Portfolio progress thread

Joost

I decided to make a thread so I can track my progress as I make new things for my portfolio.

For reference, here's the last thing I made:




For my first project I'll be making "the Vajen-Bader smoke protector"
I saw this at a museum a while ago and thought it would be cool to model.






Here's some early WIPS, excuse me for the crappy image quality but grabviewport isn't working correctly so I just copy/pasted.
I've got most of the hard surface pieces blocked in now.

Here's my to-do list for the high poly:

-make hole mesh for ears
-fix proportions, put hard surface pieces in place
-Sculpt the mask, using the pieces as guides
-Add straps
-sculpt some of the hard surface pieces










As always, Feedback would be very much appreciated! :thumbup:

CarlK3D

Knife looks sweet, great material definition. High poly model for the Smoke Protector looks clean and detailed. Keep it up!

Joost

CarlK3D wrote: »

Knife looks sweet, great material definition. High poly model for the Smoke Protector looks clean and detailed. Keep it up!

Thanks for the kind words, appreciate it!

Should have a little update tomorrow or sunday evening.

In the meanwhile, here's a little tutorial I made on how I smooth my hard surface objects.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=132383

Joost

Small update, rendered in marmoset. (high poly) I haven't done any kind of soft surfaces like leather/cloth before so it's going to take some practice. The inside of the helmet is going to be especially challenging. If anyone has any tips, please let me know!






Some things to fix:

-raised area on top needs to be subtler
-Need to fix the topology of the little tube at the front
-mask should be wider

Please let me know if you spot anything else!

Joost

Any feedback? Going to start sculpting the helmet properly today I think.

Anchang-Style

The two rings in the last pic are clipping the tube they are supposed to be held by.

Joost

Yeah you're right, the placing is still a bit rough at this point. I think I'll redo that leather piece anyway though, as it doesn't quite match the concept. Thanks for the feedback!

Joost

I'm stalling a bit now. I've been experimenting with stitches a bit, trying to plan out how I'm going to sculpt the helmet, but I haven't started sculpting it yet. I just keep delaying it. I've got all the hard surface stuff done now, except for the straps and some stuff that needs to be sculpted in.
Anyway I fixed up this part, had a first go at sculpting some leather and adding stitching. It's a little bit muddy but it's only a small element so I think it will be fine.

There are some random seams but they only appear in marmoset so ignore that, they seem to be at places where I welded verts.

Joost

Progress is coming along slowly, kind of hitting a wall now. I was about to put this project on hold indefinitely and start working on a gun or something more hard surface. But then I realized I need to work on my weak points and hopefully the end result will be worth it.


the sculpted details are quite heavily decimated to render them in marmoset.





to-do list:

-sculpt the ridges on top
-make the helmet sculpt less symmetrical
-add sculpted detail to air tank
-add straps
-sculpt the inside of the helmet, this one's going to be really challenging but hopefully it won't look too terrible.

Could really use some feedback now :thumbup:

Pegbird

Looking good so far. Very clean

Brandon Kern

i really like the texture on that knife. It looks like real corrosion. Just the perfect amount of saturation to make it look rusty.

AlexCatMasterSupreme

Brandon Kern wrote: »

i really like the texture on that knife. It looks like real corrosion. Just the perfect amount of saturation to make it look rusty.

It's dirt I'm pretty sure.

Joost

@Pegbird: Thanks!
@Brandon Kern: Thanks, but as alex pointed out it's supposed to be dirt/grime. Maybe I need to work on the material for that a bit more.

I've been experimenting with the best way to make the leather straps. I think I'll just model and sculpt it straight and then use a path deform in max.
Also had a go at sculpting the yellow fuzzy material, but I'm not sure how well this is going to bake.
Here's a zbrush screenshot of where I'm at atm:

Nosslak

I think it looks great, but the bevels on your edges are way too tight.

I also think the folds in the cloth needs to be a bit more pronounced around the eyes as the metal pieces don't feel quite grounded in the fabric.

AlexCatMasterSupreme

I think it totally looks like dirt, which I also thinks doesn't make sense too much, I wouldn't worry about it. Instead of making it stand out (if youre using pbr) make it look like just dust in cavity areas and such around the knife.

Joost

Nosslak wrote: »

I think it looks great, but the bevels on your edges are way too tight.

I also think the folds in the cloth needs to be a bit more pronounced around the eyes as the metal pieces don't feel quite grounded in the fabric.

You're right about the folds around the eye pieces. I'll try to sculpt it a bit more.
I don't think the edges are that tight? They do look pretty tight in the zbrush screenshot.

AlexCatMasterSupreme wrote: »

I think it totally looks like dirt, which I also thinks doesn't make sense too much, I wouldn't worry about it. Instead of making it stand out (if youre using pbr) make it look like just dust in cavity areas and such around the knife.

Yeah I don't know why I made it so pronounced. It's more like smudges and grime than dust. here's the reference, I should have looked at it a bit more. But I was basing it on the real knife, which I had cleaned in the meanwhile. I'll try to fix it after I finish this project.

Nosslak

komaokc wrote: »

I don't think the edges are that tight? They do look pretty tight in the zbrush screenshot.

The problem is that they are so small that the texture would probably not be high-res enough to capture it and even if it would it be so small that it would barely be visible unless you were to headbutt this poor fireman. Here's an image from the wiki that illustrates the problem better than I could ever explain it:

Joost

Yup, I'm well aware of that image. I've posted it myself several times

I guess my edges are a bit too tight on the smaller pieces. I'll try to soften them up a bit.
Thanks for the feedback!

