Snafubar - Conscience

Snafubar7

I'm working on an indie game called Conscience, and I'll use this thread to post everything I'm doing for that project.

My most recent prop is a high res pencil to be used in a cinematic. I have very little zbrush experience and I'm just developing my workflow around it.






My process here was: base mesh from maya, bring it into zbrush, detail it, decimate and export back to maya, retopo in maya as best I could, bake the normal, use ndo to rip the AO out of the normal, make the diffuse from the AO (essentially putting the AO as multiply layer on top and having color layers underneath), and then I made the spec from my diffuse.

My main question is what else can I do to push this simple prop? Was my process optimal/efficient? ...am I on crack?

I'm so used to doing hand painted textures that I get lost around texturing something I've sculpted..I feel like I shouldn't paint in any lighting information because that's what my normal and spec is going to take care of, and I also feel like all details I would usually put in my hand painted textures should have been sculpted in the first place (again taken care of by the normal/spec), so I just lay in flat colors and call it done -- then proceed to feel strange. I had a handful of students around me say that's all I need to do and I don't believe them.

Comments and feedback welcome.

sargentcrunch

n/a

c22dunbar

bitemarks, where are they? it's no pencil without ones. try embedding the model in sketchfab.

plus the specular needs some more work, if You just convert it from normal then You might as well dump it altogether cos many engines can generate specular either from normalmap or diffuse.

Snafubar7

@c22dunbar - haha yeah bite marks, I thought about it. I'll look into sketchfab. For the spec I masked a bunch of levels layers for each different material and dragged the sliders around, so you're probably right if everything in my diffuse is the same material. Or maybe I underestimate the engine and I'm wrong... Either way, thanks -- I hadn't thought about it.

@sargentcrunch thanks! maybe some damage along the metal would fit.

sargentcrunch

n/a

Goten-trunk

looks good to me modeling wise but texturing need more work, work on specular add some scratches & paint fade off effect and metal part should have bitemarks

TonyNowak

A tad high poly, the metal grip holding the eraser in place could have been textured in, but it looks to be modeled in. Did you really need ZBrush for this? I figured you could've done all these details, a bit sharper, in Photoshop, then used nD02 for the normals. You could've even done the normal before the diffuse?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Rwj0mQTMrK8

Take a look at this and save yourself a lot of time and effort. The final result will be a lot better and more clearly defined. The normals you have now as well as the AO look blurred or off in places.

Snafubar7

I didn't quite have time to make drastic changes to the pencil and I feel like a jackass for it when you guys give me all this good feedback. I'll find time soon. I was behind on making this ruler (since I had to redo it completely).





This ruler is supposed to be in our CG trailer and will be in a closeup shot so it needs a lot of attention/detail. I figure it's for a high res cinematic so I was wasteful with the texture size and poly count.

TonyNowak - Thanks for that link! It saved me a lot of headache compared to the way I was thinking of doing the normals for the numbers/ridges on the ruler.

Goten-trunk - Thanks for the suggestions, I'll see if I can get around to making the pencil look like it's well traveled.

Summer classes are starting soon so this will really test my time management

And to remind people who may have skipped past this bit -- the high poly count on both of these props is because it's going into a rendered cinematic trailer and I'm assuming a much higher budget. These are my first super high res props.