Need pro-tips

lilJohn

Hi everyone! I'm Johnathon Goswick, a product designer based in Bentonville Arkansas (Walmart Country). I have worked as a Store Display Artist/Product Designer for the past 4 years, and am hoping one day to work for a game company!

With that all said, I would like this piece to be my portfolio "Hero" piece, so to speak. I would appreciate any feedback no matter how drastic the changes you suggest are. I have only gained experience in Product Design, so I need outside opinion from an artistic community. 


Tear it up!

lilJohn

Working on the lowpoly right now, picked up a few tricks with baking hard surface from here a few years ago. I'm slowly going through and adding divisions to parts that don't correctly bake, mainly in the testing phase at 1k until I'm happy with normal reflection. I have two different lowpoly models, the quad and the actual lowpoly model. 

lilJohn

model
decent

Mark Dygert

I really like the high poly model but I think you fucked up by baking a lot of repeating elements into unique texture space. Which might be ok if you plan to do a lot of unique texture detail, but otherwise it could be pretty wasteful, even for a hero piece.

You could break this up into several smaller chunks, use a bit more geometry and save a ton of UV space.

What does your UV layout look like and how big are the textures?
Is this a single hero piece? Would there be only one per map or would it be 

The slider panel could be just a single slider track with the slider button as separate geometry, then copy that track 16 times and change the position of the buttons. This could come in handy later in the game when you have a bunch of these and want to break up the repetition or change the piece to suit the story. "enter into a powered down section of the research lab and all of the sliders are down".

I personally would treat them more as separate objects and place them on a grid that can be reconfigured to make different equipment. Even if it's a hero piece it can help build more unique looking things.

lilJohn

Mark Dygert said:

I really like the high poly model but I think you fucked up by baking a lot of repeating elements into unique texture space. Which might be ok if you plan to do a lot of unique texture detail, but otherwise it could be pretty wasteful, even for a hero piece.

You could break this up into several smaller chunks, use a bit more geometry and save a ton of UV space.

What does your UV layout look like and how big are the textures?
Is this a single hero piece? Would there be only one per map or would it be 

The slider panel could be just a single slider track with the slider button as separate geometry, then copy that track 16 times and change the position of the buttons. This could come in handy later in the game when you have a bunch of these and want to break up the repetition or change the piece to suit the story. "enter into a powered down section of the research lab and all of the sliders are down".

I personally would treat them more as separate objects and place them on a grid that can be reconfigured to make different equipment. Even if it's a hero piece it can help build more unique looking things.

Thank you Mark! You made some spot on critiques, can't really argue with anything you said so ill just quietly sneak away and make all the changes you suggested haha. 

this is my uv for the current panels you see. The faces marked "B" are either side or back faces containing only edge baking data. Considering your critiques, this uv will change drastically; it's a good thing I just started testing normal bakes so that I could quickly adjust to having "modular" set of objects rather than one single face with baked normal data. 

"Is this a single hero piece? Would there be only one per map or would it be"- I have no idea what I'm doing so you tell me hahah 

Thanks again!

Mark Dygert

Opps, I forgot to finish my thought, ha. "Would there be more than one and you would want to be able to randomize them". That kind of flexibility is a good skill to have, so is UV optimization. If you'll be looking for production level work, a nice looking piece will be good, you're off to a good start but a piece that shows some flexibility and optimization that's stuff that makes employers take notice. 

You could use the same approach on the plugs and square buttons which should give you quite a bit of space for the cloth bits.

You've got a really good high poly model going get the low poly in shape and you're going to have one hell of a piece. 

If you haven't already you might want to check out this: http://www.thiagoklafke.com/modularenvironments.html 
It has a lot of different ideas about using textures geometry in some smart ways. 

lilJohn

modelUtilizing texture space and creating interactive pieces. Thanks for the tutorial link Mark, I'm working on fixing my panel texture next and eliminating re-used normal information. 

lilJohn

I made this big ass picture instead of spamming the forums all week while I worked on the low-poly. I'm finally ready to bake! This is at least until someone on here pulls a trump and screams "WRONG". Which I am totally hoping for. So I've got two newb bake groups, again, no idea what I'm doing; but now that I have the uv space for each object evened out I can start to test bake. I'm expecting the process to take a day or so while I work on bake envelopes, in that time I hope some polycount pro-tips come my way.

general question, Should I make a back for this thing or work on a  floor and wall to showcase the radio in an "environmental setting"

cheers!

lilJohn

Hi everyone! I'm finally past the "half way point". Any critiques would be greatly appreciated! I'll be working on finishing up this "Bioshock Infinite" styled radio and working on model variations and the environment next. As you can see, the model lighting itself doesn't exactly illuminate the entire object. I'm considering adding a few extra light bars around the lower consoles which are covered by cloth; there's not actually any geometry under the cloth, but the idea is that someone would switch on both the top and bottom lights before using the device. 

again, any critiques or comments would be super von cool; this piece is taking a really long time to finish but I've learned a lot and my portfolio will thank me later.

lilJohn

Little bit of an update before I get busy this weekend. I wanted to pick a few colors to play with (besides red-white-blue) and see how it all looked. The orange is working pretty well so far, I'm going to add some decorations around to style the place up.

c&c welcome!