Minuteman Warjack - High Poly

Haftoof

So I've been working over the past months to learn high poly and hard surface modeling. Below are the results...

I'd like feedback, and I guess need to know what's the best method for learning low-poly mesh building over high for baking.

Illusive

looking pretty bad ass! one thing that i feel is a little off putting is that the barrel's holes don't look like they're sitting in the center of the barrel and based off the ref it's missing the bevel and the indents as well (also the gun is missing it's indents too)

as for building your low poly i think it all depends on what works best for you, some people anticipate the low poly while building the high, some just box model over the top but you can also try using your high poly and just collapsing groups of verts, repositioning them and then cleaning up the mesh

one useful technique you could apply to a hard surface model like this for areas that are indented, rather than build those into your geometry you can use floating geo like a half sphere that has been flipped and bake that down to your low, i'm not sure if that's actually what you're doing here but that can save you a lot of time and effort and will give you really good results

Nosslak

Overall I think you've done a great job on this. However there are some things that could be done to push this a bit further.

The biggest problem would maybe be the fact that the bevels are very uneven in size. In other words some bevels are very soft while others are hard all the while it looks like they're supposed to be composed of pretty much the same material.

I also have to agree with Illusive on the details of the gun and its barrel. It also looks like your missing the interior detail of the jetpacks bottom exhausts. The concept doesn't show anything for this but I'd make the interiors of the backs top exhaust similar as well. The feet is lacking a few details from the concept art as well which make them look pretty boring at the moment. Also it looks like the toes might just be floating at the moment, so I'd add a cylinder connecting it to the rest of the foot.

In most cases I'd make my lowpoly by just removing the subdivision surface modifier, remove all floating geometry, removing support loops and then either smooth out/optimize it where needed.

Muzzoid

War machine!

War machines designs are spectacular, great project choice.

I would agree that your bevels are way too sharp. War machine is stylized, and as such you need to make sure you use a chunky shape language to suit.

All of your rivets are way too small for example.

http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&docid=eM2QgXFq7RZ1MM&tbnid=zXTAF_s_XoCp3M:&ved=0CAUQjBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffiles.privateerpress.com%2Fwarmachine%2FStormwallComparison.jpg&ei=eetcU5CONYGQkwXQ-oCwBA&psig=AFQjCNFlUE7WwfpkxE9PFtftuBx_3j3X4g&ust=1398684921937338

But great work and i look forward to seeing the final.

Haftoof

So... Lets see if I got this checklist of ideas down. I'm glad to get the feedback on my first true high poly/hard surface piece.

1: Bevels, Most of the piece is done with smoothing, there for my control loops are what define the bevels. I'm kind of new so if I could get a screenshot showing what you're explaining it would be great.

2: You're right on the gun, I think I could probably fix the "End" section with an improved internal barrel. This can be fixed and centered rather easily. When you say indents, you mean on the outside of the gun?

3: Rivets can all be increased in size making them very stylized.

4: All the grills are floating purely for the purpose of baking detail... I couldn't find a better way to create the clean dimples on the surfaces...

5: What would you like to see as detail on the foot, I felt from the concept art that the foot was very bland, and I didn't want to place to much emphasis on it since basically its the foot. Most of the detail time went into the pistons on the legs itself.


Any resources for learning the baking process (I'm working maya) would be great!

I appreciate the feedback and over the coming week I'll go in and add some more detail as described on the feet, back jets, and rivets.

Nosslak

Haftoof wrote: »

1: Bevels, Most of the piece is done with smoothing, there for my control loops are what define the bevels. I'm kind of new so if I could get a screenshot showing what you're explaining it would be great.

What I mean was that in most cases you want the bevels to be as big and as soft all over the model. Some exceptions this would also be that a specific part could be very worn due to usage and/or just because the material is more fragile (think wood vs metal). You should also consider this old classic.

It could be a good idea to turn on metrics for edge lengths if you want to be exact.

Haftoof wrote: »

2: You're right on the gun, I think I could probably fix the "End" section with an improved internal barrel. This can be fixed and centered rather easily. When you say indents, you mean on the outside of the gun?

I meant that you should add some of the plating on the interiors of the holes.

Haftoof wrote: »

5: What would you like to see as detail on the foot, I felt from the concept art that the foot was very bland, and I didn't want to place to much emphasis on it since basically its the foot. Most of the detail time went into the pistons on the legs itself.

Some easy detail would be to add a thicker border around it, add some paneling and or add some rivets/indents on it. These are details that are used elsewhere on the model so they should fit in pretty well.

Haftoof wrote: »

Any resources for learning the baking process (I'm working maya) would be great!

I'd recommend xNormal as Mayas default baking method is very slow. I haven't tried Turtle, but maybe that's decent, I don't know.

Haftoof

I'll play with it and see what else I'll add... Mostly this is a learning experience, I want to be able to step through the whole high detail bake process and understand it.

I'll look up xnormal, are there any good tutorials for understanding low-poly mesh building, additionally are there any good tools for maya for it? I seem to recall seeing one that was super useful for building low poly meshes, but I can't remember the name.

Haftoof

Quick update, did everything but re-bevel everything. More detail on the feet, I'll do the low poly and post that once its done.

R0gu3

Hey, just want to add my feedback though it's not much :P model looks great! I would just getting your edges a little crisper though, like the feet, and the divots on the inside of the arm seem very doughy to me where I would expect some much sharper edges.

Haftoof

Yeah, I'm not sure how the divits work, they are floating cups on the surface of the arm. I suspect they will look better once baked with color over top. We'll see, for my first model I'm pretty happy with the level of detail though I would of liked to have gotten into it faster it really challenged me to learn a lot.

Next up baking, but first experimentation and learning.