Barrel and Simple Pistol

alex_kim

Modeling: Maya 2018
Texturing: Photoshop CS 6

First, sorry to not rendering this. I do not mean to ignore your advice. I simply feel confusing to understand the interface of Unreal Engine and Maya 2018 rendering system.

Maya 2018 is very powerful; but seems it changed a lot from 2015. I am working on it.

If you want to check my previous work, please visit 

http://polycount.com/discussion/190637/low-poly-barrel-with-normal-map-first-try/p1?new=1



The purple one is the High Poly. 
I used the Normal Map, Metallic Map, Diffuse Map, and Roughness Map to create low poly modeling.




This is my Barrel with the High Poly




And this is the low poly version.

It is better than before since I apply metallic map and roughness map. However, I don't like it since

it has no metal stud on metal bar.
planks should be looking old and damaged; but mine is not!

So I tried again yesterday night.


This is a lot better. However, I did not create maps yet. 

Any comments or opinions ? It is fine to criticize :-)

By the way, I am looking for a junior position in the game industry :-)

Brian "Panda" Choi

Your pistol highpolyy model is not really a high poly model.  Where are the control loops?  Your hard edges are literally sharp instead of a having a little rounding to help it catch the light.  It just looks like a low poly model.  You're not Smooth Mesh Previewing and converting any of the mesh.

(Please read this.  It'll explain why your hard edges are not supposed to be literally hard, and why we turbosmooth models to get good normal bakes: http://polycount.com/discussion/107196/youre-making-me-hard-making-sense-of-hard-edges-uvs-normal-maps-and-vertex-counts/p1)

The gun metal of the pistol is looking like leather instead of matte weapon finishes.

The shape is interesting enough, but you need to work on the material rendering.

Your pistol muzzle is not a perfect circle.   You just need to flip and extude a cylinder, and not hand model the circle out.

Pistol ejection ports tend to favor the right side, and right now, you have it symmetrically even.  That should not be the case if you're sticking to relatively accurate pistol design.

You should make low poly meshes for the iron banding.  You might as well; there's no need to sacrifice detail like that for something so simple conceptually.

Your cork on the barrel is reading mushy, flattened, and not a cork.  Cork's in barrels like these tend to me cylindrical rhombuses, not flattened pancakes.  You should fix this if you want a good looking barrel.

Get on figuring out how to render in UE4.  If you need help, reach out.  Plenty of us on the forum do our professional work in these game engines.

Are you just baking your maps in Maya?  There are better, free options like xNormal (though that's being phased out by Substance Painter/Designer and   Toolbag 3)

alex_kim

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

Your pistol highpolyy model is not really a high poly model.  Where are the control loops?  Your hard edges are literally sharp instead of a having a little rounding to help it catch the light.  It just looks like a low poly model.  You're not Smooth Mesh Previewing and converting any of the mesh.

(Please read this.  It'll explain why your hard edges are not supposed to be literally hard, and why we turbosmooth models to get good normal bakes: http://polycount.com/discussion/107196/youre-making-me-hard-making-sense-of-hard-edges-uvs-normal-maps-and-vertex-counts/p1)

The gun metal of the pistol is looking like leather instead of matte weapon finishes.

The shape is interesting enough, but you need to work on the material rendering.

Your pistol muzzle is not a perfect circle.   You just need to flip and extude a cylinder, and not hand model the circle out.

Pistol ejection ports tend to favor the right side, and right now, you have it symmetrically even.  That should not be the case if you're sticking to relatively accurate pistol design.

You should make low poly meshes for the iron banding.  You might as well; there's no need to sacrifice detail like that for something so simple conceptually.

Your cork on the barrel is reading mushy, flattened, and not a cork.  Cork's in barrels like these tend to me cylindrical rhombuses, not flattened pancakes.  You should fix this if you want a good looking barrel.

Get on figuring out how to render in UE4.  If you need help, reach out.  Plenty of us on the forum do our professional work in these game engines.

Are you just baking your maps in Maya?  There are better, free options like xNormal (though that's being phased out by Substance Painter/Designer and   Toolbag 3)

Thanks Brian. I actually forgot to upload my reference art:



This is what I found from Google. I thought this modeling is fine enough to practice my skill.

So far I understood these are my homework for gun:

1. Understand how to bevel to catch the light: understand concept of control loop
-> So far I understand, I shall insert edge loops until my modeling keeps the shape when I press '3' button on Maya. Am I right?

