Mega Man X Props, Tiles and Modules

ScottHoneycutt

Hello everyone

I am starting a thread of props, tiles and modules based on the Mega Man X franchise. Here are some of my primary goals:

1) A much higher level of detail and believability in my models. Here is what I'm shooting for:

http://www.jacquechoi.com/MegaMan.html
http://torfrick.com/Art/WIP/corridor003.jpg
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/408842472395908376/

2) Better material definition (this is always in the list of goals for me). I'm using primarily Substance Painter.

3) To focus on quality over quantity. I want to nail down the best small pieces I can before moving on.

Here's the first post:



As you can see it's currently in a very simple state, looking mostly like the X4-X6 design. I want to take this as far as I can and anime style models don't typically impress with their believability without stylized textures. At any point in this thread I'm open to all crits about designing hard surface objects and what I can do to improve what I have. Thanks!

ScottHoneycutt

Here are the high poly, low poly, and low + normal versions of the first prop. Material coming soon.

Feel free at any point to help me be a better artist

ScottHoneycutt

Here's the textured version of the prop. Any crits? I used Substance Painter with substance effects on masks.

Dethling

The texture is very noisy, I would remove the noise and instead add more shape-supporting texture elements (edge paint damage, sun bleaching, ground dirt)

ysalex

Hey man looking good! Only crit is to vary up the dirt a little bit, right now it read sorta uniform, might be worth making it less apparent in large areas, and more apparent in the nooks, crannies, edges, and meeting places - sort of the areas you would see ambient occlusion.

Keep at it. MMX4 is my favorite platformer of all time and I am a beast at it with Zero. Now I have to go play it. You're always tickling my nostalgia.

Justin Meisse

When I use Substance Painter, I always put any layers with a generator mask inside a group which I then put a mask on that I paint back some of the noise manually.

I'm by no means a Substance Painter expert but I took a quick stab at making a clean but worn material inside substance. There's a dirt layer to fill in the cracks along with a slight dust layer - just a fairly rough light grey layer with a dust generator on it's mask. On the paint layer, I duplicated the base paint but increased it's roughness, lightened the color slightly, and put it's height to a small negative value. I used this rougher paint for edge scuffs, to show where the paint has been scuffed but not worn down to the metal.

I did this pretty fast so it could use some more lovin' with painting back some of the damage.

ScottHoneycutt

@Dethling: thanks. agree.

@ysalex: thanks again and agree. I need to define these materials better! Also I literally just played MMX4 with Zero just before starting this LOL! X4 and the original X are high up there for me too.

@Justin: huge help, thanks! The last shot here is me trying to do what you did with the Pokeballs with multiple levels of wear. Admittedly, I'm not sure how to get that fine a resolution, as mine seems in comparison like 256 pixel paints.

In the curvature slot I've tried using a 3ds Max normal map, a curvature map made from that normal map in Photoshop, and a curvature baked in Painter. The last one gave the best results. Also I'm very much prefering the dirt on the second version here, but I'm not sure about the metal wear through the purple paint. I feel like the simpler one may be better ... not sure. Maybe the grey primer was too much?

Thanks

ScottHoneycutt

Another quick update. I finessed the metal edge wear on the purple a bit so it wasn't as uniform. This one has no dark gray in the painted metal wear.

I added another roughness layer. The lower image has the roughness layer below the appropriate layers for (I believe) a better effect.

Feel free to crit as to how these updates are comparing.

ScottHoneycutt

Next module. ref: http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/18887-mega-man-x4-windows-screenshot-zero-battles-a-boss-storm-owls.jpg

ysalex

I like it much more without the uniform dirt. I might even take it a step further and vary up the edge wear etc. so that it isnt applied so evenly over the edges etc.

Out of nostalgia after seeing those doors I replayed MMX4 - 13 year old me would be super disappointed in 30/year old me's ability to play MMX4.

Fuiosg

This is cool stuff. I have to echo what the others are saying, it looks like it's been undersea for a few years i.e. there's no 'rationing' of how much certain angles and edges receive wear, it's just all worn. Particularly the purple parts stand out as having more degradation than necessary.

ScottHoneycutt

Thanks.

How's material definition on this one? Notice that I changed the low poly mesh a bit by adding the cylinders to the mesh.

theblueturtle_

Hey man! I love that you're basing this off of mega man X. What are you planning on using these objects for in the end? Is this a build up to an environment of some kind or are you using this to practice your texturing?

ScottHoneycutt

theblueturtle_ wrote: »

Hey man! I love that you're basing this off of mega man X. What are you planning on using these objects for in the end? Is this a build up to an environment of some kind or are you using this to practice your texturing?

Thanks for commenting. Just making these for practice/portfolio sake. I've been given the advice to work on my material definition and to make more props and fewer full environments, so that's what !'m doing

ScottHoneycutt

I took the front end of the last piece (which I was very unhappy with) and re-unwrapped it. This portion is covering the entire UV space by itself at 2048. I can see the resolution being better, but I still have a lot of questions about my workflow and the results I'm getting. How normal is this?

