Doom4 plasma rifle

kysg

Unique bake attempt.

3d App: MayaLT 2016.
Baking: Knald
Texturing: Photoshop CS4
Retop: 3d-Coat

Wips will be in Marmoset.

Concept by John Lane.

-Any feedback is appreciated as I push through this. (ongoing)
-Thoughts on setting base textures
-Approaches on creating wear layers with convexity map
-Probably need some explanation on floaters. (done)
-Need clarification on smoothing groups. (done)
-Do not totally understand what dilation does when baking. (done)

Side notes:
-Based on previous work.  Some pieces will be left out of the bake and brought back and stitched into the lo-poly.
-Maya LT's polycount limit is 100k for export. I have been averaging around 85k when exporting.  This is with 1 smooth iteration.  I will try to get additional iterations if I can get it under 100k limit.

kysg

Update:

Will make adjustments on pistol grip and stock and then start baking.



Wireframe

kadeschui

Great start! the hardest part for me is always the general blocking XD one critique I'd add is that to me the tube components seem to be inset into the gun, if that makes sense. sort of recessed. Overall looking great, keep up the good work!

kysg

Gotta keep driving for that 5%

Plan is to retop in 3d coat.  Some of these pieces didn't bake off properly when reducing to lo-poly.

Seraphinn

Just came across this but was shocked that no one has commented to help with floaters. Basically rather than going through annoying time consuming effort of getting geometry to be nice and smooth. Floaters are used to trick the bake from your High Poly into thinking theres depth or Raised. 
First pic is of a plan space and then the shape you want in the poly. Rather than having to cut it in get it nice and smooth you create the shape you want and then move it as close as possible to the target area without it touching. (Side view) When it renders it will think its like the final picture and bake in the depth to your normal map.

Seraphinn

In critique of your high poly ill try be as useful as i would like to get back. Immediately because its in orthographic/Perspective it immediately kinda widens the pick. So id try and slim your version down slightly.  
Red areas are detail you really should try and include in your HP either by floaters ^^^^^ like i showed above to help. Or by actually cutting it in (either by hand or by boolean) I mix it up dependant on the situation.  These little details will break up the big blocks of geometry and kinda ground the piece.
Blue is something that you kinda seem to have missed. and especially moving down towards the handle in that area yours is a lot thicker.
Green definately needs some love. Its way thicker than the concept and the handle is making some wierd shapes/views on your image. 

Overall its a real good base to just go back on and add in those details. I really dont envy you trying to get that grip right! Im having issues doing a scifi weapon of my own. So i know your feels!

Hope this all helps. Good Luck

kysg

Update:

The shots uploaded are

Hipoly-Basic Materials
Hipoly-wireframe
Hipoly-clay
Lopoly-clay
Lopoly-wireframe
Lopoly-w/normals and nonbaked pieces

On the last shot there are pieces withheld from the bake.  A low poly was made by retopping in 3dcoat.  Xnormals did not like the Uv's I did so I tried baking in knald.  Knald does not pickup floaters on the grip so still need to figure that out.

Mossbros

Have to say that lowpoly is looking pretty janky, which is why xnormal might not have liked your UV's.
You seem to be having a big problem with overlapping rays.
Retopo manually. Don't rush things and use 3d coat for retopo especially for hard surface, it can be fine for organic objects but this bad topology and bake result is evidence of why you shouldn't use that app for that.
With the 'lowpoly' you have currently you should really make sure all the outer edges are matching the highpoly as close as possible as thats the area that matters the most when baking a surface. All these parts like this can be removed. (I could have circled the whole thing honestly)

All you have to do is match the shapes and main curves not make sure every edge is connected to one another.

kysg

 Mossbros said:

Have to say that lowpoly is looking pretty janky, which is why xnormal might not have liked your UV's.
You seem to be having a big problem with overlapping rays.
Retopo manually. Don't rush things and use 3d coat for retopo especially for hard surface, it can be fine for organic objects but this bad topology and bake result is evidence of why you shouldn't use that app for that.
With the 'lowpoly' you have currently you should really make sure all the outer edges are matching the highpoly as close as possible as thats the area that matters the most when baking a surface. All these parts like this can be removed. (I could have circled the whole thing honestly)

All you have to do is match the shapes and main curves not make sure every edge is connected to one another.

Not gonna argue but this doesn't really help. 

Mossbros

@kysg
In what way does it not help?

I've explained why you are getting a bad bake, what topology is bad topology and how you should fix the issue.
Tldr version, Don't use 3d coat to retopo a hard surface model and remove edges from your high poly by hand if you don't have a low poly to work from. Only leave whats necessary. If you have all these unnecessary edges you will get a bad cage because the tangents are pointing all over the place which equals a bad bake. 
Another tip would be to break the smoothing where you have UV splits, those of which should be on every edge over 45 that isn't a smooth transition.

The floaters issue is a different problem, and for all you know might be solved by making sure your cage actually projects correctly.

kysg

Mossbros said:

@kysg
In what way does it not help?

Like I said; not gonna argue.

ZacD

What do the UVs look like? 

kysg

Top is knald
bottom is xnormals

Zi0

Are those UVs for the whole gun?

Ged

Could you use the highpoly to create a lowpoly eg remove all mesh smoothing and remove extra supporting loops? that might be the quickest way to get a good lowpoly of a hardsurface model.

kysg

Zi0 said:

Are those UVs for the whole gun?

Not worrying about that.   Some stuff was left out of the bake.  Even then would set aside space for those pieces and bring them back in later.

Ged said:

Could you use the highpoly to create a lowpoly eg remove all mesh smoothing and remove extra supporting loops? that might be the quickest way to get a good lowpoly of a hardsurface model.

Tested that and no success.  It bakes very awkwardly.   That is the fastest way to get the lo-poly.

gfelton

kysg said:

That is the fastest way to get the lo-poly.

I don't think speed is your priority at the moment. UV's and baking are extremely important, if you rush them and half ass it then those kinds of results will be extremely visible.

Ged

Tested that no success.  It bakes very awkwardly.   That is the fastest way to get the lo-poly.

Why would it bake awkwardly? that just depends on how well you do your uvs. Make sure youve got edge loops where you need them and do a good uv map and you should get a good bake, its just hard work in the end, theres no magic method to making this work. high poly is looking cool so far so it would be good to see a nice solid bake

kysg

gfelton said:

kysg said:

That is the fastest way to get the lo-poly.

I don't think speed is your priority at the moment. UV's and baking are extremely important, if you rush them and half ass it then those kinds of results will be extremely visible.

Not helping.  Took what I said out of context.

Ged said:

Tested that no success.  It bakes very awkwardly.   That is the fastest way to get the lo-poly.

Why would it bake awkwardly? that just depends on how well you do your uvs. Make sure youve got edge loops where you need them and do a good uv map and you should get a good bake, its just hard work in the end, theres no magic method to making this work. high poly is looking cool so far so it would be good to see a nice solid bake

It didn't work period.  Pulled the loops and did the Uv's; it just doesn't look good.
I never implied magic here...Stop nitpicking what I say. 

Ged

How can it not work? 
Show us what you've got and we can try and help you get a good uv map and bake.  Honestly If it didn't work then you have some learning to do, please  learn to accept critique gracefully, that will get you far in this industry. Theres no need to be defensive, we all have a lot to learn. Good luck.

Cglewis

The Doom plasma Rifle was awesome!
I feel you got a great start here....but I feel your proportions need some work.
the front of the gun where you have the heat sink in the concept is flush with the body of the gun in yours it is higher (if that is the right word) also your gun if fatter and shorter than the concept
really look at the concept bring it into photoshop pay close attention to the shapes and how they relate to each other, high light and then figure out spacing and then execute the changes in your modeling package
its such a cool gun and I hope you nail it

kysg

Another Hi-poly iteration.
-Gonna get back to doing the lo-poly.
-Do have some minor fixes to implement - Lengthen in the x axis by .100.
-correct smoothing issues due to bad edgeflow.
-Side Note: I previously stated some pieces will be left out of the bake and brought back in later.  Hence why some pieces are not smoothed in the wireframe.
-Also note Maya LT's limit on poly export is 100k.  So I cannot double smooth the piece entirely.  I will dig a bit further and see if I can do 2 iterations in certain areas.

