Old General Electrics Cooker

oskarkeo

Hi Guys,

I was hoping for some feedback on material shading, as it's one of my weaker areas. I modelled an old General Electrics cooker and was texturing in Quixel.

Some caveats to what I'm doing, I guess i'm open to any feedback beyond the material settings if you deem the approach to be wack.

1) the geo in the renders is all LODA (high res) as I want to build an asset library of props, and though my current project won't show the prop from behind, I wanted to have coverage of it at high res and would then consider decimating to speed up rendering/drawing.
2) its rendered in Arnold (so it's not conceived as a games project (but lets face it, Polycount is where all the best CG artists congregate). Hopefully this is acceptable behavior


What i'd like to know are the following:
1). Does the material look believable ? - and what parts don't look right?

2). I'm not convinced the dirt is being layered on correctly, how does it look to you? and is there a workflow that anyone could suggest in how to apply dirt layers. at the moment it's sat on top of the paint layer, but it feels like it needs more bump or something

3). I'm a bit confused by the whole Texel density thing, I'm using 1x 4K uv map, which covers the entire mesh. The way it's set up, the back of the object (which will be occluded is taking up a good chunk of the surface area. even so, the texture detail looks softer than i'd like. Am I wrong to say that for making hero assets you want to have a very high texel density? I couldn't see much more detail from 2048texels per metre to 8196 texels per metre, which I thought I was. Am I missing something important?

4) As you can see on the sketchfab publish, my metal/spec glossy is miles off. I'm presuming that's because I'm using a pbr workflow? i.e. my silver material is black in the diffuse and should be white?

5). Those oven rings are using a default shader because I cannot for the life of me figure out what surface they should be, does anyone have a clue what kind of metal this is?

Thanks for any help you can give

Oskar


3D Renders:





Sketchfab:
https://skfb.ly/CyDJ

<iframe width="640" height="480" src="https://sketchfab.com/models/c9182a48d26e44e88337911294a81949/embed&quot; frameborder="0" allowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" onmousewheel=""></iframe>

<p style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; margin: 5px; color: #4A4A4A;">
<a href="https://sketchfab.com/models/c9182a48d26e44e88337911294a81949?utm_source=oembed&utm_medium=embed&utm_campaign=c9182a48d26e44e88337911294a81949&quot; target="_blank" style="font-weight: bold; color: #1CAAD9;">Cooker M02 V006</a>
by <a href="https://sketchfab.com/deadlygraphics?utm_source=oembed&utm_medium=embed&utm_campaign=c9182a48d26e44e88337911294a81949&quot; target="_blank" style="font-weight: bold; color: #1CAAD9;">deadlygraphics</a>
on <a href="https://sketchfab.com?utm_source=oembed&utm_medium=embed&utm_campaign=c9182a48d26e44e88337911294a81949&quot; target="_blank" style="font-weight: bold; color: #1CAAD9;">Sketchfab</a>
</p>



REF:
http://www.automaticwasher.org/FUN/GE40.jpg

commador

oskarkeo wrote: »

What i'd like to know are the following:
1). Does the material look believable ? - and what parts don't look right?

Yes-ish. The stainless steel trim looks like stainless, but the paint is too flat. The paint looks like its been aged quite a bit, but the stainless is almost chrome, which would indicate its brand new. The two need to match each other in terms of weathering.

2). I'm not convinced the dirt is being layered on correctly, how does it look to you? and is there a workflow that anyone could suggest in how to apply dirt layers. at the moment it's sat on top of the paint layer, but it feels like it needs more bump or something

Unless its thick mud, I wouldn't bother adding anything to the normal map. Right now, it seems kind of haphazard in how it was applied. Again, its only on the paint and not on the trim. Also, its all brown dirt. If this was an old stove, even if it were cleaned with each use, you would see staining and spatter from grease over the cooktop. Any panel gap would probably have some discoloration as well, especially where things are bolted together. The fasteners used to hold everything together will probably start to rust after a while.

3). I'm a bit confused by the whole Texel density thing, I'm using 1x 4K uv map, which covers the entire mesh. The way it's set up, the back of the object (which will be occluded is taking up a good chunk of the surface area. even so, the texture detail looks softer than i'd like. Am I wrong to say that for making hero assets you want to have a very high texel density? I couldn't see much more detail from 2048texels per metre to 8196 texels per metre, which I thought I was. Am I missing something important?

Even texel density is important yes, but you also need to consider visibility. The backside wont be seen, so why is it the same density as the front, which is far more important? Texel density is a way of ensuring even coverage of all the items in your scene. If you settled on say, 100 pixels per meter, and given the height of this oven is probably a meter at the cooktop, then you would scale your UV shells accordingly. At 100 pixel/meter it may only need a 1k map. This is all arbitray of course, but using a 2k or higher for a prop seems overkill.

4) As you can see on the sketchfab publish, my metal/spec glossy is miles off. I'm presuming that's because I'm using a pbr workflow? i.e. my silver material is black in the diffuse and should be white?

I don't think sketchfab does PBR yet.

5). Those oven rings are using a default shader because I cannot for the life of me figure out what surface they should be, does anyone have a clue what kind of metal this is?

I think they should be some kind of ceramic. That's usually what most electric elements are coated with.

oskarkeo

Commandor, thanks so much for your feedback. Pretty new to texturing so I'm still wrapping my head around all the millions of micro decisions that go into making hte texture right. Plus obviously quixel is a rather large helping hand

1). great observation. I hadn't considered how the materials sat together with each other. Will take a look at consolidating the weathering on my next pass.

2). I think i'll have to take some ref photos of my own cooker. you're right, it was a bit of a mud, I'm not thinking the weathering through logically. Feedback gratefully recieved.

3). yeah, tried to caveat this in my preamble. I'm going to have to do a decimated render model at some point but wanted to get the base correct with even high res geo. If it was for a games engine i'd agree 4K was way too large, but thought i'd need to be safe to fit in a 1920x1080 render. when you count the six planes (front back, top bottom left and right) divided by a 4K map each is somewhere less than 1024. but you're correct, gotta start deleting occluded areas.

4). great! Probably I won't go and try to learn how to convert to old style, but thanks for clarifying.

5). that's very helpful, I have a very untrained eye regarding spotting shaders. will have a google for ceramic elements.


again thanks for the feedback. Hoping to show something addressign your feedback at some point throughout the next week

Oskar