Made a High Poly Tire Tread, What Now?
polycounter lvl 7
So, I made this tire tread for a off-road vehicle, and I don't really know how to finish it or if its any good for generating normals... (ultimately for use in UDK) Is that weird triangle crap on the edge of the treads just my smoothing groups messing up? How do I generate AO from the High Poly model?
For the rim that goes in the center, Should that be made as a free floating element? When do modelers decide to split the model, whats the criteria?
EDIT: For some reason, the following screenshots are showing up all washed out in my browser (Google Chrome), but not when I download them and view them in Microsoft picture viewer or in IE9. I can reupload them if you have problems.
For the rim that goes in the center, Should that be made as a free floating element? When do modelers decide to split the model, whats the criteria?
EDIT: For some reason, the following screenshots are showing up all washed out in my browser (Google Chrome), but not when I download them and view them in Microsoft picture viewer or in IE9. I can reupload them if you have problems.
Replies
As for your tire: just start retopo'ing a low model mesh and bake the stuff- see for further improvements from there.
Just take a screenshot with the printScr button on your keyboard that should normalise it to standard 1.0 ratio.
Any good free/student retopoing software, or should I do it by hand in max? Also, How Do I approach AO? is there some way or reason to get it from the High poly model?
Although my opinion is you don't really need to retopo anything. Just pop in a cylinder in the scene, make a hole in the middle, and line it up as closesly to the mesh as you can so that it covers the high poly, unwrap it and bake it.
Also, I would suggest fixing up the inner part of the tire. Those faceted parts aren't helping you. Fun fact, you can use Tri's just fine in High Poly models if they help you reduce pinching and other issues, even Ngons are welcome on flat surfaces if they help, since I can see you're trying to keep everything quads and that could the problem.
Also, did you do a Reset XForm on the mesh and check to see if your TurboSmooth has Isoline Display disabled? If Turbosmooth doesn't give 'clean' results at level 1 or 2, then you need to refix the mesh I'm afraid, and while Display Isoline is useful for seeing where your loops of the low poly, once you collapse it, it will break your model and can cause even nasty cuts in your flat surfaces.
Another tip, always use one light in scene to check the mesh normals and as RenderHJS said, check the gamma. In Max 2012, the Nitrous Viewport has the nasty habit of giving Falloff/Normal pinching effects on mesh's which are perfectly fine. So pop in an Omni light and see if the model still has problems with that (or you can revert back to DX9).
For the AO, you simply bake it just like the Normal Map. For quick test, use Ray sample between 32-64, for Medium, 128-256, and if you want high end, go for 512+ (although for game quality, depending on size of textures, 128 and 256 will serve you just fine).
In Halo, The tires on the warthog are quite a bit more high poly than a cylinder, and I am trying to mimic that as my reference while changing the tread pattern. A cylinder would look kind of bad, no?
Not sure what part you are reffering to/how to fix.
I did not use turbo smooth, So I have no clue what most of that meant. In fact all i did was hit tessalate twice, used mesh smooth, then manually sellected and delete all the extra edge loops, it took FOREVER. Thats probably not the best way, But I am a newb, I need tips and suggestions and practice. Can you link me to a guide on how to make smooth high poly edge loops that only leave the required loops for silhouettes?
I've never baked a map in my life. Any good guides?
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/max-retopo
Tri is one of your problem . but most of the pinch come from uneven cylinder segment.. also there is no need to chamfer any edge for this kind of object. doing it only makes your work harder.
you're not supposed add a smoothing group on high poly model.
The whole piece need to be a single mesh/element.
If the object IRL made from several pieces.
Can't speak for everyone though, actually you can make the inner rim seperated element to save time. But no guarantee the inner rim will aligned perfectly with the outer part.
Also, post this on how you model dem shape thread. along with your reference ( if you have any )
http://eat3d.com/blog/eat-3d/new-free-video-modeling-tire-3ds-max
OK, that sums up the problem, you're new to this, so I can see why you're having problem, don't worry, it's not hard to get on it.
Here are some tutorials on to get a hard surface modeling going on:
Tire: http://eat3d.com/free/modeling-tire-3ds-max
Support Loops: http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-3d-studio-max/3d_cg_vfx_modeling_autodesk_3dsmax_subdivision_smoothing/
A bunch of stuff you might wanna look at in spare time: http://vimeo.com/user3618217/videos
Again, another video on idea of HS modeling: http://vimeo.com/10941211
Warthog from Halo 2: http://legacy.the-junkyard.net/images/vehicles/halo2/oxm-warthog.jpg
Warthog from Halo 3+: http://images.wikia.com/halo/images/b/b0/Halo_Reach_Warthog.png
The wheels in Halo 3 are nothing more then a cylinder with the appropriate edges 'popped' out to give it more definition. If they went into more detail, especially for the X360, it simply wouldn't be feasible.
Also, perna, I made one tread pattern entirely flat with box modeling and used clone, bend and weld to make it round. Then I used a FFD 5x5x5 to stretch the sides down into a tread shape. It was otherwise a flat halo shape.
I dont get your argument here perna. Both methods if done well will result in a good tyre, but modelling flat is far more intuitive. I hate disagreeing with you because your scarily good at being right all the time, why are you so against deforming a flat model?
personally i would do this by modelling it flat and path deforming to a circle.comvining this with an ffd can help removing distortions.
Computron, your wash out problems are because your using PNG files. they have an inbuilt gamma profile which doesnt allways get treated correctly.
Just use JPEG
Thanks for this video, very informative for turbosmooth and SubD modeling in general.