Dawnfury's Forum (Summer/Second Year)

TheDawnfury

(Update 1) Title-Returning from Polycount/ Posting (WIP) Summer work

Alex Bush (Debut Entry - 1st Year) The Rookies -  https://www.therookies.co/entries/2078
Artstation Portfolio/Website - https://www.artstation.com/thedawnfury

Hello viewers,

I have decided to return back to Polycount after a short break because I wanted to improve on my first-year work and show that I was willing to act on constructive criticism. 

I entered The Rookies for the first time as a debut entry. I wanted to participate in The Rookies because it gave me the experience of participating and gives me inspiration from other artists. I did my best for the first year but I need to step up the quality of my work.

I am going to show my improvement from my first year because I want to show I am taking constructive criticism from other artists/colleagues. I spent two weeks of my summer improving my texturing for the house.

An example of using constructive criticism to make my work better- 




[WIP] Summer Forum Work



This is all the modeling stuff I got up to before I went on holiday. Lamborghini Huracan is where I took the most time on. The other projects are to help with texturing or modeling a small environment. I am going to be learning new programs and improving in other areas. 

Basically, I want to specialize in being an environment artist, which is why I am planning on doing a Victorian room alongside my other turntable work. Turntable work features (Karrimor Shoes, Vintage Clock, F1 car and Lamborghini Huracan).

Please note- I worked on Lamborghini last summer but I continued it this summer. I need to finish some modeling for interior and exterior. Also, texture and render to a professional/industry standard.

If anyone has constructive criticism on my summer forum work or advice on getting into the games industry as an environment artist, feel free to write a comment down below. I know there is not much going on but I will post more progress soon.

Thanks for viewing my Polycount forum.

Kind regards,

Alex

TheDawnfury

Update 2 - Pick Three Projects to finish for the Summer Holidays (1st August - 30th September 2019)

Hello viewers,

I have a mood board of all the summer projects I have done this summer. However, I am spoilt for choice on which three projects I should progress on the games pipeline for practicing my texturing. They're all high poly at the moment, so no quad draw or retopology is done for the low poly stage. I know which three would stand out but I don't want to be biased. 




Let me know what you suggest.

Kind regards,

Alex. 

HarlequinWerewolf

I'm not an environment artist but I would definitely recommend working on the Victorian Room. I think it'll give you the most opportunity to expand your knowledge and try lots of different techniques and ideas. I'm super impressed with your commitment, I only started pushing myself to get projects finished in the last few months! :P

TheDawnfury

@LeahM

Thank you for responding to my forum. Really appreciate the positive comment. I completely agree with what you are saying. I want to be an environment artist eventually. I followed you on Instagram because your Polycount work is really cool. I am not the strongest at anatomy but I would like to practice a character at some point. 

Kind regards,

Alex

DanikaPuzdrowski

Hi  
I agree I think you should try your hand at making an environment as you seem to have a good grasp at the modelling stage. Remember to try to keep the scene small so you can focus more on quality over quantity
good luck  

TheDawnfury

Update #2- UV Mapping Formula One Car and Texturing in Substance Painter (Work in Progress)

 

Hello viewers,

 

I have not posted in two weeks because I have been taking a week rest so that I am pacing myself and not burning out. I had to sort out roughly six hundred screenshots on my phone, containing a lot of advice on my work I did the first year. I wanted to try and gather as much feedback as possible because I am trying to improve my work and time management. Also, I stop working before midnight as I don't want to get too fatigued. 

 

I am doing my best to stick to the games pipeline, by doing some practice of baking a basic barrel. It was just testing the concept in Maya before doing it in Substance Painter.

 

 

Test baking in Maya (it was a quick 15 minutes, nothing to fancy). It's not meant to have black areas on the barrel but I know it baked on to the low poly object. I have never really doing baking in modelling, so I am a beginner at it. Go easy on me as it's something new I am currently working on. 

 

Formula One Vehicle (Work in Progress)-

 

For the past two days, I have been making changes to the formula one car model in modelling, uv mapping and started to do some texturing. Modelling changes was mainly making the vehicle longer and more streamline along the side of the car. I realised when I tweaked the wheel rims and aerodynamics in the bod, it made a huge improvement. When I was happy with the modelling, I moved on to the uv mapping stage.

 

Uv mapping stage consists of 25 - 30 objects unwrapped in multiple udims before I put my objects into one texture map. Texture map I set to 4096 by 4096 and I noticed some stretching in Maya and Substance Painter. My uv's were stretched occasionally in places, which means the quality of texturing in Substance Painter was poor. I tried to bake the high poly to the low poly version of my f1 car but Substance Painter cancelled it due to memory or mesh name were not paired properly. I am concerned that my texturing is going to let the quality down on my 3d models. I am happy with modelling but texturing I have a long way to go. Although, I have barely used much Substance Painter. I mainly stick to Mari and Photoshop in the first year.

