@Obscura
Looking nice, I gotta learn how to uv like you. Are you spilting your uv seems? Im noticing im gonna have to on some objects, I dont like doing this cause it makes texturing harder.
Edit:
More progress, the low poly on the side wall panel is totally done,, and I started the hi poly on some pieces. I will be adding small details in ps and generating normals with crazy bump (bolts and stuff). I started the wires, i will finish this right side of the wall either today or tomorrow.
I underestimated how long it will take me to model this scene, looks like I will need another week to finish modelling.
Esselle - Just try to set the compression to TC_Normalmap_Uncompressed. For the floor, leave bigger space between the edge and the support edge.
Oh and for the wall piece, make them to one smoothing group.
When you import it, set to TC_normalmap, and when its imported, double click, and set it to tc_normalmap_uncompressed.Dont care about the strange color
Esselle - First of all you need to baking you normal with one smoothing group. But...A chat would be good for polycount . Or continue this with private messages to not spam this thread
First time posting anything on this forum, but this is my noobish attempt at the challenge. How would you go about getting the same texture to display on all the screens, since they are all different sizes and positions?
Hello all! Long time lurker and decided to join. Hope I'm not too late to the party. Here's some block out I did to get the proportions right. It's my first environment piece so still wrapping my head round all those electronics in the concept.
Just finished the highpoly and the uv-s for the lowpoly for this, and baked the normals. Its 216 triangles.
Did you mirror it? Can you show your UVs and map? Was overthinking that piece Sunday; Was thinking of using a generic tiling texture, and having the bevels in geometry & smoothing groups. I'll screenshot that later to show it's nastiness
May just HP & bake it 1 to 1 :x
And yes, it's Cryengine. Wall panels were slapped real quick (Test baking, so I think the AO had no antialias). I do love me some vertical cylinders ;d
Yes its mirrored and its have unique texture space. My uv's and the normalmap:
I have smoothing splits where i have uv splits. The empty spaces will covers other objects in the future.
Oh and its 1024x1024.
I dont like tiling texturing and using smoothing groups with normal maps because it looks shit and cheap in my opinion.I know, sometimes its useful, but not always
It should relieve the tension in the normals/tangents across that surface, resulting in a cleaner bake. Remember you can hide seams on convex edges in the same way you can hide seams on concave edges.
Thanks Konstruct, but it looks fine in UDK, and if i made another smoothing group for this section, i will needed to break my uv-s here too. I dont want to almost rework my uvs because it looks good in game. Maybe i will using more uv shells in the future for my objects, but i think i leave this as it is.
Heyup people I've been following this for a while and decided I'll have a go at it too. Hopefully I can keep up momentum and get this piece looking portfolio worthy.
Learning objectives:
- Get better at baking high poly to low poly... I am terrible at this
- Improved texturing (especially with specular)
- Generally improve the quickness and efficiency in my work. For example, modular building
- Make something to be proud of for once
Constructive critisism is welcome
Anyway here's what I've got. Firstly I took the concept and used photoshop layers to outline what I need to model. After I played around with the layout in order to achieve accurate (or at least believable) proportions. For the mechanical section I will be building modularly... I just need to pin down which sections I'm going to combine into modular pieces.
Still working hard on the highpoly version of everything. Not looking forward to trying to make it all lowpoly but will give it my best shot. Working on the doors trying to get some details in there.
I'm stuck in an infinite loop. I UV something, see something else that should be fixed/created, create that, UV it, see something else that should be created...
And the mechanical section isn't even very good yet
Oh well. I'll get some more UVing done today before work and hopefully be done soon. Then nDo/high poly and I'll finally have something to post
Whelp... blocked everything out for the second time, got 2 high polys done and did low polys and uvs got one of the high polys baked down and saved out but a crash lost the other one >.< oh well, making progress, will work on it more tomorrow, hopefully I will resist the urge to work on the space lady, and only work on her at night.
