Nosslak: thanks, man. your's looks good - know you're already baked but maybe go back and vary the seem/edge widths like alex suggested; it's subtle but'll
help the overall. also some shadow/normal? artifacts on the bottom edge? keep it up
siraniks: if you're going from concept it makes sense to get as close as you can to it - in the areas where it's vague use your own ideas while staying within the design language.
Someone recently added me on skype, I accidentally declined their friend request, if you've sent me a contact request on skype and are not already in the noob challenge group send it again.
Nosslak: thanks, man. your's looks good - know you're already baked but maybe go back and vary the seem/edge widths like alex suggested; it's subtle but'll
help the overall. also some shadow/normal? artifacts on the bottom edge? keep it up
Yeah, I think you're right and it probably would be a good idea to vary up the edge widths a bit. I'll look into fixing that.
also some shadow/normal? artifacts on the bottom edge? keep it up
Nah, that was just a failed attempt to paint in some damage on the bottom edge that was too small and too harsh to really read well as that. I've remade that completely now.
Some of my progress so far. I've really enjoyed working on these radio communication devices.
I do have a question regarding high poly workflow. I only just recently discovered the convert smooth mesh preview to poly tool and was wondering if anyone else uses this or what they think about it?
I do have a question regarding high poly workflow. I only just recently discovered the convert smooth mesh preview to poly tool and was wondering if anyone else uses this or what they think about it?
When i'm in Maya (which I'm not now), I use that tool to make the high poly details "bakeable". I've used 3ds Max much longer than Maya so someone else would have to confirm for me, but I don't believe Maya has the ability to bake the high poly mesh without committing to the subdivision. Anyone?
Thanks for all the answers and input. Admittedly, most of the "control boxes" I'm seeing are making me feel ... what the word ... well I like them better than mine. I need to move on, I did my best with my concept art, references and guess work. I also don't want to change much based on mimicking others work. this is my best effort. While I've been modeling since 2005, this is the first full game environment I've done. I'm going through Jason Lavoie's Demon Throne videos, found a few things via random research, but any links on the subject matter that anyone is fond of would be much appreciated at this point. I'm making the low polys, UVing and baking now. I put all the high poly meshes in one file (saved in increments) so its taking several minutes to save and load. As I bake in sections I will delete things as I go in separate files. The Xoliul shader doesn't work anymore so I may have to place in UDK earlier than usual to view the normals (I don't trust 3ds Max' viewport display). I'd use Unity but I need shadows here with point lights.
How do you do so? Whenever I baked a smooth mesh preview it only baked the high poly mesh without the subdivision, the same way the smooth mesh preview never showed for me in a regular render.
Hey everyone, awesome work! this is my first challenge. I am late to the game so i will do the prop. Thank you AlexCatMasterSupreme for this Halo concept! This will help me get back into hard surface modeling. I am slowly blocking it out. This is what i have got so far.
Good work everyone. @fonfa: Are you going to squeeze the mask down to a flat surface on the ground from where you have it now? It looks fine other than the lack of straps and the coil thing extending out (which is a visual indication making it clear that it is a gas mask ... remember I needed to be told earlier that it was) Everything you've done so far has looked good.
I decided to use the default display in Unity to test the bakes out and get portfolio shots of the props. I knew on my second sitting with Unity that I loved it for it's simplicity. I will still use UDK in the end for the final scene render (because the free Unity doesn't have shadows from point lights). I'm also happy to say it looks as though I've graduated from noob class with normal maps as I've twice now managed to bake some without terrible issues !!
Question: I am thinking to bake the wires against the walls. However the wire are coming out of the electrical boxes ... should I have a small wire going from the box to the wall?
Question: I am thinking to bake the wires against the walls. However the wire are coming out of the electrical boxes ... should I have a small wire going from the box to the wall?
I Guess you can bake the wires, and then mask out the wire material from the wall material.
That being said, I would just leave a low poly version of the wires. Would probably look better, and with current gen technology, it's not really that much of a problem.
If you really wanna be cheap on the polys, why not make the low poly wires a simple plane? would probably looks better than simply baking the walls.
@ScottMichaelH: Yes! Here's how it looks right now:
thanks for the feedback! I've reshaped things around in the mask and looks better. I've decided to skip the straps since one of the reference pictures I found was of a rubber or latex model that didn't have visible straps, I liked that one better and went for it
About the wires, I'd say it's not that useful to bake them into the wall. I'd make them as separate meshes, you can use a spline + sweep modifier, 4 sided is cool. You can tile a normal mapped black cylinder on them and it'll look fine. Even if they're pitch black should be okay, I guess!
