Panther Vehicle - Improving modeling and texturing skills
polycounter lvl 7
Current Stage:
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Hello fellow polycounters.
I’m currently in my 3rd year at University set to graduate in May 2014. I’ve started building a portfolio to hopefully join the industry as an Environment Artist.
I received some very positive critique about my old portfolio. Amongst the comments was that I had to improve my modelling and texturing skills. I thought that by doing a nice vehicle I could show both.
I saw this badass concept by Fightpunch and decided to give it a go (the concept has a few blindspots so I filled them im with reference from Military Vehicles etc)
Here’s where I’m at at the moment. The high poly is almost done, here's what needs to be done:
- Take the wheels into ZBrush and make a more accentuated tire.
- Sculpt some bits
- Add something to the rear part of the vehicle, sort of stuck here.
At the same time I have to move on to low poly to meet deadlines etc.
I apologise for the screengrabs, I’ll get round rendering as soon as possible.
For Higher Resolution click here
Thanks everyone, critique and comments more than welcome and appreciated!
____________________________________
Hello fellow polycounters.
I’m currently in my 3rd year at University set to graduate in May 2014. I’ve started building a portfolio to hopefully join the industry as an Environment Artist.
I received some very positive critique about my old portfolio. Amongst the comments was that I had to improve my modelling and texturing skills. I thought that by doing a nice vehicle I could show both.
I saw this badass concept by Fightpunch and decided to give it a go (the concept has a few blindspots so I filled them im with reference from Military Vehicles etc)
Here’s where I’m at at the moment. The high poly is almost done, here's what needs to be done:
- Take the wheels into ZBrush and make a more accentuated tire.
- Sculpt some bits
- Add something to the rear part of the vehicle, sort of stuck here.
At the same time I have to move on to low poly to meet deadlines etc.
I apologise for the screengrabs, I’ll get round rendering as soon as possible.
For Higher Resolution click here
Thanks everyone, critique and comments more than welcome and appreciated!
Replies
As for the rear, the rear could use some large exhaust pipes or something, something to break up the large body frame shapes and the small details. Get some sort of external, medium sized, details going on to break it all up. Nothing crazy, because I personally feel the rear is pretty awesome. Maybe have the exhaust pipes coming off the side or the middle of the back? IDK, its an off road-ing vehicle, got to think about the conditions it will be in, such as water. Just some ideas and basic critique, nice clean work. It is a little mushy, in terms of beveling, but for the bake it should be fine with a solid diffuse and spec.
I totally agree with what you said, once I have a low poly + unwrap i will take the high poly into ZBrush and use radial symmetry to get some nice tires in there!
Deffinately need to add someting to the back to break the flatness of the silhouette. Will do some more research and see what i could add that makes sense (the wheels are too big to be added there).
Thanks for the input, very solid feedback!
High Poly Render:
Higher Res here
Will get round rendering the other angles soon!
Look forward to seeing more.
-Lee
Hi Lee,
I totally agree with you. My idea is to continue as follows: Make a low poly, unwrap it, sculpt certain parts of the high poly and then bake. I think it'll be easier for me to keep track of what has to be done etc (I plan on baking individually and then combining the maps to get less problems).
I probably should've thought about the material setup before rendering, If i have time in the future (which i should probably do at some point), i'll revisit the model and assign a variety of materials.
Thanks for your comments, very constructive!
Here are the remaining renders:
Higher Res versions here: Panther
I will now start making the Low Poly, then unwrap, bake and texture!
A bit of a long post, and I don't mean it's bad, just some things that I personally dislike if the goal was sticking to the concept.
Overall I think you are kind of missing the overall feel off the car.
The concept feels more sleek and angular while yours feels almost stylized/more cartoony in a way.
The proportions overall seem more flat (on the z-axis) and a little longer.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/5585/nkiv.jpg
For example the more triangular flat shapes on the front, or the way the front of the car is constructed.
And also a lot of smaller things, such as the long triangle on the top right of the front wheel.
The part that is numbered 6.
Or the wheels coming out further, and the back wheel a bit more then the front, those things just add to the overall feeling off the car.
You have also added a lot of bolts wich seem a bit out of proportion, they are just thick circles.
Or number 3 for example wich starts of flat, has a nice flow to it and slightly tapers in towards the car, the shape is off, and you also added these random bits wich don't feel really wich kinda "destroy" the original feel.
5) yours is almost a normal hexagon, while the concept, the bottom edges are smaller, the top ones longer, and taper in towards the top.
