Mass Effect 3 M-13 Raptor - Critique Requested
polycounter lvl 14
This the M-13 Raptor Sniper Rifle from Mass Effect 3. The model is about 90% done at this point. I've never played the game and didn't look at the cinematic version until just now. One reason for me to post now is to ask if I should add the scope on top of the gun? It's not in the concept art I've been using but its in every actual model I've found. Also do you think I should just round out the gun barrels to cylinders? It doesn't look perfectly round in the concept but again, all the models I'm finding have it round. Admittedly I have little idea as to how much detail the low poly will get ... I will just have to guess and see how people react. All thoughts welcome. Using Maya 2014. Thanks.
http://sperasoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/m13_raptor.jpg.crop_display.jpg
Replies
I'd say the gun is looking great even without the scope so whatever you decide doing will be right. I'd round out those barrels if I where you though.
They look kinda funky as they are now.
I recommend using veiwport 2.0 and turning on AA as well with some AO to allow us to see the forms better.
Thanks much. Here's the rest of the work on the high poly model. Feel free to comment. This is definitely the most deceptively challenging model I've done. I thought it would take a fraction of the time it took. My only question would be whether or not its normal for a piece such as the big section in the middle-bottom (with the major slits) to look fine at most angles but have a strange gloss at just one angle (such as the straight side view I placed first)?
Here's the low poly. I will have to make a few adjustments to the high poly after moving a couple things around. The current tri count is around 4772. I spent a lot of time connecting every little thing together until the very end when I couldn't take it anymore around the tip-middle details. I was thinking of the painting process and having a clear layout of where every edge is resting.
How important is it to connect pieces in the lowpoly model? Any other thoughts?
While I'm thinking of it, is there a simple way in Maya 2014 to select all the flipped UVs so I can move them +1 to the right? Thanks
It really comes down to cost/benefit, and personal preference. At this point in technology, the added tris to make the LP all one piece are so low on priority in terms of optimization. Weapon counts are nearing the 20-50k range in "next-gen", from what I have seen. So what I am saying is, do what you feel will output the best results with your workflow.
How do you install UVDeluxe?
As you can see I'm getting a blue gun when selected (it turns black when deselected). Never did I at any point see the expected purple and white checker pattern. The texture shows on the model in Maya just fine. I've never had this issue before. It imports with a strange anisotropic look both in the viewer and the thumnbnail. When the material is applied, the thumbnail goes to an empty black box. In the second photo you can see a slight amount of fuzzy AO on the model. I really don't know what this is? Any help is appreciated.
Genius LOL! It worked LOL! Thanks again.
What am I really doing with the normal here other than capturing the fine details on the sides? Most of the model is silhouette with small pieces connected together. The high poly and low poly are obviously not the same size with the high having curved corners and edges. The normal and the AO result in curved edges, black parts not reaching the edge all the way and areas being all blacked out that don't need to be.
The bakes are from XNormal, the normal-model shot is from UDK and the AO shot is in Mudbox. The normal has red arrows pointing to things I'm assuming I should just erase out. The green arrow parts actually look OK but i'm still not convinced they are better, just different. The yellow circle area makes me think, "Is the normal creating a strangely backlit effect where it doesn't need one?" Its a low poly model to me either way. The "divets" on the side of the model are blacked out mostly so the normal won't even really show on those parts. If this were a creature or an old man the bake would make obvious sense to me, but not here.
I do very much like the silver-like shadow effect I'm getting from the AO (the AO here is already worked in Photoshop to some extent. It's two AO and two cavity bakes, level adjustments and some black brush work). How much work is really done at this stage? How perfect is it expected to be? I started smudging, blurring and painting in some areas with more black and white to clean up the places where the bake didn't reach the edges. I'm trying to use Mudbox since I have no idea where pieces are and there are so many of them. If I do that, the brush work is very "painterly" in style so I am going to either need to cover everything with a "painterly" look, or smooth out in Photoshop with blurs and smudges.
Overall it fells like the normal only helps in the areas where it is "nicely blue" in the predominate upper left part of the sheet, where the red/green islands and all need to be deleted. I'm thinking the AO needs to be painted in Mudbox and smoothed in Photoshop as a layer (In Photoshop alone it could take a week just to figure out where every piece is).
