So, I guess I should post this finally. running into a brick wall texturing it, but I also am having issues with my bake. my bake just looks like shit. the bake was done in xnormal. but I don't think i've messed with settings much in it, so if anyone has some good settings I could check out, post em please. This is a redesign also.
So, here goes...
Concept:
Screengrabs:
Maya:
Zbrush:
Textures:
Only the shielding for the angled gun was done in zbrush, and a small edging in the handle, which I didn't screencap. the other pieces were actually smoothed in maya and exported and baked. I baked in sections because in either maya or xnormal before, the baking would be sporadic otherwise.
P.S. I do not have marmoset or ddo/ndo... no money currently
Replies
If I were you I'd put this project on hold and start with something a bit simpler to really get the high poly/ baking workflow down. Something like a knife or a simple gun would be perfect. Here's some tutorials to get you started.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Tgy0lBdJK0 and http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/next-gen-weapon-creation-part-1-the-high-poly-model--cg-782
check out this page if you run into any problems:
http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap?action=show&redirect=Normal+Map
good luck with your next project, send me a PM if you want some feedback or need any help.
SO. yesterday, well, late last night, I decided to model a knife, went looking, found a bunch of cool knives and then sorted through them till I found one that I figured would be good to do for a first run/practice after watching those videos and looking into stuff a bit more thoroughly. And this is the knife I went with (had to turn the image to make get it at an angle to model from...):
I did run into a bunch of snags, one being my maya decided to be a dick and for some reason was crashing whenever I would use snap to point. eventually it stopped doing that and is now working fine again. And then I ran into issues baking the AO, the normals came out relatively fine. a few minor errors that can be fixed in photoshop... but the AO... for some reason was not accepting the edge padding, and was not baking the floating geo correctly. I did get a solid AO bake for the floating geo eventually. here are the fruits of those labors:
Low Poly without textures:
High Poly:
AO, Normals and Low Poly w/ AO/Normal:
I will probably revisit the high, I still have a copy of the model before smooth, and actually add the hole in the bottom of the handle. In total, the high poly took an hour and a half I think, aside from the constant crashing that is. Oh, and I'll also probably change up the otherside of the handle to keep it interesting... since I'm sure its not completely mirrored.
also you should not model the indents like that |_| but like this \_/
And yeah, I get you on the splitting for the smoothing groups/smoothed edges. I remember reading that somewhere in an post about baking, but I just didn't do that I'll fix that.
And what do you mean use wider edges in many cases?
about wider edges
http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=normal_edge_thickness.jpg
this
@harricool yeah, I know, I use udk fairly regularly. I've just been noticing a rise in the usage of ndo/ddo and marmoset for presentation and textures. I just felt I should mention i don't have them incase people go to recommend doing something in one of those packages that I don't have. thats all. I planned on doing renders in UDK as I normally would.
Right now it's really hard to see anything but the outline of your knife.
Those maya viewport screenshots make your model look a lot worse than it is. I'd recommend getting the trial version of marmoset for now. There's also the xoliul shader for 3ds max. I'm sure there's probably a way to make your maya screenshots look better as well, but I don't use maya. You should also make your diffuse darker so it's easier for us to see the edge highlights. like this:
And yeah, you only need smoothing group splits where your UVs are split.
installed marmoset trial and did a quick render in it. messed with the settings a bit to try to show the edges. Also, in maya, there are no smoothing groups. we use soft/hard edges instead of smoothing groups. its essentially the same thing, just figured i'd mention.
Hopefully this helps. there are some errors in the normal and AO that I can clean up, but I think i'm gonna revisit the high later tonight and fix up a few things that are wrong with the blade and put the hole in the handle.
Thanks for the help guys.