Warhammer 40K UDK Critiques

Cglewis

Afternoon,

I'm Creating a 40k Env inside of unreal, currently right now I'm UVing the Chaos Space Marine, hoping to have a base texture on him tonight. The env textures are base and planning on tweaking them...esp the barrel. But i would love to know what you think. Please drop a critique

Robbyh

looks good so far from what its possible to see. but keep working on it ?

NomadSoul2501

Do you have normal/spec maps in there yet?
The lighting is moody and atmospheric enough but it could use some highlights and direction.
My eye is drawn to the barrels but not to the marines.

Cglewis

Been working on the UVs of the marines....finally got all 4 of them posed diff into Unreal...will post image of that in a min

Here is the first interation of the Chaos Leader Helm.

Your thoughts?

Cglewis

I feel like its missing somthing...but i cant put my finger on it
this is only a diffuse

LRoy

It's really hard to see what you've got going on.

Cglewis

LRoy

I hope this next of images clears it up for you.





Please let me know what you think.

cholden

You can't just put images on models, and solid blacks/whites don't give lighting any room to work. Start with a nice color base. You can paint in details, bake them from a higher poly mesh or whatever feels good.

Any overlays need to be leveled so they aren't destroying lighting in game. In fact, based on your work, you shouldn't be using any image overlays. Spent time learning to get a good quality result before even touching that part of the process. Right now, they're defining your materials, not enhancing. Thus, it just looks like a bunch of pictures haphazardly tossed over a wireframe.

konstruct

Chris is pretty much spot on. your texture overlays are far too abrassive, and the end result doesnt look anything like a real material. space marines are metal and right now it looks like paper with a leather picture. Also, if the idea is to have a paint hand-print on top of the metal you should approach the material and associated textures as such. (get a good looking metal going, then layer the hand-print ontop, and edit your maps according)

Which brings up another point: you NEED to have a spec map and an environment map if you ever hope to convey a proper metal, in addition to a gloss map, or what UDK calls a spec-power map. Material creation is somewhat complex due to all of these various factors and the idea is to jump back and forth, tweaking colors, and light/dark levels- until you arrive at your desired end result.

-concerns-
*I fear you are using black to hide spotty mesh work. (remember what chris said, "solid blacks/whites don't give lighting any room to work") -whats going to happen when a bright light hits your blacks?
*Do you plan on making a highpoly that you intend to bake to your lowpoly? if so, what are you doing making a diffuse texture that has no foundation in those normals? (your skipping steps)
*whats the plan with having a whole base-page dedicated to the head? I know back in days of yore this was done to give a face more resolution as it would be an area of focus.
Its cool if this is your intent, but just make sure you justify the resolution gain. Otherwise I see no reason why the head couldn't be lumped in with the body. Seperate textures = seperate draws- which is a concern for performance.

Cglewis

Thank you very much for the advice, I did some work on it and I think I made it better. I've been taught to make it it's own map. I'm basing it off of the AO of the Hires Helm. I'm holding off on the Spec and Normal maps for a now because I want to get the base texture looking good on its own and then when I add the other 2 maps it'll really look good. As for the solid blacks I toned down the Opacity on the AO that i multiplied over the texture so its not solid black, I think it made a difference.

acimo

hey cg one thing i would take a look at is the uv from the helmet. i looks like you uved it wrong, you are giving away too much uv space and i saw a few n-gons which makes it hard to work on the normal map.

konstruct

Right, thats what Im getting at. The old days of being able to paint the diffuse first, then do the spec, and subsequent maps as an after thought are dead. (unless your making something thats meant for low end system specs: i phone, Ds etc.)

Good materials are about the sum result of the associated maps.

chrome for example is *almost* black in the diffuse, with ALL of the work being done by the spec, environment map, and gloss map.

I guess this might be a little heavy of a concept, but just know that this is something you will have to work towards understanding if you ever hope to create convincing materials.
Many many people still create textures the way your going about it, and it really comes down to your end result that's what matters.

Just brightening up your AO didn't do anything- there is still a WAY overly aggressive amount of lighting either painted or baked on your texture. The point of an AO is to help small details pop,- not to bake lighting into your models. Thats what a light map is for, and has an entirely different use, again meant for old school methods.


read up on some Neil Blevins if you want to know whats up. Dudes a genious and breaks down materials in an extremely smart way.

Cglewis

Its been awhile since i put up some stuff...but i reworked my textures in that time granted they still dont have spec or normals...but they will.
I still need to texture his gun and powerfirst and back pack. Then ill be moving on to the env.

konstruct

this one is probably the most important to digest:

Cglewis

Ok so i imported my space marine meshs along with normal maps and spec maps
but when i walk around after building the light maps the models get darker the closer i get to them...they are pretty well lit from far off but get very dark as you get nearer..is this just a product of not lighting the scene properly or does this show the signs of a deeper problem?
Here is the spec map i am using for my space marine body, if you need anything else please let me know.

spec map:


example:

whats_true

Everything, from your level to your diffuse maps, is dark. Seriously, i cannot see anything.