BucketOfNuggets

Are you using A subd work flow? 

pmiller001

I see you're missing a bunch of bolts and other surface detail that breaks up the form, when are you planning to put that in? Are you gonna paint those in on the normal map?

Rafael_Vieira

Hi, kysg, your high poly looks great. I remember 3dcoat having a great manual retopology workflow, looking forward to see the result.

kysg

pmiller001 said:

I see you're missing a bunch of bolts and other surface detail that breaks up the form, when are you planning to put that in? Are you gonna paint those in on the normal map?

-Refer to seraphim's comments about floaters.
-Refer to this post: http://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2474957/#Comment_2474957

Tomiajayi

great detail!
i don't know if I understand remaking 3d models from a 3d game but it's a cool gun

kysg

Test bake

-So did a test bake today, decided to do the front barrel.
-Basically need to understand hard edges in a more practical example.  Saw the cube example and really don't find it helpful.  If you split off every shell because you used hard-edges; you end up with a UV-layout that hard to use for texture painting.

Need some clarification on that

Cglewis

Hey looking good,
While your proportions are alot better your shapes are still off
really look at the concept and try to match your shapes and how they relate to other shapes
I did a paint over to help out

kysg

Cglewis said:

Hey looking good,
While your proportions are alot better your shapes are still off
really look at the concept and try to match your shapes and how they relate to other shapes
I did a paint over to help out

-Not worrying about that. Can worry about that on next piece I make.

Zodd

kysg said:

Test bake

-So did a test bake today, decided to do the front barrel.
-Basically need to understand hard edges in a more practical example.  Saw the cube example and really don't find it helpful.  If you split off every shell because you used hard-edges; you end up with a UV-layout that hard to use for texture painting.

Need some clarification on that

-Hard/Soft edges have to do with rays and angles at which your normal map is being baked/projected,
Summed up:
90 degree edge + harden edge + Split UVs = normal map has less gradients (better results for generating cavity map) and less visible seams.
90 degree edge + harden edge + Sewn UVs = normal map will have seams in most cases because edges will bleed into each other.
90 degree edge + soften edge + Sewn UVs = heavy gradient banding in the normal map, very likely seams present on edges.
90 degree edge + soften edge + Split UVs = see above.

However, I would strongly suggest you take a good read through technical talk sticky threads about normal maps bakes and edges, this one in particular:
http://polycount.com/discussion/107196/youre-making-me-hard-making-sense-of-hard-edges-uvs-normal-maps-and-vertex-counts/p1

Get normals and UVs right and texture painting is going to be a breeze (technically wise) i say this because looking at the concept i see no heavy patterns that could produce heavy visible seams and cause major headache.

Also seconding what @Mossbros said, from what i see on your HP model there are mostly straight edges, but on LP there are some weird very soft shapes so its even harder for xNormal to generate accurate maps. Would definitely take the route @Ged suggested, make low poly by deleting edges from HP, that and you can easily generate cage for baking from maya (if MayaLT has option for baking normals, just select "show envelope" from dropdown and export that)

Cheers and happy baking

Dethling

Also don't shy away from using more geo.
The front piece you showed here, has very low poly and you will have problems getting a good bake with it.
At the current engine polycount isn't that big limitation anymore, so a low poly vert-count of ~10k to 20k should be totally fine.

kysg

Zodd said:

kysg said:

Test bake

-So did a test bake today, decided to do the front barrel.
-Basically need to understand hard edges in a more practical example.  Saw the cube example and really don't find it helpful.  If you split off every shell because you used hard-edges; you end up with a UV-layout that hard to use for texture painting.

Need some clarification on that

-Hard/Soft edges have to do with rays and angles at which your normal map is being baked/projected,
Summed up:
90 degree edge + harden edge + Split UVs = normal map has less gradients (better results for generating cavity map) and less visible seams.
90 degree edge + harden edge + Sewn UVs = normal map will have seams in most cases because edges will bleed into each other.
90 degree edge + soften edge + Sewn UVs = heavy gradient banding in the normal map, very likely seams present on edges.
90 degree edge + soften edge + Split UVs = see above.

