Small props PBR + normal baking practice

Hupie

Having neglected PBR for some time, i finally want to have some practice with it. And the same time I want to get more experienced with highpoly/lowpoly modelling + normal map baking so I thought making some small props could help me with this. For now, i'm fond of making retro/vintage kitchen apparal but maybe i will also try other kind of objects after.

Currently I'm making a milk mixer like this one:

https://img1.etsystatic.com/020/1/7257552/il_570xN.487027895_35r0.jpg

I have already made the highpoly, will make the lowpoly now. If anyone already has tips for improvement, feel free to share .

Staubkopf

Hi Hupie

Nice start, the highPoly looks great. But your lowPoly doesnt quite match the highPoly, especially at the bottom. You can and should use more polygons to really match the highPoly's shape. With this your bake will look much better. Also think about exploding your scene for baking, it will definately help.

Keep it up

Hupie

Hey Staubkopf, sorry for the confusion. It was not the lowpoly version, just the highpoly version without turbosmooth.

I made the lowpoly version and did the normal map bake. I did not explode the model, i separated the elements with material IDs and baked with 'hit only matching material ID' like explained in the briefcase tutorial on 3dMotive. In the end I got it without too much errors although I dont like that the details are quite subtle. I think I should exagerate the shapes more in the highpoly but i will do that for the next prop. For now, ill bake AO and study PBR a bit.

Hupie

I just started to texture and I already am confused by PBR. I read the articles on the Marmoset website and as far as i understand, for a chrome material, you need a black/dark grey albedo and high metalness/smoothness. But when I try this in Unity with the standard shader, I get a very dark glossy material instead of mirrorlike chrome material. Only when I put the albedo color to white or very light grey, it looks like chrome. Is this supposed to happen?

noosence

AFAIK (I might be wrong in my explanation) In the metal/rough workflow you need to make it a light color because the metals color information is stored within the albedo unlike the spec gloss workflow where is it stored in the spec map.

.Wiki

noosence wrote: »

AFAIK (I might be wrong in my explanation) In the metal/rough workflow you need to make it a light color because the metals color information is stored within the albedo unlike the spec gloss workflow where is it stored in the spec map.

Its correct

For the specular workflow your albedo will be black on metals and the color comes from the specular map. If you use the metalness workflow your metal color is defined in the albedo and therefor should be white .

Hupie

Ah, you are right. When I put it on specular setup, I can leave it black on the albedo, thanks!

In the meanwhile I tried out marmoset and it makes the model look quite cool too. The textures are still very simple and there is no roughness map atm but I quite like the reflections although that is more a Marmoset thing then it is my model

3dReaper

Way too low poly, add some more geo. Looking good!

Hupie

Hmm, i work at a mobile games company so I might be out of touch with today's console/desktop standards but what polycount would be reasonable and why? Currently it sits in at 1300 triangles which is already quite something in my opinion for such a simple prop but maybe I'm wrong.

joshschmitt

Metalness is complete black or white, no grey.

nastobi123

holy damn, nice bake bro. Also nice looking prop.

3dReaper

Hupie wrote: »

Hmm, i work at a mobile games company so I might be out of touch with today's console/desktop standards but what polycount would be reasonable and why? Currently it sits in at 1300 triangles which is already quite something in my opinion for such a simple prop but maybe I'm wrong.

Its a portfolio piece so the silhouette should not show harsh polygonal edges. That is my reasoning. To me it truly detracts from the piece, now if it was a prop piece sitting on a counter in game I doubt a player would honestly spend very long glancing at the object. Low res would make sense in this instance then. Again its a portfolio piece, so the end viewer will judge you on that object and spend a much longer time on it than a player would. Up to you.

clinington

3dReaper wrote: »

Its a portfolio piece so the silhouette should not show harsh polygonal edges.

Agree. If it's just one object in a scene then it doesn't matter so much but if it is going to be shown on its own then you might want to consider adding some more geometry. It's a great start though

Hupie

I see, I could add some more geometry indeed, mainly around the bottom base. For now, I will leave it as is as I'd like to start on a new prop with more definition from the highpoly model and more materials within the texture. I will use the critics about polycount on my next prop, of course .

I guess I now used the specular method of PBR, which means its ok to have gray parts on the specular/reflective map, no?

Thanks for the critique's!

Hupie

Working on a bit more complex object this time, at least in terms of shapes. I hope the normal map will add a lot of interesting detail. It is a peugeot coffee grinder. Not completely finished yet with the highpoly. I might also add some extra decorative detail in ZBrush.

Hupie

Finished with the high and low poly. I think I'll pass the ZBrush work this time and maybe focus on learning and using Quixel Suite which I bought a long time ago but never used.

Also, did I maybe use too much polygons this time or is it ok for a portfolio piece?