Can you follow my thinking here much? I'm going to look back at Xoliul's bull dozier video again. Most videos on this sort of thing show perfect normals from organic high poly models. Are these normals on hard surfaces really necessary minus the obviously small detail here and there? This sort of thing to me is 10% software, tutorials and study, and 90% trial and error, experience and simply knowing what to do. The tutorials out there just tell you what a normal is, how to make one and why. Then you make it and it looks terrible in 3/4 of the sheet.
Thank you!
OK, quick run down of the last month on this gun.
1) I stopped for a few days to do extensive research on normal maps. In the meantime I posted this: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=133049
2) My PC problems continued, resulting in multiple trips to the "shop" which halted work for a while.
3) I started a new model in the mean time on my MacBook
4) Finally getting the PC back to running I retopologized the meshes based on the research I did (sloped a few 90 degree angles and made the silhouettes match better)
5) Upon realizing the UV layout was lost after retopologizing I chose to go back into 3ds Max from Maya (Max is my usual program, I've been learning Maya here). I figured I could save a whole day or two of work with a box UVW map, unwrapping and collapsing a symmetry modifier.
6) I did a normal HighAO and LowAO bake in 3ds Max (no more Xnormal). My first impression is that its the best bake I've ever had yet, it still has a lot of dark edges. The normal shown above has been comped in PS (but not renormalized).
Thanks for reading. This has been a 6 year long attempt for me to learn normal maps. Any and all comments are welcome. I will go back into 3ds Max and see if moving the cage can fix some of the dark edges. I was erasing them in PS which was getting old and then I'm losing the whole point of the normal (like catching that nice soft edge).
Also, make sure you are using a cage when baking.
So good luck.
my website
OK, so flipping the green channel was the primary issue. It was quite a moment when I saw it actually looking like the high poly for the first time. I knew about flipping it for Unreal, and that Maya was in synch with UDK ... Still I never put it together. If x = y and y = z, then x = z right? I think I thought of trying it at one point but never did. Either way that was my fail. Also yes I admittedly forgot to soften a few edges.
Thanks
A few extra notes. One reason I'm still baking in 3ds Max is because Maya is crashing when I go to combine the high poly mesh pieces together (or even try to move the high poly at all). I don't know if there is a fix for this. It's as if it's useless in Maya now. I tried to bake in Maya with multiple pieces and it didn't work. Maybe I'll try again. At this point I've gone back and forth several times I can't keep track of what's what.
It seems as if I can only import maya "smoothing groups" into 3ds Max, but not edit them ... is this true? Also I tried to import an all soft edge mesh and it wouldn't work.
I'm noticing a number of areas where it looks just right from one angle but not from others ... is this expected?
As far as transferring smoothing groups from maya to max, as long as you check the "Keep smoothing groups" box when exporting, it should be fine.
Lastly, i'm guessing that when you look at the model in viewport, and on one side it looks fine, and then go to the other side, it looks black and weirdly shaded... This is probably due to having it set to read as an object space tangent normal instead of world space (i might have those mixed up). at least i know when viewing in maya, and I try this, it happens relatively often.
Normal map is done (admittedly I still fixed a couple things after this upload). I'm happy with this ... which I've never said about a normal map before. At this point it's been over two months and I really need to move forward to lining the AO up to the normal and painting the diffuse.
Thanks. It turns out I didn't check smoothing groups on import into 3ds Max. I ended up preferring the Maya edges anyway. Also I guess Maya really is slower than Max with viewport details despite the nicer texture display ... or perhaps "with" it.
Normal map is looking much better! Really awesome to see that you didn't give up! Keep it up
Thanks. Here's the Diffuse without spec. I still need to fix a little something with another AO (you can see it on the bottom of the last image by the handle) and a couple seems on top. One reason to be viewing in Maya is my UDK knowledge is still pretty bad, so I will need to fool around there some.
A few things.
1) It appears as though the smoothing groups on my model are gone. I went back into Maya and created a second UV set which eliminated the error message when building the lighting, but no effect otherwise. I
2) How do people usually set up gallery images in a scene in an editor? What I mean is the basic scene has black with blue lines ... I imported a giant sphere to surround it but now it is mostly in shadow. Should I just place a plane behind it when I get the final set up?
