Sci-Fi Blast Door
polycounter lvl 10
Hi Everyone,
I'm working on this Sci-Fi Blast Door as part of an assignment.
I have 4days left until I have to turn it in.
After completing a first pass I thought I'd post it here to get some feedback on how to proceed.
Right now Its 2214 tris of an allotted 3000.
Below you can find some renders from Maya.
The texture budget is 1024. However I'm working at 2048 now and will down-res later, when I take it to UDK.
Its always the phase after the first pass at everything where I kind of get stuck, so any comments are greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Sebastian
I'm working on this Sci-Fi Blast Door as part of an assignment.
I have 4days left until I have to turn it in.
After completing a first pass I thought I'd post it here to get some feedback on how to proceed.
Right now Its 2214 tris of an allotted 3000.
Below you can find some renders from Maya.
The texture budget is 1024. However I'm working at 2048 now and will down-res later, when I take it to UDK.
Its always the phase after the first pass at everything where I kind of get stuck, so any comments are greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Sebastian
Replies
You have a lot of shapes on that door that just makes it blend in with the other parts of the whole objects making the door buried and hard to see with all these miscellaneous objects. Which kinda gets to my next point. Why did you choose these shapes? What are their functions (if any)? There seems to be these 2 things that look like handles (above the cyllinder on the right side with the 2 wires going into the door) but yet I have no clue what it's functionality is.
Always ask why... Is my final closing statement. Why does it have scratches here, why is their leakage stains here, etc.
Take care and good luck. Aesthetically, it looks good. Functionally wise, I'm lost.
Problem is i cant really see the door clearly, its mixed in there with all the details.
You should work on defining the door a bit more and the entire thing needs "local detail", scratches, dirt/leak in logical places, to really define the details you want to show.
I would suggest removing some of all the normalmapped panels and details and work on a few more selected ones and make them look really good, then if you feel there is room for more, go in and add them to flesh it out.
Great work so far, keep it up!
The directive was to make something that looks like it could fit in the 'Dead Space' universe, so I just stuck a bunch of stuff together as they have objects protruding everywhere. But they dont over clutter...
I'll work on separating the door more from the frame, make the door wider, remove the handles (they make no sense, indeed), come up with distinctive separate color schemes for door and frame,and rework the normal
I'll post updates as soon as I have them
Maybe add some things that imply the functionality of it, a user interface on the wall or a rotating light. Also the ubiquitous yellow and black stripes. That is to say if it's some kind of emergency blast door give it some "emergency".
Below you can find the current design as well as what everything does.
Let me know what you think of it.
I really like the idea of a removable power source so it can open, but make sure it's secured well and doesn't accidentally pop out.
I ran with the new concept and updated the normals and focused on colors.
Below you can find the current progress as well as a readability test in UDK.
I went with pale olive green and brown as my primary colors and each got one highlight and one shadow tone.
Please let me know of anything that comes to mind.
For the gray, make the parts that need to pop light, and push the rest to the background. I think the vertical light, power source and keypad should pop, and the rest be dark.
Maybe make the battery black and yellow too?
Thank you all for the excellent advice!
I finished a first pass at the textures. I also made the central bolts sturdier.
I tried reversing the color scheme, but eventually decided against doing that.
The warmer brown colors catch my eye more and direct me to the door.
So far I have color and normal maps, I still need to toss a spec into the mix.
I also have to paint a gloss map, something I've never done before.
What are the specifics of a gloss map?
What should I take into consideration?
And most importantly, where do I plug it into in UDK?
Thank you once again for all your help.
Cheers
Awesome!!
I'm definitely glad there's such thing as critiques...
Keep us updated if this is a project!
Good luck!
wouldnt worry about gloss maps till you can nail a diffuse map
you have gone from adding a few large colours to dirt, normals and spec without considering the medium detail. again, how do materials intersect how does dirt build up, how does rust form all of these are lost or not present within the texture you have made, get these right first then move onto other aspects of a material.
i kind of feel like telling you to start using simpler rendering methods, diffuse only etc to learn the art not the tech
i really learnt to texture when i went "back" to work on ps1/DS specs, got that right, then applied that to my high end shit it made a world of differnce, that low poly stuff has a very fast turn around and you can learn alot fast. at the moment your using alot of rendering effort and texture space to acheive ok results, not to mention the production time.
Thank you for your critique Shepeiro.
I reworked the diffuse almost from the ground up, adding scratches, welding and areas with chipped paint. I hope that's what you where talking about.
I also agree, its too early to be thinking of gloss maps, but its a requirement and turn-in is Monday
Cheers
The lowpoly also seems to have polywaste, lots of detail modeled when it should rely on the normals wich this model doesnt seem to have , did you model a HP ? the edges are razor sharp and no interesting shapes in it
But keep crackin at this ! thats what makes us all learn
Neil Blevins has some good "rust" "worn edges" "paint chipping" tutorials, if not to follow they are pretty good. I like his cheeky way of using AO to make rust.
Johny, I really appreciate your critique, you gave me a lot to think about.
I was following Stefan Morrell's hard surface painting tutorial when I added the scratches.
What is bothering you the most about them? Is it the color or the placement?
And could you please specify which edges? I'd love to address the issue but am unsure what it is you mean.
Thank you Wyldcard for the link!
There's a lot of good information there
Cheers
I love his approach to crevice dirtying by using AO bakes and clouds in his Hard Surface shading and Texturing.
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/news/2009/07/hard-surface-shading-and-texturing-with-neil-blevins/
It made me want to switch to Max for it's shading system. Blender is awesome for modelling, but I find it to be mediocre in the material system. 2.5 has changed that for the better, and with the new shading refractor coming up I'm really looking forward to the 2.6 release which should have everything working.
Another day, another update.
I took the critique about the scratches and edges and made them more subtle and faded the borders between materials.
I hope its going in the right direction:
Cheers
The normals look a bit too soft, did you generate your normals from a heightmap or a highpoly? They look heightmap-ish and they could use some beefing up with crazy bump or something. The ideal alternative is to have a highpoly source normal map.
The surface looks like it's missing any specular or soft reflection, this could help the normals pop more.
Looking at the asset and squinting reveals that a lot of the tones and colors are very similar, You could use some broad Ambient occlusion to help darken some areas. I would also suggest trying to make some elements pop more, like the wheel+metal rod make it have brighter/shinier spots like it moves often.
It would help if you would post all of your texture flats.
I noticed that the older versions had better readability, color vise.
So, I tweaked the overall difference between the frame and the door.
What do you think:
The normal is generated from a heightmap. I really toned down the spec map and added a very dull gloss map as a mask for a camera vector. The reason I did that is because I feel they're over exadurated in most games, but you're right, in my case I'm just throwing processing power around for zero results.
I posted the maps below, and would love to get you opinion on them.
I'm using a factor of 10 to tighten the values of the spec power in UDK.
Should I make it more contrasting?
What do you think:
Thank you all so much for all your help and advice.
You helped me complete my art-test and grow as an artist.
Cheers,
Sebastian