"just wondering when you do subd do you try and make the polys
mainly square so you don't get too many flow lines which are kind of
superfluous ?
like here I have a lot of rectangles flowing
from front to back, should i try and square them all up, so there is
consistency in the mesh ?"
Well, only recently decided to revamp my Tiger so thus far mainly for circular shapes I'll add a subsurf modifier at level one to minimise faceting, especially on the road wheels alongside manually adding geometry as well (...just a few edge loops) and as for the primary planar meshes - turret plus hull, the vertices are again manually connected, either triangle or 4 vertex polygons where appropriate, all the while trying to maintain a silhouette I can live with.
By the way, this version is essentially a 3D concept so won't require UV unwrapping or an in engine render because various 'configurations' I've in mind i.e. camo pattern/design, degree of battle damage or general wear and tear etc... I'd already previously tested here applying materials/textures to raw meshes which I think can be quite useful prototyping an idea.
Anyway, aim is to utilise Blender's bevel shader workflow for final renders, once done figuring out a streamlined UVunwrap and texturing methodology, (...maybe UDMs plus PBR Painter?) hopefully in EEVEE, whilst making use of variable radius bevels I believe another addon Zen BBQ could handle.
look forward to seeing the Tiger revamp,since you are a proper hard surface modeller the good thing with uv mapping the bevels is that blender does a reasonable job of it and IMHO Eevee does a great job with car/shiny shaders . There are plenty of procedural approaches for the camo pattern , using 'object 'rather than Uv's, same with dirt overlays etc. I have never really used UDIMs. tbh
Zen BBQ looks promising, only $9
So yeah I removed the weighted normals modifier from the workflow and this is not perfect , but passable, because blender does not add a bevel to the newly create face/edge, so you get a triangular bevel as in the pic below( 2nd pic) So I just enable the 'harden normals' checkbox in the shading tab of the bevel modifier.
(Weighted normals modifier was giving weird shading errors on the newly created faces)
so yeah 95 percent I have got the technique down, all of the hard edges below are bevelled and the mesh is still 1 piece
Ford Cortina MK1- This is my Grandads old car. They are worth £22,000 now
So this is designed to be visible in mid distance. i could add a few more polys in the roof tbh currently around 14,000 tris took about 12 hours to make so far
yeah the scales are just random, really, i did not actually check out the actual sizes, but will do soon
re texturing, was thinkling of maybe main paint , chrome and glass so maybe 3 unwraps. I don't like using single texture maps, but I will lopk at this soon
not thought that far Ahead yet. yeah it was my grandads car, he died in 1993 or similar, but i always remember that particular car because of the pie chart rear lights. pretty cool.
"BTW that silver 2007 Yaris in the background my current car "
Nice must be fairly economical?!
I've got a couple of rides, a 2002 Holden Commodore VX (...an ex-Police unmarked pursuit interceptor) similar in styling and specs to a Vauxhall Vectra 2.5 V6 4 door Sedan, plus 2018 Ford "Ranger" F100 entry level pickup truck I'd used for work as a security guard on rail construction sites, here in Melbourne just before Covid hit March 2020.
Also, do plan to generate both as game res models sometime in the future, Holden especially I've in mind modifying to a custom showcase project car i.e. dropping a W427 (Walkinshaw) engine modeled fully detailed, fat low profiled tyres...tricked out interiors but essentially same paint scheme, paying homage too it's roots.
nice looking car/truck, will take a while to model the whole thing I guess? . looks a damn site warmer where you live than here .
We previously had a Vauxhall Astra , but it had this weird power drain on acceleration. never found out what the problem was.replaced coil pack, improved it for a bit, then broke again. had to scrap it in the end.
We only have the Yaris as it was cheap to run and pretty small , mainly use it for the school run. we could buy a more expensive one, but toyotas are exremely reliable, so the 2007 one we have should last a few more years . Insurance is pretty cheap too as its only a 1.3 litre
"nice looking car/truck, will take a while to model the whole thing I guess?"
Indeed! although shouldn't take as long as a Tiger tank I began modeling nearly a decade ago....LOLs and yeah imo does come to think of it have a certain workman-like design functionality. And since Australia is comparatively similar in size geographically to the continental U.S. large Japanese and European SUVs alongside bigass North American 4x4 pickups in particular, have gained wide adoption on our roads, in the last 15yrs mostly I think due to distances involved simply driving from A to B plus emission laws here are a joke. Hence we're kind of a dumping ground, where imports elsewhere would be illegal so atm we've an increased freeway/highway infrastructure proliferating all over the place.
"looks a damn site warmer where you live than here ."
There's been a mini heatwave for a week or so, today was around 38C (104 Fahrenheit)....usually things heat up over January but really not that uncommon even though Melbourne is located in the southeast corner of the continent state capitol of Victoria, typically with a temperate climate however we're pretty much exposed to catastrophic bushfires that are fed from lethal heat weather patterns birthed in huge desert regions, too the state's west - 2019 - 2020 Fire Season, to date is the worst on record thus far and actually it's firefront came within a few kilometers, where I live.
"actually might chuck my cars in 3dsmax or Maya to do the texture baking,
blenders baking is not that great, though it is functional"
I've looked at Handplane, seems promising tho still running more tests, by gradually increasing complexity and also mainly driven by my refusal to continue paying subscriptions, when nowadays there's available freeware or FOSS alternatives.
not sure really, just trying to keep them as low as possible. most of the polys are in the wheels, so I might have to bake most of the details, just keep the silhouette intact. not sure wheter to bake the bevels in , but I am sure there will be baking issues and a lot of hassle to make them look good
the original scene was a VR scene, but the low poly cars looked a bit crap at the time
the Hyundai Ioniq comes in at 10,000 tris, just removing the bevels bring that down to 5,000 tris, so that could be good for a single LOD then run that through the decimate modfier for a second
so I have a good system for the uv mapping, start off with smartuv project in Blender which gives me a reaonable layout for the main body just not sure if I should have all the materials on 1 texture layout or have chrome, paintwork etc each with a diffent uv set and texture?
am guessing in Unity you would have a different shader for paint as opposed to chrome, but its expensive to have multi materials in a game engine
the wheels will have their own texture space though and meterials in case they need swapping out
checking out the vehicles in in just cause 3 they have up to 11 different textures, so its a bit confusing
adding the back logo, could not find a clean version so had to mess with it in photoshop the back lights have little extra circles in each panel, hard to add it procedurally, so will do it in photoshop
its a real pain to bake in blender as if you have any metallic on your shader, it either does not bake at all or comes out looking too dark so all the chrome has to be kind of diffuse
well I thought it was the serpentine belt or some of the pulley bearings - the other garage just tightened it waaay to much and did not diagnose the water pump. So i took it to Kwikfit and they sorted it out for me. no pics am afraid
so I ran in to a major problem when collapsing the modifiers, in that the bevels would mess up the uv's, so here is a solution I worked out. you could uv map after you have collapsed , but I prefer to keep it non destructive until I am 100 percent sure its done
a simple solution is to 1 pin 'all' the uv's 2 select the messed up ones, unpin them 3 select all the uv's again, go to unwrap and the messed up uv's pop back in to their correct position.
The pinned uv's kind of act as a guide for the unpinned ones works great even on complex models probably the bevels uv's might overlap the originals slightly, but in my case the edges are hidden in the panel cuts, so not an issue
learning a lot about editing normals. After collapsing my bevels and realising that there is a lot of tidying up to do, the shading can easily get messed up blender has a fair few tools to help with that, like smooth vector, reset vector etc you can really fine tune the normals using modifiers and vertex groups to isolate bad shading My best solution is to create a temporary vertex group named FIXES, then add the weighted normal modifer only to the bits with bad shading or the element that contains it, apply the modifer then rinse , repeat where necessary
finally got this one ready for export. probably will go on cg trader
the jeep has 2 materials+ 1 each for the wheels and lights - all fully uv mapped with basic texture I was loathe to add loads of dirt efftects as not everyone wants that
I have another 5 almost ready to go, just the final tweaks take a long time
cheers man, learned quite bit the last few days, ie varying the bevel size more, not being so heavy handed overall Now I have got the technique down I can focus more on the reference
Replies
So I just enable the 'harden normals' checkbox in the shading tab of the bevel modifier.
update on the paint shader
distance
currently around 14,000 tris took about 12 hours to make so far
versions
just not sure if I should have all the materials on 1 texture layout or have chrome, paintwork etc each with a diffent uv set and texture?
the back lights have little extra circles in each panel, hard to add it procedurally, so will do it in photoshop
so all the chrome has to be kind of diffuse
So i took it to Kwikfit and they sorted it out for me. no pics am afraid
you could uv map after you have collapsed , but I prefer to keep it non destructive until I am 100 percent sure its done
a simple solution is to
1 pin 'all' the uv's
2 select the messed up ones, unpin them
3 select all the uv's again, go to unwrap and the messed up uv's pop back in to their correct position.
The pinned uv's kind of act as a guide for the unpinned ones
works great even on complex models
probably the bevels uv's might overlap the originals slightly, but in my case the edges are hidden in the panel cuts, so not an issue
blender has a fair few tools to help with that, like smooth vector, reset vector etc
you can really fine tune the normals using modifiers and vertex groups to isolate bad shading
My best solution is to create a temporary vertex group named FIXES, then add the weighted normal modifer only to the bits with bad shading
or the element that contains it, apply the modifer then rinse , repeat where necessary
I was loathe to add loads of dirt efftects as not everyone wants that
I have another 5 almost ready to go, just the final tweaks take a long time
Now I have got the technique down I can focus more on the reference