Bonkahe - I recommend you to stop making your character, until you finish this because the deadline is coming soon...:) Btw you need to decide you are a character artist or an environment artist. Or if this is just a hobby, i said nothing
Normal tests. Baked with hard smoothing groups; then baked with all smoothed... Both yielding wierdness. Took a while til I realized the .tif compression was set to Diffuse (As opposed to Normal map @__@); SO, be sure to set the compression correctly
And then a, cryengine question. Material related. Just spent a few hours getting everything the way I like. The mat has no collision, so I check Physicalize > Default > re-export my mat. Needless to say, it gets nuked & all settings are gone
You need to reExport the asset, not the material. The material setting in max/maya to physicalize just tells the exporter to take those polygons and 'proxyfi' them.
Okay i filled the empty space on my 1st uv map, so today i will working on the textures for this objects (diffuse, spec, gloss, alpha). I thinking about to saving the spec, gloss and the alpha into one file like spec to R channel gloss to G and alpha to B channel, and a mask for the reflection to the alpha channel maybe.
Its 1024x1024 but its uncompressed in udk so in game, its 512 realy but its still looks very good.
@Obscura, atm I have a million things to do, but I am focused on environment art, you could say character art is my hobby.
Edit: Since some probably don't know how, I'm gonna drop a quick tutorial on how to get a base for a diffuse texture (something to work off of). And yes I know, I could probably bet money that everyone here knows how to do this, but for some reason there's no tutorial out there for it mainly because of that, and anytime you say that no one needs it is when someone does, so here it is.
Step one: Render out an ao map in xnormal and get it into photoshop, this is the base for everything, duh.
Thats what we start with.
Step two: Next you want to render out a World space normal map, you do this by selecting the three little dots in a green box next to normal map in xnormal, then select the tangent space check mark to make it create world space normal maps.
World space maps are the same as normal maps but instead of being the same direction no matter what side its on, its more like a gradient map, with one color meaning down, one up, ect, it looks like this:
Step three: In any case most people don't use it but what you need it for is the green channel, open it in photoshop and open the channels tab, next to layers, hit the eye next to all the layers but Green, that will give you this:
Select everything and copy that into your original Occlusion map, then set it to multiply, that should give you something like this.
Step four: Next open up 3ds max, first create a skylight, set it in the modifiers tab to Render->Cast shadows, check that and set the rays per sample to something reasonable, 20 is good for high quality textures, but for something small that wont take to long just set it to about 10, the quality is barely noticeable, and if you do it right it shouldn't be seen at all. Hit 0 and bring up the render to texture window, set project to OFF, then set what other settings you usually do for normal maps, make sure to make it "Lighting map" instead of normals or diffuse, tends to work better for me, that should give you something like this:
EDIT: OH, don't forget to set the color of the skylight to white, if you do forget just make sure to de-saturate it before you integrate it into the diffuse.
Ok a bit of explanation, basically it seems for me xnormal renders nicer ao maps, But 3ds max has much broader shadows, so it gets the big smooth gradients while xnormal only gets the little lines and creases, so I combine the two to create a good happy medium.
Step five: Lastly drop that into your diffuse on a multiply layer, and if you want more definition, you can render out a cavity map in xnormal and throw that on a multiply layer, but I noticed that tends to make seams around the edges, so I leave it off. The final project should look something like this:
This is it on the model, in the metro setting in marmoset, for those who don't know the metro setting is almost completely ambient, meaning this is almost 100% the diffuse.
This should give you something nice to work off of when painting your diffuse.
Bonkahe - I say it without any malice, but your using of uv space is realy wasteful. there are 4 copies of 1 object. and why are you modeled the back of your panel?delete it.it will be never visible to the player.its wasted polygons and wasted uv space.
Edit: Ok your right, but I still have to add the cylinder and some other stuff, that's the main reason for all the empty space, and the back... well your right, I never meant it as a show of what that model looks like, just a texture tutorial, I'll stop making them.
PS: NEVER, EVER, censor what you say because you think it might make me angry, if it makes me angry its probably because its true.
Oh no I didn't mean the edit, I didn't even know you edited it, I just mean your not malicious, your just pointing out something, and I'm great full for it.
Just wanted to applaud this gentlemenly exchange. This is how more people should interact. Well done sirs, well done indeed. Bonkahe, you are absolutely correct. One should never be offended by the truth, one should only ever seek to change it if it is offensive.