And together with that, and this is just personal opinion, I kind of dislike the extra parts you added.
4 got changed to a very simple scope/tube, you have the laser targetting on the roof that fits in with that sort of near future, while in yours you have these very old/classic lights on the top
The wheels, I would imagine these being a sort of hubless wheel with the center part driving the whole thing, this is ofcourse my interpretation, but in your model, I am kind of missing how it would work, it feels a bit like a bunch of primitive shapes put together.
Same with the front lights.
Please add some chromatic aberration and also add some different material for small details, like dark materials.
The thing is I didnt stick 100% to the concept. From it I kind of took the following things: the motivation to do a vehicle, the gun, side of the car and bonet. Wherever there was a blind spot in the concept I researched military vehicles (see humvees and all that) and decided to adapt the concept to make it more Humvee-esque. Theres a few reasons for this: If I simply added Humvee parts to the vehicle it was going to look odd, since Fightpunchs concept is more of a futuristic vehicle, and humvees are more current.
The concept also represents a very low car which would most likely not be able to circulate in very rough terrain. On the side note, Im also using this vehicle to enter the UCIII competition, so some changes had to be made to suit the art challenge.
As for the wheels, I mentioned in the first post that theyre just placeholders. When I give the vehicle a Zbrush pass Ill properly get the tire detail in.
I appreciate your comments and Ive taken good note of them. Ill revise everything you said and modify some bits (I agree with 5, will be changing that)
Thanks again!
@Srivignesh: Yes, Ill render out some wireframes when I have some spare time. As for the polycount, its roughly around 1.5 million when smoothed?
I agree with the material thing, its on the list of things to do for when I re-render.
@Kaz: Ive heard good things about Keyshot, probably will give it a go at some point!
The first image is the object that needs to be low poly. My doubt is wether I should do Option 1 or Option 2 (basically make the whole thing as one piece or have the cylinder as a separate piece)
Reasons for each:
Option1:
- Having red and green as separate will probably make for an easier bake.
- Downside is that it will need a bit more UV space
Option 2:
- Will use less UV space
- Denser mesh, maybe harder to bake which could lead to dodgy normal maps.
I would like to hear what everyone thinks regarding this aspect.
Thanks in advance!
Started it, sometimes modeling again from scratch and other times salvaging from the high poly. It currently sits at 12.5k, aiming at something around 30-50k (I will most likely be doing some LOD'ing).
At the moment the geometry is not very optimized, this pass shall come last i think.
C&C welcome
@Chandler: Thanks for the input. I ended up going (for now) with option 1. I've spotted i few places where i could re-use the green mesh so i'm going to roll with that. If it comes to a point where i actually do need to get as much texture space as possible i'll switch to option 2.
I do agree my model is rather different to the concept, but I'm glad you think the High Poly works on it's own
The reason for not optimizing as a go atm is that i'm just blocking out the low poly, i might add a few bevels here and there once the first pass is done. If i optimize the edge flow might change and itll make it a bit trickier to add bevels.
Thanks for the input, i'll update with more soon, other uni projects have kept me busy
Crit and comments welcome!
On to UV'ing
Hi Joao! Thanks for the comments, I do think in some places I might have gone over the top a little bit. However there's a few reasons for which I've gone so high poly with this. Here they are:
- Theres quite a few cylindrical objects in the scene: wheels, tubes, headlights, turret, exhaust pipe. All these objects require a lot of geometry to keep a nice and smooth silhouette. Ive been told in the past that I should be spending a lot more polygons on rounded objects. I kind of stuck with that and ensured the round objects in the car had enough polygons to keep the roundness shape.
- UVing. Im going to try and put all of the vehicle into one 2k texture map. Ive bevelled a lot of the edges so that when it comes to UVing I dont have to have a split edge, which would lead to a lot more UV islands and I would end up using a lot of UV space. By having the bevelled edges I wont be needing to split edges and will end up with more UV space (theres quite a few pieces to this car as it is)
- Having several LODs. Im working towards a very high res vehicle, but I do intend to then make a few LODs out of it. I mean, surely if im playing a game and I come very close to a vehicle, the last thing I want to see is razor sharp edges.
- Not done optimising, hopefully I can bring it down.
Im not saying my reasons are correct, but what I just wrote was my thinking process. I still have to UV and bake this, maybe once I start doing that I modify the low poly etc.
