LR 300 and First Person Military Arms

Fixer

Hi Polycount,
I'm currently working on a FPS setup which I plan to animate and bring into UDK. This is a school project so any comments and critiques would be a great help. C&C always welcome.

theSixtyEight

less DDO and more of real texture work, Also it seems like it has not speculars at all, check out Millenias shotgun tutorial

Joost

This would look pretty cool in a game like tf2. I'm assuming you're going for the tf2 look and not next gen? Is there a polycount limit? Some areas like the front grip thingy and the grooves in the magazine could really use some more geo. Arms look cool, but too much high frequency detail if you're going for a cartoony look.

Texturewise, The dirt is way too uniform. it needs more randomness. And your metal could use some worn edges and random scratches. Add more dirt and scratches to the most used parts, don't just cover the whole thing uniformly.

If your goal is a next gen weapon then you should bake a normal map and use spec+ gloss maps.

And where are the wires?!

Good luck!

Fixer

Paul68Rageous - I agree with you, it was my first go with dDo and things didn't go as smoothly as anticipated, but I had a deadline. I bumped up spec and gloss a little bit. Ill definitely check out his tutorial. Thanks.

komaokc - lol. Thanks. I was actually going for next gen but I like tf2. I need to polish my texturing skills but I'm still learning. The spec was way too subtle. Thanks for critique.


Here's some wires for ya with normal, gloss, and spec...

Joost

Do you mind sharing your diff, spec and gloss texture maps? Then I could give some more specific feedback.

Fixer

Yea. No Problem. Thanks in advance.

dazzerfong

What are you using to render this? The problem doesn't seem to be from your textures, it seems to be the fact that your specular lighting is almost non-existent.

snoop

This is a very preferential nit-pick, but why did you pick the first sergeant rank? Yeah, obviously the 1SG would deploy and be around the COP, FOB, what-have-you, but they don't really go outside the wire or do a lot of shooting given their command position as the head of the company. If you want a rank that is, in my opinion, an all around better pick, I would go with Staff Sergeant (E-6), they would be in the position of squad leader or in rarer cases platoon sergeant. Again, this is entirely preference but it struck me as odd you went with first sergeant. Also, I don't really know of when I've ever heard of or seen someone with a rank like that on the side of their arm.

Joost

You have a good base atm, but there's only procedural detail. There's no actual texture there. For metal your diffuse should be darker, you should have some kind of scratched up metal in the spec with a lot of contrast, and fingerprints/smudges/oily stuff in the gloss. You can also add some subtle detail into the normal map.

I wouldn't rely too much on DDO, it's very easy to spot procedural details, and they don't feel natural (imho).
I'd manually add some dust, edge wear and scratches. Try to think about the most logical places for these things to accumulate, don't just coat it uniformly.

And lastly, as dazzerfong pointed out, it looks like your renderer is to blame as well. You should check out marmoset toolbag to render it. Or use an HDRi at least. The lighting is too flat to really see anything.


Here's a good example by millenia: http://wip.millenia3d.net/NewVegas/Combat/combat.jpg

There's a thread here with more of his stuff: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=110618&page=2

This might help too:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=94852


And here are some tutorials:
http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/materials
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8oC1HsjOgk
http://oesterkilde.dk/racer445.html


I'm not an expert myself but I hope this helped.

MeshModeler

stop using ddo

Fixer

dazzerfong - Rendered in toolbag 2 but I didn't spend any time with lighting. Just put it in a default scene to get some quick renders out.

snoop - Shit. I didn't think anyone would call me out on that. I just picked it because I thought it was ironic, because like you said they would never be shooting a gun on the front line....unless some serious shit put them in the situation to. No real reason behind the madness but I figured you rarely even see the elbow in a FPS so it, more than likely, wont ever be seen.

komaokc - Thanks for all the leads. Your really pushing me to make this thing better. I appreciate all your help.

MeshModeler - lol. I know. It was my first go with dDo. Just wanted to see what it could do....and couldn't.

dazzerfong

If you used Toolbag 2, click on the Image Editor (the image on the bottom left of your UI) in places where you want a light. Easy as hell.