On a side and less "old scholar by the fire" note, it seems that despite my best efforts I have come down with the flu. My progress will be posted in a day or so and will be mirrored on the Pilgrimage.
I started a few days ago, thought I'd post what I have so far.
The material is just a stand in and no lightmaps are baked as the second UV's haven't been setup yet, some normal/lighting issues to sort out....lots to do
Yes, the PolygonPilgrimage is my blog/website/show that is dedicated to artists improving their skills. Check it out if you like @ www.polygonpilgrimage.com
wow tbh im really impressed with the work so far in this chellenge. If I wasnt so held down by final projects I would wanna do this so maybe next challenge since i will be on winter break
Hey Esselle, I use xnormal almost completely, as for normal map issues, in my experience, I've known people who have done it for years and it never is 100% error free, will say one thing though, it will clean up allot better after you get a diffuse one there, also it seems the plates on the middle module there, the ones flapped up, the square indention on them are quite a bit larger than in the concept.
Dat bevel... lol hey Alpha, one thing to bring up, the hatches that are open, seem to be a bit large, also I don't know about drop box, but I use drop canvas, works great as long as you don't care about res and your just trying to show someone something.
In a not un related subject, Wake up guys! everyone must still be asleep.
Replies
Awesome, you should join in next round.
@Obscura
Looking nice, I gotta learn how to uv like you. Are you spilting your uv seems? Im noticing im gonna have to on some objects, I dont like doing this cause it makes texturing harder.
Edit:
More progress, the low poly on the side wall panel is totally done,, and I started the hi poly on some pieces. I will be adding small details in ps and generating normals with crazy bump (bolts and stuff). I started the wires, i will finish this right side of the wall either today or tomorrow.
I underestimated how long it will take me to model this scene, looks like I will need another week to finish modelling.
For the wall, i re-did lowpoly and highpoly but there are still normal issues like this
Oh and for the wall piece, make them to one smoothing group.
Also tried to set compression to simplelightmap, and it looks better but still has this issue
First time posting anything on this forum, but this is my noobish attempt at the challenge. How would you go about getting the same texture to display on all the screens, since they are all different sizes and positions?
Did you mirror it? Can you show your UVs and map?
May just HP & bake it 1 to 1 :x
And yes, it's Cryengine. Wall panels were slapped real quick (Test baking, so I think the AO had no antialias). I do love me some vertical cylinders ;d
C'mon everybody, more screenshots!
I have smoothing splits where i have uv splits. The empty spaces will covers other objects in the future.
Oh and its 1024x1024.
I dont like tiling texturing and using smoothing groups with normal maps because it looks shit and cheap in my opinion.I know, sometimes its useful, but not always
It should relieve the tension in the normals/tangents across that surface, resulting in a cleaner bake. Remember you can hide seams on convex edges in the same way you can hide seams on concave edges.
Learning objectives:
- Get better at baking high poly to low poly... I am terrible at this
- Improved texturing (especially with specular)
- Generally improve the quickness and efficiency in my work. For example, modular building
- Make something to be proud of for once
Constructive critisism is welcome
Anyway here's what I've got. Firstly I took the concept and used photoshop layers to outline what I need to model. After I played around with the layout in order to achieve accurate (or at least believable) proportions. For the mechanical section I will be building modularly... I just need to pin down which sections I'm going to combine into modular pieces.
I like that how that mechanical section is turning out. Definitely the trickiest part of the concept for me.
@Bonkahe
We have until December 13th.
@Plumbjet
Nice take on those doors, I like the asymmetric interlocking design you have going on.
Edit:
Ughhh, doing these cables are making me fall asleep.
And the mechanical section isn't even very good yet
Oh well. I'll get some more UVing done today before work and hopefully be done soon. Then nDo/high poly and I'll finally have something to post
And then a, cryengine question. Material related. Just spent a few hours getting everything the way I like. The mat has no collision, so I check Physicalize > Default > re-export my mat. Needless to say, it gets nuked & all settings are gone
Anything I'm missing?
Its 1024x1024 but its uncompressed in udk so in game, its 512 realy but its still looks very good.
