Custom KL2 tractor

betasector

Hey guys,
I am a new user here, but I have been doing 3d stuff for years now. Today, I decided to join and start posting, since all the good stuff I like is boiling in here, most of my favourite artists get their feedback from you guys, so yeah, why not.

I have started a personal project to polish my hard-surface skills, and face some issues with texturing. The model is done, and I think it is ready for texturing now.



I still have to modify the rear tire first, but otherwise I am pretty happy with the results.

Any critiques on the model so far? Give it your worst.

Xoliul

Look good, save for that rear tire.
But is this for an actual game-asset? Because then you've got a lot of geometry and details that aren't gonna bake too fantastically. Too small, too thin or too sharp mostly.
Oh and your render setup isn't great, mever have 3 shadows like that. I'd just go for one keylight with shadows and one backlight without, which is less bright and a different tone.

betasector

Thanks, and yes, the light setup is not ok, I forgot to disable shadows for the side lamps. Anyway, the final will be most likely using Cycles, not Blender Internal, so its kinda irrelevant as of now. And no, not for a game, if that would be the case, I'd use stuff more sparingly, this is lvl 2 subdiv already.

betasector

I realised that there is a lot of stuff going on, and it is a nightmare to unwrap this thing. Any tips on how to handle a model of this density?

betasector

This is my first run on texturing. I will try to separate the UV islands in an other way, so the bigger stuff gets more texture space. I am also considering more procedurals for the small stuff.

J0NNYquid

While it is usually a good idea to try and overlap some uv's to maximize texture space, you need to be mindful of the details you put on those overlapped sections. For instance, when I saw the textured version, I noticed two major issues.



You have to be careful when you have overlapping UV's that the details you put on the texture aren't so large and obvious that a casual observer (me) would notice that they're the same scratch/dirt spot. I'm no expert, and anyone can correct me if I'm wrong, but generally if you know that the areas that share UV space won't ever be seen at the same time, you can get away with this, but in your case, those areas are all visible from almost any angle, and the same scratch in the same spot on both sides just throws me off.

I'll second what Xoliul said though, you seem to have a lot of geometry, especially on the front tires, that could be taken care of with a normal map. Good work, keep it up!

betasector

J0NNYquid wrote: »

While it is usually a good idea to try and overlap some uv's to maximize texture space, you need to be mindful of the details you put on those overlapped sections. For instance, when I saw the textured version, I noticed two major issues.



You have to be careful when you have overlapping UV's that the details you put on the texture aren't so large and obvious that a casual observer (me) would notice that they're the same scratch/dirt spot. I'm no expert, and anyone can correct me if I'm wrong, but generally if you know that the areas that share UV space won't ever be seen at the same time, you can get away with this, but in your case, those areas are all visible from almost any angle, and the same scratch in the same spot on both sides just throws me off.

I'll second what Xoliul said though, you seem to have a lot of geometry, especially on the front tires, that could be taken care of with a normal map. Good work, keep it up!

Thanks for the heads up!

I am thinking about creating a new layer only for the rust details and stuff whic should not be mirrored (front wire, logo, visible scratches etc).

About the tires, well, I wanted to do it with geometry, and for this model I will leave it in, but next time I will try to replace that with a normal map. Also I guess, the big wheel's pattern couldnt be cheated with a normal map.

Anyway, a bit of progress:

betasector

I tried an afternoon setup, but I might go for noon instead, dunno. Also, some more touches needed overall, but the main textures are somewhat better now:

ivanzu

Looking good but the rust on the tires just doesn't look and fit right so I would suggest to change the brightness of it and reduce the amount of it.

betasector

Ok, I have removed the mumbo-jumbo composite effects, tuned the colors a bit, and here is the last version. Small tweaks could be added (I like the rims as they are, but thanks), but I want to move on to a new subject.

J0NNYquid

Looking much better. 2 issues:

You've got some weird noise going on in the normal map, and the specularity looks like it needs to be tweaked. For something this old and worn I wouldn't expect it to be so shiny, and any area where there is rust wouldn't reflect light at all.

betasector

Thanks, noted, I will keep that in mind.