For this week, I was working on making a broken crate. Here is what I have for now. I will update it when I retrieve my updated files from the class computers. I will also post up all my work that I have worked on in the past when I get my Unity to work.
This was the dead tree model that i was working on last week. I used Zbrush's Ztree to make the tree. Substance Painter for the texture.
For this week I worked on making a chair. Here is what I have so far. I still need to work on the texturing in substance painter a bit more to make it read a bit easier.
Hello again! Again, been working hard on my character model so my time to work on the assets are lacking. Anyhow, my task for this week was to create wooden bins of apples, fish and clothing. So far, I've only worked on the apples and will finish everything by this between Monday and Tuesday.
Here's what I've worked on so far!
Apples:
Base:
Mesh:
I created two different apples, one red apple, and one green apple. I then went into Substance Designer for the first time and created the textures and colors for them. I then applied the textures in Maya using the Stingray PBS shader. In order to get the effect of the apples be stacked inside of the crate, I attached a gravity field to the apples and added a passive rigid body to the crate. This is the high res version and I'll be baking the apples onto a plane for a low res version.
Crate rough textured:
Again, used the smart wood material I created a few weeks prior. I changed quite a few things in order to make it work with this crate.
osamano: The wood texture looks overly grainy and almost too uniformed. The tips of the wood texture flow is off as well. I suggest using this and this for reference. Also, the supports feels very... off, especially looking at the references I found via google searching. They look too.. perfect and uniformed. I suggest using a combination of wood and rope.
zakioz: There's an n-gon at the front of the armrest. The texture looks very fake (especially normal map wise) and the edges are way too obvious. Might be because of the UV's. But yeah, the texture really needs fixing. I cannot see the reference (nor find it) so I cannot see how it really looks.
taylorconn: Should totally post the mesh so everyone could see the topology! Also, I didn't notice prior to the texturing but the cheek bone is veeeeeeeeeeery defined.
These are the past projects that i had worked on. I updated all of them. These are the crates that I gave a new texture to.
[IMG][/img]
[IMG][/img]
Thios is the stonewall which I sculpted more and added a new texture. For some reason, the texture looked way better in Substance Painter than it did in Unity.
@Yoomes -
Your textures on the crates seem to be going the wrong way. In the attached image, the grains go with the wood.
And nothing ever looks the same in Substance as it does in Unity for whatever reason. (I usually have problems with it looking too shiny which seems to be your problem with the rocks) Take the roughness/metalness or spec maps you get and alter them in photoshop until they look correct. The Levels tool is very useful, as well as the Brightness/Contrast tool.
For the Crate:
-Add dirt to the edges of the crate in order to give it more depth. As is, it looks very flat.
-Add a few scratches here and there to give it a more roughed up texture. The crate should look likes it been handled.
-The wood texture flows are going the wrong way in a few areas, I suggest modifying them. The wood texture flow usually follows the wood itself. (Edit: Like what Heather_Bea stated)
For the rocks:
-Increase the roughness slider to near max in order to lower how reflective those rocks are. As is, they are very shiny.
-There are noticeable stretching textures going on (especially in the bottle right two rocks). I suggest adding a few edge loops in areas that have large quads in order to smooth out the UV/texture space.
-There are a few seams, I suggest looking at your UV's in order to fix those. Another option on top of that would be to use Tri-planar projection in Substance Painter if you're not already.
-There's a lack of texture going on. Add more irregularity to your normal map would do wonders in order to make them look more real. As is, they look like they've been polished.
-It looks like in some places... the rocks look... attached. I suggest modifying the texture around the areas the rocks meet in order to look like they are separate pieces.
For the rocks (and i'm not holding back because improvement is what's important) you really aren't pushing the look. There are no texture flats or wire frames so it's harder to say specifics but it looks like you have a normal and are using PBR texturing (metalness, roughness, etc.) none of these are coming through.
If you are going to be using a normal map and these other fancy shaders to pull out detail, you really need to add a lot more to these things. It's great that you have the knowledge of how to set it all up and you are hitting some of the technical issues we all hit but you can really push that execution and really squeeze every last drop out of your maps.
Here is an example of a low poly zbrushed rock from a while ago. Just normal and spec.
not posting the image as embeded because I don't want to take away from your thread.
This is a basic shader these days of just normal, diffuse, and spec without the fancy PBR or substance. Execution is extremely important before worrying too much about the finer points of rendering. It's great to see a thread like this. Just remember to push the limits of what you are working with and when you simply can't get the look you want, that's when it's time to explore new things like PBR and rendering to give it that extra edge. Good luck guys! Keep it up.