AlexCatMasterSupreme

The ref looks like dried blood maybe, which would make more sense.

Joost

Yeah dried blood would be cool, I'll try that! Thanks

silver_hoodlum

looking good the knife

Joost

Still need to add some straps on the back and sculpt some of the hard surface pieces a bit. Then I'm pretty much done with the high poly I think. Please let me know if you see anything I should fix, or if you think I should spend some more time on sculpting the helmet.

Also changed the dirt to blood on the knife.

billymcguffin

looks good, but I think the crease in the helmet at the top of the head could use some definition. Right now it looks too blobby too me

RobeOmega

I would make the blood shinier

billymcguffin

I think how it is now is pretty good for dried blood, but it might be a bit more interesting if it had more highlights.

Joost

Thanks for the feedback guys!
I want a dried blood look so there would be very little specular. After doing some "research" on what dried blood looks like I did some tweaks to the texture. Mainly added more variation.

Joost

High poly's almost finished. I think I'll get started on the low poly and if anyone has any feedback I'll try to fix it.

billymcguffin

Whoa, nice. I like the seam you added at the top. Not sure if all of that detail will bake well though. On the gauge/dial thing there are some edges that look a bit too hard, and some of the stitching looks a bit small to be captured well.

Joost

Thanks Billy! I'm planning on using 4k maps since this is a portfolio piece. But there are A LOT of different pieces, so all of the really small details probably won't be visible. There might be a hint of them though, and that's better than nothing

I'll have a look at the gauge tomorrow(/tonight). Here's a close-up
There's a bit of weird shading on the logo, but that's only because I decimated it.

Joost

Here's some progress on the low poly. Currently at 10k tris, which is way too much considering I haven't added the straps and some other things yet. I used zremesher on the helmet but I'll probably go in and manually retopo it.

Count Vader

Everything looks pretty cool so far. The only thing is maybe the interior padding of the mask/helmet doesn't really look "puffy" enough, in the reference it looks like a bunch of tiny spherical puffs but yours reads almost like some eroded stone or something. Maybe take a look at some sheep wool as reference to get the micro-texture on that stuff

Joost

Thanks for the reference! That looks a lot more like what I was going for. I'll try to fix it.

stevston89

I would advise against trying to sculpt the wool in detail. Things like that a better left in subtlety in the sculpt. I would also look at these tutorials on how you can get it looking softer at the low poly phase.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1965863&postcount=71

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=130038

Joost

Thanks for the links stevston! I think I'll just smooth out the high poly and then use that workflow.

billymcguffin

Oooh, that's nifty. Could you do the offset in the shader instead of using multiple layers of polygons?

Joost

Did a little test with the fur. I ended up buying that image on dreamstime, so thanks for finding it for me! It did cost me €11, Which is quite a lot considering I'm unemployed, so I hope it was worth it. Diffuse only atm, probably going to sculpt in some soft details in zbrush and bake that to a normal map.




fancy blue lighting:

billymcguffin

What does the alpha look like for that fur?

Joost

billymcguffin wrote: »

What does the alpha look like for that fur?

alpha:

diff:


Keep in mind this is just a test, probably going to change when I start on the final thing.

billymcguffin

Yeah, maybe lightly multiplying a noise texture or something over the alpha so that you can see through to the lower levels a bit more would be good.

Very cool technique

Joost

Thanks, I tweaked the materials a bit. Here's a test with 8 layers, which is overkill but holds up quite well from a close distance.



4 layers looks pretty good from a distance though.



edit:

moar geo.

billymcguffin

Awesome! If you could customize the shader you could have it fade out at grazing angles so you don't see the stepping as much, but it looks good as it is!

Obscura

Fur looks really cool! I'm wondering why this method isn't really popular. I see this just rarely in games even though it isn't a new invention.

mmxnick

I think your knife is pretty much done. The blood does need to be a little shinier. For your portfolio I would show both versions, with and with out blood so recruiters can see what your capable of.

stevston89

@ Obscura - It's fairly expensive geometry wise. Also it requires a softer alpha which is expensive. I think it will become a lot more popular on this next generation. It looks quite nice and doesn't take large amounts of time to do.

Obscura

@stevston89 - I think geometry isn't really a big deal nowadays, when sometimes the important characters (or vehicles) takes around 60 or even 100k tris , but yeah alpha is expensive for sure. I hope that these kind of fancy things will be seen more in the next generation of games.

stevston89

Yeah. Geo wasn't a big problem for this past gen, but it was still considered. Even what's up there isn't soft alpha. It's dither. Which works good enough.

circle of friends

That fur looks amazing, great job.

AlexCatMasterSupreme

That's some dope fur, for your dried blood I would change the layer to additive in photoshop and just kinda tone it down, it looks like a ton of blood dried there and was never affected.

Joost

Thanks for the feedback guys! I'll try messing with the blood a bit more later.

I added some tessellation to the fur, it solved the grazing angles problem quite well.
It probably is really expensive to render right now with tessellation, 4 layers of geo and dithered alphas.
It kind of lost a bit of the fuzziness though.
This is with just 4 layers:

billymcguffin

That looks neato, but I think the displacement could be toned down.

Joost

Yeah it's a bit much This is probably a nice middle ground: