low poly angler sub

commander riker

the concept for this piece was to combine a blackdevil angler fish and a submarine. I included the light the angler would have, as well as the basic shape of the fish. I then added some sub fins, a sonar tower, and a propeller. I am still working on some UV maps and will post them when they're completed.

my poly budget is 3000 and I'm currently at 2868. I'm using 3ds Max 8.

any c&c on the modeling would be much appreciated.

angler:



preliminary render:

jaalto

It would be nice to see some wires for c&c

Joseph Silverman

I don't think you're using your polygons effectively. That looks like something I could achieve with a few hundred, not three thousand. It's a natural mistake, but don't spend too many polygons rounding/smoothing the forms. Instead, why not pull out more of the shapes of the fish? To me, what makes the angler so interesting is the proportion of the head of it to it's tail. Right now the front of your ship is larger than the back, but it's not really reminding me too much of an angler fish. If you have 3k polygons, you should be able to really model the forms of the fish. If you're having trouble finding ways to incorporate the fish's look into your design, you may even want to go for a realistic recreation of the creature, and then convert that into a submarine.


Keep it up, anyway. Good luck.

MoP

SupRore is entirely correct! I did a quick paintover to try and capture some of these suggestions, hope you don't mind:



Basically you're missing most of the major forms of this fish - you've got the "angler" bit, the recognisable light, but you seem to have overlooked all the other shapes that make this fish interesting.
I've highlighted in red the lines you should probably take care of first, but there's a whole bunch of shapes like the fins and the mouth, that you can echo and enhance in the design.

I think having the conning tower being the same shape/position as the dorsal fin would make a lot of sense and result in a sleeker, more interesting design.

Similarly you can use the shapes found under the fins as more interesting sources of detail.

Also, the way you're using polys now seems a bit strange, I'd have to see a wireframe/flatshaded screengrab to be sure though. It looks like you're spending a lot of polys just rounding out the shape of the main area when you should be spending that on adding more interesting shapes and smoothing out stuff like the curve of the "light pole" thing.

Hope that helps, I look forward to seeing this progress, it has really nice potential to be a cool piece!

[edit] Heh, just realised that it kinda reminds me of Thunderbird 2 now... not a bad thing!

Xaltar

Love the paintover MoP

Some great advice in here and the piece looks like it could be a really fun model once you are done. Keep at it.

LoTekK

That paintover is awesome, love the changes to the conn tower(?) especially. I agree, this could definitely be a fun model.

conte

yeah, Mop, very useful post.
i am looking forward to see progress and updates.

Justin Meisse

also needs a scary mouth painted on the front!

John Warner

what. a. nice. guy.

commander riker

thanks for the critiques.

here is a wireframe:


I see now that the robotic arm has way too much geometry. I've attacked the propellers about as much as I dare.

I really like the paintover MoP. good suggestions for me to implement as this develops.

I agree with justin. here's the mouth. I created this in illustrator/photoshop:


here are my latest renders:




these are my maps:

uvw


bump


specular


the robotic arm was a simple gradient I created in illustrator and duplicated a bunch of times. the light is self-illuminated with an omni inside.

right now I'm at 2998 polys. I'm gonna see what I can do to lower this. I agree its a bit ridiculous when you see what I have.

still working on this...
I think maybe I should do some kind of fog effect to make it seem like its actually under the water...?

any more c&c would be great.

thanks!

John Warner

OOOOoooooo i remember making textures like that.

don't like texturing? don't know what to put there to fill in the space? here are some ideas.

this is what i would do in order

-i agree with mop's paint over. right now your mesh proportions are kinda un-appealing. if your model had the same kind of vibe as your bump map it would be nice. (which is a lot more sleek)
-fix the UVs so that it's not skewed and so that the texel density is more even.
-scale down those rivets and add way more. what are those rivets exactly? how big is this ship? is it tiny or something?
-tone down that clouds texture or remove it. color and value variance shouldn't be random, it should make absolute and complete literal sense and should tell a story.
-grab a nice and subtle metal texture to use for a base instead
-add some location specific detail, doors, windows, engine compartments, something for that light thingy to come out of.. how do people get in and out of this? what is this meant to do?
-add some location specific scratches, damage, dents, etc. what's the story behind this? what's this ship's purpose? how would it get damaged doing what it does? what has it been through? tell us a story. don't be afraid to make it original either. there could be stuff growing on this perhaps.
-i'd add some grime in the panel lines on the diffuse map.
-add general grime and drippage where it makes sense. around the rivits for example
-that mouth is insanely saturated. it also looks stuck on. I'd scrape it up a bit and rough up the edges so that it looks like old paint or something. that way it'll work together with what you have. right now your elements appear to be fighting each other.
-unify the colors a bit.
-add the rivits to your spec map so they pop some.

i hope that helps. right now, I'm afraid this just isn't capturing the vibe of the angler fish. the proportions of the model i think are the biggest hindrance. maybe try to match the fish more exactly.. that might help.

keep it up! I'm sure you can make this really good!!

Jesse Moody

oh man mops paint over rocks...
Make it look like that! So awesome.

Panupat

I would try to follow MoP's painting much closer o.O; it just looks so cool.
I don't think your mouth is working. Angler fish' mouth is pretty scary, your's turning out kind of cute because of the curly lips.

Jesse Moody

also the mouth should be changed for design and put it under the model rather than on the top. I think this might look more fierce. But still it looks really cuddly and not so mean right now.

Quickel

ricker, for your first post on here it's not bad! obviously your proportions need to be sorted out and john_warner gave lots of helpful suggestions. i definitely think you could put more into the diffuse map to help emphasize the panels you have going on and even have dirt and grime around the rivets and such (once you scale them down).

watch your polys as people suggest. remember in most cases if it's not affecting the silhouette, remove it.

very nice concept though - this could be an awesome model.

Ghostscape

Make it look like MoP's paintover because right now you don't have good looking shapes.

your poly distribution is very weird. You have way too many sides on the cylinder for the headlamp, and too few angles defining it.

It looks like you started with a box or sphere and just pushed and pulled stuff into position - this is leading to some weird and uneven distribution in your hull.

Look at MoP's paintover and make a list of all the changes he's made and you'll have a checklist for things to look at.