Good work everyone. @fonfa: Are you going to squeeze the mask down to a flat surface on the ground from where you have it now? It looks fine other than the lack of straps and the coil thing extending out (which is a visual indication making it clear that it is a gas mask ... remember I needed to be told earlier that it was) Everything you've done so far has looked good.
I decided to use the default display in Unity to test the bakes out and get portfolio shots of the props. I knew on my second sitting with Unity that I loved it for it's simplicity. I will still use UDK in the end for the final scene render (because the free Unity doesn't have shadows from point lights). I'm also happy to say it looks as though I've graduated from noob class with normal maps as I've twice now managed to bake some without terrible issues !!
Question: I am thinking to bake the wires against the walls. However the wire are coming out of the electrical boxes ... should I have a small wire going from the box to the wall?
wow that's already good looking bed on Unity, good job and also to @Carter ... great!
Was able to finish up the book shelf, desk and final communication device as well as redo my boxes. Time is running short but I am nearly finished with the high poly and I don't think creating/baking the lowpoly is going to be much trouble.
Very nice overall. I feel like the bright green on the knobs and red handle piece is over the top. The color works if it's a lit display and its turned but the colors on the displays and knobs look the same here.
Very nice overall. I feel like the bright green on the knobs and red handle piece is over the top. The color works if it's a lit display and its turned but the colors on the displays and knobs look the same here.
Thanks for the feedback dude!
Once l move the props into UE4, I want to make the control boxes "toggle-able", So I will animate the screens and buttons.
When turned off, the knobs will have no emission. When turned on, the buttons will slowly light up.
The current emission is just a placeholder within Substance Designer.
How do you guys know or plan to limit the poly in the scene like "what are you're target minimum or maximum poly?"
make it look good without being wasteful, for personal things as long as what you are doing would benefit from it who cares. Next gen amirite.
Like lets say i have a knob on a radio, sure i could make it 1k polys, it looks amazing up close, but a player would never EVER get that close, so i'd make it 20 at most, maybe 40, depending on the importance. It all has to do with how far and close it will be seen from and all that. There are no real rules.
@ MeshPotato - The red needle really draws my eye to the low res screen behind it, its pretty minor but it makes the whole prop look lower res. I really like the triangle support framework in the bottom corners
@ fonfa - Nice mask! Looking forward to seeing how you do the low poly
make it look good without being wasteful, for personal things as long as what you are doing would benefit from it who cares. Next gen amirite.
Like lets say i have a knob on a radio, sure i could make it 1k polys, it looks amazing up close, but a player would never EVER get that close, so i'd make it 20 at most, maybe 40, depending on the importance. It all has to do with how far and close it will be seen from and all that. There are no real rules.
The best indication would be looking at games with similar settings/scale etc. Here's a screenshot of a similar prop in CS:GO:
thanks for the feedback guys, now I know ... the silhoutte waa important and the normal maps
so if creating low-poly do you have to smooth the face (not the subdivision but the shading, if you know what i mean) or just leave it flat shade and triangulate?
The falloff of the glow is way too sharp in my opinion, it would look a lot more natural with a softer falloff. The glow effect itself is way too strong as well.
so if creating low-poly do you have to smooth the face (not the subdivision but the shading, if you know what i mean) or just leave it flat shade and triangulate?
Edges with harsh angles (say >60 degrees) should have a hard edge or smoothing group split. Other than those edges you want the rest smoothed.
thanks for the feedback guys, now I know ... the silhoutte waa important and the normal maps
so if creating low-poly do you have to smooth the face (not the subdivision but the shading, if you know what i mean) or just leave it flat shade and triangulate?
Assuming I understand your question (I think you mean smoothing groups), have you gone through any of this thread yet:
Its a huge topic with a lot of opinions and preferences. Some people use one smoothing group over the whole low poly mesh, while others will do more as Nosslak said. I do both depending. honestly I simply use my own common sense in terms of what will make it look as desired by itself as a low poly mesh. In other words my mattress may have been a big box but I want it to look soft edged from a distance so I made it all one smoothing group. The bed post frames are meant to look hard edged from a distance so I left them with multiple smoothing groups (which is how box primitives start anyways). I use one smoothing group when I feel the situation calls for it and as you saw in my Unity pic, it worked just fine. This may or may not be the best advice from a technical standpoint but its what I've discovered to work for me.
Edit: my mattress lowpoly isn't just a flat box, the edges are beveled.
Question for everyone doing the prop: how are you making the glow effects?
As for my progress, I'm not at my home PC to post a pic but I'm really slowing down due to confusion about setting up my UVs and baking, I've done A LOT of head-wrapping-around what I can clone, or what UVs I can place over top of others +1 units. I keeping giving up on space saving techniques realizing that I'm trying to hard for something unnecessary and should just throw most of it in 0-1 space and have the props keep there own separate map. Again, I'm new to setting up a game environment so I'll talk about how I'm doing it and anyone can comment how they wish.
ScottMichaelH: a combo of emissive maps:
mixed together in the material, plugged into emissive slot - the mask holds the shape and the other stuff really is only softening the effect
achillesian: epilepsy setting in...
keep it up, everyone
some wires and udk screen...needs better lighting, textures
I still can't get the inside of the locker door to bake (red faces). How do you attach .obj files to Polycount posts? The rest of the locker is fine. I'm wandering if it has to do with direction? Is it trying to read something in front of it when its behind? I flipped the normals which didn't help.
I still can't get the inside of the locker door to bake (red faces). How do you attach .obj files to Polycount posts? The rest of the locker is fine. I'm wandering if it has to do with direction? Is it trying to read something in front of it when its behind? I flipped the normals which didn't help.
Do what JPomeisl said. What is most likely happening is that you're pulling normal information from the front of the door.
What I am wondering now is how would it be best to go about the AO bake or will the close proximity of the front and back piece of the door not matter?
@JPomeisl that is a really awesome break down of the pieces of the coil. +1
My next task is going to be laying out the various pieces of wires. I've decided to just make their low poly actual geometry, probably like 16 or 24 side cylinders.
@ScottMichaelH does your highpoly locker have polys on that side of the door? (is it shelled?). If not then your bake wont pick it up, either shell the HP or flip normals for the bake.
@ScottMichaelH does your highpoly locker have polys on that side of the door? (is it shelled?). If not then your bake wont pick it up, either shell the HP or flip normals for the bake.
Otherwise... weird...
That was correct, thank you. I thought of it at one point and tried a shell ... can't remember what happened but I remember it wasn't good. This time I used a normal modifier to flip it which took care of the issue. I made the mistake of trusting 3ds Max' viewport display. :poly004:
Everyone's work is way beyond mine here so thought I would try to make just a few objects and put them in UE4 to try and understand the workflow. Never done a high poly to low poly bake before so could use as much feedback as I can get. I have a weird seam in the middle of the handle because I mirrored the geometry, anyone know how to fix that? Ohh and the object is 1100 poly's.. too much?
Replies
Do you guys copy the whole thing from the concept art / reference or not?
help the overall. also some shadow/normal? artifacts on the bottom edge? keep it up
siraniks: if you're going from concept it makes sense to get as close as you can to it - in the areas where it's vague use your own ideas while staying within the design language.
needs another pass methinks
Nah, that was just a failed attempt to paint in some damage on the bottom edge that was too small and too harsh to really read well as that. I've remade that completely now.
I do have a question regarding high poly workflow. I only just recently discovered the convert smooth mesh preview to poly tool and was wondering if anyone else uses this or what they think about it?
When i'm in Maya (which I'm not now), I use that tool to make the high poly details "bakeable". I've used 3ds Max much longer than Maya so someone else would have to confirm for me, but I don't believe Maya has the ability to bake the high poly mesh without committing to the subdivision. Anyone?
Thanks for all the answers and input. Admittedly, most of the "control boxes" I'm seeing are making me feel ... what the word ... well I like them better than mine.
How do you do so? Whenever I baked a smooth mesh preview it only baked the high poly mesh without the subdivision, the same way the smooth mesh preview never showed for me in a regular render.
Continuing to fill out the scene a bit more
I can post some wireframes when I get home tonight
I decided to use the default display in Unity to test the bakes out and get portfolio shots of the props. I knew on my second sitting with Unity that I loved it for it's simplicity. I will still use UDK in the end for the final scene render (because the free Unity doesn't have shadows from point lights). I'm also happy to say it looks as though I've graduated from noob class with normal maps as I've twice now managed to bake some without terrible issues
Question: I am thinking to bake the wires against the walls. However the wire are coming out of the electrical boxes ... should I have a small wire going from the box to the wall?
I Guess you can bake the wires, and then mask out the wire material from the wall material.
That being said, I would just leave a low poly version of the wires. Would probably look better, and with current gen technology, it's not really that much of a problem.
If you really wanna be cheap on the polys, why not make the low poly wires a simple plane? would probably looks better than simply baking the walls.
thanks for the feedback! I've reshaped things around in the mask and looks better. I've decided to skip the straps since one of the reference pictures I found was of a rubber or latex model that didn't have visible straps, I liked that one better and went for it
About the wires, I'd say it's not that useful to bake them into the wall. I'd make them as separate meshes, you can use a spline + sweep modifier, 4 sided is cool. You can tile a normal mapped black cylinder on them and it'll look fine. Even if they're pitch black should be okay, I guess!
wow that's already good looking bed on Unity, good job and also to @Carter ... great!
