3D Asset Completed. Looking for critiques.

ominousc

Hi guys! So this is for a Game Art portfolio and was wondering what you guys thought of the model and to see where I could improve it. Any and all critiques are welcome, thank you!

http://sketchfab.com/3d-models/torture-chair-a765f22d216949a783d70ef96d2df6e7


Sorry, the Sketchfab embed doesn't seem to be working for me. Here are some quick renders of my piece!


 

Carabiner

Your sketchfab url isn't working - you forgot the : after "https". 

The modeling looks solid, but your materials need a lot of work. Your roughness and normal information is super busy and really distracting. I'd lean towards heavily reworking or starting over on materials, because the amount and placement of wear is really distracting from the quality of the model. Also, the fabric wrinkles don't really make a lot of sense to me, especially on the seat. What is your reference for these?

ominousc

Yeah, I see how it can be distracting for someone. So just make them be less noisy with less noise all over the model? Or like to have the roughness and normal information just on the areas where it would be the most worn out? Also, I used these as a reference: I was going by the logic of there were several people there being tortures so the fabric would be stretched out. Also would like to know if you think the amount of polygons in the model is good for a game.

zachagreg

Can't comment on the polys since there is no data for that. Just post a screen of the polycount in your modeling app we don't need the sketchfab url. Just some screens of the wires and polycount is sufficient. However, I will second the textures thing as well as the fabric wrinkles. I suspect you did the wrinkles in Zbrush or mudbox? What are you texturing in as well?

I would revisit those wrinkles first as they will come before texturing. See how on the couch they follow the cushions from bottom to top? They gravitate towards the area that the cushion would be depressed most often from people sitting in it. This is in tandem with however the leather is being stretched to conform with the shape of the couch.

Notice how the cushion on the left is used more than that on the right because you can clearly see where someone has left a depression in the cushion. The lines all follow where a person is meant to fit. Currently your wrinkles are going across the entire cushion left to right, not simulating someone thrashing about being tied to this thing. Besides I think what you are looking for is more along the lines of an old dentist chair, such as:

Two entirely different ways the leather and cushion are treated in these, the insides of the couch are loose spun fabric stuffing bundled in muslin and then encased in a leather outside. Where as this kind of is more dense usually a high density multilayered foam that is then wrapped in muslin and the out side leather. Notice how this leather tends to crack and discolor in the areas of heavy use. Turning a lighter color and the wrinkles are concentrated near the center where the patient's thighs would cause excess tension on the cushion. Causing a bunching in the chair edge's center. There are also the fold wrinkles near the edges where the leather has been pulled tight and riveted/stapled underneath.

You only get big wrinkles like your's when the leather is allowed the room inside to be loosened and since I see no tears or ripping in your cushion so the likelihood of a chair such as that not having tightly drawn leather is low. I think if you didn't want to do tearing you can get away with doing something like this:

Where the wrinkles are subdued to the edges via riveting and folding and surface definition rather than big loose wrinkles.

As far as your texturing goes, start at square one and get that wood grain going the correct directions along your chair. Most of the time the wood grain runs the length of a piece of wood not against it. And then get that leather looking real good with just slight discolorations first. Before you muddle around with dirt or blood or anything.

Taylor Brown

couple things i noticed:

* UV's - circle 1 shows areas where your textures arent aligning in a believable way. If youre going to use a texture that has a thick black line through it, make sure they are following a logical direction. i noticed this issue in many areas. circle 2 is showing some fairly drastic texture stretching.

* materials - i'd really recommend using a metalness map for your metals. if it wasnt for the rust on some areas, you couldnt tell they were intended to be metal. i think the ornamental designs would read far better if they were a different material. from a distance they just blend in far too easily with the rest of the wood.
 
there are also a lot of issues with your bake dotted around the model. there are ways to prevent this in your bake settings, by exploding a model or even by masking these issues out straight on the baked normal map.

to expand further on what was mentioned about the normal information, lets focus in on the wood. here is a desaturated shot of one of the side pieces from your prop:
and here is a desaturated reference picture of old wood:

while that ref image is a little blown out i think you can plainly see that it still looks like wood while the pic from yours kind of reads like worn down concrete.



