Marauder II (mech for a Mechwarrior 4 Mod)

verybad

Couple of pics of a Mech I did for a mod I've been working on.
Maya Screens




Ingame


Night Shift


Wire shot


A bit different from what usually gets posted here. I'm not terribly experienced with modeling for soft animation (ie people, etc, although I hope to round out my skills in my next project (some kind of biomechanical creature that DOESN'T look like "the" Alien.)

Crits are extremely welcome. I'm aware of the stretched texture on the inside of the toes, thats where I ran out of space on the UV map and didn't want to move already textured stuff) Ingame texture is 3 512x512.

Also aware of the missing polygon on the main gun in some of the ingame shots, that's an unfortunate thign that happened on one of the lower poly versions ingame.

Now I need to get attached to a different type of mod that will help me round out my skills. (Organics and non vehicle type stuff)

I've been lurking here for quite a while, and have posted here before, but I guess I got erased for not being active enough. *shrugs*

edit: Sorry about not making thumbnails, I'm leaching off of a site I'm an admin, but don't have my own personal webspace currently.

MoP

This is quite nice, I like it.

When I first saw it, the textured shots seemed very yellow and busy, not much colour variation or clear shapes defined.

However, the in-game screenshot (daytime) looks awesome - is that the same texture? If so, what's different to make it look like that... the lighting? A reflection or specular map?

The night version just looks black... I think the texture is just too dark there.

The mesh seems pretty good too.

Could you post some different angles of the in-game daytime version? I'd like to see more of that one.

gauss

howdy! glad to see a new face here. while in the first image some of the lines are hard to make out, what really counts is how the model looks in-game and if i remember correctly from playing MW4, your model certainly looks up to the level of quality of the mechs in the game. so nice work, it's a sharp looking mech which is although complicated, seems to "read" pretty well from the screenshots. no real crits from me, looks like a nicely put together asset.

looking for a mod to try out different skills on, i'd recommend going for a HL2 or UT2k4 mod. both have plenty of opportunities to work on your organic/soft-bodied object modeling skills. good luck!

verybad

The MW4 textures are based on a single TGA (512x512), with the alpha channel determining where the camo/color shows up. So the best way to make an effective texture is to spend some time working on a good alpha channel. The orange in the Maya shots are basically where the different camos in Mechwarrior4 go. (Plus I never outgrew tonka toys)

More angles, better lighting.

MoP

Ahh, I see, so the earlier ingame shot is with a MW4 camo texture shown in the areas the alpha channel allows?

I think there are some areas of the texture which are too busy (lots of thick black lines squashed up next to each other) which are kinda hiding the shapes and making it hard to read closer up.

Looks good overall though, thanks!

verybad

Yeah I tend to get a bit detail fixated. My Modus operandi is do make an extremely high res model, render it out from different angles with good lighting, and use that as the base for the texturing. Some irritating UV stuff in areas that I just noticed (although they don't show up in play (eg the foot stretch UV at the side shot) I had to use a non orthygonal UV on the foot to get it to work without stretching the main texture area there (bolt holes etc) but from some angles this results in issues in that engine. I can't preview in the engine because we only have one guy who can open it (MW4 wasn't made to be modded) So some stuff doesn't show up.

Here's some of the other stuff done over the course of modding this game.





The second one I didn't texture, though I supplied the high res renders and the low res model.

I'm epileptic and was to sick to model arround that time (ie couldn't look at a computer screen for longer than @ 20 minutes without getting the shakes) getting an LCD screen has made me hope that I might be able to pursue this beyond the hobby stage.

These two models have a single 512x512 ingame texture. The top image is a render using the 1024 version however.

EarthQuake

These need a couple things, some more surface wear(scratches and such) some dirt to break up the uniform colors, and then some variation in the saturation of the paint(faded ares, i would use the sponge tool in ps) and i think they will look really good.

Zergxes

I'd imagine a fair bit of powder staining around the vents that cool the guns and missle pods. If the engine doesn't support real time lighting like all the new dx9 games I would paint general lighting over the surface of the object.

