Modular chain link fence WIP

jetskee96

Ok, i feel like I need to improve my work and I have been dicking around long enough. Be as tough as you can on me.... I need it.

Here is the details:

I wanted to create a modular chain link fence using opacity masks, which proved challenging for me.

There are 3, 2k textures(opacity, frame diffuse, spec for frame) for this single piece. I want to cut the 2k textures in half and maybe add a bump map and a spec map for the opacity mask(if that's possible or even necessary).

Tris 934
polys 501

Two things I noticed when I was uploading the screenshots. 1. The barb wire has almost too much shadows and could be because of the angle the polys are set at, maybe setting them strait up would help this. 2. I didnt include and rings holding the chain link fence to the frame. I am not sure if that would make a difference or not, but I want to stay under 1000 tris per mod piece.

I am sure there are others, but that's where I need your help. I need to perfect the first piece before I create a corner piece and gate.

Thanks in advance.

Also, I left the spec map out because its just a grey image with the concrete blacked out, going to finish that one soon. And I dont have any wireframes up because its very basic geo, but if people need to see it, just ask.

Miller02

First glace it looks great! Would love to see the modularity transfer over to your textures and unwraps. You seem to have a lot of uv 'islands' that can just be overlapped. This will improve your pixel density. Also when think about the chain link section, your wasting tons of space by having the links tile within the same uv space as much as they are.

If your going for a game ready asset, this stuff should be how its done. Also if you do these steps you'll have no problem getting a bad ass fence using a 512 texture sheet.

As a stand alone prop its great!

Miller02

Oh and I forgot, I see cg textures here XD Its good to use these as bases for your textures, but always put love into the diffuse no matter what. Looking forward to see any updates!
Maybe a scene????

jetskee96

Miller02, thanks for the info. Since I can be overloaded very easily, I am going to start with the texture size, packing it better, and then loosing that photo sourced look. But that leads to my next question, since this is going to be a portfolio piece or at least part of a portfolio piece, is it going to make a world of difference if this is showcased with a 512 texture vs. a 1024?

jetskee96

OK, just thought of something here, since the opacity mask is tiled, creating a 512 of the chain link part and still having it fairly high res is simple, however adding the barbwire on the same map cant be done without forgoing res on the chain part of the fence. I could have two opacity textures, but having two 512 maps just looks sloppy compared to one texture.

Miller02

Possible to through up a highlighted edges shot? I can answer your barbwire question a bit better.

Well it depends, if I was making a tile able fence for an actual in game asset then yes it does. I would not make a 1024 texture map for this. I would be using tile textures for the entire thing. But a 1024 map will no doubt make it look a lot better. So it all depends on what your goal is for the piece. If you just want a kick ass beauty shot then yea what your doing will work, but if you want a more game ready scene that I could pull into my game on the spot, then I would try and go the other way.

Goat Justice

if the viewer will get close enough to actually see the GEO of the poles etc. I'd *probably* use 2 textures for this. a 4-way tiled one for the chain link part and a second one with horizontally tiled strips for the barbed wire and metal pipe sections. The 1:1 details like the attachment things at the top and the sign would use up the remaining space in the second texture. this would let you create a variety of fence shapes/heights pretty easily. You could also probably turn the sign into a decal and alpha some nice round corners.

Odds are that in an actual development situation a fence would not be a hero prop, and efficiency will be pretty important. Also in my experience its really hard to get any small detail to read on tall thin shapes like those fence poles. No matter how big a map you put on them they're still really small skinny areas of the screen. perfect opportunity to use tiles and save some memory.

jetskee96

Ok I think i get what both of you are saying, as is for having 2 1k textures on current gen games for this asset may just be overkill. Although if i arranged my uv better(which should be easy) and used it on my other mod pieces... ie corner piece, angled, and gate, this could be justified to have 1k textures for current gen games?

But before I go any further, I need to decide what this asset if going to be for. Since its going to be used for my portfolio and I want to become a prop/environment artist some day soon, which route should I go? Should I have my portfolio all game ready assets? Or should I be gearing up for the next gen games since it should be right around the corner? Or maybe even have a combination of the two? I guess another option would be to just clean it up a bit and place it in a scene that showcases something more interesting.

Goat Justice

I'd say the texture sizes are up to you, and since its for a portfolio piece you will probably be forgiven for using large textures if the result looks good. It's also way easier to downsize a texture than scale one up. that being said, 1k for the 4-way tiling chain link texture seems like a bit much. The difficulty with this being a chain link fence is that so much of the space is actually see through.

Its kinda hard to say what the line between current gen and next gen really is. I'd worry less about the technical specs and more about making something that looks awesome. Whatever piece you put up needs to grab someone's attention first before they'll dig into the specifics of how it was made. keeping things in the ballpark of game readiness will probably be enough if the result is impressive. That's my 2 cents though and others may feel differently.

jsargent

You have a nice asset and texture there but I think there are some issues to adress before you use it for a portfolio piece.
I think that two 1k textures for this asset is massively overkill. There is a huge amount of space wasted on unique texture space when it can easily be tiled. If this is going in to an engine you can use the engine to add lighting so things like the concrete areas can easily be overlapped. I also wouldn't lay out the wire sections like that, I made a wire fence asset a while ago and only used a 64 by 64 texture for the whole wire section (also had a 64 by 64 normal and opacity) and it looked fine. When you are thinking about texture sizes try to think about what you need rather than just what next gen games can take. Just because you can have 1 or 2k textures doesn't mean you need to
For portfolio pieces I will sometimes use a slightly larger texture size but it is still very important to use that space the best way you can and not to waste uv space.

BARDLER

Seems like the radio active sign should just be a separate asset instead of on the same texture as the fence.