Those uvs look pretty horrible, lots of wasted space there. You've got at Least 1/4th of your texture space not being used.
Also you have unique uv space for everything, and everything is mirrored. You could re-unwrap this to a 512x1024 or whatever equivilant res you're using, mirror stuff and detatch/pack your uvs creatively and get more detail out of it than you currently have.
A little photoshop work says i'm wrong, and that you're actually wasting HALF(or more) of your uv space, which means you could re-arange to half, mirror and get twice the detail out of your textures at half the cost. Thus being 4 times more efficiant.
Luckily theres a very simple way to fix, and that is just to re-uv and bake your maps(rebaking normals of course), even if you dont want to mirror anything you could still be twice as efficiant just by doing this.
Looks great. It appears that you didn't intend for this character to be prefectly symmetrical. You should add more details to make that more obvious. Otherwise you've wasted most of your UV space, as EQ mentioned.
Thanks Tumerboy and ElysiumGX! I'm glad you like him.
EarthQuake: The UV issue would depend on the engine. Not all handle mirrored normal maps. The goal here was the least seams and stretching possible. In that I've been successful.
Here's an example of tight UV's I've done in the past: Zoe Screengrab
It's nice, but the feet look really bland and don't seem to fit. The texture doesn't help either (at least for me) drawing my attention to the feet and hands.
Regardless of what the goal was, it still looks bad to have a texture sheet on your portfolio with 50% wasted space, and its super easy now that everything is textured(the only reason you'd be worrying about minimizing seams, for ease of painting) to do a simple bake to fix your really bad uvs. Any decent engine supports mirrored uvs, and unless this is specifly for a crappy engine that doesnt support mirrored uvs, its a pretty useless excuse.
Being that this is the only example of current generation texturing techniques you that have on your site and even worse the only actual example of your uv skills that are visible on your site, its a pretty poor decision.
Cool stuff man, I like what you've done with this. I'd echo the comment about the feet, if you wanted to toy with it a little, maybe try to add some variation there to spruce it up. Other than that, it's pretty
EQ is right. What you are doing is wrong. It's WRONG and there is no excuse for this! Get out. GET OUT!!!
*me points towards the door*
now that I take another look, I agree the feet could use some improvement to be more anatomically consistent, if you're motivated to go back and make some revisions. it would be great to see some animations for this.
The high res sculpt is nice, but the texture seems to be at war with the details rather than complimenting or reinforcing it. But maybe the specular isn`t contrasted enough to pop out the details? 2 cents.
Just out of interest, which game engines which support normalmaps don't support mirroring? I would have thought any
engine capable of normalmapping would have solutions in place to take that into account...
Anyway, I think it's a fairly cool model, but IMHO it's not up to the high standards of the other work I've seen you do. The design isn't really doing it for me, it seems very bland and, i dunno, doesn't make much sense to me... I'm not getting much of a sense of character, purpose or anything like that.
While the sculpt is pretty cool, I agree with firestarter that the texture doesn't seem to fit for some reason... and I also agree that the feet look quite strange and don't seem to fit or make sense.
I don't mean to rip on your work, because you've been a really inspirational game artist to me (I bookmarked your site and demo reel and checked them out from time to time to gauge my progress, trying to reach your quality ) - so I just want to say that, knowing what you're capable of, I think this is not really representative of the work you could be doing...
Don't take this the wrong way! Keep up the good work
alright alright ...I'll have another go. I'll try something different for the feet and better texturing. Needs more love.
I just did this guy in a week off an old mesh.
Back about the mirrored UVs - Unfortunately the console engines I've worked with don't support mirrored normal maps. I've only heard rumors of these ones that do it properly. I've worked mainly with two LARGE companies in the past few years that DO NOT have mirrored normal maps working.
[ QUOTE ]
Just out of interest, which game engines which support normalmaps don't support mirroring? I would have thought any
engine capable of normalmapping would have solutions in place to take that into account...
What i'm not liking about the feet and legs is the sense of balance for a creature that is supposed to crush things. I am expecting something that has legs that can support the upper body better . Those tiny calves just want to buckle under all the pressure the upper body can throw down. I think a more squat stance with bigger calves and thighs would help. Something that gives the sense the legs can position the upper body to SLAM! some shit.
Right now his center of gravity is pulling him forward like he will fall down.
Hey Tyler,
Despite working on many an engines for many large companies, do you plan on rendering this in one of them for your portfolio? I guess what I'm getting at is you mentioned using SSS which means it doesn't seem like you'll be limited by some engine's technical faults when it comes to mirrored normals. Why not push it as far as you can and mirror them so that you can get that extra texture res back.
As far as the feet go I think it would help to have something of a toe there. As it appears right now it's a really strong stump for the bottom of the leg and it doesn't look like it could move or bend very well, maybe even add some short toes with nails which could still keep that strong base for a leg.