3) Having said all that, how important is showing the final in an editor instead of Maya?
Thanks
secondly, those lines are going to show up as long as you aren't in game mode... or the in-game viewport. if you hit G on your keyboard, it should change to "game" mode. by the looks of those errors, it could be normals errors, smoothing groups. I would suggest exporting the model from the editor as an fbx, import into a new scene in maya, fix your edge smoothing and re-export.
Thanks. I tried exporting another .fbx from UDK and taking back into Maya but then the new triangulated mesh's smoothing groups are locked (not editable). The hard edge issue remains in UDK whether or not I have a normal map on the mesh, or even the appropriate one.
So just as soon as I dare to post "the dog" I believe I figured a work around. I made the entire original mesh smooth edges in Maya just to try it and it looks like it worked. I suppose it will never look as good as it does in Maya (which I suppose proves why you need to show it here in UDK). Its as if a combination of hard and soft edges leads it to be all hard edges in UDK with the normal only "adding details", while an all soft edges mesh placed into UDK is allowing the normal map to "work". Ths is despite the fact that I'v never been using all soft edges before except as an experiment for a few seconds here and there.
Thanks
Edit:
I originally posted a question about getting the background color changed from black. I had tried a sphere before but it didn't work. I believe I simply didn't place the sphere tightly close enough before so the lights didn't reach it. Problem solved.
Wow I can't believe I'm done. 10 and a half weeks. Thanks to everyone for looking and especially the posters, I greatly appreciate it. Any final thoughts are certainly welcome. I'm not sure if I'm willing to change anything at this point but I will certainly learn from any final critiques moving forward.
In UDK - Tris:4986 Verts:5430
I have just now recovered the files from my recently deceased hard drive which contained this gun project's files. I intend to re-render this piece and would love any advice on what I can do to make it better. The main issue is remaking the highlight info with some PBR. I'm thinking it would be the prime opportunity to download the 30 day trial of Marmoset. Either way I will use a metalness map, gloss map and redo the wear and tear on the gun. Do you think I should have to rebake it with more even bevels? I learned how to bake a decent normal while doing this project so I was more concerned about getting the meshes to line up than to have nice sized bevels, nor was I aware of the differences of game art bevels from high res models.
Thanks!
Thanks for the reply, honestly I'm not sure what you mean by either of the two above lines. *shrug*
I am using Max/Maya to bake.
Spent all weekend tweaking both models, UVs and redoing the smoothing groups. I've learned so much about modeling for a better bake since I first did this that it turned out to be a lot of work to fix. Bake is next. :poly009:
I tweaked both meshes, re-did the UVs, and went through a grueling process over on a tech thread to get a new bake done without any painting (the previous version's normal was admittedly painted quite a bit). My next step is to paint in Substance Painter. This is my first experience with this software and it is amazing!
concept:
http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17gzj95f0vswijpg/original.jpg
I need to decide on the materials. I'm thinking white, black and yellow paint over steel. Can I have a confirmation that most black guns that are not reflecting as metal are, in fact, painted? The biggest question is about what that grainy, speckled black material is in the back? It looks like a divet pattern akin to a grip pattern only the surface is reflecting smoothly (I think). I'm willing to change it of course, but I NEED to know what it is, or anyone critiquing my portfolio won't know either. Thoughts?
Here's my first post of the material. I'm feeling like this looks more steel on a factory floor with white paint on it rather than a nice sci fi gun.
Update. Trying to identity the correct look. Thoughts? I still don't know what to do with the longer black pieces on the back area.
How is the material definition? Can you tell what it's made out of? Does it make sense? Does it look good? Does it look bad? Is it boring and average? Does it look unfinished (if so why?)
I'm really glad you commented. Thanks. A few things:
1) I feel a discrepancy between real life guns and game guns. Most real ones are very simple and clean, whereas Polycount really pushes DIRT DIRT DIRT AND MORE DIRT! I don't want to make this really rugged, but I don't know how to define the materials without wear. If portfolio reviewers are going to shake their collective heads because it looks plastic, that's not good ... however I think real life version do just that (top four images): http://www.pinterest.com/scottmichaelh/inorganic-references/
2) The variation idea makes sense, however I don't want to deviate from the concept or original version toooooooooo much.
