Practice - Shotgun - M37

benj666

I started doing the tutorial that was made by Millenia.

But it just isnt turning out right, can any help me figure out whats wrong.

after hours of work I baked and my normal maps suck.......i think . Please can someone help me figure out how to get it look good.

High poly




Low poly


there is no detail from any of the floating geom on the low poly, some things seem kinda blobby. please ask for any more pics, thanks

thanks in advance guys. :thumbup:

whynot

Yeah, post pics of wires and maybe UV's. What res was the bake 256x256? There is no tight detail on the low poly. Also, what do you have your normals set to? It's good practice to set everything to soften/harden edges, but there is also a way to get good UV islands in Maya, just like Max' smoothing groups.

Bek

Random crit, it seems like your shotgun barrel tapers in towards the middle?

Darkleopard

Post some pictures of the wires of both, It looks like some of the high poly edges are a little tight.

What are you baking with and what setting are you using?

benj666

Hi people thanks for the replies I really appreciate it.

Low poly wireframe



High Poly wireframe



Models covering each other before baking



baking settings 1



baking settings 2



baking settings 3




UV maps



Thanks again guys.

for the normals i used 512x512.

@bek: yeah it does taper in the middle, i was using an image plane of the gun, I guess i thought that it tapered in the middle, guess i was wrong lol.

Again thanks for the replies guys. Really wanna get this right

Tim270

Am I missing it or is there no pic with the lp with normals applied? Go a bit higher with a 1024x1024 map so you can see the view what baked well and what did not much clearer. Post a pick with the baked normals please

The Uvs look ok I guess. You could really do with mirroring uvs (for example both sides of the trigger guard on 1 uvw island) and then scale up some parts to fill the empty space.

benj666

@Tim270: second pic is baked normals applied

benj666

I guess im an idiot and made the mistake of not clicking the apply UV button to the model you were right Tim270 there is no image with normals applied. Im sorry for being such a noob....omg i feel stupid.

But. Normals still dont look right. I cant get the cage to just cover the model. some parts of the model just wont be covered unless I increase the cage, but then other parts of the model are over covered, if you get what i mean?

benj666

Ok so here is a part of the gun with alot of detail in the highpoly



And here it is on the low poly with normals.

dpadam450

Looks about right. Post the normal map. Do you see all those fine ring details in the normal map? I'm assuming no because 512x512 is not enough. Look at your normal map and look at the part where that piece maps to. It will need quite a few pixels to get that much high detail. You posted a pic that is 798 wide, that circle object is 1/5th of that in the image. So a 1:1 texture to screen mapping.... or if you want to be that close with the camera and see the exact same detail, then if the object takes up 150 pixels on the screen, then it needs 150 pixels in the normal map to match what you see on the high poly at that close. Or thing about how those detailed rings would look if they baked into a 2x2 pixel section....It would have no detail. I'm assuming that is the issue, and/or it baked wrong.

Guns should be 2048 size textures (or more).

benj666

Ok so after some noobin' around I increased the normal map 2048x2048

these are the results





what are your guys thoughts?

thanks again for any advice.

BreaK-

Personally I would add more geo to the low bolt. Maybe go to 12 sides instead of 8?

benj666

I took your advice Break and made it 12 sided. and looks good. I also got the detail to come through by upping the sampling quality. Is this a no-no? or is this something you should do?

Also I cant seem to shift that jaggy edges around the piece.



Can anyone help me with that?

THanks for your feedback guys

CyberGameArts

I am having similar problems with another gun Myself....
Could it be that Maya just sucks at baking?
How would you go about baking complex things like that correctly inside Maya..

Thanks:)

Millenia

Maybe the piece is just mapped too small? Looks purely a resolution issue to me.

Bek

As a temporary solution, could you bake a normal from just the round screw type piece of geometry by itself on a plane, and the in photoshop copy/paste the separate bake onto your uv's in roughly the right position? Might let you analyse the results a little more.

Snader

Make sure you have equal sized texels over the whole model, because right now you have about 7 times higher pixel density on the round/conical shape as on the flat surroundings.

You can use this image:

To compare relative texel sizes. Just make sure all light and dark checkerboard squares are roughly the same size.

Reale

you need to increase the trigger guard pieces on your UV sheet... they are way too small and thats why it looks pixelated... you have a LOT of wasted uv space you could fill up by increasing the size of important geo.

dpadam450

Several things. 1 You will never be zoomed that close to the gun, so the fact that you want that much detail is pretty stupid to start with.

You have a ton of black space in your texture map. Take that small piece (I assume its one of the circles on the right and move it to that giant black space on the left and scale it bigger. But as of now that looks perfectly fine. You can't expect infinite detail so that you can zoom in to see ants on your model. You will never be that zoomed in for that piece not matter what.

mikelee

I was having simular issues aswell but i am getting good results now using maya's transfer map feature.

I made 4 corrections to my workflow:

1/ If your using tangent space normals, open up hipershade window and check that the bump projection node is set to tangent space normals as its usualy set to bump by default.

