Yeah, by the looks of this you definitely should post more of your work here
Very clean and uniform choice of colours for it. Really cool design (I like that, being able to make bulldozers(?) cool), is it some existing real life model, or something you came up with on your own?
(Oh, by the way, I had to go through hoops to view all those different pictures, as the script seems to be IE specific. Didn't work in Firefox, and not in Opera, but finally in IE which I personally would rather not use. Just a friendly heads up, we're so many who aren't using IE these days )
Roger what's been said about your thumbs script, I can't see full images either.
Anyhow.. It is a very nice vehicle you got there. However, I think you should work some more on the texture, because it is hard to tell what material the parts are made of, and to me, the tyres look like they are made of stone. Also, the dirt and weathering effects seem a bit random. Aside from that, I think you could have made better use of normal map by adding some of the dirt and scratches to it, especially the thick dirt in front of the seat and on the lift arm.
Also, one thing that is bugging me is that you keep showing cropped images, which might be nice if you are going for appealing composition, but when you want to show your model, it helps to see it as a whole.
I second what fogmann said, the materials are looking a bit too uniform, the weathering is really random and the specular is not doing his work representing the different materials, otherwise, cool modeling
The slideshow now works in the Firefox and Opera browsers. Does anyone else find my site loading slow? I think I need a new host, any recommends?
I appreciate your comments and I take them on board: they are quite interesting and I will certainly tweak to make this better.
Kyraal: It's based strongly on a real machine called a Bobcat 753 and the colours are a style of low saturation and light shade paint.
Frogman and vahl: can you extend on the dirt and weathering being random please I'm not clear on what you mean.
Colour map (made from photo detail):
Specifically, the colour map has -Mud, -Grime, -Scuffs, -Rusty scratches and -Fresh scratches. Mud is dried and mostly on the surfaces near the tyres and the odd roaming splatter (which I reckon needs more opacity). Grime is a subtle overall occurrence of textured darkening. Scuffs are a slight overlayed whitening of pronounced bevelled edges (maybe it should be less saturation too). Scratches are hairline to blobby all over the vehicle, but more so on edges and larger areas like the slow curves of the orange lid on the rear.
Frogman: The tyres do look like stone (tehe) thanks for pointing that out I'll sort that out it's the colour maps fault.
Specular map:
vahl: You are absolutely right; perhaps the specular lacks in contrast, the values are quite close together and almost look the same (I have not painted many of this type of map so any tips from anyone would be well received) The materials are that of painted metal, carbon, leather, stainless steel, rubber, plastic and cloth.
Normal map:
Frogman: I have actually filtered and overlayed detail from the colour map onto the sampled normal map, but they are invisible because the value is really low. I may have the value tooooo low because although I know it needs it, I was attempting to not make scratches or grime too profound because they exist of a minute thickness (barely no renderable surface height) But I would say the mud and rust add more thickness and or texture to the appearance of the surface as apposed to where the smooth paint is.
michalczyk: thanks pal
Chris
P.S You can see the maps at the bottom of the website page of images made with them.
Thumbnails work now, thaks for fixing it. And yeah, your site loads fairly slow. I host my stuff at Bluehost and think they're pretty good with speed and other features.
As for randomness of weathering effects and dirt... What I meant there is that you should pay close attention to what factors influence the look of the object and how it is worn off and weathered down, instead of adding dirt just for sake of making it look dirty. The dirt on the lift arm for the most part looks good, but you still have some dark splotches at the base that look a bit out of place. The most obvious thing I would point out though, are the bright dots on the roof. I can't tell what they are and why they are there. If they are paint drippings, then perhaps they could be sharper and brighter. Also, if the metal has been exposed to sun a lot, the paint on parts that are exposed for the longest periods of time is usually faded a bit, and less saturated. Just being observant and careful about placing the dirt and scratches will help you achieve better results.
In regards to specular maps, you are not constrained to using same bluish hue for all the parts. I'm not expert with specular maps for sure, and still have to experiment quite a bit to get the result that I'm happy with, but I'd say that some variation in hue and brightness could help make materials differ more. Usually the edges should be painted with brighter color, and maybe the outlines of scratches, because if you look at the objects around you, you'll see that the edges are reflecting more light than flat surface. You can take a look at this page to see how highlights were added to the edges to emphasize their shininess.
Finally, concerning normal maps, I find it better to go a little bit overboard with depth of additional detail (increase the scale value in nVidia filter), than making it too subtle, because otherwise more often then not the bumpiness of small details won't be visible.