 

On the other hand, when I do the texturing in Substance Painter, painting it freely just seems a bad texturing method at the moment. Some of my baking was not working properly. 

 

Anyways, here is my progress so far on the formula one car. Texturing I started doing an hour on but the quality is just lacklustre.

 

Maya (Progress) Modelling, Uving, High poly and Low poly modelling-

 

 

 

 I managed to put all my objects into one texture map, as it allowed me to paint in Substance Painter

High Poly model-

 

Basically made a separate file and added a smooth feature on all the objects including original uv's. 

 

Low Poly Model- 

 

Low poly had a very good topology and made my f1 car look more realistic. If you look at the very first post of my f1 car, it was just lacking the aerodynamics coming through the f1 car. By making changes to the bodywork and wheels, I achieved a more realistic look. I skipped the sculpting stage as I did not need to sculpt and damage or corrosion on the bodywork.

 

Substance Painter- Texturing (WIP) Thing I struggle the most in 3d side of my work-

 

 

Texturing is a work in progress. I used a few layers and painted over with basic colour/brushes. My texturing will get better when I use Substance Painter more. But. I have got to start somewhere. The positive thing about my texturing is I was attempting to add detail around the bodywork.

 

 

 

 

 

Screenshots from Substance Painter. 

 

Thanks for viewing my progress on my work. It was a long post but I am persevering. If I have not properly acted on previous feedback, I will get round to it. Just taking me time to do uving as it's quite a hard thing for me to learn. Feel free to leave advice or feedback for things to improve on.

 

Kind regards,

 

Alex

DanikaPuzdrowski

Hey, 

Nice job on following through and finishing the model. 
One piece of advice i'll give you is that you should try to straighten up your UV islands. It helps with baking and making your textures less stair-steppy 

Keep going  

TheDawnfury

@DanikaPuzdrowski

Thanks for the feedback. I do agree that my UV's needs fixing and hoping to improve the texturing soon. I had a look at your Coffee Shop forum you did in Unreal Engine 4 and it's really cool environment. Great job. I followed you on Artstation, as I am hoping to do environment work as well.

I will update my forum soon. 

Kind regards,

Alex

HarlequinWerewolf

Awesome to see you still working on this and thanks for the follow on Instagram! I second Danika's point on straightening your UV. It helps keep you organised when working in Substance or other softwares.

I think for a model like this, you would be better splitting your UVs into more than 1 set. I would say at least 2, one for tyres and 1 for body work but you could do more if you want better texel density. If you want to work with more than 1 UV set in Substance Painter, what I do is assign one material to all of the objects for the first UV set and a different material for all objects on the second UV set. Then when you pull everything into Substance you should have 2 texture sets that you can edit seperately. You can see them on the bottom left. In this example I have 4 texture sets.

I also think for you're tyres, you could try modelling the treads in your high poly model then bake on to the low. I see you had some trouble with the barrel and I know I did the same thing when I started. This is a good one to help with skewed maps: https://polycount.com/discussion/147227/skew-you-buddy-making-sense-of-skewed-normal-map-details/p1 I would definitely recommend all the stuff Polycount has on baking, check out the Wiki.

I would try link more stuff but my internet isn't working very well right now so maybe later :P

TheDawnfury

@LeahM

Thank you for giving me some constructive feedback on how to improve my baking and 3d work. I do agree on the baking needs more work and straightening the UV's will help improve the quality of my textures and prevent distortion occurring.  Hopefully, I can keep work making more progress on the projects.

Kind regards,

Alex

TheDawnfury

Update #3-  (WIP) Test Renders for Texturing on Vintage Clock

 

Hello Viewers,

 

I managed to put a few hours into uv mapping,baking and texturing. Uv mapping in Maya. Baking and texturing in Substance Painter. I am just going to show of some test renders as I ran out of time to finish texturing the clock yesterday when I upload the post. But, I will be improving the texturing because the wood grain is not vertical and white plastic needs more work (showing as hand painted white at the moment). Small progress is better than no progress.

 

Here is some screenshots of what I have done today-

 

Games pipeline breakdown-

 

High Poly-

 

 

 

I used some of Doxturtle's feedback to improve the proportions on the vintage clock and also baking/texturing side of Substance Painter. I used the smooth tool to help improve the overall modelling and baking I will apply at a later stage.

 

Sculpt- I did not need to sculpt the vintage clock. This is going off topic, Karrimor shoes will be sculpted in Zbrush, using the feedback from Pixel.

 

Low Poly-

 

 

Wire frame of how the vintage clock looks. I used reference and the real clock alongside me, to make sure the clock was smooth all the way round model. 

 

Bake-

 

 

I clicked the paper icon to import the high poly for the baking stage in Substance Painter on to my low poly asset. Texture map is 4k (4096 by 4096)

 

Texture-

 

 

I am managing to texture my clock to a basic standard as it's working progress, not finished with texturing just yet. I don't know how to import multiple texture maps for the "Texture Set List" section (have access to three or four texture maps at once) so that I can texture different areas and improve the texture quality? Wood grain will be fixed as the uv's are not properly straight on the sides of it. I will also texture the turntable, when I get round to it. But, I am open for debate on the turntable scenario.

 

Game Engine- Turntable Render (Arnold)

 

 

 

 

 

I only hand painted on white paint because I could not edit some of the materials in Substance Painter. I mainly used masking and layers.

 

Turntable render to a professional standard as a games asset is definitely what I am achieving. When I finish a piece of work on my summer forum, it will appear as "final render" because my forum is all about improving and showing of what I have achieved in the summer. I will finish the Lamborghini model, I am just going back to square one with the Vintage clock. I hope the breakdowns of my workflow helps viewers understand where I can improve and presentation for how I make the work. All of my projects are modelled, they just need to progress more in the games pipeline (Low poly - sculpt- high poly - baking - texture - game engine).

 

Thanks for viewing my update today. It's small progress that goes a long way but I am considering other feedback. I don't have much experience in Substance Painter, which means it's a learning curve at the moment. Feel free to leave a like,constructive feedback or advice on my forum, that would be appreciated as always.

 

Kind regards,

 

Alex

TheDawnfury

(HELP) Update #4 - UV's problem on some of the car parts (Nearly at Texturing stage)

Hello viewers,

I have came across a problem in the modelling and uving for the car, which is preventing me creating the texture maps/ texturing stage. Help part is basically me putting my hand up, as I am unsure what to do on the uving stage. 

Modelling Issue-

Modelling seems to be an issue where vertices are not merging properly, causing gaps or extra polys being created under an edge. When I merge all the vertices together and create even quads, I unfold the car parts and it reverts back to having multiple cuts in the model. Like, I try to fix the vertices and unfolding makes me go backwards. If that makes senses? I have came across it a few times. I will show the screenshots.

White areas is where I managed to flatten the UV and red area is where the edges are causing a problem in the model. Obviously, you can't see the cuts at the moment (white lines). Red area is usually stretching but I have not properly unfolded it yet.

When I unfold my uv's, it comes up with a warning in my model. I dont really want to click the first box because it trys to triangluate the model while fixing it. Which we don't want.

When I unfold the uv's (where the red area was originally), it creates all these white lines where Maya has cutted some of the model up by the stretched uv's. Which is why I am stuck on how to resolve the issue because the white lines keeps coming back. Not sure what to do.

These are all the car parts I have left to uv but there are tricky to uv due to modelling issue and hard to cut the uv's up.

Uving Issue-

These are all the uv's I have unfolded so far, in there own separate udims. I will create five different texture maps for bodywork,wheels, interior etc. This screenshot is mainly my progress for the last three to four days casually doing the uv's for the car parts.

White squares are good for my model and manages to keep it even through out the uvs. Mirrors are the only downside where it stretches a little too much on uv's side.

Back view has nice, even checker squares and no stretching. 

Does anyone have a recommendation on how to uv the honeycomb netting, like what would help my texturing for the car? It has 1054 uv shells, which is too much and will decrease the quality of my texture maps.

First outliner screenshot is all the car parts that needs uving left. 

Second outliner is the group section for potential texture maps (example originally was bodywork, tyres, seat frame, hub caps and frame for the f1 car) But, need to figure out one for the Huracan texture maps.

If anyone has any constructive feedback or advice on how to approach my uv/modelling problem, do comment down below. I want to get it finished and have it on a turntable for sketchfab but I don't want texturing to be bad for the Lamborghini Huracan. Which is why I need some help on the uving again. 

Thanks for viewing my update today.

Kind regards,

Alex

TheDawnfury

Update #5 - Lamborghini Huracan Turntable (Video)

https://vimeo.com/358347155

This is my turntable render I have done so far. Hope you guys like it.

HarlequinWerewolf

Hey, texturing is not my strong suit, especially hard surface but I can see a few things that might help you. Non-manifold geometry doesn't always mean that verts are overlapping and need merged. You could have geometry intersecting which means the unfold can work out which way is the correct way to unfold. There could be other issues, but it's not something I'm particularly familiar with.

I'm assuming that this model is for pre-rendered use and not real time as you're creating a lot of UV sets. I'm not sure how you made the honeycomb mesh but the best option I can think of is that you create 1 of the honeycombs, unwrap it then duplicate to create the full mesh. I don't know Maya for hardsurface, as last time I did hardsurface I was using 3Ds Max but, 3Ds Max has a duplicate array tool that repeats an object. I'm sure Maya would have something similar if you did some digging. Then when you have all of them duplicated, their individual UVs are overlapped so only take up the space of one.

Also, if this is for render (not real time), you should smooth the mesh to get nicer shapes. Just hit 3 on your keyboard. You can then move around edge loops to create sharper edges, or spread them apart for smoother transitions.

Hope that helps and keep at it!

TheDawnfury

@LeahM

Thank you for the constructive criticism. Sorry for the late reply, I was busy trying to finish off my summer projects before September.

I do agree with the honeycomb suggestion because by modelling one honeycomb and duplicating it multiple times, it saves texture space in the long run. Also, I won't have to worry about having lots of UV's on the texture map. Great suggestion you pointed out on my modelling. Which is good to see.

When I make new asset in Maya, I will try your suggestion from the third paragraph you commented on making the model smoother. 

Thanks for the positive comment at.

Kind regards,

Alex

TheDawnfury

Update #6 - (2019) Mercedes Formula One Car Final Renders (Student/Personal project only)-











I will be uploading my vintage clock tomorrow for my final render screenshots. F1 car I did is a personal project over the summer and managed to texture it in Substance Painter. Gained more experience from using Substance Painter but I will need to learn more programs in the future. I am planning on using Marmoset Toolbag or Unreal Engine for rendering, when I create a new project in October. This is the texturing and rendering I managed to get done today. 

I will link my Art station page, if you would like to follow me or like any of my artwork I have done.
Dawnfury's Artstation Page- https://www.artstation.com/thedawnfury

Thanks for viewing my forum. Feel free to leave a like or a positive comment. I am planning on making new content in second year, so constructive feedback will be applied for new projects for the future.

Kind regards,

Alex

TheDawnfury

5 Days left on Fruit Cart- Fruit Cart Problems- How do I make it better?

Previous Attempt (Last Week)-








Reference Image (Fruit Cart)- 


If anyone has constructive feedback on how to improve it, that would be much appreciated. Just remember I only have five days to work on. 

Thanks for viewing my update.

JamesBrisnehan

Incorporating some random rotation and scale of the fruit as well as more realistic placement would help a lot. The fruit right now is very uniform and kind of gravity defying. Also work on your lighting. It kind of looks like the lighting is turned off or set to unlit. You are not getting any contact shadows or ambient occlusion. To match the ref. you'll want soft shadows, but right now, in your scene they are so soft that they almost disappear completely. Also bringing some more warm sunlight or sun bounce-light would help a lot. What rendering/lighting software are you using by the way?

TheDawnfury

@JamesBrisnehan

Thanks for the feedback, really appreciate it. I am using Unreal Engine 4 for placing my fruit cart in to a small scene. I dont really know much about rendering or lighting as I struggle with it. Should the fruit be sitting in the basket properly rather than floating? 

Let me know what you suggest in advance.

Kind regards,

Alex

DanikaPuzdrowski

I agree with what James said above, something as simple as placing the fruit more haphazardly will help a lot in trying to sell the realism as in reality nothing is really uniform 
I think modelling a basket to put some of them in will match your reference more too and help make it look more realistic 

TheDawnfury

Fruit Cart Improvement 

Thank you to DanikaPudrowski and James Brisnehan for their constructive feedback. It was really good advice and I definitely learned more about lighting.

This is my fruit cart I have renderer and lighting is finalised.



Hope you guys like what I have created.

Thanks for viewing my update on my forum. 

JamesBrisnehan

Yah, only space fruit floats. Land fruit should respect gravity.

For lighting, All you will really need is a Directional Light, a Sky Light, and a Spherical Reflection Capture (for the windows). Find an HDR Sky to plug into the cubemap slot in your sky light settings. Something warm and afternoon. On your Directional light, Turn up the 'source angle' and 'soft source angle' values to get the softer shadows. Turn up the 'Indirect lighting intensity' on both the sky and directional light, and in world settings, set number of bounces for indirect lighting and sky to between 3 and 6. That should get you close.

Tutorials for a rainy day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsN0LBgrj14

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grN5Yd55UIM&feature=youtu.be&list=PLqfZolvobgUDAm-c41cDR8NDA79UKuN4b

https://www.tomlooman.com/lighting-with-unreal-engine-jerome/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd7-rTzfmCo


Edit*
Ha ha, you posted an update wile I was typing. It is looking better. Still doesn't hurt to learn more about lighting for future projects.

TheDawnfury

@JamesBrisnehan

Thank you for the tips and advice on lighting. I do agree that lighting would be good to look more in to for Unreal Engine 4. Really appreciate the YouTube links as well. 

Kind regards,

Alex