That's an interesting idea almighty_gir, I might try it.
Here's the low and high poly. I'd really like to know if things look right and if anything needs changing before I proceed. I've yet to deal with the 90 degree edges though... after reading a lot about this, I was thinking of bevelling the ones that will be within UV islands and using smoothing groups on ones at UV seams to keep the vertex count down. The only problem is that Blender (what I am using) doesn't seem to have manually assignable smoothing groups; the only way seems to be to actually split the geometry itself! Would it be okay to do that? I doubt it would
Okno: Just bevel it. It'll up the vert-count, but so would using smoothing groups, actually.
If you bevel all those 90 degree corners, it'll look much better!
Okay MightyPea, I've bevelled them... but the polycount has almost doubled from 1,810 to 3,218. Also, I'm still getting these visible shading problems, will they matter?:
I'm starting to think it's not even worth using a normal map for this kind of model. What do you think? With all those extra bevelled polys, I could just model the details in and have polys to spare! Are there any examples of people using normal maps of these kind of mechanical models?
I went ahead and baked the normal map and it turned out better than I expected (I shouldn't have worried so much). Here are some xNormal screens with an AO map (which needs tweaking because of floating geo in high):
I'm having a problem with these seams:
That groin part is mirrored (there were NO overlapping uvs during baking though). I guess that middle seam is due to mirroring. But I can't understand how those other seams occured (btw there is some faceted shading in the AO which I'll fix, just so you don't mistake those for anything else).
Glad to see it turned out okay. I don't know about those seams, someone much more knowledgeable will probably come along and help out with those. For starters though, are you sure it's nothing to do with the normals of the model? For instance, could it be that one side of the model has it's edges spinned around? meaning that, instead of [\] you have [/] ?
The only problem is that Blender (what I am using) doesn't seem to have manually assignable smoothing groups; the only way seems to be to actually split the geometry itself!
Not true. Ever since 2.40 or so, Blender has the EdgeSplit modifier, which makes edges marked as sharp render as hard edges. Edges can be made sharp by selecting them and pressing Ctrl+e -> Mark Sharp. It's a lot like Maya's system, so it has the same functionality as smoothing groups.
Nice model, by the way. It's actually sort of cute, for a cable plug. I recognised it as being like the Wii's immediately .
Hehe yeah looks cute. I love the design
I am VERY happy that you beveled the edges like pea suggested, it must have solved all of your lighting/soothing errors which you normal map was going to cause
Also great bake and the preview looks really naughty
Now the only thing thats going to take this model from here _ to here - is the if you work out an excellent specular map . Really hoping you dont take this easy way out form the speculars.
you dont need to bevl the ring edges around the "head" just pull the small edge loops forward slightly to get rid of the 90 degree angles.
personally i think some of your poly placement could be a little better, for eg
- the knee joints have six sides and the smaller guns have 8 plus interiors?
- the bevels around the pelvis backbone joint could be acheived by pulling some of the verts out saving polys, you'll be surprised what you can get away with.
- too many interscting meshes which lead to issues, biggest culprits are the ^^ and the neck head joint, could save polys by making continuous mesh.
@MightyPea: I couldn't work out what cause the seams, but I put the groin into a single UV island and now it's fine. The head, spine and groin all have unmirrored uvs, the rest are mirrored. Is mirroring uvs okay with normal maps?
@Butt: Thanks. I've posted an early wip of the texture below. The colours will be different, and I haven't done the grime yet, but I'd like to know whether the paint-on-metal effect is okay or not. I don't know how to make it visible from a distance without over-doing it.
@SHEPEIRO: Thanks for the advice. I took out those edge loops around the head after doing some little tests. They looked surprisingly fine even at 90 degrees but I pushed the edges to get a small angle like you said, just to be sure. I got rid of most of the intersecting meshes, took out the interior of the guns, made the knee joints 8 sided. Your suggestion for the pelvis backbone was excellent! I'll post some pics of these improvements soon.
@jogshy: lol. By the way, can xNormal's ray-tracer do things which high-end graphics cards can't do? I have an old GeForce FX Go5600 and the only way I can get effects like shadow casting is to use xNormal's raytracer (like at the bottom of the image below). I wondered whether it would be a legitimate way to make renders to put in a portfolio.
Just done the main painted areas. Still have to do the exposed metal parts (groin, gun barrels etc.) and other details like dirt, decals etc. I'll probably finish this in the next few days before Christmas.
@jogshy: have an old GeForce FX Go5600 and the only way I can get effects like shadow casting is to use xNormal's raytracer (like at the bottom of the image below).
I'm not sure but perhaps the GeForceFX supports OpenGL's shading language(GLSL). Perhaps you can try to change the xNormal's default graphics driver to OpenGL ( instead of DX9 ) and you'll get shadows... but perhaps it's a tool old card so GLSL could be not supported. In fact, my FX5200 does not suport it ... I'm not sure about the 5600.
