My first almost complete piece

ninetitle

Hi, I decided some month ago to try modelling and I really liked it, so much to try to become a professional modeller.

I worked and  learn a lot thanks to you guys and I almost finished my first " non tutorial" model.
it's pretty simple but I wanted to make it game ready and that and putting in place a modelling and texturing pipeline was not easy.

So here my model, a modern candleholder:

model

The texture are a work in progress and I would be grateful if anyone can point out oblivious and less oblivious mistakes .

Sorry for any grammar error, english is not my first language.

ninetitle

Anyone has thoughts on how improve the model ?

musashidan

Maybe you should add some candles so people know what it is.

n4uj

musashidan said:

Maybe you should add some candles so people know what it is.

lol
It sounds funny, but is a good advice actually. It took me a while to figure it out what it was (even though you wrote it down). Candels and lights can really make the difference between a "meh" model and a cool model.
Take a look at the chest this guy made, the candle is one of my fauvorite parts of it, you can take inspiration from there:

http://www.freddiepitcher.com/#!props/sphh9

The model itself looks good, but its just too too simple, I'm sure you can add more stuff to it, like a chain holding it or sth like that
The design is quite cool by the way!

ninetitle

I was expecting a more technical feedback but thanks for the input.

I think I will add a table and some candles, and upload the model with different configurations.

musashidan

Tbh, there's not really any  technical advice to give. It's a very basic model with very basic textures. Aside from adding more details or the aforementioned candles, there's not much else to be said.

If your goal is to be a pro then push yourself with every model. Something as seemingly simple as adding candles to this would make it much more readable as well as adding more visual interest. This is something you will need to be able to assess as a modeler.

Lether

Your model seems to be sharp edge. Pay attention at this. In the real world, nothing is sharp edge like that (except maybe knives). Another thing : the wood line arn't really logical inbetween them, try to respect their sense   . Hope my advices will help you

musashidan

Lether said:

Your model seems to be sharp edge. Pay attention at this. In the real world, nothing is sharp edge like that (except maybe knives). Another thing : the wood line arn't really logical inbetween them, try to respect their sense   . Hope my advices will help you

To add to this, what you might model as a tight chamfer on a realistic object, would be softer and more rounded on a game mesh for readability(and mipmapping/aliasing) from a distance in the engine.

ninetitle

I added a chamfer on the high poly mesh but I guess it doesn't translate well enough with only the normals, I guess i have to add a champfer in the low poly as well and maybe that will also help reduce the artifacts on the edge ( I was trying to be really conservative with the tris count) .

FerdTheNerd

Hey,

I'm noticing a lot of unnecessary poly's at the top of the model. All of those edge loops and extra verts are not needed. I'm guessing maybe a boolean union might have been used here, but cant be sure how you made it. Either way, the topology here isn't clean. Try to limit the vert count and keep the edge loops uniform


I also agree with the others, the edges are too hard. Try to soften them through the high-poly 
 

ninetitle

The unnecessary poly are result of triangulation and trying to semplify the model while resolving some error in the baking of the normals.

For the high poly it is chamfored and with soft edges but it doesn't really translate well on the low poly without a bevel.

Thanks for the critique I'll update shortly.

ninetitle

ok, I'm a little late, I reworked the model and rendered in unity














I added some filter and I noticed a pretty severe loss in the texture quality, I mostly fixed it but I think I'll try with a different material setup.

Critique away, I really need the feedback . 

mobkon

Presentation is a bit better. The candle holder opened up like that (with the candles) is definitely more interesting. My major gripe is the texturing looks pretty bland and uninteresting. You can't really see any wood grain in your latest Unity renders. Looks more like the wood is painted or even more plastic like. What is your texture map setup? Are you using any normal maps? Would be also cool to add some flames to the candles as well as maybe some wax buildup down the side of the candles. 

ninetitle

The wood is plastic painted, the original texture had some scratches that revealed that, but the painted grain is lost in the export and I have to tweak the maps to really show that(  it was mostly driven by an height map that really don't work well with the unity shaders).

The texture are divided in 5 material with 2k texture but I was thinking of setting only two material with 4k textures and see if the result improve.

By the way I'm targeting Unity for assets, someone know if some of the asset store shaders are better than the default ones ?
I've heard good things about Uber.

n4uj

Hey Ninetitle,

As far as I know, people use ShaderForge quite a lot. It is a slate material editor, just like the one you have in UE4.

About your project, if you are using 2k, the problem is not in the texture size at all, I would say that with that model you can have 1k and get very good results.
The material looks like a plain colour to be honest, why don't you go back to the original texture? I really liked the wood on that!!
Also I would change the table colour, they don't match at all.
Adding a skysphere to the scene can improve the reflections.
Are you using normal maps? If so, is it just the bake from a high poly mesh? I would strongly recommend you to overlay another normal map created from the original texture, so you can have the high frequence details (I'm talking about software like nDo, CrazyBump, xNormals, nVidia plugin or whatever)
If you can post your textures, that would help a lot.

ninetitle

Ok I found the problem with the normals ( wrong export on substance painter), the main "body" is a little better even if I found some errors ( that seems to be of baking but I'm not sure).

Here the shots in unity : 





and from substance painter:






sorry no anti aliasing in substance painter.

closeup of the errors : 



For illumination I use the cubemap that I used in substance painter as a skybox.