KRISS Vector
polycounter lvl 8
Hi everyone!
My name is ryan and this is KRISS. Modeled in Maya and ZBrush. I'm currently working on the game model and textures. Any feedback along the way is appreciated:)
My name is ryan and this is KRISS. Modeled in Maya and ZBrush. I'm currently working on the game model and textures. Any feedback along the way is appreciated:)
Replies
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1725586/crits/edgewidthmodel.jpg
You can really see this on the EOTECH in particular, it all looks like 90degree angles where it really wants to be catching a lot more lighting.
Apart from that it looks really nice, was it all made in Zbrush? that sounds like quite a accomplishment in itself
Just to clarify I modeled the base in Maya first and then did all the high poly stuff in Z. I've done some other weapons all in Z before, but, wanted to see if this was going to be a more effective work flow.
Are the case sections seperate ztools, or is this sculpted from larger sections? How did you sculpt the extruded sections? Is there a lot of custom alpha stuff at play here? How have you found this workflow so far?
Sorry for question barrage, looking forward to seeing you develop this.
To control the edge smoothing in ZBrush: I started with a pre-sub models that I made in Maya to hold shape (hence the to hard edge on the EOtech sight.
In ZBrush I used polygroups and mesh division to add extra res where needed.
Most of the edges needed little to no work, b/c how I modeled it in Maya.
For the most part everything is a separate Ztools. However, things will be combined that make sense for baking.
The extruded sections: The major parts were probably already in the base mesh from Maya. The really fine detail in the nobs were done with radial local summitry on.
Alphas: I created about 25 custom alphas in CS for this.
Work flow: So far I like it. Now I know not to make my edges so hard ( which is less work). It allows a lot of flexibility, as I can use some of my parts on future guns. Also, It makes creating the game res model fast-- as all I'm doing is de-resing my sub model from Maya.
I've been building my game model and smoothing out some of my edges on my high poly model. After running a few test transfers I've got some less-than desired results.
The edges look great from the Maya map transfer but everything else doesn't seem to take as well. In xNormal the edge have seams, but everything else looks great.
I would prefer to bake all my maps from xNormal as it seems to generate better detail overall.
Here's a pic of my Zbursh model and what the low model looks like with Maya transfer and xNormal bake (NRM maps only)
The low poly model has hard and soft edges where they should be. The UV seams follow a hard edge. (read in a thread somewhere that, that mattered for Xnormal).
Thanks for your help!
In other news, the gun looks sick and can't wait to see the final bake
The problem: Getting seamless maps from xNormal to Maya.
As you can see, there is a very noticeable seam from the xNormal bake. To get rid of this you have to create and use a cage instead of ray distance.
Steps to do this from Maya.
1. take your low poly mesh. (no n-gons)
3. indicate hard and soft edges
2. UV it.
3. freeze it and delete history
4 export as OBJ with the following settings.
- groups on
- point groups on
- materials off
- smoothing on
- normals on
5. duplicate that mesh.6. with that new mesh selected go to lighting/ shading -- then transfer maps
7. change mesh to envelope and adjust side. (note: if this doesn't change size and color, change size to something like 1 and close the window... repeat 5-7 and this time it should change size)
Note: the envelope mesh must be an exact duplicate of your low and be large enough to in case your high poly mesh completely.
8. Freeze it and delete histoy
9. export it with the same settings as your low poly model.
10. open xNormal and import high poly model with default settings (make sure ignore per vertex color is checked).
11. Add low poly mesh with the following settings
- use exported normals
- batch protection
12. right click and browse for cage ( this your envelope mesh)13. make sure use cage is checked
14. set map size and edge padding to somewhere around 6
15. generate maps!
There still seems to be some small artifacts that appear in the maps. If you also run a ray distance bake; you can swap out those area in seconds.
I plan on starting the UVs tomorrow-- so if anyone sees any glaring problems, please let me know. I haven't decided on the texture size yet (was planning on putting it all on one map), so feel free to leave suggestions regarding that too. Below are the wire frames.
I do make weapons for FPS game but In Max .
I always think about making weapon in Z but I think beside some especial parts it's more effective pipeline to make it in Max or Maya .
What do you guys think ?
I have a non related question however. What makes you use Maya?, because right now idk wether to stick with Maya or learn Max, since most hardsurface artist use Max. You are one of the few i found that make sick stuff using Maya, gun wise...
Thanks
thanks! Here's my work flow.
1. Made base mesh in Maya.
2. Made a duplicate of that mesh, which was later optimized.
3. Took the original mesh and added some more detail and res before taking it into Z (made sure that it held shape with a smooth preview).
4. did all the Z stuff
5. Optimized the duplicated mesh.
There were some cases when I recreated some geo. using shadowbox, but those were very few.
If you don't save a copy of your mesh before you go to town with adding edge loops and resolution, then optimizing the mesh will become very time consuming at the end-- In that case you might as well start in Z.
