Popbot SDK

gauss

SDK HERE!
http://www.fileplanet.com/dl.aspx?/planetquake/polycount/cottages/gauss/popbotmodelsdk.zip



it's ashley wood's Popbot. trouble with doing a Popbot model is that ash tends to slowly mutate how he draws him--pop looks a lot different than he used to, parts are generally the same but there has been a lot of shape changing.
some reference:



polycount is 3954, map is a single 1024x1024. though i have no plans to put him in game (yet), i decided i'd follow guidelines for HL2 characters like the metrocop.

Josh_Singh

This is really sweet Gauss!! Get it mapp't and put it on a stand pose it just like your statue with a gun! I love the simplicity, contrasting witht the complicated "intestine" hoses. Great stuff man. I cant say how cool I think this is. I really dig this kind of stuff. And Thanks for the Link!

steady

dang that rox gauss, that first render is my new background

usagi

the head seems to be missing something, i dont know what, it might because its untextured, or the static pose. also the tube in both references looks like it turns inward before joining the torso. i thinkn yours woulkd look better if it did the same

im really nit-picking though. i think this is great. very cool model

DarthRevanII

looks like that space robot from that one cartoon a few years ago...dont remember what its called

very interesting

gauss

optimized a lot of smaller details which dropped it down to about ~3600 polys. now it's back up to 3994 because of the chamfered edges, which is something i really liked about the statuette. though i won't be animating it, i'm targeting HL2 model standards relative to the combine police models... which are close to 4000 polygons (or more) with a 1024x1024 texture.

ghost: thanks man, i've always liked wood's designs. and you're welcome, he's got a lot of great artwork.

steady: haha, good to hear it

usagi: yeah, the head is extremely simple geometry-wise. it'll come alive with the proper texture. as far as the hoses, i hadn't done much with lofting in max before so i hadn't done any scale adjustments--check out the new pic and see if you like them any better. but you're right about the hose turning in, i'll see if i can't get that to look better.

darth: you mean the iron giant..?

sinistergfx

Ah sweet. I love Ashley Wood's stuff.

Looks pretty good, can't wait to see it textured. Wood's work always has awesome texture and feel to it.

You don't really need to use loft for the tubing, you can just set a line to renderable (in the "rendering" group of its command panel), turn on "display render mesh", and then fiddle with thickness and other settings like interpolation.

Keep up the good work.

gauss

thanks for the tip, sinister. i'll be sure to play with that next time. i like the functionality that loft gives, but it's always good to know as many ways to do any given task you can. i'm looking forward to seeing him textured, too

KMan

AHA!
So that's why you were asking about unwrapping tubes. I take it the lofting went well, then?

Looks ace!

sinistergfx

You can have the renderable line autogenerate the UVs for you. Then you'll just have to do a scale of the UVs to get rid of stretching.

Josh_Singh

yeah, sinsistergfx, That's how I do all my tubes.
Get this textured Gauss!! or release an sdk!! mmmmmm...

gauss

ghost: like this?


going to need a few more tweaks, especially on the tubes and juggling around a few elements on the UV map... but i think anyone who wants to skin this should be pleasantly surprised, it's very nicely organized and easy to follow

will have the SDK up tomorrow.

Slainean

I don't know what to add except that I've only recently discovered Ashley Wood's work and love every bit of it, so the timing on this is great.

Not much to critique, but it is a bit poly heavy due to the mechanical aspect like you pointed out. Can't wait to see what people do with the SDK.

gauss

thanks Slainean

SDK is uploaded plus guide--if you downloaded the first SDK, download again, there was a bit of a problem with the UV sheet (thanks for catching that one Asherr )

Fuse

love the model .. i imported the .3ds but the smoothing groups are messed up in places .. not a biggie i suppose i can resmooth it ... should be a fun project

MoP

Fuse: If you're importing a 3ds, the mesh will be broken along UV seams. Just select all the vertices, hit "Weld Selected" with as low a threshold as possible, and bingo, your smoothing should be fixed.

Good work Gauss, this is a pretty cool model - looks higher detail than the polys would suggest, must be all that chamfering

It will be interesting to see what people come up with in texturing this...

poopinmymouth

Looking cool Gaussles. what are all the white areas in the sdk color coded image?

I'd say my only crits, would be that the model doesn't have as much dynamic in the width of the limbs as her concept, and that it seems a bit high poly. he seems a bit overly smooth in areas, mainly the chest, and the rounder bits of his arms and legs. The UV layout sems a bit too broken. it would have been nice to keep some of those areas welded, and rotated them or rearrange them tighter. I know you did it for sake of readability, but you could have gotten more mileage out of your texture space had you done it differently.

Looking cool man, and I too can't wait to see what people come up with.

Joshua Stubbles

Do you know if HL2 supports a spec map? It'd be nice to have some sheen on certain areas.

gauss

thanks for the comments poop. first of all ashley wood these days tends to sign work as ash wood, as he's male. as far as the 'limb dynamic' comment, after you mentioned it before i did adjust the limbs, particularly how they taper. as mentioned, the refs i posted were only to give an idea to those who aren't familiar an idea of what the character looks like--it's not meant to be strict 'concept art' as such since the character changes virtually every time wood paints him. having said that, the smoothing groups do deserve another look. the pectorals might get seperated or made to look harder-edged.

good comments on the UV layout, but i felt it would be a better idea to maintain readibility over efficiency in this case. some in polycount might remember Glenn's space marine model and it's UV layout... while quite an efficient layout, it was a nightmare for any one else to try and decipher. if this were a production environment and the model were only going to get 2-3 skins or less from myself or a texture artist, i probably would have gone with a more efficient layout. as it is, i wanted to offer a UV layout that was more legible to the wider community.

so thanks for the crits, and i am also looking forward to seeing what other people come up with. once it's starting to look decent i'll post my texture as well

Illusions

[ QUOTE ]
Do you know if HL2 supports a spec map? It'd be nice to have some sheen on certain areas.

[/ QUOTE ]

It should, it supports normal mapping, that and certain textures in the game look like they have specular mapping applied to them (like the texture on the roller mines).

Josh_Singh

COOL! Thanks Gauss!! I'll Definitely give this guy a go!

hawken

nice model

v.high quality stuff gauss

would love to see it positioned or animated somehow, looks very static at the moment.

gauss

thanks man. once i get a skin on it i'll probably rig it so i can give it a pose like the statuette. maybe even animate it, dare i say!