Sci-Fi Mesh - Looking for criticism and feedback
polycounter lvl 10
Hi, I'm a self taught Environment artist, or trying to be. I have been learning for close to a year now including UE4, modeling, baking, and anything possible to create a workflow and better my art.
I have only been doing hard surface for about 3 months, close to 4. I have here a mesh I recently made and I am looking for some guidence, feedback, and possibly some help. UV unwrapping is very hard to learn on your own and I know mine are either terrible or not great, so that is a major spot I could use feedback. I am also working on getting my geometry to be what I call correct. it is meant for a game so this mean very clean edges, cuts, verts, quads, ect.
The process:
-Maya - I begin with your basic blockout in maya and then begin to refine the mesh to get the overall look.
-Maya - I do my best to go over and cleanup the geometry and then begin the UV unrwap. From what I understand it is good to try and limit the seams and connect uvs so the textures will fit seamless. I have also learned that this can be bad due to getting shadows in 90 degree angles.
-Substance painter - I then texture my mesh in substance painter using PBR metal roughness.
Please take a look at the pictures and leave some feedback, tips, or anything that may be useful. I also had this idea that if someone would like to take this mesh and UV unwrap it the correct way, or way that is best done and then post images next to mine that this would greatly help me see. I am linking the The OBJ file if u feel super helpful. "This mesh is not to be used for resale and is only for educational use."
Thank you so much for taking the time to read all of this and possibly help me!
OBJ - https://www.dropbox.com/s/h7hflebyep9h3kk/Box_Building01.obj?dl=0
I have only been doing hard surface for about 3 months, close to 4. I have here a mesh I recently made and I am looking for some guidence, feedback, and possibly some help. UV unwrapping is very hard to learn on your own and I know mine are either terrible or not great, so that is a major spot I could use feedback. I am also working on getting my geometry to be what I call correct. it is meant for a game so this mean very clean edges, cuts, verts, quads, ect.
The process:
-Maya - I begin with your basic blockout in maya and then begin to refine the mesh to get the overall look.
-Maya - I do my best to go over and cleanup the geometry and then begin the UV unrwap. From what I understand it is good to try and limit the seams and connect uvs so the textures will fit seamless. I have also learned that this can be bad due to getting shadows in 90 degree angles.
-Substance painter - I then texture my mesh in substance painter using PBR metal roughness.
Please take a look at the pictures and leave some feedback, tips, or anything that may be useful. I also had this idea that if someone would like to take this mesh and UV unwrap it the correct way, or way that is best done and then post images next to mine that this would greatly help me see. I am linking the The OBJ file if u feel super helpful. "This mesh is not to be used for resale and is only for educational use."
Thank you so much for taking the time to read all of this and possibly help me!
OBJ - https://www.dropbox.com/s/h7hflebyep9h3kk/Box_Building01.obj?dl=0
Replies
Nice to see a fellow environment artist learning the ropes as I myself am doing, I thought I could share some of what I've learned and hopefully you can find some use for it
First off I'd like to say that you've made a pretty neat model, I like the look of it and I can definitely see it as a game asset in some kind of sci-fi environment.
As you mentioned UV-mapping can be quite tedious to learn, a couple of thing to keep in mind however;
- You usually want to keep your UVs as straight as possible. Making it easier to stack them and texture them, which in turn makes it a more optimized usage of texture space. (See the red lines in the picture, those are areas that can be cut in order to easier line up the UVs straight.)
- You usually want all sides of your model to have the same UV space/texture resolution (look up 'texel density') The two yellow areas in the picture should be the same size and ideally identical to each other as this could allow you to stack them on top of each other in order to save even more texture space.
- A good way to visualize this is to activate the UV-checker indicated by the green arrow in the picture. Here you want to keep the squares about the same size without distorting them.
I recommend watching this video to get an idea of what I'm talking about.
Making your assets modular and reusable in other parts of your environment (or reusing your texture for other assets for that matter) is really important to think about when starting out with a new scene. Takes a lot of practice and I'm still learning about it myself, it's a lot of fun though!
One last tip, check out Vertex HD. It's a digital book about game art with a lot of nice tips. Hope this was at least somewhat helpful, keep up the good work!
Everything you said I have actually learned somewhere along the way but at the same time never knew if it was right or wrong. I can clearly see how all you mentioned would better things.
I do know what you mean by using a single texture for multiple meshes and I am actually starting to do that now. It takes time and a lot of thought at first lol but I am getting the hang of it. Now if I can better my UVs ill be good to Go!
Thanks for your help!
Here is our IndieDB - http://www.indiedb.com/games/solar-purge
A lot has changed and I need to update all the info even story wise but you can still check it out.