@Dvids@suule yep that's right Dvids! Basically for the actual material itself I have a wood master material with a wood grain detail normal and then each material instance contains the baked normal for each given piece.
Highpoly's that are WIP (Fan does not have it's propellers yet)
I'll finish off the table fan and standing fan and move on to the next table + Drawers tomorrow=)
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lEl6k
Lates update with Marmoset Viewer is up.
Here's a couple of pics from todays work (the reason why i constantly make small updates is so i can look back and acctually see the progress)..
Nice Work! I like the Fan, especially the Material - it looks realy nice. Nice progress, your Scene is realy coming together.
//EDIT
You´ve uploaded the last post while I was writing mine - great stuff and nice details on the drawer!
//EDIT
I wish I could say the same about mine - well, I make some progress, but the going is very slow and the results aren´t all that great, but I won´t give up now. I feel that I learn with every asset I create even if it doesn´t look all that great.
Well, enough of the forward apologies - here are my two little towers that I have done since my last update:
This one is very rough - more of an early blockout, its the middle tower behind the gatehouse on the left side.
I think this one has turned out better - its the outpost/platform on the right side. I consider the platform mostly done but the posts and the logs need some work still.
On another note - I bought Substance Painter today and played around a little - a realy nice tool and I have seen awesome things done with it - but I´ll need to consult the documentation or do some tutorials before I am able to produce something usable with it.
The result of my small experiment, the firebowl in the front of the concept - even an awesome tool like Substance Painter has to fail when it has to work with crappy UV Mappings and someone without a clue sitting in front, pushing all those nice buttons and hoping for the best .
I still think it was the right decision to buy it, one day or another I´ll undestand those shiny buttons.
Nice Work! I like the Fan, especially the Material - it looks realy nice. Nice progress, your Scene is realy coming together.
//EDIT
You´ve uploaded the last post while I was writing mine - great stuff and nice details on the drawer!
//EDIT
I wish I could say the same about mine - well, I make some progress, but the going is very slow and the results aren´t all that great, but I won´t give up now. I feel that I learn with every asset I create even if it doesn´t look all that great.
Well, enough of the forward apologies - here are my two little towers that I have done since my last update:
This one is very rough - more of an early blockout, its the middle tower behind the gatehouse on the left side.
I think this one has turned out better - its the outpost/platform on the right side. I consider the platform mostly done but the posts and the logs need some work still.
On another note - I bought Substance Painter today and played around a little - a realy nice tool and I have seen awesome things done with it - but I´ll need to consult the documentation or do some tutorials before I am able to produce something usable with it.
The result of my small experiment, the firebowl in the front of the concept - even an awesome tool like Substance Painter has to fail when it has to work with crappy UV Mappings and someone without a clue sitting in front, pushing all those nice buttons and hoping for the best .
I still think it was the right decision to buy it, one day or another I´ll undestand those shiny buttons.
The best thing to do, is exactly what you are doing. By testing yourself out in these Monthly challenges, they will always push you to learn new stuff! Just by doing these 2 things (drawer and fan) I've learned more about Sub-d and texturing! Can't wait too se what magic you'll bring forth in the future!
oh you bought substance! thats good but yes... like all tools tutorials are your best
friend in the beginning!
the models start to look good too looking forward how far you will be able to push this!
heres my progress so far
the printer was a hell but i did it and also started uving the models immediately
now they look far far better lol
@count
oh you bought substance! thats good but yes... like all tools tutorials are your best friend in the beginning!
It was on sale - so I couldn´t resist. I´ve seen awesome things can be done with it and I played around a bit with the demo. I think that it is far too advanced for my current skillset, but I intend to use it in the future so I´ve bought it.
the models start to look good too looking forward how far you will be able to push this!
Thank you! I too think that the Platform looks better than my first models. But I still notice many mistakes I´ve made and I am pretty sure there are even more that I don´t see until it is too late to repair the damage that has been done.
I have seperated this to a new Post since I am not realy sure if it is against the Forum rules to post questions in the challenge thread - I haven´t found any rule against it - if it is the case I apologise and would ask a Moderator to move it in the right area.
I thought it might be the right place to post the question here since it is related with the Challenge and my "Noobness".
I would like to ask you, if you have any suggestions for Tutorials that I should consume to fix my inefficient and cluttered UV-Mapping Workflow.
First Step - I seperate the different logical groups on the Map:
Second Step - I start to stitch together the parts that belong together
Third Step - That is how it looks after a million stitches (Some things just wouldn´t fit anywhere or stretch different parts of the mapping, so I left them floating in the middle)
Fourth Step - I start to seperate the areas of the Map in Photoshop in different Layers
Fifth Step - I fill the Areas on the Layer with a solid color
Sixth Step - I make a color Selection, invert it and delete the unfilled parts of the area above the colored blocks that contains the Texture that I desire for the areas.
As you see it does the trick to get the color on the Model - but I am pretty sure that the workflow is as wrong as it gets.
Since I want to avoid to get used to inefficient and plainly wrong workflows I hope that someone of you can point me to a tutorial that isn´t too advanced or to project specific that might teach me how to do it the right way.
I have a Digital Tutors Subscription and already done Texturing Low Polygon Game Characters (It was very specific for the created Character and the painting Part in Photoshop was way out of my league) and today I´ve watched Getting Started with UVs in 3Ds Max (it has done a good job in showing the different tools, but as it is a Basic Tutorial it just scratches the surface without being too concrete)
If someone can point me to a useful Tutorial (it hasn´t to be on Digital Tutors or free - I will gladly pay some Bucks to get a step further) it would be very nice!
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lEl6k
Lates update with Marmoset Viewer is up.
Here's a couple of pics from todays work (the reason why i constantly make small updates is so i can look back and acctually see the progress)..
Just peeped the Marmo scene on your Artstation, REALLY nice work :thumbup: Your material definition is mostly solid and I think you found a great balance with the damage - nice small detail paint damage on the cabinet that's subtle enough keep it interesting without being too noisy, some large rust damage to break things up.
I'm gonna nitpick because I like this scene so much, if you don't mind
The fan:
Dusty blades are killer, I Like the contrast with the clean metal wires. The first 3 circles of metal wires aren't attached to anything, I'd push them back to connect to the other wires. The rust on the fan base also looks too bright red and shiny, I thought it was red paint streaks at first.
The cabinet:
I think the hole in the top front face of cabinet is really distracting. I'm not sure what purpose it serves or why it exists, and it's visually distracting when panning through the scene because the cabinet interior is also lit. I would close it. Also it looks like you have some weird pixelated artifacts in the normal map on the right side panel and I'd try to doctor up the rust seam on the left panel, there's an odd line where the damage abruptly ends.
For the UVs, I would try to keep the islands as straight as possible.
For example the big middle part at your UV is slightly angled. Grab one of the horizontal lines of it an hit the "align to edge" button in max (don't forget to deactivate the angel snap feature^^).
This way you remove the amount of jaggy edges on your texture and it's also more easier to add decals like text.
Also for the stiching: It's good to keep UVs together but sometimes it's better for the bake (especially the normal bake) to keep them apart.
Rule of thumb: If you have a smoothing group split in your model you can also have a UV split. The sharper the corner is, the more likely a split is the better soultion.
Also if you try to improve your UVing speed, use hotkeys for your most used commands (relax, align, stich, break etc.) and also the tex-tools can be helpful: http://www.renderhjs.net/textools/
Just peeped the Marmo scene on your Artstation, REALLY nice work :thumbup: Your material definition is mostly solid and I think you found a great balance with the damage - nice small detail paint damage on the cabinet that's subtle enough keep it interesting without being too noisy, some large rust damage to break things up.
I'm gonna nitpick because I like this scene so much, if you don't mind
The fan:
Dusty blades are killer, I Like the contrast with the clean metal wires. The first 3 circles of metal wires aren't attached to anything, I'd push them back to connect to the other wires. The rust on the fan base also looks too bright red and shiny, I thought it was red paint streaks at first.
The cabinet:
I think the hole in the top front face of cabinet is really distracting. I'm not sure what purpose it serves or why it exists, and it's visually distracting when panning through the scene because the cabinet interior is also lit. I would close it. Also it looks like you have some weird pixelated artifacts in the normal map on the right side panel and I'd try to doctor up the rust seam on the left panel, there's an odd line where the damage abruptly ends.
Great start, looking forward to seeing more!
Thank you and i shall take a look at it and fix it! The fan is fixed, The Cabinet will be made later on, i'm thinking of adding some kind of keyhole or showing some archives in the back
@Skodone and Dethling:
Thank you very much for your input! Good to know that my workflow isn´t as wrong as I initially thought. I just need to practise, then practise again and then some more practise - it seems that thats a pattern in 3D Design.
For now I´ll stick with that workflow but I will look into TexTools and Surface Painter as soon as possible - thank you for the suggestion Dethling - it looks very useful - I will look into it first, since it is nearer to the classic Texturing and I think it would be best to be confident in the Basic Tools before I dive into Surface Painter, even if it looks tempting.
@count i do this quite the same but i use xNormals fill filter in the end to avoid flashing on the edges of the textures
Do you mean those white edges on the right asset?
I wondered where they come from, since I extended the selection area and the colors should fill out the whole mapped areas. I´ve just read through the Edge Padding Article in the Wiki and it seems that my extended area was still too small.
I´ve also taken a Look at xNormal - it seems like a great tool (I am very interested in the whole Baking Topic), but I think it is another entry for my "Later" list (a realy long list to be honest). Once I am able to produce better High Polys I will try my Hand at baking.
I´ve finished the Map for the Platform (more or less)
A very boring texture (it isn´t tiled even if it looks that way- I´ve copied the base Texture in Photoshop many times before cutting out the Textured areas), but I am afraid that if I spend any more Time with it it wouldn´t look much better and I would not be able to make progress on the other assets. There are still the Gatetowers, the small Tower in the Background, the Bridge and the Gate.
@count
essential key to good textures are good resources, your stock for the textures looks kinda weak in the first place which will lead to boring looking assets. try to get stuff more varying look at ACTUAl patterns how they look like how they have different colors in different areas, how everything is not flat. you can also try xNormals height2normal feature and create simple normal maps from your textures. just first turn them into b%w and those small things will bump the models (literally) big time.
and the thing about baking is, it adds so much as AO, Cavity... those things also add up to make the models look better. Not to speak of specular and gloss maps who are responsible for material definition in a non pbr workflow. Maybe you should first experiment a bit with those things, pbr and non pbr workflows, understanding of bump, normal and ao maps. All this stuff is a lot to learn and go through but is very essential to create convinving models. and of course then theres handpainting too.. another chapter of 3d.
Thank you very much for your input! Good to know that my workflow isn´t as wrong as I initially thought. I just need to practise, then practise again and then some more practise - it seems that thats a pattern in 3D Design.
as you said. 3d is a lot about sacrificing ones life to it. learn and never stop to learn... techniques evolve so fast one cannot afford to stand still. but the cool thing is
once youre at a decent level youre indeed able to do really scary things... i mean if you wouldve told me 2 yrs ago that i will do a full pbr 3d game in ue4? wouldve sounded like winning in the lottery to me
so keep it up, and dont get overwhelmed by the sheer mass of stuff going on in the mysterious 3d universe. pick one topic at atime until you master all the tools needed for your concerns.
that was a bit of a beat around the bush now lol.
as to your textures again: try to vary the materials more, bring in decals, paint in scratches, put some nails on them... dont stop adding variation. look at the concept clearly. what did the conceptartist paint on certain areas so they dont just look like huge flat areas. you can try to paint in shadows manually... stuff like that. its a horror in photoshop only i know, but mudbox is actually able to paint on the model afaik. i for instance use 3dCoat to paint in details, because you can paint the texture straight onto the model... which is suepr nice.. no seams nothing visible
also always check that the textures arent stretched around your model. your ladder is quite stretched still...
_________________________
my progress for today: more uvs (uving the room really changed a LOT)
a nice couch and the retro laptop!
Slow and steady! Made a couple more assets and started on the floor material. I'm probably not going to be finishing this by the end of the month, but will keep at it for the sake of having a portfolio piece.
I'm running into some lightmap issues with my tiling floor pieces, as you can see in this imgur album. Any thoughts?
Here's a standalone image:
How can I fix the lighting on the tiles near the light sources? This is baked at Production settings, and I set the light mass index thing to 256 to see if that helped (it didn't).
I know I also have some light bleeding at the top, but I think I just need to increase the padding so that should be solved okay.
@Carabiner lightmap index is the uv channel it uses for lightmapping.. by default it should be something like 1.. 0 is probably the one you used for your uvs
You could change the smoothing/quality and level scale in the world settings.. but it's not clever to make the floor super modular (in case it's not just one mesh). It will just produce many errors.. better use one or only a few pieces for floor and ceiling or any large surface.
Here's an update from me! started in on some trees and got alot of the smaller metal pieces into the scene. Played with my saturation.... once again. Crits please! It's definitely gonna take me past the deadline to finish this and I for sure will! Just been really busy with my last year of high school and work!
Here's an update from me! started in on some trees and got alot of the smaller metal pieces into the scene. Played with my saturation.... once again. Crits please! It's definitely gonna take me past the deadline to finish this and I for sure will! Just been really busy with my last year of high school and work!
IT's definatly looking better for each day, my only nitpicks are what i tried to fix in photoshop (ey my skills arent that superb :poly122::poly122:)
Saturation on the wood and wear and tear needs to be fixed , it feels to "clean" and do dark at the moment when comparing to the concept as you can see from before and after .
Wirrexx I would actually say the lighting is one of your strongest points in this piece. Looks like none of us are actually going to finish on time haha Here is what I got done today! I went back through and added some damage to the edges of the wood and roughed them up a bit. I still need to saturate the base color of the wood however.
so i will go to an animation and cg conference tomorrow so 3 days of no sculpting which makes the deadline for this gone :d but i also will finish this definitely
in the meantime continued uving the assets... will show something on monday
I'm kind of overwhelmed by all the great work, but I'll keep checking back on these. And maybe I should stop making excuses and just start doing it, huh?
... My PC is having some overheating issues. I was only able to get one render before it shut down for the umpteenth time... Here is a shot of the pistol. More details are on the other side and back. Hopefully I will get my PC fixed soon so I can post more renders. For now I have some more details to finish up before moving to the low poly.
@count
essential key to good textures are good resources, your stock for the
textures looks kinda weak in the first place which will lead to boring
looking assets.
I am not realy sure if my source images are to
blame - I use Filter Forge since it has a large collection of presets
and I have the ability to tweak many parameters (in Theory, not that I
am realy able to do it just now). I thought that would be a way to avoid
to much work in Photoshop in getting Images from different sources
consistent (also I wanted to be sure that I am allowed to use the
Textures that I use), some of the Texture Pages have very confusing
License Models.
try to get stuff more varying look at ACTUAl patterns
how they look like how they have different colors in different areas,
how everything is not flat.
That seems to be the second great
Topic in 3D - I´ve ignored it on the Tent and now again on the
materials. I think I´ll have to develop an artistic eye and artistic
imagination and pay more attention to reference images and the concept
image.
you can also try xNormals height2normal
feature and create simple normal maps from your textures. just first
turn them into b%w and those small things will bump the models
(literally) big time.
I had the whole mapping process on my
"Later" list - but you have convinced me that I have to move it up the ladder. As you
suggested, Ive done just a Black and white Bumpmap and added it to the Bump Channel in the Material and I wasn´t able to see any effect in the Viewport or the Render. I´ll take a deeper look into this topic very soon, the Tutorial that I am currently doing includes dirt and rust, so the textures shouldn´t be that plain and boring.
and the thing about baking is, it adds so much as AO, Cavity... those
things also add up to make the models look better. Not to speak of
specular and gloss maps who are responsible for material definition in a
non pbr workflow. Maybe you should first experiment a bit with those
things, pbr and non pbr workflows, understanding of bump, normal and ao
maps. All this stuff is a lot to learn and go through but is very
essential to create convinving models.
I´ve seen awesome things
done with maps and PBR - and I am determined to use them one day, but
for now I think there are some more pressing issues, like UV´s (there
are some stretched areas in the tower textures, even after some work and
attention to stretch them out properly) but from now on I will at least
include Bumpmaps in my workflow and go on from there, step by step. The Tutorial includes Ambient Occlusion Maps, I think thats a good thing to know too.
and of course then theres
handpainting too.. another chapter of 3d.
I did some of that already in a digital tutors Video (it was the Barbarian) - but two big obstacles presented themselves to me: - my lacking Photoshop Skills (I will have to work on that) -
my lacking Anatomy Knowledge (the Instructor was talking why he painted
shades in which area, pectoral muscle and so on) - I´ve seen that that
is an essential skill too, if I want to do some characters (and I do )
as you said. 3d is a lot about sacrificing ones life to it. learn and
never stop to learn... techniques evolve so fast one cannot afford to
stand still.
True - there are so many areas that it is a little
hard to set priorities, to recognize the basics and to put some more
advanced stuff on the waiting line. I try to focus my free time that I
dedicate to 3Ds Max into the key areas to build a foundation, even if
tempting techniques and awesome artworks pop up everywhere - my
Bookmarks in the "Later" Folder are growing in number by the day.
but the cool thing is once youre at a decent level youre indeed able to do really scary
things...
I dream of that day !
so keep it up, and dont get overwhelmed by the sheer mass of stuff going
on in the mysterious 3d universe. pick one topic at atime until you
master all the tools needed for your concerns.
I will!
I plan to
participate in every upcoming Noob Challenge, since it gives
me a deadline, a nice concept, the oppurtunity to see the workflow of
seasoned artists and helpful and friendly advice. I am thinking of
setting up a Thread, chose some simple assets (I was thinking of some stylised
weapons first) and try my hand at them to get some advice without
cluttering the Noob Challenge Thread.
I realy apreciate that you have taken the time to point me in the right direction - Thank you very much!
Here is my result for this months challenge, its not realy close to the Concept, but at least similar.
There are many issues and I wasn´t able to complete everything on time.
But on the other Hand I am satisfied that I´ve come that far and I´ve
got the feeling that I have learned a lot and it is realy inspiring to
see what all of you have done - it keeps me motivated to improve and
maybe one day I´ll be able to reach that level.
Some closeups of the Tower - I tried the roof with the Bend modifier, but got nowhere close to the result I desired.
I'll be making my final push challenge wise today on twitch if you guys want to see a little bit of my workflow. I'll probably spend at least another 2 weeks after the deadline to actually get a portfolio piece out of it though. I'll be under game development for a few hours!
I present to you the slowest slowpoke - me. But better late than never. This is my second project in 3D (the first I have not finished yet), and I have not learned texturing yet, but we have what we have. Here I must to make the magazine, barrel, and make high poly. I think by this time I'll learn the basics of texturing. I would appreciate for advices
So most of my spare time this month went to making my costume..sadly didn't finish ha. This is what I got done =/ I may still work through the week just to see where I get. Meh Still so far away from finishingggg
Apologies for the late upload and I was unable to complete the task, still much work to be done. Anyway, here's where I'm at.
Still working on the lighting and some place holder textures are still in use, just gradually building up the scene. I'm not overly happy with this, much of it is rushed, but it's all good practice.
There is some great work within this thread which fantastic to see the variation from the same concepts. Keeps me motivated and inspired.
just havin a bit a weird feeling about the wall texture? but stuff is looking rad!
heres my update... all has uvs now... just some ity pity small models missing!!! the fans, the engine thingy and the mixer besides the recorder oh and the lamps
Replies
I'll finish off the table fan and standing fan and move on to the next table + Drawers tomorrow=)
UPDATE
And calling this one done, moving on to the next piece!
the fan in the concept has only 3 leaves
love the texture and wear ant tear how did oyu do it? phototextures or substance/quixel?
edit*
actually the fan in the concept is a total different one
update for me... getting there slowly getting faster with modeling yay!
Everything done in Photoshop. Yeah different concept! I looked up my own references so i had something to follow.
Lates update with Marmoset Viewer is up.
Here's a couple of pics from todays work (the reason why i constantly make small updates is so i can look back and acctually see the progress)..
//EDIT
You´ve uploaded the last post while I was writing mine - great stuff and nice details on the drawer!
//EDIT
I wish I could say the same about mine - well, I make some progress, but the going is very slow and the results aren´t all that great, but I won´t give up now. I feel that I learn with every asset I create even if it doesn´t look all that great.
Well, enough of the forward apologies - here are my two little towers that I have done since my last update:
This one is very rough - more of an early blockout, its the middle tower behind the gatehouse on the left side.
I think this one has turned out better - its the outpost/platform on the right side. I consider the platform mostly done but the posts and the logs need some work still.
On another note - I bought Substance Painter today and played around a little - a realy nice tool and I have seen awesome things done with it - but I´ll need to consult the documentation or do some tutorials before I am able to produce something usable with it.
The result of my small experiment, the firebowl in the front of the concept - even an awesome tool like Substance Painter has to fail when it has to work with crappy UV Mappings and someone without a clue sitting in front, pushing all those nice buttons and hoping for the best
I still think it was the right decision to buy it, one day or another I´ll undestand those shiny buttons.
@count
oh you bought substance! thats good but yes... like all tools tutorials are your best
friend in the beginning!
the models start to look good too looking forward how far you will be able to push this!
heres my progress so far
the printer was a hell
now they look far far better lol
It was on sale - so I couldn´t resist. I´ve seen awesome things can be done with it and I played around a bit with the demo. I think that it is far too advanced for my current skillset, but I intend to use it in the future so I´ve bought it.
Thank you! I too think that the Platform looks better than my first models. But I still notice many mistakes I´ve made and I am pretty sure there are even more that I don´t see until it is too late to repair the damage that has been done.
Nice looking scene - well done!
I thought it might be the right place to post the question here since it is related with the Challenge and my "Noobness".
I would like to ask you, if you have any suggestions for Tutorials that I should consume to fix my inefficient and cluttered UV-Mapping Workflow.
First Step - I seperate the different logical groups on the Map:
Second Step - I start to stitch together the parts that belong together
Third Step - That is how it looks after a million stitches (Some things just wouldn´t fit anywhere or stretch different parts of the mapping, so I left them floating in the middle)
Fourth Step - I start to seperate the areas of the Map in Photoshop in different Layers
Fifth Step - I fill the Areas on the Layer with a solid color
Sixth Step - I make a color Selection, invert it and delete the unfilled parts of the area above the colored blocks that contains the Texture that I desire for the areas.
As you see it does the trick to get the color on the Model - but I am pretty sure that the workflow is as wrong as it gets.
Since I want to avoid to get used to inefficient and plainly wrong workflows I hope that someone of you can point me to a tutorial that isn´t too advanced or to project specific that might teach me how to do it the right way.
I have a Digital Tutors Subscription and already done Texturing Low Polygon Game Characters (It was very specific for the created Character and the painting Part in Photoshop was way out of my league) and today I´ve watched Getting Started with UVs in 3Ds Max (it has done a good job in showing the different tools, but as it is a Basic Tutorial it just scratches the surface without being too concrete)
If someone can point me to a useful Tutorial (it hasn´t to be on Digital Tutors or free - I will gladly pay some Bucks to get a step further) it would be very nice!
Thank you very much!
Just peeped the Marmo scene on your Artstation, REALLY nice work :thumbup: Your material definition is mostly solid and I think you found a great balance with the damage - nice small detail paint damage on the cabinet that's subtle enough keep it interesting without being too noisy, some large rust damage to break things up.
I'm gonna nitpick because I like this scene so much, if you don't mind
The fan:
Dusty blades are killer, I Like the contrast with the clean metal wires. The first 3 circles of metal wires aren't attached to anything, I'd push them back to connect to the other wires. The rust on the fan base also looks too bright red and shiny, I thought it was red paint streaks at first.
The cabinet:
I think the hole in the top front face of cabinet is really distracting. I'm not sure what purpose it serves or why it exists, and it's visually distracting when panning through the scene because the cabinet interior is also lit. I would close it. Also it looks like you have some weird pixelated artifacts in the normal map on the right side panel and I'd try to doctor up the rust seam on the left panel, there's an odd line where the damage abruptly ends.
Great start, looking forward to seeing more!
For the UVs, I would try to keep the islands as straight as possible.
For example the big middle part at your UV is slightly angled. Grab one of the horizontal lines of it an hit the "align to edge" button in max (don't forget to deactivate the angel snap feature^^).
This way you remove the amount of jaggy edges on your texture and it's also more easier to add decals like text.
Also for the stiching: It's good to keep UVs together but sometimes it's better for the bake (especially the normal bake) to keep them apart.
Rule of thumb: If you have a smoothing group split in your model you can also have a UV split. The sharper the corner is, the more likely a split is the better soultion.
Also if you try to improve your UVing speed, use hotkeys for your most used commands (relax, align, stich, break etc.) and also the tex-tools can be helpful:
http://www.renderhjs.net/textools/
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lEl6k
Thank you very much for your input! Good to know that my workflow isn´t as wrong as I initially thought. I just need to practise, then practise again and then some more practise
For now I´ll stick with that workflow but I will look into TexTools and Surface Painter as soon as possible - thank you for the suggestion Dethling - it looks very useful - I will look into it first, since it is nearer to the classic Texturing and I think it would be best to be confident in the Basic Tools before I dive into Surface Painter, even if it looks tempting.
Do you mean those white edges on the right asset?
I wondered where they come from, since I extended the selection area and the colors should fill out the whole mapped areas. I´ve just read through the Edge Padding Article in the Wiki and it seems that my extended area was still too small.
I´ve also taken a Look at xNormal - it seems like a great tool (I am very interested in the whole Baking Topic), but I think it is another entry for my "Later" list (a realy long list to be honest). Once I am able to produce better High Polys I will try my Hand at baking.
I´ve finished the Map for the Platform (more or less)
A very boring texture (it isn´t tiled even if it looks that way- I´ve copied the base Texture in Photoshop many times before cutting out the Textured areas), but I am afraid that if I spend any more Time with it it wouldn´t look much better and I would not be able to make progress on the other assets. There are still the Gatetowers, the small Tower in the Background, the Bridge and the Gate.
essential key to good textures are good resources, your stock for the textures looks kinda weak in the first place which will lead to boring looking assets. try to get stuff more varying look at ACTUAl patterns how they look like how they have different colors in different areas, how everything is not flat. you can also try xNormals height2normal feature and create simple normal maps from your textures. just first turn them into b%w and those small things will bump the models (literally) big time.
and the thing about baking is, it adds so much as AO, Cavity... those things also add up to make the models look better. Not to speak of specular and gloss maps who are responsible for material definition in a non pbr workflow. Maybe you should first experiment a bit with those things, pbr and non pbr workflows, understanding of bump, normal and ao maps. All this stuff is a lot to learn and go through but is very essential to create convinving models. and of course then theres handpainting too.. another chapter of 3d.
as you said. 3d is a lot about sacrificing ones life to it. learn and never stop to learn... techniques evolve so fast one cannot afford to stand still. but the cool thing is
once youre at a decent level youre indeed able to do really scary things... i mean if you wouldve told me 2 yrs ago that i will do a full pbr 3d game in ue4? wouldve sounded like winning in the lottery to me
so keep it up, and dont get overwhelmed by the sheer mass of stuff going on in the mysterious 3d universe. pick one topic at atime until you master all the tools needed for your concerns.
that was a bit of a beat around the bush now lol.
as to your textures again: try to vary the materials more, bring in decals, paint in scratches, put some nails on them... dont stop adding variation. look at the concept clearly. what did the conceptartist paint on certain areas so they dont just look like huge flat areas. you can try to paint in shadows manually... stuff like that. its a horror in photoshop only i know, but mudbox is actually able to paint on the model afaik. i for instance use 3dCoat to paint in details, because you can paint the texture straight onto the model... which is suepr nice.. no seams nothing visible
also always check that the textures arent stretched around your model. your ladder is quite stretched still...
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my progress for today: more uvs (uving the room really changed a LOT)
a nice couch and the retro laptop!
I'm running into some lightmap issues with my tiling floor pieces, as you can see in this imgur album. Any thoughts?
Here's a standalone image:
How can I fix the lighting on the tiles near the light sources? This is baked at Production settings, and I set the light mass index thing to 256 to see if that helped (it didn't).
I know I also have some light bleeding at the top, but I think I just need to increase the padding so that should be solved okay.
You could change the smoothing/quality and level scale in the world settings.. but it's not clever to make the floor super modular (in case it's not just one mesh). It will just produce many errors.. better use one or only a few pieces for floor and ceiling or any large surface.
IT's definatly looking better for each day, my only nitpicks are what i tried to fix in photoshop (ey my skills arent that superb :poly122::poly122:)
Saturation on the wood and wear and tear needs to be fixed
top one is the old one
Here is what I got done today! I went back through and added some damage to the edges of the wood and roughed them up a bit. I still need to saturate the base color of the wood however.
http://imgur.com/8FXtVkp
but i also will finish this definitely
in the meantime continued uving the assets... will show something on monday
[URL=http://s1206.photobucket.com/user/aaronmwolford/media/Render01_zps4klbqql3.jpg.html][IMG]http://i1206.photobucket.com/albums/bb451/aaronmwolford/Render01_zps4klbqql3.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
http://i1206.photobucket.com/albums/bb451/aaronmwolford/Render01_zps4klbqql3.jpg
I am not realy sure if my source images are to blame - I use Filter Forge since it has a large collection of presets and I have the ability to tweak many parameters (in Theory, not that I am realy able to do it just now). I thought that would be a way to avoid to much work in Photoshop in getting Images from different sources consistent (also I wanted to be sure that I am allowed to use the Textures that I use), some of the Texture Pages have very confusing License Models.
That seems to be the second great Topic in 3D - I´ve ignored it on the Tent and now again on the materials. I think I´ll have to develop an artistic eye and artistic imagination and pay more attention to reference images and the concept image.
I had the whole mapping process on my "Later" list - but you have convinced me that I have to move it up the ladder. As you suggested, Ive done just a Black and white Bumpmap and added it to the Bump Channel in the Material and I wasn´t able to see any effect in the Viewport or the Render. I´ll take a deeper look into this topic very soon, the Tutorial that I am currently doing includes dirt and rust, so the textures shouldn´t be that plain and boring.
I´ve seen awesome things done with maps and PBR - and I am determined to use them one day, but for now I think there are some more pressing issues, like UV´s (there are some stretched areas in the tower textures, even after some work and attention to stretch them out properly) but from now on I will at least include Bumpmaps in my workflow and go on from there, step by step. The Tutorial includes Ambient Occlusion Maps, I think thats a good thing to know too.
I did some of that already in a digital tutors Video (it was the Barbarian) - but two big obstacles presented themselves to me:
- my lacking Photoshop Skills (I will have to work on that)
- my lacking Anatomy Knowledge (the Instructor was talking why he painted shades in which area, pectoral muscle and so on) - I´ve seen that that is an essential skill too, if I want to do some characters (and I do
True - there are so many areas that it is a little hard to set priorities, to recognize the basics and to put some more advanced stuff on the waiting line. I try to focus my free time that I dedicate to 3Ds Max into the key areas to build a foundation, even if tempting techniques and awesome artworks pop up everywhere - my Bookmarks in the "Later" Folder are growing in number by the day.
I dream of that day
I will!
I plan to participate in every upcoming Noob Challenge, since it gives me a deadline, a nice concept, the oppurtunity to see the workflow of seasoned artists and helpful and friendly advice. I am thinking of setting up a Thread, chose some simple assets (I was thinking of some stylised weapons first) and try my hand at them to get some advice without cluttering the Noob Challenge Thread.
I realy apreciate that you have taken the time to point me in the right direction - Thank you very much!
Here is my result for this months challenge, its not realy close to the Concept, but at least similar.
There are many issues and I wasn´t able to complete everything on time. But on the other Hand I am satisfied that I´ve come that far and I´ve got the feeling that I have learned a lot and it is realy inspiring to see what all of you have done - it keeps me motivated to improve and maybe one day I´ll be able to reach that level.
Some closeups of the Tower - I tried the roof with the Bend modifier, but got nowhere close to the result I desired.
That´s it for now. Now it is Tutorial Time.
See you next month and Happy Halloween!
This is what I got done =/ I may still work through the week just to see where I get. Meh
Still so far away from finishingggg
Apologies for the late upload and I was unable to complete the task, still much work to be done. Anyway, here's where I'm at.
Still working on the lighting and some place holder textures are still in use, just gradually building up the scene. I'm not overly happy with this, much of it is rushed, but it's all good practice.
There is some great work within this thread which fantastic to see the variation from the same concepts. Keeps me motivated and inspired.
just havin a bit a weird feeling about the wall texture?
but stuff is looking rad!
heres my update... all has uvs now... just some ity pity small models missing!!! the fans, the engine thingy and the mixer besides the recorder oh and the lamps
todays fan!
will alpha map the planes on the front for the tiny grid
now...lights...compressor thingy...door...
next comes all the nice stuff finally :d
Am having trouble with doing the detail of the handle.
the process continues!
added door and lock