First Year University Work
polycounter lvl 10
I am now at the end of my my first of university. We were assigned to model a highpoly tank which we baked it's details onto a low-poly tank. I now am creating a report and need industry/professional feedback. What do you guys think?
High-Poly
Maps
Low-Poly
Current issues I have found is that I havnt scaled my UV's appropriatly to their size on the tank, resulting in pixelling dirt and scratch on the tank.
Thanks!!
High-Poly
Maps
Low-Poly
Current issues I have found is that I havnt scaled my UV's appropriatly to their size on the tank, resulting in pixelling dirt and scratch on the tank.
Thanks!!
Replies
Some things that you could improve on for next time.
Diffuse: I know it's hard to add extra detail onto a tanks diffuse. But you could have investigated adding some camouflage to make it less blocky.
Normal: Your normal maps look fairly clean. When projecting circular objects onto lower geometry you can get "wavey" lines in the normals. It's worth fixing these in photoshop with transform and blur tools.
Specular: The specular seems underused. Riddling it with scratches and dents would make the tank look more realistic when flickering in the light.
For example with the 413 sticker/paint. Instead having it at 0 specularity, you could have done the opposite. However have black scratches from aging. This could have been coupled with your diffuse. Also there's no use putting your diffuse (including scratches) onto your specualr. With tanks it's either shiny or it's not so try bump the contrast.
Rendering: Try avoid rendering onto black backgrounds. At the moment we can't see the tracks. Also check you've added your maps correctly.
Investigate the picture, It doesn't seem you have your AO or any shading.
My advise would be to go back and implement the things I said. Not only would it improve your grade. But will give evidence of you applying feedback to your work. Also giving you something to write about in your report.
In regards to my specular, could you elaborate a bit? What do you mean by there is no use putting my diffuse onto the specular?
Do you suggest i play with the Levels and add in additional black scratches?
I have placed my AO on top of my diffuse within photoshop, should I darken the AO a bit?
I have now added in white-grey scratches onto my diffuse, aswell as putting them into my specular and changed their colour values to black. Furthermore I have changed the colour numbers on the side to White.
How is it looking?
Applied specular to my material in 3ds max and re-rendered.
Edit - adjusted the Specular.
Or if metal has a polished or gloss finish. Imperfections in metals would not shine as much.
Tip. Specular maps and seams can be your no1 enemy. Don't have different values of specularity on each side of the seam as it will show.
This includes scratches. Keep scratches away from your seams, take advantage of where you have stitched your geometry and place edge scratches there.
Tip. download xoliul viewport shader and and move an omni light around.
You should be fixing these in your 3D app by using a projection cage for your baking.
I'd strongly discourage doing stuff like that in Photoshop 'cause it becomes inconsistent. If you need to shuffle your UVs around, you don't want to re-bake it, then have go through and nudge it all back into place. It's a lot of work, it alters the normals and it's not consistently repeatable.
With a cage, you can edit your UVs as much as you like and be guaranteed a clean bake each time.
So dark means it has a very broad highlight and white means it's a very sharp and focused highlight. The shades of grey will blend between those extremes.
Combined with specular you can define a really nice range of materials.
After messing about with the specular this is what I have got so far.
And this is the Specular Map
Aah I think I know what you are speaking off, Should I edit my specular map to create the gloss maps? and if so, How?
Thanks again everyone for all the feedback.
The paintwork would be pretty matt, so a dark/mid grey. Then get the scratches that have gone through to the base metal and up their specular value with a brighter gloss to help them shine.
You can see in the picture Croftyness posted, the scratches are really brightly shiny (high spec) because it's cut through to unoxidised metal, but they're not very glossy because they have a rough surface where it's been scratched (low gloss). Which is why they're so much brighter than the rest of the metal.
That surface detail is killing the low poly as well. I would be really careful about adding normal map information onto metal. It makes it look like stone instead of metal. It's okay to have some details, etc. but just let it be accomplished in the diffuse and specular maps and not in the normal map. Unless it's a huge dent or something.
I think your diffuse textures are scaled way too much and is causing the entire texture to have a low resolution.
My specular needs work... definitely, could you highlight any areas that need to pop-out?
I agree that the normal maps makes the metal look stony, I shall reduce it down.
Check out this link on spec maps.
http://www.manufato.com/?p=902