So... keep it up and I hope you will manage to make this Bobcat really shine.
its cool.. But you could get a lot more space on your texture if you just reused the same space for all the tires. Could do this on some other palces aswell.. Also the "cone" holding the stick u drive with (i guess ) is really polyheavy.
Replies
Very clean and uniform choice of colours for it. Really cool design (I like that, being able to make bulldozers(?) cool), is it some existing real life model, or something you came up with on your own?
(Oh, by the way, I had to go through hoops to view all those different pictures, as the script seems to be IE specific. Didn't work in Firefox, and not in Opera, but finally in IE which I personally would rather not use. Just a friendly heads up, we're so many who aren't using IE these days
Anyhow.. It is a very nice vehicle you got there. However, I think you should work some more on the texture, because it is hard to tell what material the parts are made of, and to me, the tyres look like they are made of stone. Also, the dirt and weathering effects seem a bit random. Aside from that, I think you could have made better use of normal map by adding some of the dirt and scratches to it, especially the thick dirt in front of the seat and on the lift arm.
Also, one thing that is bugging me is that you keep showing cropped images, which might be nice if you are going for appealing composition, but when you want to show your model, it helps to see it as a whole.
The slideshow now works in the Firefox and Opera browsers. Does anyone else find my site loading slow? I think I need a new host, any recommends?
I appreciate your comments and I take them on board: they are quite interesting and I will certainly tweak to make this better.
Kyraal: It's based strongly on a real machine called a Bobcat 753 and the colours are a style of low saturation and light shade paint.
Frogman and vahl: can you extend on the dirt and weathering being random please I'm not clear on what you mean.
Colour map (made from photo detail):
Specifically, the colour map has -Mud, -Grime, -Scuffs, -Rusty scratches and -Fresh scratches. Mud is dried and mostly on the surfaces near the tyres and the odd roaming splatter (which I reckon needs more opacity). Grime is a subtle overall occurrence of textured darkening. Scuffs are a slight overlayed whitening of pronounced bevelled edges (maybe it should be less saturation too). Scratches are hairline to blobby all over the vehicle, but more so on edges and larger areas like the slow curves of the orange lid on the rear.
Frogman: The tyres do look like stone (tehe) thanks for pointing that out I'll sort that out it's the colour maps fault.
Specular map:
vahl: You are absolutely right; perhaps the specular lacks in contrast, the values are quite close together and almost look the same (I have not painted many of this type of map so any tips from anyone would be well received) The materials are that of painted metal, carbon, leather, stainless steel, rubber, plastic and cloth.
Normal map:
Frogman: I have actually filtered and overlayed detail from the colour map onto the sampled normal map, but they are invisible because the value is really low. I may have the value tooooo low because although I know it needs it, I was attempting to not make scratches or grime too profound because they exist of a minute thickness (barely no renderable surface height) But I would say the mud and rust add more thickness and or texture to the appearance of the surface as apposed to where the smooth paint is.
michalczyk: thanks pal
Chris
P.S You can see the maps at the bottom of the website page of images made with them.
As for randomness of weathering effects and dirt... What I meant there is that you should pay close attention to what factors influence the look of the object and how it is worn off and weathered down, instead of adding dirt just for sake of making it look dirty. The dirt on the lift arm for the most part looks good, but you still have some dark splotches at the base that look a bit out of place. The most obvious thing I would point out though, are the bright dots on the roof. I can't tell what they are and why they are there. If they are paint drippings, then perhaps they could be sharper and brighter. Also, if the metal has been exposed to sun a lot, the paint on parts that are exposed for the longest periods of time is usually faded a bit, and less saturated. Just being observant and careful about placing the dirt and scratches will help you achieve better results.
In regards to specular maps, you are not constrained to using same bluish hue for all the parts. I'm not expert with specular maps for sure, and still have to experiment quite a bit to get the result that I'm happy with, but I'd say that some variation in hue and brightness could help make materials differ more. Usually the edges should be painted with brighter color, and maybe the outlines of scratches, because if you look at the objects around you, you'll see that the edges are reflecting more light than flat surface. You can take a look at this page to see how highlights were added to the edges to emphasize their shininess.
Finally, concerning normal maps, I find it better to go a little bit overboard with depth of additional detail (increase the scale value in nVidia filter), than making it too subtle, because otherwise more often then not the bumpiness of small details won't be visible.
So... keep it up and I hope you will manage to make this Bobcat really shine.
anyways.. i like your stuff. Post more!