Why is your wireframe over your textures in addition to adding a water mark (noone is going to steal this dude.) Again, I cannot see anything.

Going back, your diffuse map is to dark. The only bright part if that helmet. Match the rest of the body to that and it will start to look like something. ditto to others people points.

cholden

Because your diffuse is almost solid black. Replace it with a constant 0.5 or rgb 128 (solid neutral gray), and test.

Also, try setting your dominate directional like to 1.5 or 5 brightness. And type ToggleHUD in the console.

Cglewis

What interesting is that both my helmet and body share the same base color.
but in this screen shot that is shown below after tweakign my directional light the main leader is lit and the the guy on the right is lit but the middle guy is super dark...

konstruct

^ it sounds like there's something different about your middle guy that the other two don't share. This is what REAL video game dev is all about :P get your deductive problem solving hat on and work through it.

whats with the cheesy painted scratches? - thats a job for your normal map. you can paint scratches into your diff, but painting them with a light source like you did is again oooold-school. we have normal maps now, use em!

And I get that you REALLY like that hand print, but again with the extreme blacks and whites. Personally I`d approach the hand print as if someone actually dipped their hand in some white stuff (hur) and slapped it on. Right now it looks like a photoshop dodge and burn mess. really there should be nothing in the diffuse but something like an off white color in the shape of the hand. you have all of these reds hues, too that also look really out of place.

I feel like your struggling a lot with mixing old school methods with new school ones. Just remember- if your painting lighting into your texture, ask yourself if this is something a normal map could do. Really the only painted light should be your AO map, which is merely there to help smaller details pop.

Cglewis

I was figuring you were going to say that lol

I feel that painting the scratches aides in the normal map, I.E scratches would be a diff color from the other metal so that sould be shown in my map?

yeah your right ,i'll refine the hand print...that makes scenes


Body_N


Head_N

konstruct

Dagh I thought so- Traditionally what you have here is called a bump map. Where you take a black and white map- crunch it through a filter, and it gives you *slight* bump effect.

A normal map has similar a similar look, but its generated by capturing high-poly information, and baking that to the UV`s of the low poly mesh:

Peep the polycount wiki:

The way I see it your at a fork in the road.
-either continue as you are, just go through the motions, get something completed- have some cool images- but understand there is a ton more you need to learn

-or-

-scrap everything and start something new, ensuring that each step you take is being done properly; -learning what baking out maps is all about, -learning what modeling true high poly is all about. -learning how to create correct materials.

I think there is still value in pushing on, Its never bad to take something through completion, but Just know that without re-working your work-flow and thought process, The end result is something that anyone looking at it (from a hiring point of view) is going to be somewhat-to-harsly critical of.

And yes painting scratches on does aid the normal map- unless your painting lighting into those scratches. At that point its working against the normal map.

Cglewis

I decided to do it right, and right now here is where im at.
I think I'm going to scrap the runes on the shoulder pad. or make them bigger.

Shin Pad


Shoulder Pad


Shoulder Pad in game

konstruct

rad dude!! you have some REALLY nice small details-

Something to think about is that most everything has 3 levels of detail: small, medium and large. right now you have all small and large, but little in the way of medium. I know the space marine shoulder pad isn't the most complex, but they are pretty heavily defined by having a large fatty border trim. Id suggest creating the trim as a separate piece of geometry so your not fighting in mudbox to define it via sculpting. There's more to high-poly modeling than just dumping your meshes into mud-box and banging em up.

It be nice to see some true high-poly hard-surface modeling. They bake super clean and sexy if done right.

I suppose You could skip the hard surface modeling step if you REALLY know what your doing in a sculpt package, via hard surface brushes an all that jazz.

But Id still suggest Modeling your high-poly surfaces in max, THEN using modbox to add flavor-- this is generally the most pure method.


you might find some really good information Here:
Also, this is how I learned all this shit:

remember, its all about the bevels

NomadSoul2501

Hey!

Looking better, but you're still not quite doing all the steps.
I was also going to mention the small, medium, large principle but it has been excellently explained above.
Instead I searched on polycount for similar threads to yours and found some interesting links where you can see how other artists approached their projects.

Not a character but an excellent step by step thread on hard surface modeling:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=71867&highlight=warhammer

A space marine scene with a lot of break downs:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=77716&highlight=warhammer

A warhammer dwarf engineer with a more stylized theme and a bad ass sculpt:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=82008&highlight=warhammer

A 'generic' wall tutorial covering low poly preparation, sculpting and baking:
http://www.brameulaers.com/tutorials/generic_wall_tutorial/generic_wall_tutorial.html

Hope these help