* modeling - there are a lot of cool shapes youve pulled off. though there also a lot of random hard edges that are breaking your shading


It's a cool asset and I think with a bit more work and attention to details it could be a worthwhile portfolio piece.

rexo12

I personally think the wrinkles look good, but the roughness and normal detail on the wood is way off. The roughness and normal information on the wood seems to be entirely inconsistent with the actual properties of wood, seeming closer to stone. 


can you see how the normal details do not match the directionality of the wood grain in your base colour? Nor is the "chiselling" in your normals reflected in the colour. This disconnect makes the material very hard to read, and is probably the main issue with it.


Same thing with the roughness, it matches your normal details better but there is no hint at all that what i am looking at is wood. 

If you just look at the channels in this material, each map on its own is able to telegraph the material you're looking at. This isn't an absolute rule with roughness, but i'd say it is with your normal map:
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/substance-designer-old-wood-0f596425fa954f28833f101e54cf069c

I'd probably also make the overall roughness of the wood a bit higher, as well as darkening the base colour and removing some of the noisiness in it, to contrast with the seat cushion a bit better. Would probably also make the blood darker and with a bit of normal height, to imitate that congealed look. 

EDIT: Someone covered what i said before me, hadn't reloaded the page. Sorry for doubling up.

redhonour

Lots of great points about the materials already.

I'll second the metalness feedback already made and add that your metalness map should not be entirely black if you intend for parts of this model to be metal. It looks like you used Painter for this so make sure any grunge overlays, rust, etc. don't completely kill your metalness when you add them. Check your metalness buffer often

You might also consider tweaking your AO bake. A lot of your AO coverage is fine but some areas didn't bake accurately and that will negatively affect your mask generators.



I think the modeling is not too bad. I would however revisit your smoothing groups because some of them are hard where it doesn't make much sense:


 I would think about adding more geo to solve areas where your mesh very visibly intersects with itself:


Looking forward to seeing your updates!

ominousc

Thanks for all the feedback, I'll get to work. And to add my wireframe and polycount:

ominousc

So this is what I got for wrinkles.



Also took the liberty of adding new Geo to the mesh so that it doesn't look like it's just intersecting it.

ominousc

Heres an update. Still working on getting the wood to feel more organic and did some adjustments on the metal color and added more variety to it. What do you guys think?
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/torture-chair-a765f22d216949a783d70ef96d2df6e7

Taylor Brown

Looking better, keep on pushing it

ominousc

So here's the latest update. I'm finishing up some UV textures so that there are fewer seams and still trying to make the fibers feel organic. But this is what I have:


https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/torture-chair-a765f22d216949a783d70ef96d2df6e7

zachagreg

Looking much better! I would say ease the normal a bit towards the base as it's looking rather chunky. Pitting metal like takes HEAVY abuse. As well as breaking up your edge wear, right now its looking very procedural and uniform across the wood. Look up the FlippedNormals video on youtube that goes over edge wear and smart materials. It's called something like "How You're Using Smart Materials Wrong" or something like that. 

But pay attention more to the visuals of that because you can see where he goes in and breaks up the smart mask by adding or removing paint from areas that would have natural wear. 

I know from experience (of doing construction at a dentists office not being tortured) that the base of the chair pointing backwards gets a lot of wear from the doctor placing, or shuffling a foot on it during some procedures. As well as the main side that the doctor uses when leaning a patient back.

marco_3D_artist

Yes is looking better you improved!  Like Zachagreg said maybe  this video can help you to understand how  smart Materials work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xppOU2y10Cs

ominousc

Thanks for all the critiques! I've gone ahead and implemented the paint technique into my painting process. I've aligned the wood fibers and everything! Do you guys think this is good for a portfolio piece or does it need more work?