Mass Effect Reaper
polycounter lvl 9
Hey! So I've been wanting to do a Reaper from the Mass effect games for a long time now and finally I have made some progress, so I figured I start a proper thread for it now 
Highpoly is pretty much done, need some tweaks here and there and might add some more micro details but I will mostly do the smaller stuff with nDo.
The lowpoly currently weights in at 42k tris and my goal is to get it down to around 30k which I think is pretty reasonable for a "vehicle" this size, these bad boys stand 1,6 kilometer tall after all so don't want to compromise too much on the shapes ^^
Will probably use 2 separete 2k texture maps for it, one for the legs and one for the body for better resolution. Planning on rendering this inside UDK so I can play with some shaders and if that doesn't work out too well I´ll fallback on marmoset or even Cryengine, it depends
Next up is optimizing and UVs.
Highpoly:
Low (WIP)
Highpoly is pretty much done, need some tweaks here and there and might add some more micro details but I will mostly do the smaller stuff with nDo.
The lowpoly currently weights in at 42k tris and my goal is to get it down to around 30k which I think is pretty reasonable for a "vehicle" this size, these bad boys stand 1,6 kilometer tall after all so don't want to compromise too much on the shapes ^^
Will probably use 2 separete 2k texture maps for it, one for the legs and one for the body for better resolution. Planning on rendering this inside UDK so I can play with some shaders and if that doesn't work out too well I´ll fallback on marmoset or even Cryengine, it depends
Next up is optimizing and UVs.
Highpoly:
Low (WIP)
Replies
Nice job!
Test bake of one of the smaller legs:
My initial plan is to have all the legs on one 4k texture and the body on one 4k texture, might resize down if needed but these guys are like 1.6 kilometer tall so they are pretty huge so I think that level of detail could work
Got some test baking and UVing left but hopefully I can start the texturing process pretty soon!
I havent really decided on the engine yet but its leaning towards Marmoset 2 (I must buy it first) or Unreal since I can do some shader stuff in there
ignore the seam in the middle I haven't welded it yet.
Going to start detailing with Ndo now and will post a fancier render once everything is ready for texturing, just though I should make an update on this : ]
* I just spotted the slightly wavy line on the "nose" and have adjusted it properly
Marmoset 1 render and the lower one is Diffuse bakes only
Can't wait to see this fully done.
pretty plain at the moment trying to get some subtle surface details before I add some "space dust" and such. I will also try to get some more variation in the metal color, now everything is pretty plain blueish metal. I'm currently only working on the legs so the rest is still just base colors.
I love the execution of the modeling, make sure you get that sexy iridescent-esque specular in there
But its a good idea to get a scale reference in there while I'm texturing! gonna try that
I have no idea if making your own little logo for fanart is cool or not haha but I guess I can always erase it..
Subbed.
I ended up doing 2 separate maps for it, one that has all the legs on it and one for the core body - was easier to keep the resolution nice this way. its kind of how they did the in-game cutscene marines in Starcraft 2 : ]
I'm currently working in 4k and the I mapped the legs they will each get a 2k texture and if I resize to 2k they would all get 1k each and so forth.. The texel density match up much better between the legs and the body this way and also gives me more resolution to work with than making a single texture for everything.
This would leave me with 2 Albedo maps 2 Normalmaps and one texture where I can store my roughness and metalness information in the separate channels.
Or take it one step further and remove the blue channel from my normal maps and place the metalness maps there since they aren't that detailed or precise in my case - removing the need for an alpha channel in my roughness texture.
1 more texture than if I would have done everything with one sheet per texture type( 2 more if you would choose to embedd the metallness into the blue channel of your normalmap)
Going to do the final emissive map next, get rid of that ugly blockout.
The emissive could use a push like you've mentioned and I'll suggest maybe a unique mark/scar/damage or something to make your reaper a bit more unique instead of just another reaper.
You're going to do a base for it yeah? Like a destroyed skyscraper or something to really push the size and scale of the thing
Keep up the great work Fozworth!
Ill try to add some more "character" to it! might be a little tricky since almost everything is mirrored in some way.
Yeah, I think a base is the way to go if I want the scale to come across, at least for the full-body shots. Dont think I have it in me at the moment to make an entire scene with it, but if I would get my hands on UE4 it would definitely be something I might do!
Think some skyscrapers and a little bit of scorched ground would do it
Trying to gather as much feedback as possible so I have a clear "to do" list as I make the final push for this
but yeah something about the emissiveness of all those blue lights looks off to me, i would probably push the emissive of them more or add a slight bloom to them or something, they don't really look very 'glowy' right now
I think I'm going for some skyscrapers and ruins for the moment but I will probably keep this as a little pet project and do some fun stuff with it, there are so many possibilities! will try to rig it as well so I can pose it a little.
I just need to put a "done" sticker on it for now and put it on my website and let it rest for a while ^^
Yeah I agree