My Question now is, why didn't you just create UV shells for every Smoothing Group instead of creating more geometry around the edges, to get an result that isn't as clean as simply cutting the shells? Just because you didn't want to arrange too many uv shells?
This is what the front of the suppressor looks like on my bake / UV.
This is a better layout for this part than either of your examples. When texturing you can actually see what you're working on instead of a bunch of weird strips.
You can also see that the extra edges only serve to control the normal correction gradient a bit on the front plane where it might be most noticeable. If your engine and baker have synced tangent bases you can do without them. People keep bringing up these edges. I'm not defending every edge loop on every part of this model. There are twenty seven thousand triangles, I'm sure some are superfluous.
My Question now is, why didn't you just create UV shells for every Smoothing Group instead of creating more geometry around the edges, to get an result that isn't as clean as simply cutting the shells? Just because you didn't want to arrange too many uv shells?
This is what the front of the suppressor looks like on my bake / UV.
This is a better layout for this part than either of your examples. When texturing you can actually see what you're working on instead of a bunch of weird strips.
You can also see that the extra edges only serve to control the normal correction gradient a bit on the front plane where it might be most noticeable. If your engine and baker have synced tangent bases you can do without them. People keep bringing up these edges. I'm not defending every edge loop on every part of this model. There are twenty seven thousand triangles, I'm sure some are superfluous.
Thanks for the answer. I would have never thought on unwrapping it this way. I really like your model and im looking forward to see the finished version.
Btw. Your tutorial on how to create a knife was the first thing i did in 3d and its what got me into game art :-)
My Question now is, why didn't you just create UV shells for every Smoothing Group instead of creating more geometry around the edges, to get an result that isn't as clean as simply cutting the shells? Just because you didn't want to arrange too many uv shells?
This is what the front of the suppressor looks like on my bake / UV.
This is a better layout for this part than either of your examples. When texturing you can actually see what you're working on instead of a bunch of weird strips.
You can also see that the extra edges only serve to control the normal correction gradient a bit on the front plane where it might be most noticeable. If your engine and baker have synced tangent bases you can do without them. People keep bringing up these edges. I'm not defending every edge loop on every part of this model. There are twenty seven thousand triangles, I'm sure some are superfluous.
Im confused , I was watching Tim Bergholz tutorial on his AK and he said that you want to keep lines as straight as possible when unwrapping. Normally I would have done it like you just showed but after watching his tut I would have straightened it ? He said that straightening the lines help get a cleaner bake ?
That would be correct, rotated UV islands can give rough artifacts. Not in this case though. Having it this way has pretty much no drawbacks, and as you can see, the bake is fine. It's much easier to texture this way as well.
Im confused , I was watching Tim Bergholz tutorial on his AK and he said that you want to keep lines as straight as possible when unwrapping. Normally I would have done it like you just showed but after watching his tut I would have straightened it ? He said that straightening the lines help get a cleaner bake ?
Having a lot of straight edges in the unwrap makes for a more efficient pack with less null space. A lot of people would straighten a curved magazine in the UV for example. But in this case, and generally with all cylinder caps, having an intuitive UV layout that's easy to texture on is more of a win than null space optimizations.
Artifacts won't arise unless you're very low on texel density, as you can see there are none here
With a synced bake, the only time you'll have artifacts is projection issues, projection skewing, and from low texel density. Your UVs shouldn't matter too much, as long as they aren't extremely distorted or low resolution. A lot of hard gradients can cause artifacts to show up when your texture uses a lower mip though, but I wouldn't worry about that at all for a portfolio piece.
Very interesting technique, working with blockouts!
I've noticed here that the actual inside of the loop is just planar. How did you make that look so good? The sense of depth you added looks amazing. Pardon me if this is a newbie question... What I learned in school about normal maps just never gave me such good results!
By the way, this whole thread is just gold to me. You're inspirational and I really hope those gumroad tutorials will be made - I would certainly buy them.
Sometimes you have to model things unrealistically to get your normal map to show the detail that you want, you could model that with more of a cone shape, so that you get to "see" the sides of the inside of the barrel. And then the middle can be darkened to black by your AO, you will probably have to paint that in. Or you can make it black in the albedo and make sure there is no gloss/completely rough where it is black.
Hey, great job you did here! Can you tell me, do you match pixel density between separate models? How do you choose size of the texture for separate part. Can you show some of the textures and UV layouts? Thanks!
Hey, great job you did here! Can you tell me, do you match pixel density between separate models? How do you choose size of the texture for separate part. Can you show some of the textures and UV layouts? Thanks!
The pixel density isn't matched between models. I textured each part on a 2048 so certain things like the grip are much more dense than certain parts like the receiver. In production you would keep the visually important parts at max res and halve or quarter the other parts according to their visibility. I might post some textures later... as for the UVs I can tell you each part has a square ratio texture, some use more or less mirroring to fill the space
I think for now I'm gonna suspend this project, I wanna come back later and revise the textures and make more parts, but I think it would be a more valuable use of time for now to get some props and vehicles into my portfolio. Might post some small tweaks soon but probably nothing major.
Hey Ben, when you have a cylinder object that is either inset or deeper you always reduce the the edge flow to make the inner part les faces. Is there a specific workflow to this or do you just delete one edges on the inner part and then connect whats left .
Great work! Thank you for showing the wireframes of your polys as well. Its easy to nitpick polys here and there, but I like seeing how other people optimize.
Replies
This is a better layout for this part than either of your examples. When texturing you can actually see what you're working on instead of a bunch of weird strips.
You can also see that the extra edges only serve to control the normal correction gradient a bit on the front plane where it might be most noticeable. If your engine and baker have synced tangent bases you can do without them. People keep bringing up these edges. I'm not defending every edge loop on every part of this model. There are twenty seven thousand triangles, I'm sure some are superfluous.
I would have never thought on unwrapping it this way.
I really like your model and im looking forward to see the finished version.
Btw. Your tutorial on how to create a knife was the first thing i did in 3d and its what got me into game art :-)
Thank you very much for that :-D
Artifacts won't arise unless you're very low on texel density, as you can see there are none here
I've noticed here that the actual inside of the loop is just planar.
How did you make that look so good? The sense of depth you added looks amazing.
Pardon me if this is a newbie question... What I learned in school about normal maps just never gave me such good results!
By the way, this whole thread is just gold to me. You're inspirational and I really hope those gumroad tutorials will be made - I would certainly buy them.
Sometimes you have to model things unrealistically to get your normal map to show the detail that you want, you could model that with more of a cone shape, so that you get to "see" the sides of the inside of the barrel. And then the middle can be darkened to black by your AO, you will probably have to paint that in. Or you can make it black in the albedo and make sure there is no gloss/completely rough where it is black.
Can you tell me, do you match pixel density between separate models? How do you choose size of the texture for separate part. Can you show some of the textures and UV layouts? Thanks!
I think for now I'm gonna suspend this project, I wanna come back later and revise the textures and make more parts, but I think it would be a more valuable use of time for now to get some props and vehicles into my portfolio. Might post some small tweaks soon but probably nothing major.
Great works ,ben.
How to make the model look like realistic . What is the key to making a realistic model, Ploygon, texture,Light?
this is my 3d works ,I hope you can make more comments.I want to know the gap between I and masters. thank you .
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/LVorP