1) What should I be placing in the curvature slot? The normal map? I've tried Photoshopping a curvature map to bad results. I've tried baking a curvature map which worked once, but it seems to me at least that the baking options here in Painter are still in development without much to visualize to solve issues. Last time I tried it they all failed to bake and I realized I didn't have a clue how to figure out what went wrong, so I gave up.

2) How much control in Painter should I expect? It seems that with this mesh here, I can get a strong line of wear along the top edge of the middle purple box, but nothing is showing up along the curved rim below it unless I crank the wear. At that point there is so much wear that the placement is useless. Notice with the blue ends that the wear is so uniform that it seems useless. I can't control it.

3) This wear doesn't look like metal edge wear to me ... more like fuzz.

4) How much hand painting of wear should I be doing? When I paint, the edges of the brush strokes look bad ... very generic. You can tell that I painted it which kills the definition.

Mik2121

Right now all this noise screams "procedural generated" a little bit, I think. As someone said, I'd try to mask out things and try to add some slight variation so it doesn't look like that. You don't need to paint the actual wear, but maybe use a brush to mask it out in some areas. The mask can be some slightly noisy mask to get some less uniform masking.

Keep the good work though, I'm looking forward to seeing some nice scene done with all this!

ScottHoneycutt

Here's a new attempt at the last module (likely the last). I used dirt brushes onto the group masks to reduce the wear and dirt, as well as painted a new roughness. I hope this doesn't look too uniform. Thoughts?

Mik2121

I'd say that looks better. I think it's still too much, but that's up to your taste and also the situation you want to present in your piece, so it could very well fit if there's a reason behind all the wear and dirt.

ScottHoneycutt

Thanks.

Next one is the sub tank. ref: http://cdn.wikimg.net/strategywiki/images/c/c3/Mega_Man_X_Arm_Arm_Sub-Tank.png

ScottHoneycutt

Here's the sub tank textured. Noticed that I played around with the Substance Painter post effects. Any thoughts at all are welcome. I hope this is an improvement over the previous materials. I think it is.

ScottHoneycutt

ref: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-XTkx43J1bOQ/VSXyWzS_SbI/AAAAAAAAFV8/nYV88jsNS5E/w438-h303/heart-tank.gif

Gungriffon Geona

it feels like there is meant to be some sort of crease down the middle, or that it's not actually a heart shaped device and more two cannisters very close together. that's how the sprite always read to me, atleast.

ScottHoneycutt

Gungriffon Geona wrote: »

it feels like there is meant to be some sort of crease down the middle, or that it's not actually a heart shaped device and more two cannisters very close together. that's how the sprite always read to me, atleast.

Thanks for the comment . Admittedly it was sort of my own take on the heart combined with both the SNS and PSX game versions (which was a little more heart shaped). I actually struggled a bit with the design on this one more than you might think for such a simple thing. I initially tried make it more like the original sprite ... and then I simply didn't like it LOL.

PSX ref: http://oyster.ignimgs.com/mediawiki/apis.ign.com/mega-man-x-collection/thumb/9/92/Mmxc_x4_02.jpg/225px-Mmxc_x4_02.jpg

ScottHoneycutt

Here's the textured heart tank. Thoughts? Help me to better understand what it is that I'm shooting for? I was getting critiques that I was overdoing dirt and grunge and changed things up a bit. Is it better? Worse?

ScottHoneycutt

My take on the X capsule. I'm not sure how many more (if any) I will do after this one.

ref: http://cdn5.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/gg/up/sshot4e52c2505fba6.png

ScottHoneycutt

The baking took me way longer than the initial modeling. Note that I dropped the small wires on the bottom part and that I will likely either 1) lose the big cylinder in the center or 2) place it further outside to surround more.

ScottHoneycutt

Does this make sense? I feel like I'm randomly trying to change it over and over having little idea what to do because no matter what ... its not good enough. Is this better? Worse?

I'm going to return to the others as well.

mr.pissarro

Unbelievable work man I really like also that you are basing your theme off of mega Man X. I actually own a copy of this game. If u don't mind, and sorry if I missed it early, but what work flow are u using? I might adjust the heart as the last person mentioned. It does feel a bit weird, considering how well designed everything else is.

ScottHoneycutt

I think this is better. Is it? Is the material definition better? I'm trying to get better edge definition with harder edge wear marks. I was looking at Frank Robbins work for ideas (among others).

Before in the first attempts I was playing around with the Substance Generators and painting into masks (on group folders) to reduce the generated details. Now with these new attempts at the door I'm painting in the details in Substance Painter without generators. For the purple areas I have a layer for purple, then light purple, then grey primer (which I gave up on completely eventually), then metal. There is a separate roughness layer as well.

ScottHoneycutt

New attempt at the ground prop.

ScottHoneycutt

Here is the final prop in the series. I always knew I would do the X capsule and wanted to build up to it after doing a few simpler ones first. I'm still open for crits if you have them. Either way ...thanks! Here is the final portfolio page:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/megaman-x-capsule

Bummer6

Maaaaaan this is dope! More! MORE! I want MOOOORE! I'm a huge Megaman fan, and this stuff is awesome. So yeah.... MOOOORE!

saddong

woah these look awesome, they look just like the game models. Is there a download link for these?