Grumpntug: I can't speak for the others. However for myself, I started 3D modeling around February of this year. So I am still in the process of learning many key aspects of 3D modeling. Prior to participating in Chico State Game Studios, I had zero experience with creating game assets. And I started participating in August. So hopefully my skills are growing at a decent pace.
Also, I haven't been able to work on the assets as much I want to due to my other Computer Animation and Game Development (CAGD) coursework (F.E: 3D Character Modeling, Animation and Pre-Production). So trying to manage my time
I know that can be rough. It would be nice to have a course that let you focus primarily on your area of interest. When I was in school I had creative writing classes and Japanese pop culture for some reason. Would have rather had two more classes on environment art. I added more to my previous comment with crits on your rock. Hang in there.
That was kinda jerk of you. I think this is a really GREAT idea and that every teacher should create a post and force their student to post on it. 80% of people coming out of school issue is that they narrow their entire field to what people at school think or were good at and they appear in a world where THOUSANDS of junior are 10x time better then they are, and where they can't accept harsh critique because they were use to the sugar coating.
I couldn't care less about my teacher or the student critique, they were bad and really empty, none of my teacher know how to handpaint or care much for it, except for 2 all of them couldn't care less about me, they kept telling me how shitty i was and that i would NEVER get a job etc. I learn low poly and game modeling mostly on polycount by looking at what everyone did here. Then when i FINALLY had the courage to post here, GOOD LORD, everything my teacher said about me, was false and people here help me realize i was good and i had potential, thank to them i got a job before finishing school, a job I ABSOLUTELY ADORE.
So yeah, it's a really good thing when teacher for their student to go out in the wild, and not stay trap in the school jerk circle.
I critique art because I enjoy it, I look at art for inspiration and to learn, and I create art because I love it. I'm a game programmer, I don't make money at all off of art.
Being that I am not paid for anything, and you are paid to lecture and help, I just don't really understand this at all. Are you not able to critique your own students?
The other website I frequent is gamdev.net, for programming related to games. On there anything that sounds like homework, they have a policy that they will not do programming homework for people. This thread is a step further and sounds like "do my job". If all you know is high poly CGI and not game stuff, I feel you should have prepared and stuck around here, observe ask questions to apply that to your students. From the website though, it looks like the college has been making games for years.
Critiquing this thread to me just feels like a job. If individuals wanted help, and ask for it vs a collective group. I feel like that is a class and a job of the class. I already see about 7 questions, are you going to post reply's to this thread. Are these questions just going to be asked tomorrow in class that it is a waste of time for anyone to post here? "I'm forcing my students to post here...in turn I'm forcing you to critique their work."
Grumpntug: Haha, not my rock =p But thank you for giving feedback! That example actually helps put a few things into perspective when it comes to lowpoly and texturing.
Also, there are classes that let you pursue the project(s) you want. One of them is called Senior Portfolio. You propose a project or multiple projects that you want to work on over the course of the semester or multiple semesters. Then each week there's a review/critique on the progress you made. I will be taking it all next year, and I'm looking forward to it! I just need to come up with the specifics that I want to work on. It'll most likely be a stylized game environment of some sort.
Odow: I agree with you, I'm in full support of more threads like this. Students (like myself) are learning how to 3D model and Polycount is an amazing resource. Posting our work on here allows others to critique us, allowing us to get better. Every content post we make has a chance on getting critiqued, allowing us to use that critique to get better. If we didn't post on here, our options for critique's get rather limited.
I can understand the point of view for sure. What this really makes me think though is that I wish game art schools were better equipping students for the industry and I believe this is a step in that direction.
A lot of students simply don't know to post their work on places like polycount and this builds that connection for them. Yes there is a lot of beginner work here that needs improvement but, again, that's why we'er all here.
I have had countless conversations about how I and other developers wish art schools would produce real expectations of the industry and I think this is a step to remedy that. I'll bookmark this thread and pop-in every now and again.
Going off of the whole idea of this thread, I am all for students posting on polycount. I am a recent grad myself who posted on here during my schooling and got valid critique. My only concern is how it will only be posted on a Sunday. This shows no progress throughout the week, and does not allow others to give critique during the making. That is where a lot of my mistakes were caught and changed. If you are only posting on Sunday night before the deadline, there is not much motivation to go back and change it, (I say that from personal experience) and you do not get posts stating that the student did not even work on a project throughout the week.
