low poly fiberglass chair, also hello world

isamprado

hi how's it going? first time poster here and relatively new to low-poly asset creation. just thought i'd share the first of hopefully many props i'm working on for a ue4 level, there's a few issues like the AO map baking with some glitches and some weird stretching on the bottom of the rubber feet. but all in all i'm pretty satisfied with how this came out. critiques are totally welcome and appreciated.

modeled in blender and textured in substance designer.

dumb question: are 1024 textures too high res for a background object like this? i know it varies from based on context but i'm curious what a standard would be for, lets say ps4-level of detail.
model

Narosev

Hey this is looking pretty nice. For next time, I think a little more wear focused on the seat where someone would have been sitting would help, given the the amount wear/rust you have on it currently.

Also as far as weird stretching on the feet (assuming you mean your normal map bakes) I've found the following thread helpful with regards to the weird little issues I get with baking: 
http://polycount.com/discussion/81154/understanding-averaged-normals-and-ray-projection-who-put-waviness-in-my-normal-map/p1

isamprado

thanks so much for advice and the link. that should come in handy in the future.
i did all my baking from substance designer which while really convenient doesn't give you too much control. (or maybe i don't know how to use it correctly yet) i will have to resign myself to baking in blender, which while totally functional is super counter-intuitive. if i win the lottery i might migrate to 3ds max one day.
i do think i might try to go back into substance designer and figure out how to make a butt mask to have a controllable amount of wear in that area. it should be interesting to see how i can make custom masks that don't depend on curvature or AO maps, a welcome challenge.

KaiserJohannes

I havent used SP so I dont know how good the baking is but:
You can either use xNormal to bake - just export ur high, low and cage to fbx and bake them there. 
Or - and you might be doing it allready - bake in Blender by using the Cycels Render engine. That way you can adjust the sample size and use a cage.

allengingrich

isamprado said:

thanks so much for advice and the link. that should come in handy in the future.
i did all my baking from substance designer which while really convenient doesn't give you too much control. (or maybe i don't know how to use it correctly yet) i will have to resign myself to baking in blender, which while totally functional is super counter-intuitive. if i win the lottery i might migrate to 3ds max one day.
i do think i might try to go back into substance designer and figure out how to make a butt mask to have a controllable amount of wear in that area. it should be interesting to see how i can make custom masks that don't depend on curvature or AO maps, a welcome challenge.

Use xNormal. Free and way better.

isamprado

thanks for all the feedback!
i made a few changes and i am fairly satisfied with the results. this time i exported a cage mesh for the normal baking which seems to really help in some areas, a friend of mine who collects fiberglass chairs and went to school for engineering gave me some useful tips so I've also made changes to the position of the legs in relation to seat, and made the whole thing a but thinner.

i keep hearing good things about xNormal so i might just give that a try. the UI is probably one of the ugliest things i've ever seen which has put me off from trying it out so far. i'll try to set my vanity aside.
in the end though i like being able to bake right inside of substance designer and have all of my textures update automatically, so if i can figure that all the ins and outs of that i might be just stick with it.
i'll probably move onto modeling some new props but by all means let me know what you think.
https://sketchfab.com/models/f6eb8f6f4f2e43d5820b22dceca674e0