Yeah, variation in saturation would help this a lot.
Might be my monitor is washed but I think the night version is rather nice- maybe toss in some cool colors- like a faked blue moonlight on the surface. Your shadows are really jaggy- is there a way to smooth those in the level without tanking performance?

Mongrelman

The usual Verybad greatness Great to see you here man.

As a crit I'd say the line of rectangles under the 'wing' on the back of the marauder is a bit wavy. But anyone that faces that thing ingame won't be looking at those (if they know what's good for them).

PS. You should post up your other stuff (particularly those highpoly Rifleman and Canis renders).

StrangeFate

I like the last 2 mechs, but not the marauder skin, it's way too noisy and crowded, too many strong black lines etc. Makes it hard to follow it's shape, or any shape.

Mark Dygert

I love the mesh! The skin I am not so hot about. All the tiny detail shapes, vents and crazy lines makes it hard to distinguish the shapes of each piece. The lines that define the different parts of the armor are lost in all the crazy detail. I learned an important leason when Rob Liefeld said in an interview "more lines means more detail". No, Rob, it doesn't. It means you made a mess and forgot where your eraser is.

I think you need to simplfy your skin. It almost looks like you turned the mech inside out and all the armor is on the inside, with the guts and bobs on the outside? You need to remember that it will be seen at a distance and needs to retain its shapes. From a mech stand point it is pretty obvious that is there just to be candy. Hatches should have purpose other than crazy detail.

- If you can show a hatch has pourpous then it won't come off as crazy detail. Why would someone put 5 identicle hatches running the lenght of a piece of armor when one hatch would work fine.

- With all those vents it screams sand traps. Dirt and sad getting into places they shouldn't be, would be a bad thing. Mech designers might not put so many ways for a mech to fall to something as common as mechanical failure?

- Those square plates behind the cockpit could be turned into some other kind of detail, like kill tags that are painted on.

- With so many small straight lines, it shows off some texture streching which normally would be hidden.
Here are the changes I would make, in paint over form.

Sometimes simple is the key.

MoP

Vig makes a good point here. I prefer his painted-over version with less busy detail, it just seems more solid and easy on the eye.

gauss

i disagree; while in general it's an important principle to consider, i think the more-is-more look is dead nuts on for what the MechWarrior mechs are all about. maybe some -slight- detail pruning is in order, but nothing that drastic. Vig, you make some very good points about considering the practical value of the different vents and ports and what not, but that logic is roundly defeated by the fact that 100 ton mechs make no practical sense. if we're to follow realistic principles of design, we'd design mechs right out of existing and make something far more sensible.

there is of course a happy medium, designing within the constraints of the level of suspended disbelief engendered by such as a 100 ton walking robo-tank, but i think verybad's already there.

btw, verybad, the description of your workflow sounds like you're pretty close to ready for a normal-mapped workflow. you've got all that stuff modeled out, isn't much of a leap to put that data into a normal map and not just the skin. hope the LCD works out for you, i've found mine easier on the eyes generally speaking than my old CRT.

Ninjas

I think it is the yellow. Make it something darker and more neutral and I bet the problem goes away.

verybad

Here's one with a darker Camo (skin and camo are essentially different concepts in MW4, two different files)



A range of distances to give an idea of ingame texture looks. Most fighting occurs at the medium to long range.

I also included some vehicle shots from real untis that have influenced my design philoshopy re detail

For comparison purposes I included two marketing screenshots from the original (nonmodded) game. My mech is using 3 TGAs while theirs uses only one, so mine can support more detail more clearly. Although considering their work is just one 512x512 it holds up pretty well.
(it IS a 4 year old game)

verybad

[ QUOTE ]
...Your shadows are really jaggy- is there a way to smooth those in the level without tanking performance?

[/ QUOTE ]

Heh. THOSE shadows on the ground are on 16x Anisotropic Filtering and 8xS antialiasing. They're MAX quality on a modern machine at 1280x1024 resolution (also max for the game)(3 gHz speed, 1 gig ram, 128 meg PCI-E card). It's just an old game. Detail textures on the ground are only 64x64 for example. The game runs at over 100 FPS on my machine. Can't do any