2/ Select low your poly mesh and smooth the normals.

3/ Make sure that the search envelope/cage as shown in bake settings 1 fully encloses the high poly mesh you wish to bake by increasing the %, you can make manual adjustment to the envelope by selecting individual verts.

4/ Chamfer all 90 degree edges as normal baking dose not like right angles.

I hope one of these steps may improve your results.

Rgs

Mike

BreaK-

Yeah that's a resolution issue. You need to increase the UV space that the side of the trigger guard takes up.

dpadam is right, you wont really be able to see that normal detail in a FPS view. But you might want to optimise your UV's better.

benj666

Hi wow guys thanks for all of your feedback!!!:D. The idea of me doing this was to get better at the baking process. because i suck big time thats why i wanted that bit to look right.

Yes i thought i'd have to reorganise my UV map I knew looking at it when i finished it, but me being impatient and wanting to see how the baking process went got to me i guess.


Gonna do what you said though and re organise my UVs and make sure ALL of the important stuff has enough space, and not waste space

Thank you for all of your feedback again! ill post an update when I do it!

thanks

dpadam450

Always throw a checkerboard on your model to see what pieces have more or less resolution. Certain parts can deal with lower resolution because you won't be close. Back of gun vs tip of gun for FPS. One draws close and big and other not big at all.

benj666

Hey guys back again. After some serious sunburn, i was out of action for a while (idiot). But ive made progress.


I just have a little question regarding gloss maps.
I've never used a gloss map before. So I dont really know how they work, and millenia is using max in his tut and xoliul shader.

Here are my textures

Diffuse



Normals



Specular


Gloss


So with following the tutorial i created them this way. and i tried to understand as best as i could.

Ok without gloss here is the gun.



and with the gloss map here is the gun.



There is a slight change in the width of the spec, which is if my knowledge serves me correctly that is what a gloss map is supposed to do. the size of the spec right?

But if i alter the gloss map with darken it alot or lighten it alot, nothing changes, but i though lighter = more gloss, darker = less gloss.

so i guess my question is,

how do gloss maps work inside of maya?

where to you input them into maya? (cosine power?)

I also would like this gun to go into UDK. so any information on how to implement the gloss map into UDK would be great.

and any information anyways would be great.

Thanks as always polys

Ben

Reale

make sure you watch the texture tutorial part from start to finish and download the brushes provided, I am assuming this texture is still a wip because in the tutorial he takes the texture a lot further, it seems like you have just filled in some areas with the paint bucket and thrown on some texture overlays and thats it... without understanding gloss, you are still able to take the spec and diffuse further with the information given and shown in the tut... (infact all the work is done on the spec and copied onto the defuse and gloss so even without understanding how the gloss works, you should still have a stronger texture)

as for the differnces between maya and max, a simple google search will yield results you are looking for.

also on a side note, you rearranged the uv sheet increasing some parts and leaving other important geo... if you struggle with unwrapping again FOLLOW the tutorial and try and match what millenia does. The last chapter of the tutorial is where you have to stop and think about what millenia is doing and why hes doing it and try and replicate it - its not like the other chapters where your following 1 for 1, you have to stop and think and take the time to get the same result.

he gives you the information so that you can replicate it one for one if your willing to really pick it apart... there is so many people doing this tutorial but few who are coming out with the same results - If you did a side by side of your gun to the tuts gun see how it differs and ask your self why, what has he done to get the spec to shine in certain areas and yet dull in others and try and replicate it, instead of following the tutorial through, you have to ask yourself questions along the way and challenge yourself to pull out the important information.

the gun itself has decent overall shape (and you did a better job of the stock than I did) but the texture really really needs pushing... you have two very good tuts on texturing given to you so I suggest you follow both of them (both the millenia tut and the racer 445 texture tut - also read the article too).

this feed back isn't intended to come off as harsh, infact the only feedback you need you can get from yourself. Save your image out and save out millenia's and either have them side by side or flick back and forth and if they look the same then thats the good feedback and if it doesnt, open maya/photoshop/youtube back up and ask yourself why... All the information is in there to get the same quality. Even if the end product isnt 100% identical its ok as long as you can see where it isnt and why, its important to learn why for your next model.

best of luck.

benj666

Thanks for the feedback man

Yeah I know the texture looks unfinished. Its because it is unfinished. I haven't finished the tutorial yet. Its just the gloss maps are giving me troubles at the point of where I am. I have put mine and millenias side by side and this is why I ask

He puts his gloss maps into the gloss map node of the xoliul shader.

Where do I put them in maya? That kinda was my question overall because I am not getting the same results as he is getting upto the point of where I am in the tutorial.:(

I have gone backwards and forwards through the tutorial trying to find out where I am going wrong with it.

But again thank you for the feedback ill go back through and try and find more

benj666

Hey update time. been busy also so thats why its taken so long.

This is a UDK render.










I feel i can make it better, but i just need some guidance.

Thanks in advance for any feedback