2. Apply material again to look like metal instead of leather
3. Understand material rendering
4. Fix the shape of pistol muzzle



Right now, my plan is to create at least 4 more guns until October/20/2017, and I wish at least two of them are good enough for junior portfolio.

Larry

Yes alex you are correct. You need to put edge loops so that when you press 3 it keeps the shape. Good job on understanding how to apply nornal maps. You learned alot!

alex_kim

Larry said:

Yes alex you are correct. You need to put edge loops so that when you press 3 it keeps the shape. Good job on understanding how to apply nornal maps. You learned alot!

Thanks. 

Let me try this pistol again. Let us hope this time I can settle this finally.

alex_kim

@larryrttrivette
@Brian "Panda" Choi

Tonight,  I just fixed my simple pistol




I used Arnold Rendering from Maya 2018

And, these are my normal map & diffuse map (I resized 25% from original which is 2048 x 2048 for uploading purpose):

Brian "Panda" Choi

Your normals are looking bad.

Your hard edges are way too sharp.

Did you notice in Joe Wilson's tutorial that he specifically notes that for mipmaps (aka Level of Details), the round edges are best because they look better at lower LODs?

You can fix this.  You need to soften the hard edges of your high poly pistol.

Please reference this and other, better high poly weapons for how your edges should look in the high poly model.
 

Also, your UV mapping can stand to be better packed.  Looks like you got lazy and just allowed for a lot of dead space.  A big part of game art is about maximizing the limited resources you have, and just leaving all that dead space in a UV map is bad practice.  At least run a Pack or Layout operation on it.

You've missed large amounts of elements on the texturing.  You're not attempting to make what the concept is, just what YOU think a gun looks like.  The gun is gun metal grey with heavy coats of lightly colored dust.  You just slapped on a gun metal black and called it a day.

There are large cracks on the grip plate.  You just threw on a wood texture on the grip plate with no doctoring.

There are large splotches of nocks and depressions on the action slide.  You have not detailed anything visible in that regard.

You've neglected to add the small screw at the front of the trigger guard.

Stop using Arnold. 
 
Games are not reendered in Arnold.  Arnold is not a real time renderer.

Figure out Unreal or Unity, and get it rendered in a game engine if you don't have Toolbag 3 or something similar.

You can come back to Arnold later once you get a handle on more fundamental modeling habits.

There's still a lot of opportunity to fix stuff. 

Are you confused about ANY of this?  It's fine to ask question, but if there's something you really don't know how to approach, ask.  I'm pointing out a lot wrong, but it's fine if you have no idea how to execute on the iteration fix.

alex_kim

@Brian "Panda" Choi

@Brian "Panda" Choi 

Thanks Brian. I actually feel shy when I read your comment.

You are right; when I did my uv map and texturing; I was frustrated; and wanted to move on  which was not a nice attitude.

My work is not good enough it is not because of lack of skill (well, I do but). But, maybe because I lost my focus during of job that is not professional. 

Having a good skill or not; I should have not lose professional attitude since this job is not a joke.

Most of errors that you pointed out; I could avoid it if I focused. 

1. Do not use Arnold Rendering

2. Hard Edge Issue

1) Way too sharp

-> Make it rounded: Soften the hard edges of the hp mesh

3. UV Mapping Space Issue

4. Texturing Issue a.k.a my attitude issue

I have questions

Question One.
I am using nCombiner to combine Normal maps since combining more than one normal map using Photoshop takes a lot of steps and difficult.

However, sometimes this program refused to combined and showed me "invalid float number" error message. Do you know why?


Question Two.
In this gun case, I have wood and metal material.

Which means I need to apply two material for each.

In wood case, shall the size of wood part uv map must be equal as metal part uv map?

Since wood thing is small, I believe that size of uv map for wood must be smaller than metal one.


Question Three.
If I can create this pistol as great as you like it

Can I use it for junior job portfolio? 

In my opinion, I think it is way too simple. What do you think?


Last Question.

I know this is silly to ask, but I need to.

What do you think how many hours I should practice Maya and 2d drawing(sketch) per day?


Thanks Brian, Sorry to disappoint you

I will be better

Larry

drawing is good to make you develop an eye for the details mostly. About maya, you can challenge yourself to make 1 prop per day for 30 days. And when you make all of them, unwrap and texture 1 prop per day for another 30 days. It is a good practise for me to keep a schedule. For Junior position portfolio you can try and make a more complicated weapon if you like weapons. Anything is fine, really, as long as it shows the techniques that you know and it is good looking. But beware, the simpler the object, the more good looking it has to look if you want a job on this!

alex_kim

@larryrttrivette 

Thanks Larry, always.

