Long Road Ahead - Dagon's Improvement Thread

Dagon

I have neglected posting my progress on here for quite some time. 

The first asset on here is a Storage/Treasure Chest. I have only modeled the High Res so far. Please feel free to critique and share your knowledge any way you see fit. 

Workflow/Steps

1. Model High Res (Done)
2. Retopologize the High Res to create the Low Res 
3. UV Unwrap the Low Res 
4. Explode the HP and LP meshes prior to Baking the Normal and AO Maps in Xnormal
5. Import the UV Layout from Blender into Photoshop and begin the texturing phase
6. Import to Marmoset Toolbag 2

Software - Blender 2.77a/Photoshop CS3/Marmoset Toolbag 2

RogerP

If you are going to be baking this my recommendation would be to make sure you smooth some of those sharper edges on your Highpoly as well as making those metal straps on the chest a bit more pronounced so you can get a better bake.

Dagon

Thanks for the tips ROGERP. I wasn't quite sure what edges you mean't were too sharp. I haven't "thickened" the metal straps yet. Would it cause issues if I thickened them just in the high poly and left the low poly as is? I'm trying to avoid thickening the straps too much which would make it look cartoony.

I'm not very good at retopology and that is one of things that has made me avoid modeling complicated models along with baking artifacts. I hope this one turns out good in the end.

Steps to do -

1. Apply Smoothing Groups
2. Apply UV Seams
3. Explode the LP and HP models in preparation for "baking"
4. Bake the Normal and AO Maps in Xnormal
5. Begin texturing phase in Photoshop
6. Import into Marmoset Toolbag 2

Robert Berrier

Looking good man.
Just keep going and finish this asap. Get your learnings from it.
If you have any problems and need advice. Make sure you PM me in case I don't respond here (busy live, bla, bla)
I believe it took me a full year of playing around to understand all the pitfalls of this process. So don't worry to much. Just keep creating and learn
Enjoy!

Dagon

Thank you Robert. I will keep that in mind! Believe it or not I have been modeling since 2007. But never truly got into game art till recently. I could never grasp the process and workflow, there are so many ways to create the same thing the trick is to learn the most efficient way and even that differs from one artist to another. 

Dagon

The Unwrapping is taking a while... it is extremely tedious in Blender. I have had to straighten sections line by line and also weld vertex by vertex when overlapping identical sections. I'm not sure whether I should give the padlock a separate texture sheet. Any ideas or tips?

Dagon

Not a very successful bake. Loads of artifacts I will thicken the metal straps on the high res and soften the edges all over tomorrow morning. I also need to fill in the UV sheet more efficiently hopefully the next bake will be better once I have made those changes. As for the floaters casting shadows I can either paint them out in Photoshop or disable cast shadows on the floating geometry only. If you spot any other issues that I have overlooked feel free to let me know.

Once I have a satisfying bake. I'll begin the texturing phase. I plan to include ornamental engravings on the metal straps and perhaps the wood or leather surface depending on what I settle for unless I decide to do both leather and wooden planks.

Dagon

Second bake. It has come out a lot better. The chest with the red matcap is just a screengrab from Blender to display the smoothing groups (edge split modifier and sharp edges) Still a couple artifacts in the normal map but I am a lot happier with it than the first bake. I didn't use a cage though.

Dagon

I have started blocking out colours for the Albedo texture map in Photoshop.

Dagon

Almost finished. It is nowhere near perfect but I've learn't a thing or two from this. 

jaker3278

looking good, how much poly modeling have you done in total ?

Dagon

I started modeling in 2007. I still have difficulty modeling complex models but I'm getting there... I'm still figuring out new techniques, methods and hotkeys for Modeling in Blender. There are certain tools/modeling tricks in 3ds Max that I haven't figured out how to do in Blender yet which I feel limits my ability to model certain complex shapes.

Dagon

Dagon

Working on a modular Greek/Roman architecture set. I have never done anything that has to do with modularity. This is also my first building model. Still have a lot to learn and reading up on modular workflows.

The column shaft is separated from the top and bottom I'm not sure if I should combine them as one mesh and just make different variations from there.

Dagon

Low Poly Column. I think the normal map bake came out alright. 

Modeled in Blender 2.77a. Baked in Xnormal, Textured in Photoshop CS3 and rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 2.

Dagon

Working on a wooden cart. So many parts to bake which is making this difficult to complete. At the moment I'm having problems with the normal maps baking with weird seams on the edges where I put sharp edges (using the sharp edges and edgesplit modifier) The edgesplit modifier physically splits the vertices though I've looked up better ways to achieve smoothing groups in Blender but this seems the only way. I used a cage to bake the normal and AO maps as well but not shown in the exploded model. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

AtticusMars

You can use mark sharp with autosmooth instead of edge split modifier. I doubt this will solve your bake problem, just a guess but that looks like a bake you get from not using a cage or averaged projection in your bake.

Also general piece of advice: Space out your UVs a little bit more and use a lot more padding in your bakes. Again, won't solve this problem but will avoid future ones.

Dagon

I did bake with a cage. I just deleted it in the exploded screenshot so you could see the low and high poly exploded meshes.

I've rebaked the model (without editing the UV unwrap for now)

Without edgesplit and just using autosmooth and mark sharp I'm getting weird gradients on my normal map.

AtticusMars

The gradients indicate that your mesh is baking as all one smoothing group.

Could be something wrong with the way you tried to set up mark sharp/autosmooth. Maybe you didn't mark the edges as sharp, maybe autosmooth wasn't checked when you exported.

Could be a problem with the export, maybe vertex normals is unchecked in whatever you're exporting to.

Could be a problem with how you're baking it, maybe your baker is being instructed to ignore the meshes vertex normals (not likely)

Dagon

These are my export settings and above the green-blue edges are marked sharp. I am using Xnormal to bake my normal map.

AtticusMars

Only thing I could suggest is checking apply modifiers.

Can you upload the low poly obj?

Edit: From your top screenshot it doesn't look like you have auto smooth checked

Dagon

Calling this done. It took a lot longer than expected since I had a few hurdles to get through along the way.

SOFTWARE: Blender 2.77a, Xnormal, Photoshop CS3 & Marmoset Toolbag 2

Go2frag

It's looks good so far. Maybe I'll make those wood a little more damaged, but it's look well anyway. Keep up good work!

Btw: It's cool to see other people also uses Blender to make game models