Hard Surface and PBR exercise

Grumpntug

I've been working on this for a bit but figured I'm getting to texturing and will soon be breaking it apart for low poly and baking so I can finally mess with PBR in tool bag. (Haven't really gotten to do any PBR)

It started as a hard surface exercise in Zbrush since I wanted to learn a work flow for hard surface that didn't take me out into Maya or another program.

I've been AD on Trove for a while and it's such a simple game I haven't had non-simplistic quality art at work in a long time so I'm getting back into it in my free time.

What I'm looking for is eventual help with PBR and maybe rendering in Zbrush too with light caps, etc. Basically getting up to speed on the pipelines I've missed out on in my years on such a simple game visually and world building.

So here's my work so far and a link to the previous steps on my blog. Critiques are SUPER welcome and any links to tutorials, videos, etc. on anything rendering or really anything is always welcome and loved. Thanks!

Grumpntug

Grumpntug

Finally an update to this.Been working on my house non-stop. Working on the low poly...

Grumpntug

FInally posting more progress. I only get a few hours a night to work on this thing. I re-topoed it again since I wasn't happy with how it was broken up before. I also wasn't getting the quality of bakes that I wanted. I got some textures baked out but it's getting late. Will bake out the remaining pieces and start making maps tomorrow.

AgelosAp

Looks pretty good, can be pretty sweet when you apply PBR textures, keep going!

PaulJCampbell

On the allegorithmic and marmoset website they have PBR guides that go in to the technical side of things , this has really help me understand what It is and how to apply it my work.

Also the allegorithmic you tube Chanel has some awesome tutorials that breakdown the process of working with PBR.

https://www.allegorithmic.com/pbr-guide
http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn
https://www.youtube.com/user/Allegorithmic/playlists

Grumpntug

Awesome thank you! I'll check these out this evening.

Grumpntug

polished up the low poly for a clean bake. Ready to actually start the fun part of PBR and the maps for it.

Grumpntug

First pass of textures in Unreal. I haven't made textures for use with PBR so I imagine I'll need to take a few stabs at it...



If anything looks horribly wrong here please let me know. Thanks as always for feedback!

huffer

Looking good, but.,.hmm..why do you also have a specular map if UE4 uses Metalness? From what I remember, the specular slot in UE4 is meant to be used only in rare cases as a constant multiplier to increase or decrease specular value for non-metal parts, but 99% of the time, the metalness map is enough. I also think the roughness might be too white, everything looks kind of matte.

Jedairusz

Your metalness texture is bad. Surfaces are only metals (white) or non-metals (black).

Grumpntug

Ok, thank you guys! I wasn't sure exactly how metalness map worked but that makes sense. I used specular because it gave the carbon fiber the extra metal flakes under the gloss that I was looking for but I suppose I don't need the rest of the model using spec. I'll tweak that stuff tonight. Thanks a ton for clearing this stuff up!

joshschmitt

I wouldnt use a white background if you have any edge bleeding it could put metal where its not supposed to.

Grumpntug

I have a pretty large edge bleed around my UV shells but you aren't wrong. Will probably be a clean up step.

Grumpntug

Got a lot of useful stuff from you guys about what was wrong with my texture creation for it so I went back and re-did it. Still only about half way but starting to get the look I want on parts...

WIP textures

Albedo - Normal
Metal - Roughness

Grumpntug

Alright, I feel like I've gotten the thing to about where I'd like it. I learned a whole lot and thank you to everyone who helped out when I needed! I'm ready to move on to the next thing though and apply what I've learned and improve upon them.

Ged

Grumpntug wrote: »

what happened to these colours? it looked great! now its all a bit gray and the cartoonish outline doesnt help sell the realistic pbr either.

macoll

Love it ! Yep it looks cartoonish atm, perhaps it is wanted

For your roughness map, don't hesitate to use the AO map in it (try invert it, sometimes it gives good results for some wanted effect on some precise area).

Grumpntug

Ged wrote: »

what happened to these colours? it looked great! now its all a bit gray and the cartoonish outline doesnt help sell the realistic pbr either.

Yeah I wasn't sure on the outline. I'll probably remove it. As for the colors, once I got it into Unreal there was just something I didn't like about it maybe because it's been slow going and I've been staring at it for years.

Macoll, I'll have to try that. I really want to move on to a new piece but I agree there's something about this final render that I don't like. I suppose I put enough time into fussing over it that I should spend a little more tweaking it for rendering.


Thanks as usual everyone

Sanek94cool

I think you did great on this exercise! Keep going on PBR!

Grumpntug

So added the old colors back in and I think now that I have the other maps figured it out it looks a lot better...

Grumpntug

Alright, final final haha. I wanted to keep pushing things and take to heart some of the feedback I got (thank you for it) and I've gotten to the point where I'm starting to fuss over it now so I think I'm ready to put it down for a bit and move on to something new. This was a lot of fun and I can't wait to improve with this.

Ged

much more impressive final result, this shows off the hard work youve put in much better

Grumpntug

Totally agree. Thanks to you and macoll making me want to push it further. Night and day between the old renders/maps and the new ones.

joshschmitt

Ok so you should make the background almost black for the renders, its competing with the asset.

Also your textures seem kinda flat to me.

Grumpntug

I'll play with the darker background this evening. I figure a back plate that matches the lighting scheme gives it better context and further helps sell the pbr. Some of the pieces are meant to be more of a matte painted metal but I agree that maybe the neck base feels a tad flat.