High-poly mechanical objects - tutorials?
I've been looking around for tutorials on normal mapping mechanical objects that don't have that ultra futuristic rounded, sleek, organic feel as in Unreal Tournament or Gears of War (more industrial, man-made feel like engine blocks, bulldozers and the like).
What's some of your methodologies to modeling mechanical objects that have a lot of hard edges? The only thing I really know is to create a reference copy in Max of your low poly model, apply turbosmooth, and start chamfering edges on your low poly, but that ends up with a lot of weird shadow problems on the surfaces. Do you pros even turbosmooth mechanical models, or do you simply get 'enough detail' through regular modeling, then re-create the low-poly model to fit the high?
Are the high poly models air tight, including all the little nuts and bolts? I'm at a complete loss. I've been modeling a little over a year now, but we have never focused on mechanical modeling with the intent to normal map. Thanks!
Edit: The intent is in creating real-time content for games, though at this point, I'm willing to try anything.
What's some of your methodologies to modeling mechanical objects that have a lot of hard edges? The only thing I really know is to create a reference copy in Max of your low poly model, apply turbosmooth, and start chamfering edges on your low poly, but that ends up with a lot of weird shadow problems on the surfaces. Do you pros even turbosmooth mechanical models, or do you simply get 'enough detail' through regular modeling, then re-create the low-poly model to fit the high?
Are the high poly models air tight, including all the little nuts and bolts? I'm at a complete loss. I've been modeling a little over a year now, but we have never focused on mechanical modeling with the intent to normal map. Thanks!
Edit: The intent is in creating real-time content for games, though at this point, I'm willing to try anything.
Replies
http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=157548&an=&page=0&vc=1
About turbosmooth, just preper you model with extra edges by using a combination of any of these amazing maxscripts:
http://www.vg2max.spb.ru/EdgeChEx.htm
http://www.luxinia.de/download/arttools/CB_EdgeStraighten.mcr
or the maya version of Edgestraighten by Whargoul
http://www.members.shaw.ca/whargoul/CRstraightenEdges.mel
and manual tweaking.
Don't miss these scripts, they will make your highpoly modeling so much faster.
Side question, though. If you want to do a high poly model for display and really nice renders, what would you do instead of floating geometry? Things like small bevels for screws, panel seams, diamond plate, etc. cannot be floated due to the silhouette. Is this simply extrude/bevel, chamfer and adding loops?
This might be true for some film stuff or not (no clue)
Usually I find it's best to assign a single smoothing group to the whole mesh when baking a normalmap in Max. This avoids many of the seams and also avoids mis-casting between the low and the high. I think Poopinmymouth's tut had a bit on this?
On the high-res model you could use Smoothing Groups if you want, but the backwards way Max forces you to apply them, it's easier to make chamfers/bevels IMHO. Poop has a tut for Smoothing Groups too.
If I'm in a hurry, I'll use Smoothing Groups to define hard edges on the low-res mesh, after baking. But I always get better results when I use a single Smoothing Group and use bevels or chamfers instead... then I can choose exactly how soft or hard I want an area to be, just by how tight the bevel is. In the end, a bevel is the same in-game vertex cost as a hard edge made with Smoothing Groups... four verts for each edge.
Ultimately though I think it depends on where you bake the normalmap, and how well your game exporter translates the tangent calculations from the normalmap baker into your game format. If you bake in Max, you'll get the best results exporting directly from Max. Same with Doom III's baker, works best with Doom III.
Dunno if that makes sense.
i know how to do all the smoothing group stuff. and i know it's best to assign one smoothing group to your lowpoly. i was mainly curious about the highpoly and how those smoothing groups would translate after a bake. hahaha. i guess another way to do it is to experiment. hahaha.