Sketchbook: mr_

mr_

LATEST: After spending 2 months on creating 2 sets of floor tiles, and for other various reasons: I got burned out and it made me put my small scene project on hold. Thus I went back to my roots: doing a ton of quick HP builds to learn from and to practice.

Hi there!

Long time ago I was into modding which made me interested in 3d modeling. However took a long hiatus. Now I decided to doodle around once again.

This thread will focus on my ever current projects.

Feel free to reply/comment!

mr_

mr_

old test render:

unfinished community render sphere:

mr_

Been working on somewhat realistic looking easy cracks (screen cap):

mr_

wip prog_1, floor tile for scene

mr_

wip prog_2, floor tile for scene

so, after having some technical difficulties, I had to redesign (first image, with cavity overlay) my base mesh and alter some of my work-flow. However I'm still not satisfied with the outcome of my hand made cracks.



sadly, my custom vdm stamp causes a (yet) unsolvable problem. Been working on it for weeks but still were unable to recreate the desired effect and a relatively nice mesh flow all together. If I correct the stamp, I loose the definition of it. It's a tedious process as a stamp is effected by many variables within mudbox (size, strengh, ect.). So I will keep on truckin'...


(even tho' picture A. shows a promising surface, B. and C. highlights the flaws - and it becomes particularly visible after rendering)

mr_

After a hot minute, I found out that my noise problem was twofold: the first one was obvious (distortion and lack of resolution), the second one came from the incorrect use of noise (when applying the stamp). So I adjusted accordingly the vdm stamp and corrected my use of surface detailing. It's still not 100% optimized, but it's almost unnoticeable.

mr_

Well, that "barely visible" thing was out of pure luck*. So I had to do some more tweaking. Tried a number of methods (re-editing my sculpt tools, using different modeling approaches, retopo-ing by hand (ugh...)); non of them worked really at this level of complexity. Then I started playing with the retopo tools once again and finally had some promising results. I hope that this will quicken my process exponentially...
So here is a small breakdown of the process:

The idea is to clean up the mesh after each "destructive" step (only when you stretch the topology beyond repair)


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*increasing the size of the noise made is visible again

mr_

did a quick test, (3 is the newest, with exaggerated AO and cavity overlays)

mr_

So after some more in depth testing, I decided to redo the whole floor tile (looks way better!):

the HP is almost done. I'm still debating on what to add between the slabs. Might take my original approach (keeping it simple) by only adding sand in between, and change it later on if I fancy it...

Also I will post an early block-out of my planned scene.

mr_

And the block-out (early concept):

The action scene: when the dude opens the chest, the skeleton looks at him.

mr_

small update:

1.) I've rigged a custom dummy for posing/modeling references and updated the "monastery action scene" accordingly.



2.) Also, had to came up with a simple solution for my texture extracting problems, which originated from having extreme high polycount for my tile. Thus I have to separately render each floor slab, which creates the: (tiny resolution) + (dead empty space everywhere) = problem - equation. To counter this effect and to minimize empty uv space*, I simply "sliced up" the slabs into smaller rectangular shapes with basic lowres squares. It definitely increased my render element counts, but it's a small price to pay for the sake of optimization and render times/samples.
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*thus not forcing my renders to be 12millionX12million pixels with a render time of 12 hours/piece, just to get the desired texture detail&density

mr_

initial material testing (grey-dusty floor slab):



So, had to scrap my original idea, and went with a different approach, thus taking so long to figure out things. This is the first material pass, and it's roughly there where I wanted. How ever the spec/gloss freaks me out...

(lol on the unreal game logo XD)

mr_

refined material/mesh update: VISIONS



I slightly edited the base mesh (simplified topology and modified uvw sets), and tweaked all textures (now just 4 in total). Had to remove AO (as unreal doesn't utilize pre-baked ones any more; so gave me a hard time to figure out how to somewhat mask lights out) and gloss. Also had to physically write down my pipeline as it got way to complicated to remember (wonder how many people deal with this type of issue?)

In this stage, the test tile looks much more like what I had in mind. I'm slowly getting to learn to project my visions into reality (it's ain't easy  ). Oh, and also found a simple solution for my dusty overlays (in cracks): previously they where only just a coloured version of the cav map, now they have a separate normal/height definition; creating the illusion of volume.

mr_

big update:
first quick pass, 4x1024x1024 textures, 100% modular, no post processing added

mr_

further bg blockout:

mr_

random WAYWO 2016 post

mr_