I wondered whether it would be a legitimate way to make renders to put in a portfolio.
Well, the realtime raytracing graphics driver can perform soft shadows and faked photon mapping, but probably it's too slow to navigate well the scene unless you have a quad core. Try to tweak a bit the options using the plugin-manager.... but, to be sincere, it was more an experiment than a useful thing.
Btw, for xn4 I'm writting a generic renderer... so you'll be able to render an image placing a standard camera ( not only render-to-texture using UVs ).
It will use bidirectional path tracing, metropolis transport, photon mapping and spectral rendering with custom node-shaders.... but it's still very far in the time.
Nope, I don't seem to have glsl support... so I used someone else's computer and took some sreenshots in Blender's Game Engine (with a bloom script). I only had about 30 minutes to set things up and I think I might've set the spec slightly wrong (well, it look quite different from xNormal's view). Not sure if the 3 light set up looks good or not.
Anyway... I would love some input on how to make it look better.
Replies
I'm going to change the gun lights and make the gun connectors more reinforced.
Vj
~C
bevel, uvw map, bake normalmaps, select beveled edges, convert to vertex, remove edges, remove verticies.
your uvw maps will remain unchanged, you won't have any strange artifacts from your normalmap baking, and your polycount will be nice and low.
i'm sure there's a faster way, but i don't do much hard surface stuff, sorry =/
Here's the low and high poly. I'd really like to know if things look right and if anything needs changing before I proceed. I've yet to deal with the 90 degree edges though... after reading a lot about this, I was thinking of bevelling the ones that will be within UV islands and using smoothing groups on ones at UV seams to keep the vertex count down. The only problem is that Blender (what I am using) doesn't seem to have manually assignable smoothing groups; the only way seems to be to actually split the geometry itself! Would it be okay to do that? I doubt it would
If you bevel all those 90 degree corners, it'll look much better!
I'm having a problem with these seams:
That groin part is mirrored (there were NO overlapping uvs during baking though). I guess that middle seam is due to mirroring. But I can't understand how those other seams occured (btw there is some faceted shading in the AO which I'll fix, just so you don't mistake those for anything else).
Here is the normal:
Nice model, by the way. It's actually sort of cute, for a cable plug. I recognised it as being like the Wii's immediately
I am VERY happy that you beveled the edges like pea suggested, it must have solved all of your lighting/soothing errors which you normal map was going to cause
Also great bake and the preview looks really naughty
Now the only thing thats going to take this model from here _ to here - is the if you work out an excellent specular map . Really hoping you dont take this easy way out form the speculars.
personally i think some of your poly placement could be a little better, for eg
- the knee joints have six sides and the smaller guns have 8 plus interiors?
- the bevels around the pelvis backbone joint could be acheived by pulling some of the verts out saving polys, you'll be surprised what you can get away with.
- too many interscting meshes which lead to issues, biggest culprits are the ^^ and the neck head joint, could save polys by making continuous mesh.
great model though
@comradeJ: Thanks for that tip!
@Butt: Thanks. I've posted an early wip of the texture below. The colours will be different, and I haven't done the grime yet, but I'd like to know whether the paint-on-metal effect is okay or not. I don't know how to make it visible from a distance without over-doing it.
@SHEPEIRO: Thanks for the advice. I took out those edge loops around the head after doing some little tests. They looked surprisingly fine even at 90 degrees but I pushed the edges to get a small angle like you said, just to be sure. I got rid of most of the intersecting meshes, took out the interior of the guns, made the knee joints 8 sided. Your suggestion for the pelvis backbone was excellent! I'll post some pics of these improvements soon.
@jogshy: lol. By the way, can xNormal's ray-tracer do things which high-end graphics cards can't do? I have an old GeForce FX Go5600 and the only way I can get effects like shadow casting is to use xNormal's raytracer (like at the bottom of the image below). I wondered whether it would be a legitimate way to make renders to put in a portfolio.
Well, the realtime raytracing graphics driver can perform soft shadows and faked photon mapping, but probably it's too slow to navigate well the scene unless you have a quad core. Try to tweak a bit the options using the plugin-manager.... but, to be sincere, it was more an experiment than a useful thing.
Btw, for xn4 I'm writting a generic renderer... so you'll be able to render an image placing a standard camera ( not only render-to-texture using UVs ).
It will use bidirectional path tracing, metropolis transport, photon mapping and spectral rendering with custom node-shaders.... but it's still very far in the time.
Anyway... I would love some input on how to make it look better.
Blender Game Engine:
Diffuse
Spec
Normal
Glow
xNormal view:
Self illuminated diffuse only: