Dinosaur Tracker

dreamparacite

[SKETCHFAB]843db21bdaac4829ac892e1506b9b8e3[/SKETCHFAB]

The first commercially available dinosaur tracker produced in 1960. This durable detector can scan for all sizes of dinosaur big and small. Whether out hunting or recovering valuable assets this tracker can do it all. We are not liable for injury or death sustained after having found said dinosaur.

Inspired by the great looking environments and tech in Alien: Isolation I decided to build a Dinosaur Tracker! Modeled in Cinema 4D, unwrapped and textured in 3D-Coat using photoshop and crazybump.

This was my first time trying out the PBR workflow and while tricky I did learn a lot, especially when trying to export it to sketchfab (wasn't aware of the need for multiple UV sets). While not as clean and concise as traditional texturing for me, the freedom and flexibility of the PBR workflow was nice and it gives realistic results. Thanks for checking it out and let me know what you think.

3dReaper

Your tracker needs more work, more detail and definition. You also do not appear to be using PBR correctly. Firstly you put ao in the albedo, secondly I only see your Albedo and Normal maps but not your metalness nor roughness.

What do you mean by multiple uv sets? This mesh probably does not need multiple uv sets unless you want to do something inside an engine, like a lightmap or something else with the material.

Could you post all your flats?

Did you bake from a high poly? I do not see much detail if any in your normal map.

I would probably make an emissive for that screen as well, make it glow, instead of putting that in the albedo. I would also add more geo, especially to cylindrical pieces.

dreamparacite

Thanks for the reply! So to answer some of your questions I needed multiple UV sets because when you upload from 3d-Coat to sketchfab it makes one material per UV set. The issue with that is you can set the metalness and roughness but if you have only one material it does it for the whole model which defeats the purpose of PBR. So to get around that I grouped parts of the model that had similar levels of metalness and roughness together so that when exported they would retain their distinct looks, the rubber being more matte than the chrome on the handle.

I did not bake from a highpoly, this is the highpoly. I did bake from a highpoly for the nub on the end of the cord that connects to the handle because if I didn't it would add unnecessary polys.

The screen is emissive, at least in 3D coat but it may not have transferred to sketchfab. I set the screen as it's own layer set to emissive in 3D coat so that it glowed.

To be honest this is my first PBR attempt so it was all a learning process, probably not the simplest model to learn on but it's what I wanted to make. The whole thing was not planned too much texture-wise in the beginning so all the materials were put together using custom smart materials in 3D-coat and so unless exported from 3D-coat isn't a nice neat collection of maps like a typical model would have, for instance a lot of custom made noise maps were made in photoshop and were used to mask the things like rust or add bumpiness to the paint.

Thanks again for checking out the model and for your input.

MattyWS

You'll definitely want a roughness/metallic map instead of just assigning chunks of models a value. And also a metallic map will usually be purely black and white. Your albedo is no longer needing lighting or AO for PBR. AO maps are actually separate! An albedo is just used purely for colours and typically if you have something that is chrome, it'll be almost black in the albedo and pure white in the metallic map. As for the emissive part on the screen, you still only need normal colours in the albedo and the emissive map should add that glowing effect, no need to make it look bright and glowing in the albedo.

Either way you do not need more than one UV set for this, just the correct maps (Albedo, AO, Metallic, Roughness, Normal, Emissive) and it should be fine.

dreamparacite

Thanks for the clarification! Like I said, very new to all of this so I'm not even sure how to generate those maps but I think it can be done when exporting from 3D-Coat. And it wasn't exactly assigning chunks of the model a value, I just used smart materials in 3D-Coat and with those materials you can assign roughness/metalness values per layer and have multiple layers and masks within a material, but I did do it strangely at first (masking out explicitly the parts of the model to apply it to when that's not really needed). I'm sure if I exported the proper maps it would incorporate the roughness/metallic bits of all the smart materials.

I guess the multiple UVs were a bit much but it was seemingly the only way I could reproduce the look I had in 3D-Coat, but after hearing about roughness/metallic maps it looks like I could have gotten by just fine with one. Good to hear!

Also I wasn't aware that AO maps were separate, when doing traditional 3D modeling and texturing I always multiplied it on a layer in photoshop in the diffuse map, not sure where it would go in PBR but also good to know.

Thanks for the helpful responses, I'm sure I can improve upon the workflow for the next PBR model I make.