Doom 3 Style Crate
polycounter lvl 13
I made this prop mainly to practice texturing without using any kind of photos.
Modeled the high poly in max, baked in xnormal. Low poly has a very low poly count, 106 tris. I could obviously made it a little bit more detailed, but I did it this way so the texturing part would be more challenging at giving depth to a very flat model.
I'm always looking to improve and evolve, so please drop me some feedback and crits, don't hold back!
Cheers.
Modeled the high poly in max, baked in xnormal. Low poly has a very low poly count, 106 tris. I could obviously made it a little bit more detailed, but I did it this way so the texturing part would be more challenging at giving depth to a very flat model.
I'm always looking to improve and evolve, so please drop me some feedback and crits, don't hold back!
Cheers.
Replies
1. In the first render at the closest region there is a rectangular block with an inset protruding outwards, according to the rest of the textures this seems very plain, almost untextured. Change this area to a colour that would provide constrast to break the textures up, maybe orange? It could be self illuminated with a glowing text readout to indicate the level of capacity.
2. The overlay you have used with the base texture seems too uniform, I would expect to see one/two of these objects per room, even if there are more lighting will help hide these details from looking repetetive so I suggest making some stains/dirt around the opening edges and deep crevices for added realism.
3. A displacement map for the side carrying handles would help with depth.
Seems like this crate is a good candidate for having a symmetrical texture, if you want to go down that route.
With your spec map, the triangle logo is orange, meaning when lights hit it, it will look sort of metallic, which is ok if that's what you want. But if its not you should change that to gray.
Ummm GCMP ..
Parallax mapping would be a waste on a prop like this.
The edging on the diffuse (particularly the buckles) seem kind of heavy handed. I'd try thinning that out, or spreading it more thinly?
No Spec?
That was MY opinion, that is YOUR opinion!
Maybe this object will be a centrepiece on a table? Open your mind to possibility!
In that case he should cut in more polygonal detail.
A parralax map makes sense, i guess, if you're tiling a lot of details that are going to be close the viewer -- worn bricks, maybe. If it's something you could solve with 20 polies why waste a whole new map?
Plus i dont think the engine he's chosen to show it in even supports that, so it's further ridiculous.
anyway! Cool crate, man. Why didnt you choose to mirror your textures?I think those dark grey plates on the front/back are the only weak part i really see, the uniform wear around them looks like a drop shadow and it took a while for me to sort out what's actually going on.
'nilla D3 does have an option for adding in a greyscale heightmap that gets mixed into the normalmap at runtime.
I think the normalmap turned out pretty good- I'll second what's been said about the diffuse- it's a little boring. If you want to spice it up a little:
doom3 takes place on mars- how about adding in a layer of red dust to the Y facing polys.
doom3 is dark as hell- adding in a glowmap with little LED displays like has been mentioned before- you could even have these partially obscured by the dust to give them a little more depth than usual.
accentuate the raised areas on the corners with lower spec/scratches and gouges. They look like they could be rubberized for no-skid space travel, so they'd be duller and more prone to deep gouging.
stickers- might be redundant if you add led's, but having a few things like 'no zero g' 'do not freeze' 'do not teleport' would help put it in the story.
I'd also probably have bevelled those "corner pads" a bit more to really get the full effect of the normal-map, right now those corner pads feel quite thin, it seems like it'd be much better if they felt chunky.
My comment was concerning the side handles, they look a bit flat imo so pushing them out a bit would add a bit more depth, doesn't seem ridiculous to me, personally I would go the full nine yards.
Maybe a displacement map would be justified, or maybe not depending on your goal for texture memory.
Now that I'm finished with this prop I'm looking back at the workflow I used and a couple more tris would be justified, even if it's just a crate.
After all, nowadays consoles / PC can handle shitloads of tris on screen, but texture memory is always a big problem, so more edge loops and poligon details would be justified.
And yeah, parallax is almost always used on tillable textures, like terrain textures.
cptincognito, yeah man, most of the detail of Doom3 goes into the normal maps! It's amazing id made all that using such "embrionary" technology back in 2001 ~ 2004, those guys were way ahead of It's time.
Doom3 marked a generation, id is always one step forward everybody!
Oh btw, here's the LP + HighP
Well, it's possibly justified- doom3 uses mainly LWO's for its static meshes, and possibly because they don't have smoothing groups or maybe for additional reasons, models often have extra cuts like that, and unwelded verts to preserve hard edges. For this particular model, doesn't look necessary