First real portfolio piece! (WIP)

Kimon

LATEST UPDATE:

After looking at it today with fresh eyes I kinda felt that most of the colors were pretty dull and.. boring. So I made some changes to that, also added a lot of finer details and replaced a bunch of ddo presets with my own scratches etc.



Would be awesome with some feedback if I did the right thing

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ORIGINAL THREAD:

Hey everyone! I'm in the progress of making my first real portfolio piece and of course I'm looking for some feed back

Here's my baked low poly with normals and some simple AO right now:



Based on this cool concept by Feng Zhu:


I'm planning on doing the whole room in a similar layout as the concept.
Will update as I progress!

Thanks for stopping by!

MeshModeler

looking awesome

Stockwell

Second that! Will you finish off the scene or keep it in the diorama state it's in?

If your not going to do it all, and just finish what you have, you may want to look at this for ideas on presentation.




http://www.peperaart.com/images/doors_01.jpg

Just always loved the use of the pipes and the "what's under dat sci fi floor" approach to his presentation.

Joltya

This is a low-poly? Could we see some wires?

Kimon

@MeshModeler

Thanks for the kind words! Just made my night better

@Stockwell

Yea, I'm planning on doing the whole room, but if not, that's an awesome idea.
That guy is crazy skilled by the way. Awesome stuff!

@JoltZero

Yea, of course! Here you are:



I tried to model pretty much everything as one continuous mesh mostly for practice.
Sits at 5k tris right now. A bit much for this kind of prop?

CandyStripes05

Kimon wrote: »

I tried to model pretty much everything as one continuous mesh mostly for practice.

why though?
if they are separate objects and you can save tris by making it so then I don't see the point in making it all one object

Kimon

CandyStripes05 wrote: »

why though?
if they are separate objects and you can save tris by making it so then I don't see the point in making it all one object

I watched some tutorials by Laurens Corijn (the guy behind the Xoliul shader) and he talked about some nice stuff with keeping a lot of parts continuous.

Texture space, intersections when baking etc etc. So I wanted to try it for myself, see what kind of result I would get. I felt that it was going pretty good so I decided to take the piece further, and I think it makes the model look pretty cool also, haha.

I get what you are saying though, and I totally agree. Stuff that are seperate IRL can ofc be seperate in the mesh.

Kimon

Small update:

After thinking it over some parts were really unnecessary to keep as one continuous mesh, especially the back wall, lamps & buttons. Seems more logical this way.



@CandyStripes05

Thanks for the heads up and input!

AlexCatMasterSupreme

A few things, while it's looking pretty cool, it looks like a lot of the faces make use of already existing geo for a lot of your insets and such, which isn't really bad but it isn't as cool as it could be and doesn't really show any functionality to your models. Try gathering some real-world refs for mechanical details and push your skills.:)

Kimon

@AlexCatMasterSupreme

Thanks for the feedback! Yea I agree.
You see that mechincal arm thingy in the concept, I'm planning on doing that one as well. Feels like a great place to show off some functionality and parts that work together! What do you think?

luge

right now, it looks pretty and i can't wait to see more of it.

Kimon

Another update!

Been adding a lot of smaller details and I think I've found a pretty good balance between open areas and more detailed parts.

Will probably start texturing this piece soon!

Kimon

Ok, so I've encountered this smoothing problem that I really can't seem to track down.
For the most part, everything looks pretty clean but in some very specific angles I get some really strange smoothing artifacts. Here is a picture showing what I mean:




If anyone could shed some light on this I would be really thankful

Stockwell

Can you post your wires? and did you change your smoothing normals(groups) at all after baking your normal map?

Might want to throw your uv map up too, could also be something there.

Kimon

No smoothing groups changed after baking.
Here's the wires and normal map for the problem area:





This problem is really bugging me to be honest!

Clark Coots

go take a look at the Red and Green Channels in Photoshop and you'll actually see some stepping and a gradient. Particularly the Red channel.

Since your texture is just flat surfaces with divots and bolts etc most of your normal map should be RGB: 128,128,255. In normal map terms that color is "flat" and wont have gradation.

Stockwell

Hmm, Coots, what would cause that while baking? I've never come across this problem, but am curious as to what would be the cause.

Kimon, are you using Direct 3D or Nitrous in Max? You may want to check in a game engine, UDK, Unity, etc. to see if you run into the same problem there.

PogoP

Maybe your low poly piece has a slight smoothing change on it and that's being incorporated into the normal map?

Kimon

@coots7

Wow! Can't thank you enough. Will definitely remember that one.
Just did a quick fix in photoshop and it's pretty much fixed!



Had the same kind of thing on the lower one and it's looking great now.



Thanks again!

Clark Coots

Stockwell wrote: »

Hmm, Coots, what would cause that while baking? I've never come across this problem, but am curious as to what would be the cause.

Its possible the HP was not completely flat when baking. For instance if you only had holding edges at the bevels but no additional edge loops throughout the flat parts of the model you can get a very subtle arch across the "flat" surface from bevel to bevel... I think.

This looks like it was modeled and baked as a flat plane which to me rules out the possibility of smoothing groups being a problem.

@Kimon no problem! glad that helped. it's looking good!

Kimon

Time for an update again!
So, after a small break due to school work I started playing around with texturing today. This is what I've come up with so far:



To be honest, I'm not too crazy about anything about the textures right now, and I can't really seem to find anything that makes me go "that's what I want!"

So, some feedback would be awesome
Thanks!

Kimon

Another small update!



Fixed some more with the colors and textures. Is it getting better? I'm starting to feel a bit insecure about this one to be honest.

AlexCatMasterSupreme

Kimon wrote: »

Another small update!



Fixed some more with the colors and textures. Is it getting better? I'm starting to feel a bit insecure about this one to be honest.

I think a few things you could do is step away from Ddo, which it looks like youre using, Try making it look more functional, I'm not really sure what it is in the concept or at all, I would try taking that middle part and make something cool out of it. The floor texture could use some work and you could add more spec to the cables as well. I wouldn't feel insecure about it, just keep at it and then make the next things better.

oxblood

this is looking nice... add some more damage to the paint.. like places where the paint has peeled off and mabye a little more color variation in your metals. I am really liking this don't be insecure keep going.

Stinkfoot

Nice work! I used to think that the single mesh method was the way to go, but it's a pain at the latter stages.

Kimon

Thanks guys! Will keep working on it for sure. Yea, will try to remove that Ddo-look as much as I can. Not sure why I suddenly felt so uninspired with this piece, but I guess everyone feels like that from time to time.

Kimon

After looking at it today with fresh eyes I kinda felt that most of the colors were pretty dull and.. boring. So I made some changes to that, also added a lot of finer details and replaced a bunch of ddo presets with my own scratches etc.



Would be awesome with some feedback if I did the right thing