Foxhound vehicle - Portfolio piece

Mathis

Hey everyone,
I'm currently working on a British military off road vehicle called Foxhound. This vehicle (highpoly+lowpoly bake only) is going to be part of my bachelor thesis and it's also going to be the main portfolio piece when I'm going to apply for a job in the game industry within this month.

I'm planning to create some modular pieces (like a transport or recon version) but these version only exist in my mind so far. Maybe I'll show them off later on in this thread as well.

As I said before, I would like this vehicle to be my main portfolio piece, so if you have any feedback how to improve the look and feel of it, please don't hesitate to tell me.

Edit: Nearly forgot to mention- if you still have some time left and feel like criticize something, feel free to check my website ( www.mathiswidrat.com screenshots below aren't uploaded to the main site yet).








Last but not least- the highpoly:



I also would like to show of one weapon I made for the Foxhound, even so it's not the official weapon used by the British army.

The M2 Browning with 5,6k Tris / 3k Polys:




Please let me know what you're thinking

Scifix

Having dirty thoughts...mmmm. Seriously though, great model. I would work on having some better lighting on the interior. Right now is very flat and indirect. e.g. the front seats and dashboard. And the tire normals aren't quite right in my eyes. Take my comments with a grain of salt because I am a noob.

Voncire

NIce model i really like the inside shots where did you get your refs for it?

beefaroni

The low-poly tires don't look correct. The treads appear to be extruding outwards rather than inwards.

Envart

What are you using to render the model?

Bek

You might want to rebake the Browning with a cage; there are a lot of projection problems. Just look at the edges of the larger holes along the barrel, or the smaller ones that are heavily skewed. In fact these problems are evident in the vehicle too—you have a lot of bake errors.

Your highpoly's look nice (although depending on map size you'll probably want to loosen up some of the edges); you might as well spend the extra time getting a better bake. And as Beefaroni pointed out the tyres are quite obviously wrong on the low—green channel needs to be flipped perhaps?

Fraeger

Looks very nice!
I Do agree, there are some Projection Errors in the Gun which you might want to get rid of. Also 17k Polys is pretty low for a Vehicle, so you might be able to invest a couple more polygons on the gun (like on the round holes on the barrel).
Also, I noticed a couple of bolts that are baked into the normalmap where you clearly see they were baked (due to the perspective distortion). Making those bolts flatter in the Highpoly and rebaking would make that problem much less obvious.

But as I said, very nice model and overall a pretty nice and clean bake.

merc-ai

Nice choice with the Foxhound, it's one of the cooler military vehicles that is often overlooked.
Great work on vehicle and interior!

Foxhound[DEV]

Tis looking quite nice their sire Cant wait to see it ingame

Mathis

Thanks for all those comments, seems like I still have quite some stuff to do before sending my applications

Scifix wrote: »

I would work on having some better lighting on the interior. Right now is very flat and indirect. And the tire normals aren't quite right in my eyes.

Indeed the indoor lighting would need some work, currently there's only light sources outside the jeep which shine through the material.
And yeah, the tire's normal was mentioned quite often (beefaroni and bek), should spend some more work on those as well.

Voncire wrote: »

NIce model i really like the inside shots where did you get your refs for it?

From different sources in the world wide web. Sadly there aren't so many interior shots...

Walrus wrote: »

What are you using to render the model?

3dsmax render with Mental Ray.

Bek wrote: »

Just look at the edges of the larger holes along the barrel, or the smaller ones that are heavily skewed.

yeah those large holes keeping me busy. Also I will try to flatten some parts like Fraeger told me, hopefully I'll get rid of most of the distortion.

Foxhound[DEV] wrote: »

Cant wait to see it ingame

Me too

Thanks again for all those constructive comment, going to post the reworked screenshots soon.

Envart

if you're applying for a job, it might be helpful to render the low poly from within a games engine, or something like marmoset 2.

Great work.

Mathis

Walrus wrote: »

if you're applying for a job, it might be helpful to render the low poly from within a games engine, or something like marmoset 2.

Thanks for the feedback. I just imported the model+normalmap+ao into the Udk. Even so there are still some baking errors left (e.g. on the interior seats) I'm still happy how it came out. Some screenshots:






Hope I fixed most of the stuff you guys mentioned. If anyone still sees something that should be fixed... well, you know- don't hesitate to tell me

Oh and thanks Bek and beefaroni for another hint, I indeed just forgot to flip a channel for the wheel's normalmap

I also worked on the M2 BRowning, mainly to fix those cuts on the holes at the barrel. I think they are quite fine now, what do you guys think? click me to view the image

Finally I also managed to upload the Mk19 grenade launcher to my website. You view the two images here and here. Unfortunately I only created the highpoly so far.

DWalker

On the grenade launcher, the charging handles are at an odd intermediate position. Except when charging the weapon, they are forward and up.

