Firebrand SDK for ut2k4 (fixored!)
polycounter lvl 18
Yeah, like my third thread created in the past few days =P
Thanks to Vailias, he uv'd the model with my permission, and he'll rig it too. It's not rigged yet but it's gonna be put into ut2k4 with custom animations.
A little over about 3000 triangles, two 1024x1024 textures, .psk and .3ds provided. You may need to weld all verts since MS3d's 3ds exporter sucks (breaks smoothing) and the .psk currently has badly shaded wing membranes, so have lighting off when skinning those areas.
Get the SDK! (220Kb)
My skin in progress, very rough, just started
Thanks to Vailias, he uv'd the model with my permission, and he'll rig it too. It's not rigged yet but it's gonna be put into ut2k4 with custom animations.
A little over about 3000 triangles, two 1024x1024 textures, .psk and .3ds provided. You may need to weld all verts since MS3d's 3ds exporter sucks (breaks smoothing) and the .psk currently has badly shaded wing membranes, so have lighting off when skinning those areas.
Get the SDK! (220Kb)
My skin in progress, very rough, just started
Replies
!!!! dude thats a ton of wasted space.
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Anywhere you have bilateral symmetry you can 'fold' on top of the other half. You did it with the wing, why not the chest and face?
!!!! dude thats a ton of wasted space.
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agreed.
Irritant: Welcome to UT2k4, where body and head maps are both 1024x1024 as a standard
Sett: Perhaps for tattoos and damage?
Still doing my skin here
If the seam was running from the armpit to the bottom of the wrist, it'd be MUCH less noticeable, therefore people wouldn't have to worry about hiding it so well during texturing. Nobody ever sees the underside/inside of the arm in-game anyway, while the view you're presenting there is one of the most-seen angles, and you've gone and put a seam right down it!
I'd also recommend shading with colour, not black/white or dodge/burn or whatever you're using there. Flesh especially is not just a lighter or darker tone of the same colour/hue, highlights should probably be warmer, different colours, while shadows would usually pick up the environment colour so blues or greens look good in shadows.
Your areas of shadow around muscles are also very large and blurry, they should be sharper on some sides, and smoothly blending out on the other side, to simulate planar angles and light catching form, rather than just "lighter on a muscle, dark around the muscle" which is what you're doing at the moment.
Study some of Bobo, Qube or Moose's texturing work (those who I can think of offhand who paint lighting well), see how they do it, and learn from that.
Your modelling has improved (although it's taken a while...) but your texturing is still living in a cave hitting dinosaurs with a big stick, you have a full range of colour to play with, so use it!
Irritant: Welcome to UT2k4, where body and head maps are both 1024x1024 as a standard
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Ah ok, from the way you posted it, it looked like a 1024x512 skin.
Is 1024^2 required for the heads? Seems to me that a 512^2 flat would be alot better of a resolution match. I understand the whole point of the head being more detailed because it's what you mainly look at, etc, but that seems a tad overkill.
1.) most of you should know by now that you can map any texture that's a power of 2 to any uv map and have it apply. Just because the SDK includes a 1024^2 wireframe doesn't mean you cant paint a 256 map and have it apply the same way. UVW space is vector space just like XYZ, and cares jack about the image pixel resolution. Seriously how do you think Mip-maps work?
2.) Bilateral symetry.. I freaking hate mirrored maps. Its a personal pet peave if I can't have one part of the body different from another. Symetrical Maps look like symetrical maps. Especially if you do anything pattern wise, or if you add "damage" elements to the skin. Nothing like having perfectly symetrical bullet impacts on a chest plate eh? The wings got mirrored because they are so huge they would need their own separate texture to skin appropriately otherwise. Since this is bound for Unreal where the UPL files only specify 2 materials, having the wings on their own map and material just isn't practical. The only reason I didn't separate each leg and arm is cheapy requested them not to be.
Now as far as that arm seam goes, yeah that was a mistake due to me not paying enough attention, so disregard this version till I can fix that little detail.
So anyway if the lot of you can find a way to better use the remaining space, while keeping an EVEN Texel-res across the model, and not distorting the texture placement, well hell, I'm all for it.
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Thats what I imidiatly thought, too.
Keeping the restrictions in mind cheapy wanted (no mirrored geometry etc) it is a reasonably well placed uv-map.
Some smaller improvments here and there, and being a bit less 'fanatic' about the even texel res might improve the uvmap, but that is really nothing to write home about.
