Project: MotoGP KTM 125 bike
polycounter lvl 9
Hi, I am starting a new motorbike in my spare time and wanted to document my progress, partly to show people how I go about making models, and also of course so I can get tips on how to do it better!!
I'm making a KTM 125 MotoGP bike, starting with a high poly, then baking it down. I like making bikes because there is a lot of contrast, lots of very smooth panels alongside a lot of complicated blocks of metal.
Cos its a one-off race bike, there arent any blueprints around, so I will be relying on a lot of photos. I've been lucky enought to find a matching side and front pic, so will use that to roughly shape and place objects, and use lots of other photos to guess the rest. You might be able to see I've put straight lines across my ref images at obvious points (in Photoshop) so I can line them up easily in 3d. Not essential by any means, just something I like to do to get things exact.
Anyway, first up I've blocked out all of the major forms, and got rough base shapes going. None of the panels are exactly correct, but they are in the right place and will be a good base to start from. Problems Im going to have include guessing how wide the frame, fuel tank and seat are (no top view photos!) but have made a best guess that I will probably refine later.
Next step is to start detailing some of the objects, starting with the wheels. I'll try and update every day that I work on it.....
Replies
Cheers
Started on the back wheel today and made the footpegs. Not quite sure how they attach to the frame so held off on that for now. Theres also some hydraulic cables to go on top of the springy thing, but again I'll wait till I've got a bit more done before hooking them up. Finally I made the back section of the swingarm and welded it all together.....
The welds were done by taking a ball, squashing it almost flat like blood cell and bending it a bit with the FFD modifier, then cloning and stacking them like a line of spilt coins, if you get my drift. Attach and use a path deform modifier with a spline as the path if you want to bend em round corners. To avoid path deform spaz-outs its worth reseting the xforms when you've got your weld how you want it (before you path deform it) To be honest I havent done a great job of making my blob of weld, but I think it works well enough in this case.
I think I'll try and finish up the back before moving on to the more flashy bits (otherwise I won't want to later!) so complete the front of the swingarm, make the rear suspension and attach all the tubes. However, no true media professional would ever contemplate working on a Friday, so it'll have to wait till Monday. Have a good weekend!
Anyone got any crits here I'd love to hear them, as theres a few places I've triangulated stuff as a way to end loops that I no longer want, below the windshield for instance. There must be a more elgant solution, but it beats me at the mo....
Oh and, anyone know a good way of smoothing verts?
The model is looking really nice, great work. About the tris and messy wires, if it smooths ok, don't worry about it. No use stressing on something that wont change the result, and tris don't matter on the lowpoly later on anyway.
You probably already know this but the lower rear of the fairing is intersecting with the rear wheel.. apart from that it looks good to me so far, will be watching this for sure!
Keep it up!
Anyway, materials and lighting need quite a lot of work still but its definitely looking more bike like now. I've always been a bit rubbish with VRay so once the model is complete I'm going to spend some time on this to learn a bit more before moving on. At the moment I've just got two lights and an environment map in the environment slot in the rendering dropdown, but I've heard theres much better ways of doing things. I will find these secrets and use them.
I dont like the blown out highlights from the lights, so going to find out how to fix them, and have a general mess about and see whats what. Only problem it takes half an hour to see if something works. Patient bear indeed.
On the modelling side I'm learning a lot, especially how to make some more complex shapes that you cant cheat by pressing subdivide a few more times. I'm very pleased with the brake levers, but I'll wait till I've got a better setup before rendering that. Other than that, just got some of the non mirrorable side stuff to do, like the chain side of the rear swingarm, the brake caliper and run some cables round.....oh and do the inside of the fairing as its just a doubled sided mesh atm. Hmm that will be fun....
edit: Oh yeah and fix the bodywork running into the rear tyre....I havent forgotten!
Havent had time to do a whole lot today, just the back swingarm where the chain goes through. Stuck in a placeholder chain, anyone know why the pathdeform pinches around the path vertexes?
Will hopefully finish the last few major bits tomorrow, then probably go back and have another look at anything that needs improving......
The engine this is going into demands that all geometry is grouped by reflectivity, so all metal together on a texture, all plastic together, then each group is assigned a material, which can be altered by specular a bit to give say, different shinyness of metals, but not completely, so for instance rubber and metal in the same texture wouldnt work in the engine. Not what I am used to to say the least! This seperation has been pretty complicated, but now its actually done it should be a breeze to texture. I'll post something more exciting when the last few bits are baked down....
Baked, stuck on a few photos to test resolution and chucked all of it into the 3point shader. Its been the first time I've used textools and 3 point shader (lite), and I'm in love with both! I'm pretty happy with the bake, the welds have come through nicely, and the texel density is ok between the textures. Oh and I'm only 300 tris over budget!
Next job, get the Wacom out and get colouring.....have a good weekend
Alright, did a first pass on this. I vectored most of the graphics (the text is still shoddy!) and tried to get all the rough materials down. I have got the basics I think, but I really want to add something more to the aluminium frame to make it pop. Any tips or ideas let me know, otherwise I'll just keep playing with the specular.
Grabbed some views all around, I'm kinda after some crits really as I am going to take another run over this tomorrow......
Cheers!
(I absolutely love it 3point guys, as soon as I have any cash I'll be buying the full one) So anyway, reflections, reflection mask, spec, gloss etc etc, all with similar parameters.
The guy I am doing this for is a PROPER programmer, he writes his shaders in text still. I kinda want to show him a decent shader setup in a game engine, ideally laid out the the graphical way, so he can write a similar one, but I er, need to know how to do it first
So ye, stumbling about with the light off in the technical art cupboard here!
using hdri reflections will be nice add I think. You can also use vray render elements and get some raw reflections and raw spec passes and comp them in photoshop with your raw render then color correct/curves, etc.
and lastly, you might already know... make sure to set up your gamma to 2.2 this is really important to get the most of your render.
hope to see your improvements!
You're right about the tyre tho, I'll fix that up.....