Help me improve!

Finnn

We can create anything that our imagination can come up with, there is no limit!

Hello everyone and thank you for being interested in helping me.
Feedback is crucial and I am very grateful for every thought and comment on how I can improve my work.

I learn CGI intensively since 1 1/2 year, beside this I study Software Engineering in Hamburg, Germany.
My first tool was the map editor of Battlefield 1942, later Hammer Editor in the Source Engine.
My goal is to create high quality game environments and props.
I am also interested in rendering, photography and making music. (If days would just be 48hours long! ^^)

In this thread I will post small projects that I am working on to improve certain techniques.
I'd be very glad if you could tell me where to improve.


What 2 learn:

Substance Designer

• Reach photorealism
• Ability to create any kind of texture
  
• Stylized materials
• Implement sculpting in my workflow
• complex height maps / shapes

Environment Art

• High Quality Interior and Exterior Environments
  
• Modularity Techniques
  
• Trim sheets (they confuse me)
• Foliage creation and shaders
• Landscaping
• UE4 integration (exposed parameters, material blending etc.)

Prop Modeling

• High quality props
  
• Improve modeling: complex shapes, proportions, hard surface shading
• more complex models/props
• Implement sculpting in my workflow
• Improve texturing in Substance Painter

What I already learned:

• From blockout to game ready asset
• clean baking
• Hard Surface Modeling
  
• Substance Painter basics
• Substance Designer Material Creation
  
• UE4 basics : lighting, materials, asset placement
  
• Rendering
  
• Photoshop
  

Check out my Artstation:
https://www.artstation.com/finnisengardt

Thanks in advance for helping me,

Finn

Finnn

So my first post here is this longboard I made. It is high poly and made in 3Ds Max using Turbosmooth.
Tell me what you think about it and how I could push the models detail a little further.

here is the artstation link: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/K5VYx

Finnn

.

Durkel

Hi Finn,

Nice modeling so far. Can you add closeups of the trucks/wheels, a bottom view, screenshots with wireframe and perhaps your reference? Anyway, if I would model a longboard I would add some curvature to the deck, increase the bevel on the sides and make the deck slighly smaller in height. The wheels could be wider, make them stick out a little more then they do now. I can barely see the truck bolts on the top, when I look at some rerference they should  be a lot bigger. I would also replace the rectangular shape where the bolts are attached to with something that looks more interesting. 

Keep it up

Cheers,

Derk

ZacD

Most long boards have some sort of concave or bends. And the nose/tail bend up slightly. The sides tend to be a bit rounded instead of flat.

Finnn

Thank you for your feedback guys. I will not redo this model, but I really see your points. I am participating in the env. challenge right now so that should keep me busy

Finnn

So I made this Nasal Helmet, it did not took very long.
When I'd have to critique it myself I'd probably say the geometry could be more detailed.
Anything else that could make this better?

jewski-bot

The helmet modeling looks good, though the best way to tell is to have it over a person.  That will help with troubleshooting any errors.

As for textures / materials, I think that you're off to a good start.  One thing to be cautious of is relying too heavily on Substance Painter masks to automate things like edge wear.  Also, I'm not sure what your map outputs are, but you may want to add ambient occlusion if you haven't already.  Lastly, you may consider exaggerating things like fabric weaves and leather bumps to help with selling the materials.  And of course, never be afraid to manually paint in scratches and custom wear to break up the uniformity of smart materials.

Larry

hey @FinnIsengardt
Good job though on the helmet! Potentially if someone always wears it, you can delete the inner polygons, it is worthless geometry there...! Also, spending a little more geometry on circular areas is always welcome...! 

Finnn

@Larry and @jewski-bot
Thank you for your tips. I will put a character base mesh under the helmet to test it out. I will also model some more details.
The texturing is very simple indeed, just simple smart materials modified them in color and curvature...
I will remodel it a little and then go back into SP and put some more effort into the detailing.

Finnn

remodelled the cape and added some more detail... I decided to make the cape a padded armor.

jewski-bot

FinnIsengardt said:

@Larry and @jewski-bot
Thank you for your tips. I will put a character base mesh under the helmet to test it out. I will also model some more details.
The texturing is very simple indeed, just simple smart materials modified them in color and curvature...
I will remodel it a little and then go back into SP and put some more effort into the detailing.

