Tarascus

Helios

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Posting my latest game art model, the Tarascus. It is based on the resin model with the same name from the Confrontation series board game by Rackham. I did not have the actual model so I used pictures of it as reference. The lowpoly model and highpoly armor pieces are modeled in Maya and the rest of the highpoly in ZBrush. Textured with Photoshop and Nvidia normal map filter.

5376 tris and 1024x1024 texture
Color, Specular and Normal

All of the following images are cropped screengrabs from the Maya viewports taken at 8xFSAA, no post-processing.









More pictures at my portfolio site:
Here

rooster

whoah sweet work! love the texturing, I would bump the contrast up a little here and there though, maybe use a dark colour on a mid-opacity overlay layer, just to pop out certain bits.. great work

cholden

Cool piece, but it has a weak specular map that completely flattens the (normal map) whole thing instead of adding to the depth.

Try something with more contrast, and color variations. For example, as a test, try taking your color map and cut the contrast up 50 and the brightness down 50 (in photoshop), and use this as your specular. If you really want to make things interesting, shift the hue 180 so it’s the complete opposite (this technique doesn’t work for everything, but can really make metals and other surfaces stand out)

Anyway, redo that specular to make your material POP!

Slum

I love the textures. Very crisp and neat, but what cholden said is true. The specular really isn't doing anything for the materials, and everything seems to blend together. I can see that you've got leather and metal there, but they look like they could easily both be the same material. Some more adjustment in the spec should make the metal pop out more than the leathery bits.

I do love the textures though, very very cool.

Helios

I see what you guys are saying with the specular map and it's true i could tweak it for more contrast. But i didn't want to go for full realism with bright specular highlights and deep normal map. I wanted it to have the more soft, handpainted look of the original resin model.

Jon Jones

Helios, when I took a look at it, I was actually surprised to find out it had a normal map or a specular map at all. It looked like a basic hand-painted color texture with nothing else.

I'd really suggest giving what Chris said a try, because right now it's so soft and easy to miss that all the extra work you put into it is being wasted. That's nearly 2.1 million pixels, man!

Helios

Click here for a comparison of what each texture layer does.

Pedro Amorim

Very sweet, and as others said, boost up the spec.

poopinmymouth

How did you generate that normal map? It seems to have no depth whatsoever. Also how are you rendering it? GI only will ruin a normal map most times. The piece looks good, but I'm with Shine in thinking it doesn't look much more than a color map. Even seeing your breakdown, there isn't a whole lot of difference from one step to the next. I'd try to amp up the normal map effect and render with a light setup that really shows it off.

aesir

Perhaps you just need to turn up the normal map's strength in the material editor or errr... in maya... its the hypergraph right?

The beauty render looks fantastic by the way. Really impressive.

fogmann

I believe this ineffectiveness of normal and specular maps are due to the shadows and highlights being painted in the color map, while perhaps you should have let the normal and specular handle that. End result does look great, though. Excellent work!

Black_Dog

It seems to me that you could shave quite a few tris from the sphere and hornsword without losing anything. I like him though.

Joseph Silverman

I'd say definitely punch the spec and normal up a bit. That comparison you posted shows almost no signifigant change between the three.

conte

nice model and diffuse map!=) solid shapes

MartinKDahl

Like i said in school i really like it. But i have to agree with the notion that your normal map got lost somewhere on the way. But all in all great addition to your reel! Good job anton.

Tulkamir

Seems to me that you have a fair amount of wasted polygons on top of what has been said. That sphere on his side for instance is way too high poly. If you were to work with it some you could add in some polys to the armour so it has an actual silohoute.

Honolulu_Ninja

This one turned out to be kickass, great job Anton.
But I agree with Nelis, the normalmap doesnt seem to pop out as much as it would be able to and I would play a little more with that specular if I were you. GJ!

rollin

hey realy like this one.. but the normalmaps are more like "putting in a bit dynamik" than realy sculping the model..and on a stady render its hard to figure out whats dif and whats nm (looks realy like dif-only or baked nm)
the spec-map could realy bring more depth into it

but anyhow its looking realy awesome

and maybe this is only me, but i would prefer a bit more "realistic" skin structure

btw.. this head is soooo cool

Mark Dygert

This is begging to be the next Nali war-cow for 2k7! hahaha great work I love it!

Edit: I just read it is normal mapped. 50 DKP Minus, for it not looking normal mapped. The normal map comes off really really weak. I also think you can help it along by adding very minimal geometry like this:



Oh and congrats on getting highlighted on CGTalk, which is CGSociety now?

ebagg

Top notch stuff dude, it's badass! I agree with Poop's crit on the normal map.

Helios

I just wanted to thank you all for your comments and for taking the time to provide me with insightful critique which will help me make my next normal mapped model better (this was my first).