When you're editing the texture think about adding some subtle shading to the skin to help define those broad areas like the pecks and such, you don't have to go really dark but you can shift the hue some as well and it'll help the forms stand out more.
Right now there's also the fact that there's not a lot of medium of high frequency detail in your highpoly mesh. This is fine but there IS a lot of that higher frequency detail in the diffuse which kind of gives the expectation that there should be some in the normals.
I actually really liked the simplicity of JUST him before. I think he looks like you just took some random stuff and threw it on him to try and sell it more. . . but I was totally sold with just him.
Yeah I also liked the simpleness of the old one. His feet looked good as blunt, unfeatured smooshers. Maybe they would look good with two toenails like hooves. And the armor changes his whole attitude from what I had envisioned. He's no longer a primitive monster, but a slightly civilized humanoid with some level of intelligence.. I find that less interesting than the original.
But this is really a stylistic question, not a technique one. If you want my advice.. follow your heart!
Replies
It's funny how cartoony he looks in the maps!
Also you have unique uv space for everything, and everything is mirrored. You could re-unwrap this to a 512x1024 or whatever equivilant res you're using, mirror stuff and detatch/pack your uvs creatively and get more detail out of it than you currently have.
A little photoshop work says i'm wrong, and that you're actually wasting HALF(or more) of your uv space, which means you could re-arange to half, mirror and get twice the detail out of your textures at half the cost. Thus being 4 times more efficiant.
Luckily theres a very simple way to fix, and that is just to re-uv and bake your maps(rebaking normals of course), even if you dont want to mirror anything you could still be twice as efficiant just by doing this.
EarthQuake: The UV issue would depend on the engine. Not all handle mirrored normal maps. The goal here was the least seams and stretching possible. In that I've been successful.
Here's an example of tight UV's I've done in the past:
Zoe Screengrab
edit: looks like you tweaked your reply, fair enuff
Being that this is the only example of current generation texturing techniques you that have on your site and even worse the only actual example of your uv skills that are visible on your site, its a pretty poor decision.
Cool stuff man, I like what you've done with this. I'd echo the comment about the feet, if you wanted to toy with it a little, maybe try to add some variation there to spruce it up. Other than that, it's pretty
Word.
Gav
feet look forgotten
*me points towards the door*
now that I take another look, I agree the feet could use some improvement to be more anatomically consistent, if you're motivated to go back and make some revisions. it would be great to see some animations for this.
engine capable of normalmapping would have solutions in place to take that into account...
Anyway, I think it's a fairly cool model, but IMHO it's not up to the high standards of the other work I've seen you do. The design isn't really doing it for me, it seems very bland and, i dunno, doesn't make much sense to me... I'm not getting much of a sense of character, purpose or anything like that.
While the sculpt is pretty cool, I agree with firestarter that the texture doesn't seem to fit for some reason... and I also agree that the feet look quite strange and don't seem to fit or make sense.
I don't mean to rip on your work, because you've been a really inspirational game artist to me (I bookmarked your site and demo reel and checked them out from time to time to gauge my progress, trying to reach your quality
Don't take this the wrong way! Keep up the good work
I just did this guy in a week off an old mesh.
Back about the mirrored UVs - Unfortunately the console engines I've worked with don't support mirrored normal maps. I've only heard rumors of these ones that do it properly. I've worked mainly with two LARGE companies in the past few years that DO NOT have mirrored normal maps working.
Just out of interest, which game engines which support normalmaps don't support mirroring? I would have thought any
engine capable of normalmapping would have solutions in place to take that into account...
[/ QUOTE ]
Renderware
New image below...didnt care for this one.
Right now his center of gravity is pulling him forward like he will fall down.
Great work so far bro.
Despite working on many an engines for many large companies, do you plan on rendering this in one of them for your portfolio? I guess what I'm getting at is you mentioned using SSS which means it doesn't seem like you'll be limited by some engine's technical faults when it comes to mirrored normals. Why not push it as far as you can and mirror them so that you can get that extra texture res back.
As far as the feet go I think it would help to have something of a toe there. As it appears right now it's a really strong stump for the bottom of the leg and it doesn't look like it could move or bend very well, maybe even add some short toes with nails which could still keep that strong base for a leg.
When you're editing the texture think about adding some subtle shading to the skin to help define those broad areas like the pecks and such, you don't have to go really dark but you can shift the hue some as well and it'll help the forms stand out more.
Right now there's also the fact that there's not a lot of medium of high frequency detail in your highpoly mesh. This is fine but there IS a lot of that higher frequency detail in the diffuse which kind of gives the expectation that there should be some in the normals.
Any better?
But this is really a stylistic question, not a technique one. If you want my advice.. follow your heart!