Envart

Try running your normal map through http://www.handplane3d.com/
it might fix some of the normal map issues on the UDK display of your model.

jbk

hello everyone.
I have a small question, how do I render on gray background in UDK?
thank you for your response.

Mathis

DWalker wrote: »

Except when charging the weapon, they are forward and up.

That's exactly why it's at this position, like you can see on the first image.

Walrus wrote: »

Try running your normal map through

handplane only throws some odd textures into my face. I baked another normal in xnormal anyway, hope you like it more (updated the images). Please keep in mind that some errors might be caused by lightmap/AO, I think I didn't fixed all of those errors yet.

jbk wrote: »

hello everyone.
I have a small question, how do I render on gray background in UDK?
thank you for your response.

Simply place a exponential height fog and nothing else and play with the setting. It's quite a simple way I guess.

dazzerfong

There's still quite a fair bit of errors, especially around the grille area, unless that's intentional.

Dustinmaertz

I feel like there is something wrong with the bake, inverted green channel maybe?

Mathis

dazzerfong wrote: »

There's still quite a fair bit of errors, especially around the grille area, unless that's intentional.

Hehe, nope it's not. But I fmainly fixed the poblem- was caused be a lightmap and normalmap error.

Dustinmaertz wrote: »

I feel like there is something wrong with the bake, inverted green channel maybe?

Green channel is fine. Anyway I'm still trying to fix some errors and uploaded a new version with less visible errors (many were caused by the lightmap). You can check the new version right here. Still fixing last errors.

Also started to make another scout version of the Foxhound by removing and adding modular pieces. The pipes are not ready yet btw. Feedback still welcome.

neilberard

I definitely think it's your normal map. I would just place a flat color on the material without a light map and examine how the object is lit with just the normalmap applied.

Tobbo

Here's an idea about what could be causing the dark edges.

Anywhere you have a hard edge (smoothing split), you MUST have a shell split in your UV map. You also MUST have padding in your normal map.

I haven't seen your normal map so I don't know if you are following this rule or not, but that would be my guess as to what could be causing it.

Mathis

neilberard wrote: »

I definitely think it's your normal map. I would just place a flat color on the material without a light map and examine how the object is lit with just the normalmap applied.

Thanks for the image, I'm a bit ashamed because I'm not so sure that the green channel isn't inverted anymore... Made a comparison like you mentioned.
Thought that the green channel should only be fliped if it's baked with 3dsmax, not xnormal, am I right? Also the green channel itself looks good to me in photoshop. But take look for yourself, I uploaded the normal below.

Tobbo wrote: »

Anywhere you have a hard edge (smoothing split), you MUST have a shell split in your UV map. You also MUST have padding in your normal map.
I haven't seen your normal map so I don't know if you are following this rule or not, but that would be my guess as to what could be causing it.

As far as i can say I did like you mentioned with the smoothing and the cuts. But if you still want to you can take a look at the normal- that would be great (left 1/2 exterior - right 1/2 interior):

neilberard

oh, ok. I hate to say it, but it looks like you need to change your uvs and re-bake the normal map. If this is going into udk the green channel should highlights underneath. Right now the green channel does look inverted. I don't know how you are flipping the green channel but I just usually open the map in Photoshop, select the green channel and hit "ctrl i".

Mathis

neilberard wrote: »

oh, ok. I hate to say it, but it looks like you need to change your uvs and re-bake the normal map.

Well no problem, better you're the one telling then no one
I split the chart and re-baked the Normal and AO.

In addition I created another version of the foxhound, some kind of transporter. Also (hopefully) finished the final bakes/lightmaps. Please let me know what you think.

(click here for more screens and click the images itself to view larger screens)






Looking forward for some additional feedback

Maks

Hi, good work, the lightmap looks so much better now!

I noticed that the green channels of two of your normal maps are flipped (Scout and Transporter).
Good Luck finishing your model!

Mathis

Maks wrote: »

Hi, good work, the lightmap looks so much better now!

I noticed that the green channels of two of your normal maps are flipped (Scout and Transporter).

Thanks, and yeah I had some problems with the normals. But I made new screenshots with the same texture/material settings and some new lighting settings to make things a little more interesting.
But now I'm receiving some strange normalmap error on the wheels in 3DS Max. Seems like the normals are flipped or something... no idea. Already reset XForm, normals, STLcheck, remade 3/4 of the wheel and still- no change.

Does anyone knows what is causing the error on the wheels?

harricool

Check for inverted uv`s sometimes cloning the wheels and mirroring them create these kind of problems

Mathis

harricool wrote: »

Check for inverted uv`s sometimes cloning the wheels and mirroring them create these kind of problems

Thanks for the tip, unfortunately it didn't help. But the problem got fixed by exporting the model as a fbx and importing it to 3dsmax again. Final version can be viewed here.

Edit:
Still no diffuse, but I hope you like it anyway: