[UE4] Tool Box :: [Quixel Suite and Marmoset] Baseball Grenade

fairbanks3d

Hello fellow 3D artists! I am a student at the Art Institute of California, San Diego. I wanted to post some game assets I completed recently for class.

Believe me when I say, I am absolutely all about straight, honest feedback. I truly appreciate any advice and critique as I know it helps me become a better artist.













Thank you for viewing.

JordanN

Your grenade texture would be better, if you combined all the uv islands into one island, or if you tiled the islands on top of each other.

One of your seams is way too obvious.

fairbanks3d

Oooh, nice. I was looking at various options of how to cover those seems, and that's one I never thought about. I'm going to try that out! Thank you.

Lt_Commander

Your presentation is quite nice, but I think the texture could use more details. On the toolbox, the scale is a little hard to nail down because of that teeny tiny keypad. I think increasing the size of it wouldn't hurt, neither would adding the actual numbers on the keys. The rest of the box could use a little more flair, something like a manufacturer's logo and/or model/serial numbers, barcode, stickers, etc. Something that implies it was manufactured and not just modeled. You have the space and resolution to do it.

Otherwise it's technically sound as a static prop.

mospheric

Toolbox - The design is really off. For example, you have this large, chunky toolbox (huge handle that I'm not sure how you grip it) paired with a tiny, delicate keypad system. Your proportions are incorrect if you expect a hand to use that grip and that keypad. As a toolbox, you would expect to see some scratches and scuff marks from opening the top. You have small detail evenly distributed over the toolbox without any medium/larger detail. Also it seems the normals are too tight on the edges. If you made a high poly to bake the normal map, I recommend beveling more of the edges and loosening them up. Personally, I recommend not using DDO until you have developed a stronger texturing ability.

Grenade - Again, the textures suffer from having too much micro-detail without having medium/larger details. The normal map also has edges that are too tight. The material definition is off on the grenade. Really observe your reference and try to match the specular/reflections coming off of the materials. The central portion of your grenade should have a rough, broad highlight, but your model acts more like smooth metal.

You definitely show promise, but pay attention to the basics and tackle each issue in your next prop. Hopefully this helps! Good luck!

garcellano

Hey Chris!

Glad to see you joining Polycount. It's cool seeing the stuff you have shown since you started at AI.

Aside from what was mentioned, there's a few minor things I noticed that I've come across in the past. On the first toolbox picture, the bolt on the top by the handle is bit shiny, it might be the Specular Color or Roughness. The keypad might be as well, but I'd test around with that.

Presentation wise, this might be a nit-picky thing, the font formats you have are different throughout most of the images. Some are in cursive, bold, italics, etc. Just keep it consistent, from your name & info, name of your model, texture names, separate views. The background behind the toolbox is a neat design, but it might not fit for the look of the toolbox you have. The second toolbox image has a white background, it might be better to change that to black or keep it the same as the background design. For the wireframe presentation, the gradient in the background might get it the way. A black background or a black tile behind the UV map would be more readable.

I like the background you have for the first grenade picture. The metal scratch look with the grenade model transparent might be overdoing it a bit. I'd look into to changing that a bit.

I hope this helps, man.

fairbanks3d

This just shows how valuable critiques truly are. I completely overlooked the proportions for the tool box in relation to the keypad. Wow! I probably would have went my whole life, maybe remembering this tool box, and never realizing my mistakes.

Definitely awesome feedback and I will take all of this with me as I work into my next prop. Per your advice, mospheric, I'm going to restrict myself from using Ddo for my next prop. It's due by Wednesday, August 20th. So I will post as I work.

Lt_Commander, thank you! I'll keep those things in mind for this next prop I'm starting today.

garcellano, What's up Anthony! It's been a while. I'm just glad I finally decided to start posting my work here. I appreciate the advice, as always. I'll have to meet with you again soon, we'll catch up!

BagelHero

What you are calling Gloss/Roughness isn't actually Gloss/Roughness, it's still Colored Spec.
Gloss/Roughness are greyscale maps, I'd suggest going and reading up on your PBR a little more. It would really help with that grenade, too, having a better idea of how metal and plastic/painted metal work.

DWalker

The body of the grenade is very low poly, especially when compared to the ring - it looks like the sphere has 8 sides, compared to the 12 on the much smaller and less important ring. Overall, I'd say that you'd have a much better looking model if you bumped it up to the 500-600 polygon range, spending most of the polys on the body, but also adding some of the finer details, such as the hinge connecting the spoon to the fuse.

The body of the grenade is covered with rust, so you'll really need to drop the specular to match the matte original.

You should probably change the name; yours looks like some version of an M-67 fragmentation grenade. I'd expect a baseball grenade to look something like this:

snoop

Your grenade is missing the spoon's hinge, and the additional safety clip. You also have the spoon (the third and final safety, after the pin, and before that the safety clip) connected to the fuse, or rather you have it as one piece when it is not.

Helpful images:







Hopefully these images can give you a little insight on how the grenades work. If you're still confused any, just send me a PM. I was in the Army in the 82nd Airborne Division, 1-508 PIR. I had to handle weapons systems all the time and know them pretty in and out, I might be a bit rusty on some of the knowledge but most of it's still there.

fairbanks3d

Thanks guys. Extremely useful information here. I may also explain that for the grenade, we had to meet a 400 tri-limit. Which I met exactly. So many things simply weren't modeled. The textures however, can be done properly regardless of polycount. Our instructor also said it was called a baseball grenade, and we're supposed to stick with those naming conventions, so I did.

What I'd really like to do at this point is address all of your advice and re-do this
grenade, but without the tri-limit. I want to keep it optimized, but I'm going to model every part of it and ensure it represents the real M-67 grenade. Then I'd like to go and address the texturing.

I just did a bunch of research based on all of your feedback. Snoop, thank you for your service. I am also a veteran.

I will post progress of the new grenade soon and see what y'all think.