Mech Walker - WTB Critiques

OnionCake

This is the newest version, as per changes from friends/comments. I'd love any comments/critiques you guys could give. :]

LATEST:




I went ahead and painted a low-res pinup girl for the side of this thing. Proportions are off, but It's not supposed to be a serious focus. It ended up on a 512 sheet with some other floaters.




ORIGINAL POST:
So, I'm about 95% finished with this, and it's the perfect time for critiquing.

Unfortunately, no crazy massive overhauls to the design are going to be made. The hull is a little weak, and I'm aware of that, but ah well. Next time I'll spend more time designing a better looking mech.

High Poly was in Keyshot, Game-Version was in Marmoset.
I started with a quick dDo base for material definition, turned all the crazy options down, then dirtied it up myself.

It's using 2x2048/1x512. And it's around 38k Polys, which is a bit of a problem, but I'd rather have quality over efficiency for a portfolio piece that isn't going into a game. :] For the final presentation, I'll have it on a rocky landscape with some ground textures and rocks.

Tear it apart! For best viewing, right-click->View in new tab.

Side-note: I just revamped my website, so if you end up going to it, and have a critique, I'd love to hear what you have to say.

skyline5gtr

shape and overall wear is a nice touch, only thing that bugs me is it seems to be pretty low resolution in some areas on the hull with some pixel distortion. I'm sure some people would like to see the UV map. There is not as much color variation as I would personally like to see but overall I like it, materials are pretty well defined

OnionCake

Thanks Skyline!

I've heard that from friends too. There's just a lot of surface volume for this thing, and I couldn't justify going above 2x2048s. I looked at other games, and many of the vehicles have this same problem, so I'm not too worried about the texture resolution.

For the color variation, I was trying to keep it a little more toned down, but maybe adding some extra colors would make the whole thing pop a little more.

Here's the 2 2048s. There's certainly some unefficient usage on the body, like large sections that are't seen, because they're overlapped by another mesh.


Body(Including Hydraulics):


Legs:

skyline5gtr

wow that is alot of parts lol id say the only issue is when designing/building trying to be more budget friendly. Use instances and symmetry to cut down on the space, i mean the thing is huge so kinda comes with the territory

Deathstick

That's a pretty sweet model! One of the few suggestions I can give for large objects would probably be to try and test out some tiling textures for various parts in order to increase the resolution. It's something I noticed done a lot for massive spaceship models and the like, usually factored into the design when building it, although I'm not quite sure how it would work for something like this.

konstruct

Looks cool-

next time you should do larger beveling on the high-poly, and more beveling on the low poly. All the 90 degree angles makes it so you`re losing out on a lot of cool specular edge highlights that would really make the shapes pop.

also, more operation instruction decals! might be cool to make up some company, or affiliation logos, aswell. Put these things on a decal sheet so you can control how symmetrical/asymmetrical the placement is.

nice work!

OnionCake

Thanks everyone !

@Deathstick - Yeah, I should have done that, looking back now. I'll certainly do that in the future because this had waaaay too many parts. hahaha

@Konstruct - I would have kept a little bevel on the LP, but I was already way too high on the polycount, but for my next mech, I'll probably be scaling down a bit, so I'll give that a shot. I agree on the decals! I'll put more on, because I definitely have a bit more texture space to work with.

Sean VanGorder

I'd have to agree with what's already been said, especially konstruct's comment. The edges in the high poly are super sharp, so that plus the low resolution in some spots makes the normal map almost non existent.

HatPoweredSpyCrab

Hey there, Pretty nice piece you got here OnionCake >.<
I was wondering which maps did you used, as I am a bit new to this... Diffuse, Specular, Normal, and which is the other one? a kind of reflections? AO? not sure about it

OnionCake

HA. Love your name.

It's a gloss map, here's some info about them:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=90709

Aaand, some examples about making them (I don't think all of these tutorials use them, but I remember that's how I learned how to make them):
http://www.philipk.net/tutorials/materials/materials.html

seth.

great model, but I think that the size of your presentation shots is doing you no favours, you have area's of the model that might be 512 or less in texture res, blown up to 2-3 times that size for the beauty shots, it's not helping to have that image size without the res to back it up...other than that and the already mentioned stuff I think its pretty ace.

OnionCake

Thanks Seth.

I altered some stuff, added a pinup girl, and did those renders at 1080, which should be fine for anyone looking.