The most important thing is Not losing professional attitude, I guess..

Let me try this pistol again. If Brian and you both say "you can use it", that will be green light :-)

Larry

I am always bored to go back on the same, and I make something new. Your modeling skill is fine, you just need to know when to bevel hard edges. Uv and texturing is what you must focus on!!

Brian "Panda" Choi

You can use it if you looks good.

Brian "Panda" Choi

Answer One:
No, I don't know why.  I use programs like Substance Painter which just bakes all my elements down to one map.  I recommend using Substance Painter as well.

Answer Two:
Texel density should be even across the board for both the metal and wood elements.  You can check this with a checkerboard (Google UV Checkerboard online)

There are times when some elements need to have smaller texel density than others, but I don't see a reason for that here.

You only need one material for the whole gun.  Game artists should strive to ooptimize the number of materials they need, and there's rarely a need for a different shader to be applied between wood and metal.

Answer Three:
If you execute well on the concept, it's portfolio worthy, yea.  If it's your best work, then yes.

Last Question:
As much as you can.  During uni, in general, if I wasn't in class or taking care of extra cirricular responsibilities like The Navigators or Alpha Gamma Omega fraternity, I was making game art or in the lab working on the game our team was working on.  That's a minimum of 2 to 3 hours a night.

I appreciate the self-reflectiveness, you just gotta know that we know you can do it and get it done.

alex_kim

@larryrttrivette 
@Brian "Panda" Choi 

Hello Brian
Hello Larry.

I was working on the substance painter since you strongly recommended me. And, this is what I've got.


This is the 75% of original image size since the original image is HQ and huge.

Also, the format is .png since I cannot upload .tga here. I directly rendered in the Substance Painter.

Well, this is the best quality I ever produced in my Maya life. Of course, this is NOT the end. I do not mean to be arrogant; however, I feel good myself. :-)

I guess I understood basic part of interface of Substance Painter according to this project.

Do you think this is good enough for portfolio? I humbly ask your honest opinion. 

Thanks both of you. I really appreciate; I can reach this point because of your kindness :-)

Larry

I like it that you learned about damage, but you overdid it. If this was a real gun it would propably malfunction. People take good care of guns and clean them often from gunpowder becaus you, always want it to work, and if it doesnt, you would have a real problem.Always ask yourself: is this how it looks in real life? Search for a gun with a wooden part on the handle, does it look the same? 

You made progress though, and I can clearly see which material is wood and which is metal..! But your wood is stretched and your metal has too much damage...!

Also dont save as pgn save them as jpeg. Forum rules is that you must not upload pgn images

alex_kim

@larryrttrivette 

You are right Larry, I guess I was excited too much ;_;

Substance Painter is very powerful yet interface is very.. complicated :-) comparing from Photoshop.

I guess I should watch tutorial about gun texturing.

alex_kim

@larryrttrivette 
@Brian "Panda" Choi 

Hello, Larry.
Hello, Brian.

I was playing with Substance Painting 2017, and this is my final result so far. :-)

I would like to try something funny, something unique.

What do you think? Do you believe this is fine to use for portfolio?

Always thanks. :-)

Larry

No :P if you dont take this seriously why would anyone take your work seriously?

alex_kim

@larryrttrivette 

It was not a joke.  There IS the hello kitty gun.

Larry

Okay then, it is your choice to go as humorous as you want personally if I wanted to hire someone I would like to see a gun textures as a gun. If you can do that correctly then you can certainly make a hello kitty gun

alex_kim

@larryrttrivette 

I guess you are right.. even if I want to create unique version, It should be looking like gun.

At least, I should create a realistic gun and then paint it like a REAL LIFE hello kitty gun.

Brian "Panda" Choi

It looks better than it did originally, yea. You've made progress!

I feel like you might just be puttering around with this asset, especially if you're trying not to recreate the concept one to one.

I feel like it's time to move on and just place this in your portfolio as one of your best pieces for now.

Whatever you're doing next time, your big challenges you needed to tackle are:

1) Matching the concept art stylistically and physically.
2) Softening your hard edges on the high poly model.
3) Better UV packing.

alex_kim

@Brian "Panda" Choi 

Thanks Brian. Maybe I try texturing again later. Or, maybe I should try two versions: original version and hello kitty edition :-)

I actually did not practice modeling more than three days since I was working on Substance Painter 2017. I was bit worry about it.

I am now working on to create Colt single action army with realistic version. This time, I want to create as real as possible. 

Thanks for your opinion again.