Id like to see what everyone thinks about my points, are they sensible and logic? Or have I gone completely nuts hehe?
Thanks polycount!
the thing is , its a pretty boxy looking model and the only areas that imo deserve some more polies might be the wheels.
"UVing. I’m going to try and put all of the vehicle into one 2k texture map. I’ve bevelled a lot of the edges so that when it comes to UVing I don’t have to have a split edge, which would lead to a lot more UV islands and I would end up using a lot of UV space. By having the bevelled edges I won’t be needing to split edges and will end up with more UV space (there’s quite a few pieces to this car as it is)"
Im sorry , but i had to re-read this sentence to believe what i was reading, i think you should re read the thread on technical talk about it.
the thing is ... its a pretty boxy model , and you are trying to justify polywaste , i didnt even see the wireframe and i can see loads of areas that i bet have tons of tris that contribute to the silhouette at all mate
Good luck
I realised aswell that when it comes to unwrapping there's going to be a seam somewhere, so might aswell make that edge a hard edge and save a few polys and let the normal map do it's job, like you said,Joao.
I'll be revising the model and reducing all unnecessary beveling, see where i can take this model to.
Thanks for the critique, has been very helpful!
Probably won't be able to tell difference but the reduction of polys is there. Ideally I want to bring this down to 20k for the Unearthly Challenge competition, but we'll see
High Res shot where you can actually see stuff: http://i.imgur.com/wWpMZAx.jpg
(ImageShack isn't the best >.< )
And I've gone ahead and UV'ed the car, here's the result (might move things around, but i'm sort of happy with how it came out)
I hope i've left engouh space in between uv islands. Some are really tight but one way or another i'll make this work!
The purple is due to mirroring in the low poly.
On to baking!
I'm sure if you removed even a few of the divisions in some of the cylinders you'd see a big saving, the only issue being if you don't decided to remove ever other edge loop, your going to need to re model them to keep them even
Sorry if some of these are just ones you haven't got round to doing yet, but hopefully it will help a bit!
edit: Just seen your aiming for 20k, you'd get there easy with by taking out some of the cylinder divisions, look at the front bull bar and the larger exhaust. Also remember if you can save 100 poly on a wheel that adds up to 400 across all 4 so worth a try!
edit 2 !: Also look at the side step bits, could you change the design slightly so they are half circles going to a flat edge under the vehicle, would knock of a chunk of polys I would think.
Cheers
I also just realised that whats taking most of my polycount at the moment are the AMMO boxes, so Ill deffinately be simplyfing a lot those (at the moment overall they are 5k, which, realising theyre simply boxes, seems too much).
As for the purple things you mentioned should be in the bake. The reason I kept them as geometry is because Im going to be re-using them somewhere else in the vehicle. Also some stuff is mirrored in the car so having that kind of objects placed on one side but not the other will break up the repetition.
As for the car itself, it now stands at 19,5k, which gives me room for 500 polygons for the AMMO boxes which should be fine hopefully. This way I can stick to the 20k the Unearthly Challenge dictates.
Unfortunately I saw Bencs suggestions after I had done the bake for the vehicle, here is the normal map:
And here is what it looks like when applied to the low poly vehicle:
High Res Screenshot here: http://i.imgur.com/wn9eS8G.jpg
Ive noticed theres a few issues with the bake, which Ive written down in a list and will start working on them asap (if anyone else spots anything not mentioned please do say so)
- On the Door Platform the normal map becomes jagged
- Same with the turret mount
- The door hinge/cylinder didnt bake down properly
- Nasty stuff happening where the front window meets the side window
- Rear part The handle type things havent baked properly nor have the bolts in the piece underneath the rear part.
- Part of the Exhaust pipe detail isnt showing
- Some bolts in the bonnet havent baked or have baked flipped.
These seem to be easy fixes as they pretty much have to do with the cage. If I still cant get them right after I few tries it might just be easier to paint out in photoshop.
Thanks everyone, quite happy with how things are going with this.
I'm thinking about having it snow-type vehicle as oposed to desert.
HighRes: http://i.imgur.com/I9McTd7.jpg
Crits, comments and suggestions as to what I could do to the vehicle are welcome! I'm interested in seeing what people can think off.
Thanks!
@Zinco: Thanks for the support, i'll keep updating
@Neil: Thanks, I won't disappoint, i'll make this look good
Here's a bit more on the diffuse. Still blocking colours really, hard to get the perfect balance between dark and light tones, but i'm getting there.