@CGA
Thank you! The reason I use Maya is... A long time ago when I was changing from traditional art to digital art-- the school I was trying to go to taught Maya. And somewhere I herd this: (I'm not sure if there's any truth to it) That Maya was harder to learn (UI wise) and if you could learn Maya you could learn Max.
If you know most of the hot keys, use hotbox, and all the short menus in Maya... then modeling is pretty fast. Most of my friends that model professionally that started on Maya and switched to Max, say that Max is better for modeling. So why haven't I switched yet? Right now I rather put time into Z.
Here's a link to my filo. Most of which is modeled in Maya except the knife and hand gun, which were modeled all in Z. http://ryanbown.org/
Thanks again
Got the UVs done and packed them all into one layout. I left enough padding for a 2k texture, but I'll probably do a 4k diffuse on this. Anyways, Here's the progress.
@ Havoc89, thanks man- I see you've made some nice weapons.
@CGA, thanks, but there are a lot of people much better than me at hard surface modeling in Z. Shadow box and dynamesh all the way for hard surfaces (if your starting in Z).
12,400 tris. (gun and all attachments)
4k texture (AO and NRM)
rendered in Maya
only thing i could probably crit about this is that you could use a bit more edges on your optic to define the roundness (if its an fps gun then you really dont want your edges to show there). and in your uvs youve got TONS of little clusters that can more than likely overlap each other and ultimately give you some more rez on the more important pieces.
@Oniram
regarding UV islands. and UV space: Most of those are either the teeth from the rails or the circles on the sides. The side circles must be unique. I also, have greater UV space allocated to stuff closer to the player in First person POV. It might not be evident in these pics. The texture is really much crisper then what your seeing here. I'm referencing pictures that are posted on my dev. blog and blogger compresses images resolution and also down sizes the pics that are uploaded. Thanks again for help, Hope my SGM will turn out sexy too:poly124:
Example of metal
Anyways, let me know what you think, I should have some texture updates this weekend...
@Bek.
I don't own the gun... but from what I can tell in pictures the main body (shell) is a hard plastic. The internals of the gun are metal.
Not a big gun expert but i think you need to work more on specular map and textures
Make material differences and small hilights more visible
lighting also helps a lot. try pulling up some studio shots of this gun and somewhat match the lighting layout (ideally you should always use 3 point lighting to start out but ultimately whatever looks best)
http://kwausa.com/files/3113/2682/0471/f_krissvector_ang.jpg
http://www.evike.com/images/large/gr-kwa-kriss.jpg
thank you, you nailed it... That is what I'm trying to do. The spec map is way off right now.
@mr_ace
thanks for the feedback. I think this might be even lighter then what I had before:poly122: How dark should I paint base layer for the black areas (60-65% gray)?
RE: all black
This might sound stupid, but I like black. But I'm running into the problem that all of you mentioned, it's not visually interesting and it's hard to distinguish material differences. For this reason, I might paint the plastic a different color... which mean I probably will:)
@Oniram
Thanks for the feedback... I will clean up that area and try to simplify my texture. Right now I have so many layers in PS.
@burtonyang
Thank you, I will work on the gloss map as well.
Anyways, thanks for taking a look and giving some needed advice! list of hot fixes:
Anyways, feedback always welcome...
edit: if that's supposed to be blood on the stock, you need to darken it and make it more brown, it currently looks too pink and light, blood should look like the photo below, and when it dries, it goes a lot darker and browner
Anyways, ur a monster bro
@cptSwing: Thank you for your C&C
@CyberGameArts: Lol, your to kind:)
@KartoonHead: Thank you!
RE: The negative values in my NRM map. Those are project errors from parts that are under other geo. None of them are visible.
RE: The baking error on the stock. Thank you for pointing this out... This was actually a problem with my AO map. I also repainted the camouflage in 3D space to git rid of all the seams. Hopefully it looks better now.
Anyways, I want to thank everyone for their C&C while I worked on this. I'm going to finally call this done... unless there's a glaring problem that I missed :poly122: Here's a list of all the updates:
The gun is 12,680 with all attachments. The texture map is 4k. 1 diffuse, specular, gloss and normal map (2048 each). Thanks again for taking a look:poly121:
btw didnt understand, u are using 4k map for diffuse and 2k maps for spec, gloss, and normal map, or also diffuse is 2k?
I'm happy to see you guys like it.
RE: texture maps.
There is only 1 diffuse, 1 spec, 1 gloss, 1 normal map. Each map is 2048 x 2048. That makes the total texture size 4096 x 4096 or 4k.
Interesting workflow. So I've been using Maya for all my stuff and Modo recently to render and bake, but I don't entirely understand the idea behind using zbrush for hard surface. I try to stay away from zbrush even when I do organic stuff cause I dislike how much geometry it spits out and how little control I have over it. So I've only touched it to work on wrinkles and such. Is there any real advantage to using it for hard surface?