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USR Ghost Cloak Drive (Fractured Space) - WIP

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Little project I started last evening on my free time, redoing this part of the USR Ghost I made back in 2014 (and subsequently improved in several passes), opting for a modular normal mapped look this time instead of the VERY heavily geometry based approach of the original asset. We're talking about 70k triangles for the drive. The new version should end up in the 25k range whilst improving the look, so it's a nice win-win situation.

Original cloak drive:



New version (work in progress)



Model/wireframe so far:



Concept art by Mike Hill:


Replies

  • killnpc
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    killnpc polycounter
    I want to blow it up in Star Citizen. Mr. Hill did an awesome job on that concept, that steel plating looks great. One thing bothering me is that the light source (the sun) is not aligned with the background. Very impressive work!
  • Millenia
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    Millenia polycount sponsor
    Well, I finally got the chance to get back to this:



  • Millenia
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    Quick material exploration. Material is entirely procedural in UE4 with one RGBA (transparency, curvature, AO and gradient map), normal map, gradient (256x32) and shared RGB grungemap with 3 variants blended in parametrically. The gradient I map to the texture is 3 steps of pure RGB mapped to the greyscale input three times to create three pure RGB selection masks. From there, I just use the outputs to give me up to 9 "sub-materials" inside one material with base colour, roughness and metallic.
    Allows me to create skins for the ship with ease when I can just instance and change the values on the fly.




  • Justo
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    Justo polycounter
    Amazing stuff Hans.
  • Kanni3d
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    Kanni3d ngon master
    Absolutely mindblowing how you have everything parameterized, instanced, and fully procedural in engine. Phenomenal stuff!
  • Clark Coots
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    Clark Coots polycounter lvl 12
    Very cool. Are your Grunge Maps just cloudy type textures that you can apply over whole surfaces, or are they custom to be tailored to where the cracks and crevasses are? Are you doing any curvature and grunge map blending to create a like a more organic dirt/scratch mask, or is your curvature map straight from your bake? Also what kind of blend are you using for color? Multiply? Overlay? Thanks, looks amazing and only 256x32!? I don't see any bad aliasing where I'd expect some like the red tubing.
  • Prime8
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    Prime8 interpolator
    Fantastic! As usual :)
    This is not the same workflow that you use for reworking the Fractured Space ships right?
    Are you using deferred mesh decals on either as described in the tutorial you made? Doesn't look like it, but I would like to know for sure.
  • Millenia
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    Millenia polycount sponsor
    Very cool. Are your Grunge Maps just cloudy type textures that you can apply over whole surfaces, or are they custom to be tailored to where the cracks and crevasses are? Are you doing any curvature and grunge map blending to create a like a more organic dirt/scratch mask, or is your curvature map straight from your bake? Also what kind of blend are you using for color? Multiply? Overlay? Thanks, looks amazing and only 256x32!? I don't see any bad aliasing where I'd expect some like the red tubing.
    Yeah they're basically just three different masks made in Substance to add scratches and splotches to the base colour/roughness, nothing too fancy. Basically at the moment it goes base value -> curvature -> grunge multiplied in -> AO, not doing any massively complicated blending since I just want to vary the material a little bit without making the shader super expensive. The 256x32 only applies to the gradient that I use to mask the map, the greyscale input that gets gradient mapped into the material masks is 2048 (though it'll likely be 1024 at the end). Still, 8 masks out of a single greyscale input + small gradient texture is pretty good.
    Prime8 said:
    Fantastic! As usual :)
    This is not the same workflow that you use for reworking the Fractured Space ships right?
    Are you using deferred mesh decals on either as described in the tutorial you made? Doesn't look like it, but I would like to know for sure.
    I've got a couple of different workflows, I use this technique on detail sheets/modules and use vertex colour driven materials on the bigger hull pieces. Not using dbuffer decals anywhere ATM since they have some annoying issues preventing me from using them in production, as well as the potential performance cost and potentially not working in mobile rendering path, something we use on integrated GPUs to boost framerate.

    Messing a bit more with the mats, starting to add some decal work. I should call this bit done, really, and just move onto the rest of the ship soonish.

    Also, I must plug here that we have an open env artist position right now: http://polycount.com/discussion/187106/environment-artist-edge-case-games#latest




  • Prime8
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    Prime8 interpolator
    Thanks for the info.
    I wasn't 100% happy with the deferred mesh decals either when I tested them last time, unfortunately that topic doesn't seem to be important for Epic at the moment.
    What kind of decals are you using on the final version now?

    Millenia said:
    .... The 256x32 only applies to the gradient that I use to mask the map, the greyscale input that gets gradient mapped into the material masks is 2048 (though it'll likely be 1024 at the end). Still, 8 masks out of a single greyscale input + small gradient texture is pretty good...
    I don't fully understand that part, do you mind explaining it a bit more?
  • Millenia
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    Millenia polycount sponsor
    Prime8 said:
    Thanks for the info.
    I wasn't 100% happy with the deferred mesh decals either when I tested them last time, unfortunately that topic doesn't seem to be important for Epic at the moment.
    What kind of decals are you using on the final version now?

    Millenia said:
    .... The 256x32 only applies to the gradient that I use to mask the map, the greyscale input that gets gradient mapped into the material masks is 2048 (though it'll likely be 1024 at the end). Still, 8 masks out of a single greyscale input + small gradient texture is pretty good...
    I don't fully understand that part, do you mind explaining it a bit more?




    Hopefully this'll clarify a little bit. Decals wise I mostly use textures which have unique details on the top half of the UV and a tiling section of the same material on the bottom half. That way, you get a matched material for your unique details as well as being able to tile it across one axis. Vertex colours are used on top of that to turn one material into 3 different ones and allows the same details to be in 3 different colours (say, steel, copper and white paint) without any extra texture inputs.
  • Niknesh
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    Niknesh polycounter lvl 10
    Whoa, man. Awesome how most of the nodes are a param that you can change on the fly. But does this make all the node connections more complicated to look at. What I wanted to say, do you have or have made a mat function for some stuff or is it easier for you this way?
    I'm guessing everything you need to change, you do it on a mat instance?

    Also before this material, grunge/dirt/dust etc. could only be tiled and not have it follow a certain flow or angles of the normal map? That's the reason why you use multiple masks?

    What happens with the unmasked areas, the ones where you don't have the normal map applied? Do they still tile all the way, but only how much you let them?
  • Prime8
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    Prime8 interpolator
    Thanks again.
    Will have a look at this inside UE as well.
  • LaurentiuN
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    LaurentiuN interpolator
    Mega awesome work here, i`m glad you came back to it, can wait to see this finished.!!!!
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