This could be because you created the map in 8 - bit mode. Try creating it using 16 bit, though this depends on how you created the normal map.
Edit: Since some probably don't know how, I'm gonna drop a quick tutorial on how to get a base for a diffuse texture (something to work off of). And yes I know, I could probably bet money that everyone here knows how to do this, but for some reason there's no tutorial out there for it mainly because of that, and anytime you say that no one needs it is when someone does, so here it is.
Step one: Render out an ao map in xnormal and get it into photoshop, this is the base for everything, duh.
Thats what we start with.
Step two: Next you want to render out a World space normal map, you do this by selecting the three little dots in a green box next to normal map in xnormal, then select the tangent space check mark to make it create world space normal maps.
World space maps are the same as normal maps but instead of being the same direction no matter what side its on, its more like a gradient map, with one color meaning down, one up, ect, it looks like this:
Step three: In any case most people don't use it but what you need it for is the green channel, open it in photoshop and open the channels tab, next to layers, hit the eye next to all the layers but Green, that will give you this:
Select everything and copy that into your original Occlusion map, then set it to multiply, that should give you something like this.
Step four: Next open up 3ds max, first create a skylight, set it in the modifiers tab to Render->Cast shadows, check that and set the rays per sample to something reasonable, 20 is good for high quality textures, but for something small that wont take to long just set it to about 10, the quality is barely noticeable, and if you do it right it shouldn't be seen at all. Hit 0 and bring up the render to texture window, set project to OFF, then set what other settings you usually do for normal maps, make sure to make it "Lighting map" instead of normals or diffuse, tends to work better for me, that should give you something like this:
EDIT: OH, don't forget to set the color of the skylight to white, if you do forget just make sure to de-saturate it before you integrate it into the diffuse.
Ok a bit of explanation, basically it seems for me xnormal renders nicer ao maps, But 3ds max has much broader shadows, so it gets the big smooth gradients while xnormal only gets the little lines and creases, so I combine the two to create a good happy medium.
Step five: Lastly drop that into your diffuse on a multiply layer, and if you want more definition, you can render out a cavity map in xnormal and throw that on a multiply layer, but I noticed that tends to make seams around the edges, so I leave it off. The final project should look something like this:
This is it on the model, in the metro setting in marmoset, for those who don't know the metro setting is almost completely ambient, meaning this is almost 100% the diffuse.
This should give you something nice to work off of when painting your diffuse.
PS: NEVER, EVER, censor what you say because you think it might make me angry, if it makes me angry its probably because its true.
Just wanted to applaud this gentlemenly exchange. This is how more people should interact. Well done sirs, well done indeed. Bonkahe, you are absolutely correct. One should never be offended by the truth, one should only ever seek to change it if it is offensive.
On a side and less "old scholar by the fire" note, it seems that despite my best efforts I have come down with the flu. My progress will be posted in a day or so and will be mirrored on the Pilgrimage.
Keep going guys. Excellent work here!
Cheers~
The material is just a stand in and no lightmaps are baked as the second UV's haven't been setup yet, some normal/lighting issues to sort out....lots to do
[IMG][/img]
Yes, the PolygonPilgrimage is my blog/website/show that is dedicated to artists improving their skills. Check it out if you like @ www.polygonpilgrimage.com
See you all again soon!
Cheers~
I think normal map issues won't never go away... where did you bake them guys?
Hope to improve:
- Highpoly/lowpoly skills
- workflow with CE3
- Baking and Texturing
- Getting a feeling for Scale and modularity.
I also decided to use NDO2 as much as i can.
Edit: (someone know how i put dropbox images into this forum =? )
Edit the image:
- Scale and Grid are now compatible with CE3
- added Scale Charackter
- New Blockout, Thanks Pancake - your mockup helped alot !
@Pancake - can you explain youre workflow here ? Seems well prepared
Is there a solution in maya to increase the grid via shortcut ?
Dat bevel... lol hey Alpha, one thing to bring up, the hatches that are open, seem to be a bit large, also I don't know about drop box, but I use drop canvas, works great as long as you don't care about res and your just trying to show someone something.
In a not un related subject, Wake up guys! everyone must still be asleep.
LIES, I cant hear you! LALALALALALA