Does this look like I'm on the right track, or look like I'm clueless and just randomly changing things? I'm honestly not sure at this point. *shrug*
What should I be looking at? What should I be watching/reading? White guns are not extremely common in real life or games. The few in games seem to simply smother it with dirt or use small wears at least on the edges (what I thought I was doing). I get that it should look like its in battle currently. I've also received crits on other project telling me to define the material first before adding details ... this confused me because it thought that was how you defined it. It's so much easier to define something really rugged than something simpler in my book. I personally don't like this white, but it says "painted metal" more than the previous pic ... I think.
Edit: How much variation would you (anyone) place in the color versus the roughness? I see variation in other works, but don't know how to achieve it.
http://videogame-art.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/VideoGameArt_ScifiRifle_01_TorFrick.jpg
Okay, trying this again, hey Scott!
Material definition needs work on this, get rid of all the microdetail in the albedo.
Having color variation in the albedo is important, but you need to understand why it's there. All this noise you have is better served as a slightly rougher roughness map + normal map details if absolutely necessary.
Whereas, in the example you posted, the color variation is sensical, and almost tells the story of the weapon. It's aged and the metal seems to be of devious quality, various areas have dirt caked up from hands grabbing on them constantly and being exposed to weather, any paint is also showing signs of weathering and peeling and general discoloration. All of this makes sense and is concentrated in areas that are exposed (or not, in the case of dirt getting into those cracks that it just never comes out of), handled often, or in the line of fire.
Just think about it logically. I'd return the white to a flat, very slightly off-white color. ME has sort of this thick, matte-ish paint vibe going on with its weaponry, though this opens up some fun possibilities once you've nailed the main material to add some subtle sweat and oil stains from the hands being all over the white paint...
Additionally, go back to the concept and do some research and labelling. Mask each different material on the concept with a different color and identify what it is. Find some usable reference, and more-or-less appropriate roughness values if you can.
That middle section of the gun, black? It actually looks like it has a pattern with a clear coat over it in the only version of the concept I could find, meanwhile I'm unsure what you're going for here. What it actually looks like is a little like... what's it called? Uh, Carbon Fiber. Yeah, that stuff. Which is a little weird, but eh, I'm not questioning it.
Keep it up, it's coming along (and certainly much better than the old attempt already)!
Update. I believe this is better, but hey ... I'm ready for anything! Thanks again BagelHero
I'm continuing to look at real guns and game art guns for reference, continuing to try several different approaches, and continuing to ask for help. This is very much something where I need to figure out how it works, not just figure out what to do. I'm asking myself "how" to define the material. When I initially placed rubber on the handle grip, no one noticed because there was so little contrast. In my research I found game guns with a lot of small metal speckles on it and figure, "OK, maybe that's how I can define it is painted metal". I saw rubber areas that were, matte, clean and bumped with a cellular pattern and thought the same thing.
Paintover:
Where I said smooth, keep in mind that this is only really in the albedo and referring to chips and dings-- I quite like the gloss variation.
I think some of the discoloration could be a little brown and yellow, though keep it extremely subtle. Having only grey discoloration is kinda weird, hands have oil all over them and it tends to leave "dirty" marks as opposed to just grime. The white rubber on the grip is a little plastic-y, too. Needs to be a little softer.
It really is better, though I gotta ask... What are you viewing this in?
Thanks. I'm using Substance Painter. Admittedly I've been changing the background HDRI a lot. This pic here has the same lighting in all four angles. This is also the first one where I can honestly same I'm starting to feel better about it. Keep the comments coming everyone! :poly142:
Also I admittedly wasn't paying as much attention to the extra details and secondary parts much, but have focused mostly on the white. I'll probably get rid of the metal wear line on the upper outside of the handle (the protected area close to the trigger). Next I will try experimenting with a touch a color variation and try some more scratches.
I'm now happy with it
Thank you all again! Here's the artstation page:
http://www.artstation.com/artwork/cerberus-m-13-raptor
But the model looks great, and the texture work seems solid now.