Added another colour to the camo stripes, not sure if I should make the marks bigger to avoid having a very noisy texture, or if I should proceed how it is. Suggestions?
Once I'm happy with the colour i'll start adding scratches, mud etc...
High Res Version: http://i.imgur.com/oVV38bg.jpg
Crits, comments and suggestions more than welcome!
But anyway, here's an update
(Scratches are very strong atm just so that i can see where they're going. They;ll be mainly in the specular pass, rather than the diffuse)
For the meantime Ive been experimenting with Tesselation to get the tires to pop out a bit more. Ive managed to get the pop out, but Ive come across problems.
Heres whats happening:
And heres the setup:
Theres nothing too fancy in the setup, or the texture itself. Where I drew the red line theres also a Hard Edge (not sure if that could be the problem)
Thanks polycount!
Otherwise I think the model looks great but the material definition could be improved (especially the tires, way too shiny). The normalmap looks a bit off in the UDK shot as well, which I'd guess is because of either compression or unsynched tangents (the normalmap you posted looked fine though). I'd re-bake the tire pattern with some bigger bevels (like this) as they will look a lot better. You could also try to bake the tires flat as you would then get no projection issues like you currently have on them, where instead they would all look the same.
All in all I'd say it's coming along nicely, so keep up the good work.
I totally agree with the material definition. Its something Ive struggled with in the past and that I really want to get working properly in this project.
As for the wheels. I wanted to get some good information there and tried to sculpt them in ZBrush (radial symmetry + drag down with an alpha of the pattern) but it sort of killed the curvature of the wheel and didnt come out great. I guess what you suggest is the way forward, bake a flat tire and then combine the detail information with the normal map of the smooth wheel to get the curvature normal map too?
Thanks for the positive feedback!
I realised I hadnt shared what I submitted for the Unearthly Challenge, here are a few shots (I couldnt update them, so the shots shown dont have Nosslaks critique applied)
Beauty Shot:
Textures:
Wireframe:
Unfortunately im going to have to put this project temporarily on hold, Uni deadlines require I move forward. I'll come back to this roughly in christmas time (yep, no christmas for me
Thanks!
- The camoflage pattern would probably be painted with paints of similar properties which means that the spec and gloss between the different colors shouldn't differ a lot (most of the difference should be in the diffuse, only small if any difference in the others).
- It's hard to differentiate what is supposed to be bare metal and what is not. I'd use a darker diffuse with a bright specular and gloss for those parts.
- The glass need a lot more grunge and dust as they're spotless when the rest is very dirty. The footstand could use some more grunge as well.
Agreed on the diffuse issue. I was having trouble to see the spec come out because the diffuse was very bright, will be darkening that and let the specular/gloss be more visible.
Thanks for your feedback Nosslak, much appreciated!
This is the result after roughly an hour. I will most likely be using this to render my vehicle. I haven't had chance to work on the textures yet, i shall be doing that over christmas.
Thanks!
I finally have some spare time to come back to my vehicle, which I had to leave on hold.
I still need to work mroe on the textures and add some decals here and there. The AMMO boxes are yet to be textured and I'm currently thinking what i could add to improve the presentation (might have some ammo boxes on the floor next to the vehicle). Rotating one of the wheels is also on the list of things to do.
Spent a bit more time dabbling with Marmo, i have a good feeling about it
Crits and comments more than welcome, thanks!
Try some different angles and dofs, I think it would look more interesting from a higher angle.
Keep experimenting, good luck
Thanks buddy. I agree with something not too distracting. I did try with the lights on (quick experiment) but it didn't work very well, i might have to spend some good time to see if i can get it to work.
Ill deffinately experiment with those too, see what i can come up with.
Will update soon, dissertation is taking some time away from me
Also, wouldn't there be snow in the crevices on the wheels? (horrible at terminology)
Thanks! I'm happy to with how they came out. All the hard effort put into the high poly was worth it hehe.
Not exactly what you mean?
Update:
I've been busy with my dissertation stuff but here's a quick update with how I plan on presenting my vehicle.
My doubts are wether I should have a different platform. The one i have at the moment is simple but doesn't distract too much the attention from the vehicle, and i'm worried that maybe adding loads of stuff will make it "noisy".
I'd love to hear what more experienced people think about this.
Many thanks!
May be you can put some rocks on the platform, but let the experienced people give their opinion
tarickTDS: Thanks for the support!
Updates very soon!
Tried to keep it simple and not too distracting.
Thanks