Very nice overall. I feel like the bright green on the knobs and red handle piece is over the top. The color works if it's a lit display and its turned but the colors on the displays and knobs look the same here.
Once l move the props into UE4, I want to make the control boxes "toggle-able", So I will animate the screens and buttons.
When turned off, the knobs will have no emission. When turned on, the buttons will slowly light up.
The current emission is just a placeholder within Substance Designer.
so i'm ready to go low poly and texture ...
make it look good without being wasteful, for personal things as long as what you are doing would benefit from it who cares. Next gen amirite.
Like lets say i have a knob on a radio, sure i could make it 1k polys, it looks amazing up close, but a player would never EVER get that close, so i'd make it 20 at most, maybe 40, depending on the importance. It all has to do with how far and close it will be seen from and all that. There are no real rules.
Decided to use Toolbag 2 over UE4, all the materials are work in progress
@ siraniks - I've included a wireframe shot of the above shot, I'm trying to rely on the normal map for each prop as much as I can as a test without sacrificing the overall silhouette - its likely TOO low poly but it should hopefully help a bit https://9bad47853f7822ffefbc4802dab1217e7802db20.googledrive.com/host/0B96YRmFdJ5E6NVdYeUxwbklTTmM/PCNC_June5_Wire.jpg
@ MeshPotato - The red needle really draws my eye to the low res screen behind it, its pretty minor but it makes the whole prop look lower res. I really like the triangle support framework in the bottom corners
@ fonfa - Nice mask! Looking forward to seeing how you do the low poly
The best indication would be looking at games with similar settings/scale etc. Here's a screenshot of a similar prop in CS:GO:
so if creating low-poly do you have to smooth the face (not the subdivision but the shading, if you know what i mean) or just leave it flat shade and triangulate?
Edges with harsh angles (say >60 degrees) should have a hard edge or smoothing group split. Other than those edges you want the rest smoothed.
Assuming I understand your question (I think you mean smoothing groups), have you gone through any of this thread yet:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=107196
Its a huge topic with a lot of opinions and preferences. Some people use one smoothing group over the whole low poly mesh, while others will do more as Nosslak said. I do both depending. honestly I simply use my own common sense in terms of what will make it look as desired by itself as a low poly mesh. In other words my mattress may have been a big box but I want it to look soft edged from a distance so I made it all one smoothing group. The bed post frames are meant to look hard edged from a distance so I left them with multiple smoothing groups (which is how box primitives start anyways). I use one smoothing group when I feel the situation calls for it and as you saw in my Unity pic, it worked just fine. This may or may not be the best advice from a technical standpoint but its what I've discovered to work for me.
Edit: my mattress lowpoly isn't just a flat box, the edges are beveled.
Question for everyone doing the prop: how are you making the glow effects?
As for my progress, I'm not at my home PC to post a pic but I'm really slowing down due to confusion about setting up my UVs and baking, I've done A LOT of head-wrapping-around what I can clone, or what UVs I can place over top of others +1 units. I keeping giving up on space saving techniques realizing that I'm trying to hard for something unnecessary and should just throw most of it in 0-1 space and have the props keep there own separate map. Again, I'm new to setting up a game environment so I'll talk about how I'm doing it and anyone can comment how they wish.
mixed together in the material, plugged into emissive slot - the mask holds the shape and the other stuff really is only softening the effect
achillesian: epilepsy setting in...
keep it up, everyone
some wires and udk screen...needs better lighting, textures
Do what JPomeisl said. What is most likely happening is that you're pulling normal information from the front of the door.
What I am wondering now is how would it be best to go about the AO bake or will the close proximity of the front and back piece of the door not matter?
@JPomeisl that is a really awesome break down of the pieces of the coil. +1
My next task is going to be laying out the various pieces of wires. I've decided to just make their low poly actual geometry, probably like 16 or 24 side cylinders.
BTW carter. Loving the use off colors. Looking good so far
Here's what happens when I do that (just the one big poly separated). Moving the cage behind doesn't work either:
Here I modeled all the three polys (the big and the small extension above and below) from scratch and baked again:
Edit:
.
Otherwise... weird...
That was correct, thank you. I thought of it at one point and tried a shell ... can't remember what happened but I remember it wasn't good. This time I used a normal modifier to flip it which took care of the issue. I made the mistake of trusting 3ds Max' viewport display. :poly004:
@JPomeisl: Thanks and nice work :thumbup:
how do you guys do the walls?
was it from your file then exported for game engine
or was it made from brush same with unreal engine?
and doing with the textures,
does every objects have their own separate texture file
or one big texture file for all objects?