Not  a problem.  If you ever get stuck on texturing with Substance Painter, I might be able to help you out with refining the weathering.  It's a little overwhelming at first, but once you figure out how things get broken down it becomes easier.  In fact, I'll give you a little tip right now: When starting off, learn to build your own materials from scratch.  It'll give you a much better insight into how things are constructed.  I'm still trying to figure out a bunch of things myself, but I do know that I've grown leaps and bounds from where I was almost 3/4 of a year ago.

Finnn

jewski-bot said:

Not  a problem.  If you ever get stuck on texturing with Substance Painter, I might be able to help you out with refining the weathering.  It's a little overwhelming at first, but once you figure out how things get broken down it becomes easier.  In fact, I'll give you a little tip right now: When starting off, learn to build your own materials from scratch.  It'll give you a much better insight into how things are constructed.  I'm still trying to figure out a bunch of things myself, but I do know that I've grown leaps and bounds from where I was almost 3/4 of a year ago.

Thanks for offering your help, really appreciate it.

I actually did it like this: Taking a Smart Material and turning off every effect in the stack to modify the base. And then I worked my way up and tweaked the effects and deleted or added some.
And I also always saved some basic Materials or Masks that came across while texturing.

Or do you mean creating base materials in Substance Designer? I tried it, but it's really difficult for me to get in. Even though the node base system is quite easy to understand, it is really difficult to realize the idea I have. But as always, practicex3 might fix this. And for basic materials like dirt, that I can use as masks should be enough.^^

About the project:

I decided to sculpt the padded armor details with ZBrush, even though I am new to it to but it's is quite essential. But I lost the pen for my intuos pen&touch (the old version) and they are pretty difficult to find. So I gotta wait like 3 weeks for a pen to be shipped from whereever.
so I will put this project beside and work on other stuff.

Finnn

doodle^^

Finnn

And right now I am working on a vinyl record player. Wanted to practice hard surface

Finnn

I textured an older project, it's quite simple but I like it.
Old textures:

Finnn

Baked normals

Finnn

I tried one more time to texture the sword and I think it is alot better now!

Alemja

I would probably have another layer of blood that doesn't have as much height to it, and reduce the height of the current blood. It's not really reading correctly.

JordanN

Agree about fixing the height. It reads like jam or thick paint, not blood. 

Also on the blood texture itself, I would introduce more color.  What I mean is, blood after it leaves the body has darker reds. I'm not sure what the 100% scientific term for it is. Maybe it's the hemoglobin? But the material should read where the blood has dried up on the sword when it was used to impale and other parts could be still fresh and dripping like a viscous liquid. 

Finnn

Thanks you both for your input.
The blood was really a quick mess and more of a gimmick I think in game the blood would probably not be mesh related and be implemented as decals I guess.
Anyway I'd be happier if it would read correctly and u guys are right, it doesnt...
I created a simple material preset in Substance Painter with a uniform red color and a simple brush.
I will try figure out a way to make it look better. Maybe I use this liquid tool in SP, never used it before though

Finnn

Today I did some practice in Substance Designer which I didnt use alot yet, but I really want to be capable of doing a complete Game Env. sho this is a skill I have to learn. I did this without a tutorial, but whenever I couldnt progress I looked through YouTube for solutions.

It is a quite simple Material, but I would be happy for any critique and tips what could have been done better here.

RoughnessDiffuse

Larry

Hi finn! What is the material you were going for? I definatelly cannot understand what is this meant to be. Maybe having a refference and trying to recreate it would be better than making things entirely from concepts in your mind. I would also recomend watching all youtube videos and doing them at the same time. Re-inventing the whole process is very good, but limits your growth and it is very time consuming. If there are some techniques already created by others, it is good to learn and build from them. Have fun with your experimentation!

jewski-bot

The blood on the sword doesn't need to be height mapped or normal mapped.  Likewise, this also goes for paint.  There just isn't enough thickness.  At best, you'll probably need just base color, metalness (set to black), and roughness (set to medium or low).

Finnn

@Larry Ure right I didnt use any reference, I just started out with random shapes and came up with this kind of marmor/sand/mosque even kitchen tiles. ^^ I've worked through most of the Allegorithmic Videos for the basics. For this material I did not follow a particular tutorial, just started from scratch without knowing what kind of material I am gonna make.

@jewski-bot I think blood can be quite thick, especially if its very fresh and a lot. but if the sword sliced through a body then it would probably look very different and maybe better without heigh information. I will try to make the blood look dried out. Right now it looks just artifical^^

Finnn

Did some Substance Designer practices

Finnn

Finnn

Finnn

I am pretty happy with this texture. My second attempt on a wood texture.
This is rendered in Iray, but I haven't figured out how to render Material height as detailed as this in UE4...

Brian "Panda" Choi

For UE4, it's driven by height map for tesellation, but your mesh needs to have enough polys to make that happen, even if it's a plane object.

Finnn

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

For UE4, it's driven by height map for tesellation, but your mesh needs to have enough polys to make that happen, even if it's a plane object.

Yes, I was able to set up tesellation base heights. I use a standard plane and scaled it to match my floor. I thought the 'tesellation multiplier' would control the amount of triangles the mesh is tesellated and in wireframe it is showing more or less amounts of triangles, but the height still looks off...

Larry

Finnn said:

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

For UE4, it's driven by height map for tesellation, but your mesh needs to have enough polys to make that happen, even if it's a plane object.

Yes, I was able to set up tesellation base heights. I use a standard plane and scaled it to match my floor. I thought the 'tesellation multiplier' would control the amount of triangles the mesh is tesellated and in wireframe it is showing more or less amounts of triangles, but the height still looks off...

Connect the heightmap's channel to the alpha of a LERP node. The LERP node sets what number is your highest value(white) and lowest (black) By default it has 1 and 0 so you just plug it to alpha. Then i guess you could multiply the outcome with a constant 1

Finnn

The error with my displacement maps in Unreal Engine 4. The displacement set up comes in the material editor comes with the next post.

Finnn

Finnn

Larry said:

Connect the heightmap's channel to the alpha of a LERP node. The LERP node sets what number is your highest value(white) and lowest (black) By default it has 1 and 0 so you just plug it to alpha. Then i guess you could multiply the outcome with a constant 1

I tried this but I could not find any updated documentation about it.
Which node are you talking about exactly?

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

For UE4, it's driven by height map for tesellation, but your mesh needs to have enough polys to make that happen, even if it's a plane object.

I got it fixed and have a nicely displaced material now.
I imported a tesellated plane. I know this comes with high performance costs, especially when I make a whole floor tesellated, but my scene is gonna have just a few props, so I consider this an option :P Thanks for helping me out.

Finnn

I am happy how the material looks inside unreal, also the displacement / height is good enough. :]

Finnn

Feedback for the materials would be great. I am not sure about the "chipped" parts of the sandstone, might be a little to strong at the edges. 

Finnn

Marmoset Render of the planks



Studded Floor WIP

Finnn

Quick SD sketch: Subway Tiles

Finnn

Abandonded this project some weeks ago. Still learned alot about Rendering.

Finnn

Enalrem

Damn you improved a lot with your substances, good job! The lined paper one looks really nice. Were you following a tutorial, or did you do it all by yourself?

Finnn

Enalrem said:

Damn you improved a lot with your substances, good job! The lined paper one looks really nice. Were you following a tutorial, or did you do it all by yourself?

Thanks for your kind words! I did it all by myself, just used some reference. It is a rather simple substance

here's the graph:

Finnn

Finnn

this is on the viking shield

Finnn

I practiced Substancing alot. Now that I feel alot more comfortable, it is alot of fun. Still there are many materials I am not capable of doing, but slowly the latter will be climbed (: Materials are just awesome.

here are my latest studies:

Finnn

Metal Study!

Larry

Try and do all the substance challenges. They will be of help

Finnn

Larry said:

Try and do all the substance challenges. They will be of help

I was trying some of them, but they have been too advanced for me. I decided to start with simpler shapes and materials and try to get them look photorealistic.
I will give them a try soon, that's for sure!

Finnn

I finished this Dry Soil. Not 100% happy with it, but I like the result.
I also , for the first time, put a material up on my stores. I recently bought Substance Designer, so I actually own my materials
Dry Soil in my Artstation-Store