I think it would be better to have the students do "sketchbooks" or a WIP thread for each project. This would allow them to post daily or whenever they hit a milestone and give them a chance to get feedback on anything from the model, to UVs, to textures. I think this would also allow for more personal feedback instead of people getting skipped since there have been 5 posts since they posted their work. It is also fun to go back to previous threads and follow how it was made, and where you went wrong or what you did right and build from it.
I understand that this would be more work for the person running the class to have to go through each thread, but an email with a link to that week's thread should suffice and get some nice feedback.
Hi i have been assigned to work on a horse and i have come across a problem i would hope the people of Polycount would help me with. If the flow of geometry correct for the horse because i feel like it isn't right.
Hi all! My assignment was to make a gravestone with a cross. Here is the wireframe and textured results. There are a couple of issues I plan to revisit, such as adding a crease where the cross meets the gravestone base and beveling the sides of the low-poly.
Here is the start of my new character. This character will be less buff than the redcoat. I'm still working on finding his face. The mouth definitely needs work still.
For this week, I am working on a rope net that the player can climb up on. I created a high poly rope by extruding three cylinders and twisting them inside of maya to be baked into a normal map. It is a modular piece that can be connected together. For now, it is straight as I'm still working on the texture for them and it's a bit hard to manipulate with the low poly cylinder but I will add a few bends on them in the final version.
Hello! For this week, I am working on "Tied down pile of barrels." So I came up with two versions of how it can look. I finished the barrels and now I just need to finish my rope. I will update later when I finish the whole thing.
I have completed the main character, Gavin, I did not have much time to make him, so all of the modeling was done in Maya, then I will just do a sculpt for detail. The model needed to be completed soon for rigging; these are the results:
On his head I also added simple hair geo, precaution for anyone that looks under the alpha cards.
I started making a cannon as well, the selected/highlighted meshes are still blocks.
For this week, I went back and started reworking my trees (since I never got around to finishing them). I believe I'm starting to get the hang of alpha cards.
The tree in the background is the climbing tree. The small tree in front is the regular small tree.
I have completed the main character, Gavin, I did not have much time to make him, so all of the modeling was done in Maya, then I will just do a sculpt for detail. The model needed to be completed soon for rigging; these are the results:
On his head I also added simple hair geo, precaution for anyone that looks under the alpha cards.
I started making a cannon as well, the selected/highlighted meshes are still blocks.
Your animators are going to run into issues with the current topology flow of every character model on this project. I recommend looking over this website on edge flow for animation even if it's too late to address it at this stage, for future projects. Lots of good information on ways to maintain muscle volume during deformation. This is really important stuff you need to understand to work in the industry but isn't really talked about a whole lot since many of the projects posted here are personal works where edge flow is not really important.
For the leaves, those will not work. The game style is realistic to a degree. Those leaves (with how flat and full they look) give off a stylized impression and would class with everything.
Take for example, my leaves a few posts up. My tree isn't complete yet since there are a few adjustments that I still need to make. However, it's a more realistic style that's required for this game. I also suggest googling up Philadelphia trees and find more info about the common types.
Hello there! This week I worked on a winch for lifting or pulling heavy objects. I think this is still going to need some further work (The UVs need some adjustments, the hook feels a little messy and the ropes are still placeholders), but here's what I have so far.
Hi guys, here is my weekly update. I was tasked with making a mug and glass bottle. One thing I'm on the fence about is whether or not I make them dirtier. In my references the bottles and mugs from the 1700s were pretty banged up, however being in that time period they would be rather new.
Hello again, this week I worked on the different trees again. The large tree for climbing plus improving the generic trees. I'm getting better at creating them at the very least.
Climbing Tree:
Ignore the texture, it's a placeholder for now. It's around 12k tris. Still working on this one. Will post the finished version in a day or two.
And for the generic trees: The angelic figure is for scale. 6 feet.
Hi all. My job was to make a candlestick and a stack of firewood. The firewood is intended to be modular, but I have not combined them in a stackable format as of now.
This week I worked on a shed inside of maya. I used substance painter to texture the overall shed. I need to spend a bit more time working on the texture but this is what I have so far.
For this week, I was assigned to do a carpenter's table. I went with something very simple with the references that i was looking at. I will get a wireframe upload of the image up ASAP. But for now, here is what I have. It is not final. I still need to work more on the texture. [img]http://i.imgur.com/Wy1bmXG.jpg?1[/img]
William Howe is completed Changes made: White stitching on shoulders rather than black. Hairline moved down around ears. Stitching added to gloves. The reflectivity of the bowtie has been knocked down.