However, I would strongly suggest you take a good read through technical talk sticky threads about normal maps bakes and edges, this one in particular:
http://polycount.com/discussion/107196/youre-making-me-hard-making-sense-of-hard-edges-uvs-normal-maps-and-vertex-counts/p1

Get normals and UVs right and texture painting is going to be a breeze (technically wise) i say this because looking at the concept i see no heavy patterns that could produce heavy visible seams and cause major headache.

Also seconding what @Mossbros said, from what i see on your HP model there are mostly straight edges, but on LP there are some weird very soft shapes so its even harder for xNormal to generate accurate maps. Would definitely take the route @Ged suggested, make low poly by deleting edges from HP, that and you can easily generate cage for baking from maya (if MayaLT has option for baking normals, just select "show envelope" from dropdown and export that)

Cheers and happy baking

I read that link, it is still not clear.

90 degree edge + harden edge + Sewn UVs = normal map will have seams in most cases because edges will bleed into each other.
90 degree edge + soften edge + Sewn UVs = heavy gradient banding in the normal map, very likely seams present on edges.
^
This is what I was talking about, but for a split uv you have a to cut and give padding.  It just is not clear how to get the layout in a way that is still usable for texture painting.
I guess I'm just gonna have to post the UV's and bakes as I do it.

Jaston3D

I'm not sure what your goals are as far as where you want to be as a game artist whether it be a hobbyist or working in the industry but if you want to work in the industry you better get ready to iterate and take critique well. I've been in situations where I finish an asset and then an art director wants me to make changes and its a damn pain to go back sometimes but "Not worrying about that. i'll worry about it the next piece" isn't going to cut it. Even if you just want to do it as a hobby, take some pride in your work and don't be lazy. Do what it takes to make it look great. Anyways as far as critique and help goes, just about everything cglewis said in his paintover are pretty valid. As far as UV's go, the front piece of the gun that you have baked is unwrapped incorrectly I didn't look at any of the other shells but in general it seems like you just took a big chunk of geo and did a planar unwrap and then relaxed the heck out of it, you have to break up shells more based on their angle. There's quite a bit more wrong though besides breaking up shells judging from your bake. Maybe post your meshes for us to take a look at.

kysg

Jaston3D said:

I'm not sure what your goals are as far as where you want to be as a game artist whether it be a hobbyist or working in the industry but if you want to work in the industry you better get ready to iterate and take critique well. I've been in situations where I finish an asset and then an art director wants me to make changes and its a damn pain to go back sometimes but "Not worrying about that. i'll worry about it the next piece" isn't going to cut it. Even if you just want to do it as a hobby, take some pride in your work and don't be lazy. Do what it takes to make it look great. Anyways as far as critique and help goes, just about everything cglewis said in his paintover are pretty valid. As far as UV's go, the front piece of the gun that you have baked is unwrapped incorrectly I didn't look at any of the other shells but in general it seems like you just took a big chunk of geo and did a planar unwrap and then relaxed the heck out of it, you have to break up shells more based on their angle. There's quite a bit more wrong though besides breaking up shells judging from your bake. Maybe post your meshes for us to take a look at.

-Like I said not worrying about, can worry about it next piece.  If that doesn't cut it oh well...sorry.
-could elaborate on the breaking up of shells part, because that isn't clear. 

Anyways I will post the test bakes later on today.

Mossbros

@kysg
I really don't think anyone can iterate more upon whats already been said for you, at this point it just seems most are wasting their time. 
If you want people to elaborate on things for you, I think that you should really work on the way you respond as you are coming off as very passive agressive with every response. 
 kysg said:

-Any feedback is appreciated as I push through this. (ongoing)

At least act like you meant it.

kysg

-Test bakes on the front barrel.