Anyway I've fixed the arm.. still can't believe I didn't realize it was on the front of the arm. Its good I came back to this anyway. I found a few minor distortions I didn't catch the other night, and went ahead and enlarged the cuff areas on the map so it will be easier to print text on them should anyone so choose.
there is never a need for 2 1024's blurry is not solved by the map size its done by photoshop skills, the best maps ive seen have been done on 512 and even 256, think about it
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I don't conclude to details right at the beginning of skinning. That'll just get me distracted. Besides, UT2k4 relies on 1024x1024 as a standard for it's maximum detail level setting, so you have to be consistent with that (for example, lowering the texture to "normal" detail will bring it down to 512x512 with every other character)
nah, you can have your texture be whatever size you want. The highest detail setting will use the highest mip. id suggest a 1024 body and 512 head on this imo. do whatever you want, its your skin
You really are making it more difficult for yourself by putting effort into doing that in the first place... just flesh him out using areas of flat colours (areas larger than 1 pixel, don't get smart with me, heh), and use some transparant brushes to add some early shading, and you'll be able to plan everything much better. As you're doing it now, chances are you'll end up with something that might be nothing more than a polished turd, ie: it's nicely rendered out and all that, but there are areas that could definately be improved...
And if you'd want to change it you'd have to start over on that bit, and that would be too much work, so you leave it.
Also, try sketching on all of the details (without shading, ofcourse, but just outlines) with a black 1 px brush, i find that helps me alot in following an idea without getting ahead of myself by detailing an area.
It's good to see you're improving, but i (and everyone else, which warms my hard ever so slightly) can't stress this enough:
Enough with the goddamned gargoyles.
It may seem like a great idea to try to do the same theme (and the same variation on that theme, as you've done quite a few incarnations of this particular one) over and over again, but at this point i wonder how much more quickly you'd improve, doing something else.
We should set up some sort of a bet:
Everyone should pledge to skin his first serious NON-gargoyle (no, your duck isn't quite serious/good enough)
chearpalert. i'll try to give a shoot this weekend. i'm strangle by milestone for the moment
i found there a bit of waste on the polycount but since the anatomy is OK thats..well.. Ok :P
i ust don't like the hand and feet but the rest is fine
. Damn you milestone !!! *shake fist*
BTW nice improvement
Rig WIP.. also to show just how big the wings are.
WArning, there's a slight distortion on some parts of the wing and spar
However I skinned my way through it anyway
http://www.planetgargoyle.com/fbsvcskin20.png
http://www.planetgargoyle.com/fbsvcskin21.png
http://www.planetgargoyle.com/fbsvcskin25.png
http://www.planetgargoyle.com/fbsvcskin26.png (ASS SHOT!)
http://www.planetgargoyle.com/od2y.png (Skinmap)
http://www.planetgargoyle.com/hedad.png (head skinmap *not pretty*)
Jody
this could obviously taken furthar by defining the muscles more and creating better ighting as mop said but its start
Jody
before
after
Vailias said he's getting it done very soon, so i'll pick this up again
edit: late update lol
1024x1024 this time, blender can't paint 1024 very fast on my ath950 so I have to psp5 my details, heh
The wing uvws are still a bit stretched as you can see, however
make sure not to forget middle ground values in the skin. You have a ton of highs, and a ton of lows.... but very little 'fill' middle ground color. it makes it look patchy and blocky as opposed to an organic curtain over muscle.
i'm way out of practice in the texture department. of all people, guess whose sdk i picked to play with. about 2 hours so far. gargoyle week continues.
Currently standing at 2438 triangles.
the only thing that looks like its been neglected are his feet. they still look rather blobby and unrefined. everything else got so much love, why not the feet?
also sort of looks like his wings are just stuck through his back polys... not actually connected. I suppose thats for animation purposes?
now show us your leet unwrapping skillz!
heres to hoping I get some more time to finish the animation set for the garg.
He now has teeth planes that can be alpha masked. He has no modeled fangs.
He also has bracers
The feet are now fixed.
The wings aren't welded because I chose not to, i wanna have a back without holes :O and i don't wanna wreck up the edgeloops there also. However, I have moved the wings closer into the back to fit it in more.
There's something up with those knees, and i can't put my finger on why.
Also, those forearms are a might bulbous looking.
Otherwise, nice job
Also, i've started work on the highpoly mesh, and yeah i'm gonna try to normal map this sucker also
working slowly like a jerk
anyhow, i resumed on him again, not much big changes but i'm on the stage where i flesh out the limbs now
btw, it's really coming together, could turn out pretty good.