I received a message from Grumpntug the other day about an awesome opportunity. He runs a Twitch Podcast/Show every Sunday at 4:00 PM PST at http://www.twitch.tv/grumpntug. The show goes over a lot of info about the game industry and I think if you have a chance you should check it out. I know I will be this coming week.
Replies
Textured
The boards are just using the same texture as on the fence.
I made the textures for the posts in the barricade in Substance Designer as well.
The texture is based off the same one for the fence just built upon.
This was the dead tree model that i was working on last week. I used Zbrush's Ztree to make the tree. Substance Painter for the texture.
[IMG][/img]
I used ID maps in substance painter so I unfortunately had a lot of maps outputted..
I almost forgot to mention, Im getting some strange artifacting on the front side of the sash. It wont allow me to paint over it.
Here's what I've worked on so far!
Apples:
Base:
Mesh:
I created two different apples, one red apple, and one green apple. I then went into Substance Designer for the first time and created the textures and colors for them. I then applied the textures in Maya using the Stingray PBS shader. In order to get the effect of the apples be stacked inside of the crate, I attached a gravity field to the apples and added a passive rigid body to the crate. This is the high res version and I'll be baking the apples onto a plane for a low res version.
Crate rough textured:
Again, used the smart wood material I created a few weeks prior. I changed quite a few things in order to make it work with this crate.
____________________________________________________________________
osamano: The wood texture looks overly grainy and almost too uniformed. The tips of the wood texture flow is off as well. I suggest using this and this for reference. Also, the supports feels very... off, especially looking at the references I found via google searching. They look too.. perfect and uniformed. I suggest using a combination of wood and rope.
zakioz: There's an n-gon at the front of the armrest. The texture looks very fake (especially normal map wise) and the edges are way too obvious. Might be because of the UV's. But yeah, the texture really needs fixing. I cannot see the reference (nor find it) so I cannot see how it really looks.
taylorconn: Should totally post the mesh so everyone could see the topology! Also, I didn't notice prior to the texturing but the cheek bone is veeeeeeeeeeery defined.
[IMG][/img]
[IMG][/img]
Thios is the stonewall which I sculpted more and added a new texture. For some reason, the texture looked way better in Substance Painter than it did in Unity.
[IMG][/img]
[IMG][/img]
Your textures on the crates seem to be going the wrong way. In the attached image, the grains go with the wood.
And nothing ever looks the same in Substance as it does in Unity for whatever reason. (I usually have problems with it looking too shiny which seems to be your problem with the rocks) Take the roughness/metalness or spec maps you get and alter them in photoshop until they look correct. The Levels tool is very useful, as well as the Brightness/Contrast tool.
Suggestions:
For the Crate:
-Add dirt to the edges of the crate in order to give it more depth. As is, it looks very flat.
-Add a few scratches here and there to give it a more roughed up texture. The crate should look likes it been handled.
-The wood texture flows are going the wrong way in a few areas, I suggest modifying them. The wood texture flow usually follows the wood itself. (Edit: Like what Heather_Bea stated)
For the rocks:
-Increase the roughness slider to near max in order to lower how reflective those rocks are. As is, they are very shiny.
-There are noticeable stretching textures going on (especially in the bottle right two rocks). I suggest adding a few edge loops in areas that have large quads in order to smooth out the UV/texture space.
-There are a few seams, I suggest looking at your UV's in order to fix those. Another option on top of that would be to use Tri-planar projection in Substance Painter if you're not already.
-There's a lack of texture going on. Add more irregularity to your normal map would do wonders in order to make them look more real. As is, they look like they've been polished.
-It looks like in some places... the rocks look... attached. I suggest modifying the texture around the areas the rocks meet in order to look like they are separate pieces.
@yoomes
For the rocks (and i'm not holding back because improvement is what's important) you really aren't pushing the look. There are no texture flats or wire frames so it's harder to say specifics but it looks like you have a normal and are using PBR texturing (metalness, roughness, etc.) none of these are coming through.
If you are going to be using a normal map and these other fancy shaders to pull out detail, you really need to add a lot more to these things. It's great that you have the knowledge of how to set it all up and you are hitting some of the technical issues we all hit but you can really push that execution and really squeeze every last drop out of your maps.
Here is an example of a low poly zbrushed rock from a while ago. Just normal and spec.
Old Rock Model
not posting the image as embeded because I don't want to take away from your thread.