-Still a bit confused on it, tried scaling pieces in on barrel so I still had a readable layout for texture painting.

kysg

Edit: bad post

kysg

Edit: bad post

Mossbros

Here's my quick example, a bad one

You can make your UV's more readable by adding secondary edge loops, this will allow you to make things a nicer layout for painting in photoshop, but without the supporting edge can lead to the normals displaying wrong. 
Ben Bolton is pretty much a pro at this, and has shown in various examples how and why. 
http://polycount.com/discussion/166058/ak-337-modular-rifle-system/p2

Zodd

See the main bit im having trouble is understanding the whole "UVs need to be good for texture painting" because they are never going to be seamless and its impossible to unwrap them in a single UV island, so either way you are going to have to paint the damages by trial and error and see what works and what doesn't.
That being said, from what i can see in normal maps UV islands are at random angles if the edge is straight in 3D it's generally better to have it straight in 2D
But that isn't the main issue here, the main issue is, for starters you need to go and read up a bit on unwrapping and some general guidelines/rules related to the concept, mainly texel density, and cutting up UVs in a way that minimizes texture skewing, take a look at that and then go over this model again, i think its gonna make things more clearer.

ZacD

I personally believe making your UVs readable in 2D is a waste of time. With baking, DDO, Substance, 3D texture painting, ID masks, etc, your textures are going to have enough information that you are going to instantly know what part is what if you need to do and 2D work on it in Photoshop.

kysg

ZacD said:

I personally believe making your UVs readable in 2D is a waste of time. With baking, DDO, Substance, 3D texture painting, ID masks, etc, your textures are going to have enough information that you are going to instantly know what part is what if you need to do and 2D work on it in Photoshop.

And having a bunch of strips in 2d reduces your texel density but that is a whole different discussion.

kysg

updates today.

-got some seams on doing matId bake from knald, not sure how to correct that.
-still got some issues in the bake overall.
-Is there a way to pull out dilation once your in photoshop?

in order:
-Low Poly with Normals and Base Color
-Low poly with Normals
-Low Poly
-Low Poly wireframe
-Hi Poly with placeholder mats
-Hi Poly wireframe
-Base Color texture
-Normals
-UV layout

Cglewis

You have a bunch of wasted space in your UVs I would try to utilize the space more effectively 

ZacD

43% of your texture space is not being used. Ideally that's closer to 20% unused. There's tons of auto packing tools out there. 3d-Coat and Maya both have them built in.

kysg

Edit: Besides the UV spacing, is there anything wrong on the bake?   If there is nothing else there then I'm just gonna finish out texturing.

kysg

bump

Zodd

Cant help with normal seams since i am not familiar with knald but as far as dilatation goes you can use Xnormals plugin for photoshop i think it has dilatation option among other tools.
And regarding bake, there is some skewing going on with bits on front grip and trigger handle  have square bits a little skewed i would say its because of low poly and normal rays, and i think there are some additional squares on LP not present in HP  on the stock in the back, farthest tube has normals flipped or no normals... from what i can hunt down scrolling up and down
Apart from missing/extra details in normal map you should go and fix the UVs since i bet they are causing this, also the UV layout looks like it either has some major inconsistencies in texel density or missing parts because i cant believe all those polygons managed to fit in like that ... may be wrong here but definitely look into better unwrapping.
Cheers.

kysg

Zodd said:

Cant help with normal seams since i am not familiar with knald but as far as dilatation goes you can use Xnormals plugin for photoshop i think it has dilatation option among other tools.
And regarding bake, there is some skewing going on with bits on front grip and trigger handle  have square bits a little skewed i would say its because of low poly and normal rays, and i think there are some additional squares on LP not present in HP  on the stock in the back, farthest tube has normals flipped or no normals... from what i can hunt down scrolling up and down
Apart from missing/extra details in normal map you should go and fix the UVs since i bet they are causing this, also the UV layout looks like it either has some major inconsistencies in texel density or missing parts because i cant believe all those polygons managed to fit in like that ... may be wrong here but definitely look into better unwrapping.
Cheers.

The question was pivoted more toward what dilation does.  I was also unsure how to remove it.  I figured it out later, guess I will have to try to read to see what it does.  Some of dilation bled into uv's with tube.  Just have to paint that out I suppose.

Seams on color will have to be hand painted.  I'll just manually pack the Uv's, auto-packer removes control so will just have to do it until I get it.

Texel density will not be same across the whole mesh.

kysg

Edit:check next post.