticed those tutorials you suggested require a subscription. Anything else that doesnt require a subscription? If not, Ill sign up but just checking.

Thanks!

jStins

mobkon wrote: »

I looked at a couple tutorials and both of them used straight photosourced images for their assets. Is this not the way to do it? And yeah the normal map is generated straight from the texture. I modeled low poly and only low poly, there was no high poly to bake a normal map from.

Photosourcing is not necessarily a bad thing, but you need to be mindful of your high frequency details so things don't become too noisy. Those details can be nice, but apply them strategically to create rhythm and interest and give the eye places to rest on the asset. Also keep in mind that painting is still part of the process, so don't hesitate to knock back details with a brush or eraser. Photosourcing is a process that involves more than layering a few photos together.

Your normal map is making the noise worse since it's being processed all at once. Try building your normal map in layers. For example, white dots on a gray BG will create some nice defined shapes for the rivets when you run it through nDo. Then you can process your high frequency details separately and layer the two normal maps together.

Looks like you have the basics down, but need to keep practicing to make things more efficient and push the artistry.

ScrotieFlapWack

Very cool man really like this. I am still learning as well. I only learnt what UV's are and how they work a few days ago, that was after studying them for a good few weeks lol. You've done a real good job for your first asset though dude. Just as Alex said, you could have defo mirrored some of your islands there and scaled up your main parts of the model which are the most noticeable. A friend told me about a really nice workflow for doing your UV's the way I like to do it is less clutter letting you focus on each part of the model, next time you UV try and put your main parts of the model on their own UV set and some other parts on their own. Then work on them separately to see what works best. When you got your seams how you want and your islands are scaled how you want (remember texture relativity, if your side is bigger than your front thats gonna look weird ) then bring the UV sets into their own and do your logistics on that one UV set. Less clutter and easier workflow giving you better results

luge

I honestly would say the same thing everyone else has said. It is a good start, good learning point. Some things could be worked on, such as saving UV space by mirroring, and by overlapping (fix in lightmap uv set...). and some work on poly optimization.

Photosourcing isn't a bad thing, it can produce some very good results, you just have to do some tweaking to make it work. And I'd say its best to paint over the photo to create a heightmap to bake a normalmap from to get a better result. so you can properly accentuate the details you need, instead of just turning it grayscale and popping it into crazybump/xnormal and calling it a day.