Next up, unwrapping and baking

Hupie

Finished unwrapping and baking the lowpoly and just did a quick pass in DDO by only assigning materials and WOW! DDO really does an amazing job of creating instantly good textures! Ofcourse with a lot of tweaking the materials can still get a lot better but I'm already surprised by the good results so far with only a few clicks.

I do have a question about the color ID baking. For baking, I use the 'hit Only Matching Material ID' option to prevent unwanted baking between elements but how can this work when you want to use Material ID's for a color map? As far as I figured it out, I must render the color map without the matching material ID option and clean up the color map afterwards in Photoshop. Is this correct?

Will do more testing in DDO now.

bobmartien

Cool stuff !

I just have a single question.
Did you add your Occlusion in your Albedo ?

BARDLER

You have a solid start on the mixer, and the base materials are reading correctly, but there are a few things I noticed.
-You put your AO into your albedo which is not needed. AO only goes in as a separate texture which is used as an indirect diffuse and specular light mask.
-Reflectivity map could use a touch of color. Metals always look better with color, even if the metals like chrome or silver have a touch of blue to them. Also bringing in a tiny hint of that green paint from the body in the reflectivity map would make the color pop more.
-More detail and breakup in your roughness map. This map is what makes materials look really good in a PBR shader, and is the one you should spend a lot of time on.

Hope that helps.

Hupie

Thanks for the comments!

Yes, I added AO to my diffuse/albedo which I shouldn't have done. Will not do it for future props Also thanks for the tips about roughness and reflectivity, I'll use it on my future props as I think the mixer is a bit too simple to use as a portfolio piece and I don't like it so much anymore.

Can anyone answer the question in my last post about generating colormask maps? I'm using workable colormask maps now but I feel the workflow can be a lot cleaner.

In the meantime, I played a bit more with DDO to make a variation.

3dReaper

Looks excellent! You know what would sell it a bit more? A few coffee beans!

Hupie

A few coffee beans would definitely work! When i make new portfolio screens I'll add them!

Currently I'm working on a Lanard X8 which is a Nerf gun which people turn into very cool looking guns by modding them.

I finished the highpoly and I'm now working on the lowpoly version. I think the highpoly turned out quite alright although there are some things I'm not happy about. Some parts don't have good smoothing/topology, although the errors are minor. A big thing however is that its not functional, the barrel cannot slide out as there is no mechanism. I didn't think about this until the end and i don't feel like modeling in a whole mechanism right now so i will leave it as is :P

I have a question about the lowpoly, which parts are best to model/weld as one element and which i better keep separate? I think the small box details on top of the barrel i can leave separate, but the shapes at the end of the barrel i feel i should merge. What do you think?

Cay

I think there's no real benefit in merging them.. you'll up your tri count and spend time on it and that's pretty much it, right? You will have to explode it for baking, so you might just keep it separate.

Spoon

I love the last 2 pieces! The coffee thing looks absolutely gorgeous!

I would definitely keep them separated. You not only save triangles, you might also get cleaner bakes by exploding it

Hupie

Finally spend some time working on the gun again. I finished the lowpoly with elements kept separated and baked out the various maps. Im quite happy with the normal map, the lowpoly with normal map almost looks like the highpoly. I quickly put some materials on it via DDO but that doesn't look so good yet unfortunately, especially the copper. Then again, I have yet to really explore the program and its features.

pixelpatron

Looks like you rushed the materials; they seem almost toy-like atm. I really dislike how the ejector rod clips in with the muzzle.

Hupie

It's true, I did rush the materials :P But besides that, I think I also have some of my maps set up incorrectly, especially the object space normal map, thats why the copper material looks so weird. There isn't really an ejector rod, the thingy on the side of the gun is just decoration for all I know and isn't centered with the cylinder.

I played a bit more with the DDO materials, and I feel I have a decent natural skin now. Will still need to tweak some materials and I also plan to make a few different skins with different materials just like people do in real life with this Nerf gun.

Hupie

I started to work on a new gun, this time a realistic Colt .45 Peacemaker. When I worked on my previous sci-fi gun, I really didn't know how revolvers worked. I did some research with the Colt, and now I know a lot better

In my research, I found there are some variations in Colt Peacemakers depending on which year they were built. In the end, I just combined parts of the various versions just as I saw fit. Still if there are gun experts here who can point me one mistakes, please do.

Also, the highpoly has some spots with ugly topology but hopefully that will not be very visible in the end on the bakes maps.

I will make lowpoly and bakes now.

Hupie

Lowpoly and bakes are finished! Again, I quickly put down some materials in DDO and I'm quite happy with the results so far. I will tweak the materials a bit more and also make a simple western scene around it and finally render in UE4.

Jonas Ronnegard

Hi there, good work so far, would be nice with some more work with the textures though, especially the wood on the revolver, some highlights and darker areas etc.