3D Art Student's Bunsen Burner

Braystar

Hello, I am a student at AIE. I'm currently working with a team to make a small game, and this is one of the assets assigned to me, a bunsen burner. I have modeled it in Maya, and textured it in Substance Painter. The style we are going for is a sort of stylized with flat colors, using the lighting as a way to help make the assets look better. I am still a beginner with self doubts, so I would like some feedback on how to possibly improve.


 

JamesBrisnehan

One thing that could help is hardening some of the edge normals. Right now it looks like you have all of your edges set to soft shading witch is wreaking havoc on your normals and specular highlights. Any angle > or = to 90 should have hardened edge normals or beveled edges.

Also are you modeling within a strict tri-count? If you are, I think removing some of the geometry up at the top of the model so you can add edges vertically and get rid of the hexagon look would greatly improve the silhouette. If you're not under a strict tri-count, add some edges anyway to turn those hexagons into circles. 

Braystar

Does that explain why the area around the needle valve is all weird looking? I was told to make my edges soft, but I guess in Maya I selected the entire thing and forgot those edges.
This model is meant to be background decoration, so there is a limit. It was originally more round, but I was told to remove a certain amount of edge loops which lead to the hexagon style I have now. The area up the top was copied from the reference I used, but I can remove the indents from them and make them flat, using texture work to fake the indents.
Thank you for your feedback, I appreciate it.

JamesBrisnehan

Yes, all of the edged being softened is probably why that part looks weird. Extreme low poly geometry + all edges soft = really nasty looking normals. That's not a problem if you are doing a hand-painted baked lighting king of thing. But the specular highlights are, well, highlighting all of the issues.

And yah, put your edges where they can do the most good. The hexagon look would be cool if everyone on the team was doing hexagons too. Like it would be great as an aesthetic theme, but if your asset is the only one with this extreme low poly look, it's going to stick out like a sore thumb.
You can also save some triangles by disconnecting pieces and having intersecting geometry. Here is an example:


One more thing, there is a discussion specifically for low-poly modeling you can look through if you're interested. You can also post your image there to see if anyone else has some ideas for you.
https://polycount.com/discussion/41232/lowpoly-or-the-optimisation-appreciation-organisation#latest