Handplane - Shiv - Sargent no. 507 - Final

Shiv

Final images - 



Baker feedback - -  - http://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2513591/#Comment_2513591

- - -Thread start - - -  

I don't do enough modelling anymore, and this baker looks cool!

I am working on the Sargent no. 507 Rabbet Plane - 


Slow progress is -


I always start blocking out properly... then get distracted by just putting a little more detail in...

Joopson

Super excited to see this. It's a beautiful plane. Good variation of materials as well, in the real plane.

Shiv

Thanks a lot dude! I hope I can make it live up to your expectations, it is only now I start to realise quite how far I have fallen down the ladder heh. 

Anyway, slow progress! 

100% Went too tight on these corners I think. Interested to see what happens with them in the bake either way, the mesh is still on hand all modifiered up to quickly fix any of these issues and get the bake super Metaliandy approved crispy.

Shiv

Proportions are allover the place, but got to keep progressing towards the end! I can clean them up when I have the whole thing to play with.

Thanks all

Shiv

Got back from parents for christmas where there was no pc, Fixed up some proportions, added some new bits, onto the main body of the bit tomorrow! 

Shiv

I think its time to move to zbrush... or i will forever procrastinate heh

Shiv

PROCRASTINATING SO HARD.
Doing lowpoly now
Here is the zbrush pic complete with gizmo circles XD

Shiv

Low poly, just needs unwrapping.

Shiv

Unwrapped and packed, time to sort out the bake and shtuff

Shiv

Just preppin the final images, thought i better show one of the bakes! I will write a full thing with words when I have finished the images

Shiv

Finished, enjoyed the comp, was good to get back to modelling and baking and such for a bit.

- Baker Feedback -  

My main bakers are Knald and 3ds Max, I have used most of the others but settled on these 2 a while ago. It ends up being Knald for almost everything and Max for edge cases.

Ui -
Fullscreen - - - -  I work better full screen, less distractions, double clicking the top bar doesn't full screen it like other programs which confused me for a bit. It also seems to snap back to a small window every time you miss a button, which is doubly frustrating as you miss a button and then the button has completely moved because the window is tiny again.
I had a long list of seperate meshes to try out the projection grouping (awesome!!), this was much easier to use full screen.
Ui spacing - - - - - Especially noticable in fullscreen, but there is an awful lot of dead space and tiny buttons, it feels like either the buttons could be made bigger and the ui look squishier, or made more compact, a mix of both is probably best as i missed the smaller buttons a number of times (and then it quit fullscreen XD)
Material presets - - - - - 
There is no label above the colour id's, took me a little while to realise what the colour swatches were for.

Features - 
Projection groups - - - -  love love love, I use them all the time in max, really enjoying how straight forward they are in this, groupable, loveable, really awesome. 
Material presets - - - Again, this is brilliant! I did not use the material base settings in the comp as I normally go straight from colour id to substance or ddo, but the automatic psd maker is slick!
I would appreciate some form of random colour id on new preset toggle in settings as i always used knalds material id colour schemes - each id in order gets a specific colour.
Saving/loading projects - - - Used this more than I thought I would, really useful, especially with larger more complex bakes with projection groups and seperate cages. really cool.

Baking - 
Tangent spaces - Really useful! I can skip handplane and just do it straight in the baker, much appreciated!
Ambient occ  - - - - - This seemed reaaalllyy slow, quicker than 3ds max, but no where near as fast as Knald or as sharp, I appreciate the projection groups a LOT for this as I could get real ao without broken bake edges from meshes touching, but it seemed to take forever to bake and was not as crisp either. For complex models with multiple intersections the projection groups outweigh the speed but for more simple models or models with no overlaps I would very much use knald over this. 
I did a long tasty bake, and it did look really nice, just took a long time.

Wants - 
Previewing - - - Some form of preview to see ray distances / high low, basically visual debugging, would be nice. It seems like a huge ask tho and I managed without.
I use it in knald a ton to quickly tune the cages and check baked map resolutions, and to make sure high/low is in the right place.

Other - 
I really appreciate the ? boxes linking to the help page, was useful to just quickly check settings.
It appears the the project links and locations are relative,

In conclusion, this completely replaces any baking I would have done in Max before, it just does it better and is easier to manage. I will probably also use it over knald for anything where there is a win from Projection groups, yay for less cleanup
For the tightest of deadlines I would probably still use knald as that seems to just bake faster and I abuse the realtime previews to get quicker feedback on bakes / it's also easier to find lowest res bakes required for a mesh this way. / the cage display is super useful. 

Thanks again for the comp!