I finished UVing everything. To layout the uvs, I decided to use Maya Auto Uv Layout. At first, I attempted to do it manually, but soon realized that auto Uv Layout would do a far better job than I could.
There will be two texture sets for this, one for the wings and the other one for everything else. Keeping the wings separate, as I might use subsurface/opacity/emessive on it.
Managed to do some more texture work. Played around with marmoset setting a lot, I feel better on how it looks now, but I am using a lot of sharpen to make the model appear crispier. Not sure If it's a good thing to do. Also, rendering it at twice the resolution results in a significant loss of crispness. Maybe doubling the sharpen will fix it.
Next I will be cleaning up Ao artifacts on the model, mostly around the arm area.
Compared to the reference you showed I think the main difference (which also makes your drone pop a bit less) is seperation, especially on the wings. The material you're using on the wings is hard to distinguish from the rest of the body. Making them brighter and the seperating fingers that sit on top/in between wing parts darker will help with that. Also you could use an extra AO pass to emphasize certain darker spots (once again between wings/fingers and maybe between segments in the chitinous exoskeleton).
Depending on what look you want to achieve and how stylized you want it to be in the end you could add some texture into the roughness channel in painter on certain parts of the drone. That could give you some nice breakup and seperation too. Looking at your reference I think the wing fingers actually have smaller and brighter highlights than even the wings, to me it looks like this:
White horn like parts on claws and teeth: highest roughness --> normal exoskeleton like head, brownish parts of claws and main torso: a bit less roughness --> wings: once again less roughness --> wing "fingers": least roughness
I think you already have it set up like that but making the differences stronger could help.
Other than that having the eyes emissive would be really cool.
Are you still planning on making the wings a bit translucent? That would definitely look amazing.
@SimonKl You are right, I was also feeling that the different parts are a bit difficult to distinguish. Like you said, I will try adjusting with the colors and roughness and maybe AO to make it more readable. And yeah, will have to reduce sharpen as well.
About the transparent wings. I tried to do it initially but its proving a bit tricky to achieve, I will try once more, let's see.
Did another pass on texture, was able to achieve good results on the translucent wings. Also added some noise in some places, looks a bit weird. I will do another texture pass before finalizing the textures
Replies
@Ashervisalis Thank you!@Ashe
I finished UVing everything. To layout the uvs, I decided to use Maya Auto Uv Layout. At first, I attempted to do it manually, but soon realized that auto Uv Layout would do a far better job than I could.
There will be two texture sets for this, one for the wings and the other one for everything else. Keeping the wings separate, as I might use subsurface/opacity/emessive on it.
working on textures. I did some rough gradient map work in Painter. Render is from marmoset.
This is turning out great! Keep it up!
@Grubber Thanks dude!
Managed to do some more texture work. Played around with marmoset setting a lot, I feel better on how it looks now, but I am using a lot of sharpen to make the model appear crispier. Not sure If it's a good thing to do. Also, rendering it at twice the resolution results in a significant loss of crispness. Maybe doubling the sharpen will fix it.
Next I will be cleaning up Ao artifacts on the model, mostly around the arm area.
I would really appreciate any feedback. Thanks!
It looks really good!
I wouldn't use sharpen to that extend.
Compared to the reference you showed I think the main difference (which also makes your drone pop a bit less) is seperation, especially on the wings. The material you're using on the wings is hard to distinguish from the rest of the body. Making them brighter and the seperating fingers that sit on top/in between wing parts darker will help with that. Also you could use an extra AO pass to emphasize certain darker spots (once again between wings/fingers and maybe between segments in the chitinous exoskeleton).
Depending on what look you want to achieve and how stylized you want it to be in the end you could add some texture into the roughness channel in painter on certain parts of the drone. That could give you some nice breakup and seperation too. Looking at your reference I think the wing fingers actually have smaller and brighter highlights than even the wings, to me it looks like this:
White horn like parts on claws and teeth: highest roughness --> normal exoskeleton like head, brownish parts of claws and main torso: a bit less roughness --> wings: once again less roughness --> wing "fingers": least roughness
I think you already have it set up like that but making the differences stronger could help.
Other than that having the eyes emissive would be really cool.
Are you still planning on making the wings a bit translucent? That would definitely look amazing.
@SimonKl You are right, I was also feeling that the different parts are a bit difficult to distinguish. Like you said, I will try adjusting with the colors and roughness and maybe AO to make it more readable. And yeah, will have to reduce sharpen as well.
About the transparent wings. I tried to do it initially but its proving a bit tricky to achieve, I will try once more, let's see.
Thanks a lot for the amazing feedback. 😊
Did another pass on texture, was able to achieve good results on the translucent wings. Also added some noise in some places, looks a bit weird. I will do another texture pass before finalizing the textures
Finally calling this done. Did some final polish and fixes.
Posted this on artstation as well ArtStation - Zerg Drone (Game ready model)