This is a basic shader these days of just normal, diffuse, and spec without the fancy PBR or substance. Execution is extremely important before worrying too much about the finer points of rendering. It's great to see a thread like this. Just remember to push the limits of what you are working with and when you simply can't get the look you want, that's when it's time to explore new things like PBR and rendering to give it that extra edge. Good luck guys! Keep it up.
Also, I haven't been able to work on the assets as much I want to due to my other Computer Animation and Game Development (CAGD) coursework (F.E: 3D Character Modeling, Animation and Pre-Production). So trying to manage my time
I couldn't care less about my teacher or the student critique, they were bad and really empty, none of my teacher know how to handpaint or care much for it, except for 2 all of them couldn't care less about me, they kept telling me how shitty i was and that i would NEVER get a job etc. I learn low poly and game modeling mostly on polycount by looking at what everyone did here. Then when i FINALLY had the courage to post here, GOOD LORD, everything my teacher said about me, was false and people here help me realize i was good and i had potential, thank to them i got a job before finishing school, a job I ABSOLUTELY ADORE.
So yeah, it's a really good thing when teacher for their student to go out in the wild, and not stay trap in the school jerk circle.
Also, there are classes that let you pursue the project(s) you want. One of them is called Senior Portfolio. You propose a project or multiple projects that you want to work on over the course of the semester or multiple semesters. Then each week there's a review/critique on the progress you made. I will be taking it all next year, and I'm looking forward to it! I just need to come up with the specifics that I want to work on. It'll most likely be a stylized game environment of some sort.
Odow: I agree with you, I'm in full support of more threads like this. Students (like myself) are learning how to 3D model and Polycount is an amazing resource. Posting our work on here allows others to critique us, allowing us to get better. Every content post we make has a chance on getting critiqued, allowing us to use that critique to get better. If we didn't post on here, our options for critique's get rather limited.
A lot of students simply don't know to post their work on places like polycount and this builds that connection for them. Yes there is a lot of beginner work here that needs improvement but, again, that's why we'er all here.
I have had countless conversations about how I and other developers wish art schools would produce real expectations of the industry and I think this is a step to remedy that. I'll bookmark this thread and pop-in every now and again.
I think it would be better to have the students do "sketchbooks" or a WIP thread for each project. This would allow them to post daily or whenever they hit a milestone and give them a chance to get feedback on anything from the model, to UVs, to textures. I think this would also allow for more personal feedback instead of people getting skipped since there have been 5 posts since they posted their work. It is also fun to go back to previous threads and follow how it was made, and where you went wrong or what you did right and build from it.
I understand that this would be more work for the person running the class to have to go through each thread, but an email with a link to that week's thread should suffice and get some nice feedback.
Textured:
Mesh:
Nothing too complicated. Next week will be revising my previous tasks (such as trees)
Version 1
Version 2
Head model:
Concept Art (From the concept art department):
I smoothed out some of the facial features to be more boy like, he is about 13 years old.
On his head I also added simple hair geo, precaution for anyone that looks under the alpha cards.
I started making a cannon as well, the selected/highlighted meshes are still blocks.
The tree in the background is the climbing tree. The small tree in front is the regular small tree.
Your animators are going to run into issues with the current topology flow of every character model on this project. I recommend looking over this website on edge flow for animation even if it's too late to address it at this stage, for future projects. Lots of good information on ways to maintain muscle volume during deformation. This is really important stuff you need to understand to work in the industry but isn't really talked about a whole lot since many of the projects posted here are personal works where edge flow is not really important.
http://www.hippydrome.com/
For the leaves, those will not work. The game style is realistic to a degree. Those leaves (with how flat and full they look) give off a stylized impression and would class with everything.
Take for example, my leaves a few posts up. My tree isn't complete yet since there are a few adjustments that I still need to make. However, it's a more realistic style that's required for this game. I also suggest googling up Philadelphia trees and find more info about the common types.
Climbing Tree:
Ignore the texture, it's a placeholder for now. It's around 12k tris. Still working on this one. Will post the finished version in a day or two.
And for the generic trees:
The angelic figure is for scale. 6 feet.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/Wy1bmXG.jpg?1[/img]
Changes made: White stitching on shoulders rather than black. Hairline moved down around ears. Stitching added to gloves. The reflectivity of the bowtie has been knocked down.
I received a message from Grumpntug the other day about an awesome opportunity. He runs a Twitch Podcast/Show every Sunday at 4:00 PM PST at http://www.twitch.tv/grumpntug. The show goes over a lot of info about the game industry and I think if you have a chance you should check it out. I know I will be this coming week.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/ilPQMVQ.png[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/KFbG6Zf.png[/img]