Advice, critique and pointers for a beginners project

AlKoponen

Hello there.

I recently started to study 3d techniques and do some modeling in my spare time. I think I got all the basics down, like building clean mesh, UVW mapping, baking maps, texturing diffuse, specular and normal maps.

I'm a bit afraid of moving to higher polycount before I master these basics, so I kindly ask you to point out some mistakes, errors or things that could have been done better.

Programs that I use are 3ds Max 2013 and for texturing Photoshop with Nvidia Normal Map filter.

Below is part of one practice project that I'm working on. It's simple low poly castle set. Slam me with all the bad things you can find from it.

Thank you in advance! :thumbup:

http://www.sharecg.com/v/73627/view/5/3D-Model/AK-Poorlords-keep

Mossbros

Looks perfectly fine, Never doubt your abillities especially when moving from low poly towards high poly.

The only thing I would do before venturing into high poly is to simply read up on how it all works, differences between subdivision modes, how to control edges by using supporting geometry and one last thing, using geometry that isn't attached to your main mesh is your best friend in moving from low poly to high poly as it allows you to add support edges without effecting other parts of your mesh.

Practice is the best form of education, so just start whenever you think you know the basics and experiment.

Steve Schulze

That's looking pretty solid.

One thing I might suggest is that you shouldn't be afraid of using floating geometry. It looks like you've built this guy as one contiguous mesh, where you could have saved yourself some polys and mucking about by simple sitting details like the external windows, buttresses and chimney thing on top of the mesh that makes up the walls.

AlKoponen

Thanks for the tips guys.

AlKoponen

I'm going to do more similar medieval architectural stuff for practice and I've been told that I should use more single tileable textures rather than one large 4096x texture to improve resolution/texture quality, and reuse/optimization.

What do you think about this? Any down sides?

Snader

The downside is you have to think about how you build your texture atlas, and how to use it in concordance with your mesh.

But the upside is that you can use the same brick texture on every building in the scene, instead of having 10 different ones for every building, which means that you can have a higher resolution texture. Also it makes for a more modular workflow which (for anything except a simple prop) means you'll be faster.

AlKoponen

Snader wrote: »

The downside is you have to think about how you build your texture atlas, and how to use it in concordance with your mesh.

But the upside is that you can use the same brick texture on every building in the scene, instead of having 10 different ones for every building, which means that you can have a higher resolution texture. Also it makes for a more modular workflow which (for anything except a simple prop) means you'll be faster.

Thanks for clearing that out!

Sythen

If you plan on using this in Unreal or any modern game engine, you can use tilable textures and use your AO channels on a separate UV Coordinate. So as to achieve your beautiful AO bakes and your tileables.

A little more advanced, but look into it

Otherwise it looks very beautiful, I'd recommend staying away from the nVidia Normals Filter. In comparison to what's available it's not a very good choice to keep with. I use nDo 2 from Quixel to convert any textures to normals, xNormal for baking normals from high poly, Crazy Bump is free to, though there is a license for commercial use. Knald was recently released too.

One last thing to look out for with normals, is that when Unreal Tournament's team were using it for their normal maps, they mentioned that you need to crank then nVidia filter to 20-40 to get a very good normal out of it. But then it depends on what you're exporting to, Unity, UDK, Cry.. etc.

Keep going! It's looking awesome, I'd love to see more. There's not really much I can give in the forms of critique, the model seems pretty solid

AlKoponen

Sythen wrote: »

If you plan on using this in Unreal or any modern game engine, you can use tilable textures and use your AO channels on a separate UV Coordinate. So as to achieve your beautiful AO bakes and your tileables.

A little more advanced, but look into it

Otherwise it looks very beautiful, I'd recommend staying away from the nVidia Normals Filter. In comparison to what's available it's not a very good choice to keep with. I use nDo 2 from Quixel to convert any textures to normals, xNormal for baking normals from high poly, Crazy Bump is free to, though there is a license for commercial use. Knald was recently released too.

One last thing to look out for with normals, is that when Unreal Tournament's team were using it for their normal maps, they mentioned that you need to crank then nVidia filter to 20-40 to get a very good normal out of it. But then it depends on what you're exporting to, Unity, UDK, Cry.. etc.

Keep going! It's looking awesome, I'd love to see more. There's not really much I can give in the forms of critique, the model seems pretty solid

Thanks for the info. I'll check those alternative programs for normal mapping.

AlKoponen

Ok, made new model with all the stuff I learned so far. I exported the object into the UDK and it seems fine. Only problem is that I had to up the lightmap resolution to 256 in order to get rid of the shadow problems. Is 256 sized lightmap too big for model of this size?

Also a question about collision model. What is the best method of making one? Should I make one from early version of the model or is there easy way to "simplify" the final version into collision model?

http://www.sharecg.com/v/73940/view/5/3D-Model/AK-Bloodraven-Longhouse