Fire Hydrant asset

StJoris

Hey there,
I've been working on this concept for a while, posted it on other forums, but I'd also like to post it here to see what you think. Click for the full sized image. C&C highly welcome and needed

Jeremy Lindstrom

Looks a little overly complex for what it actually should do. I can't tell what your concept does or is trying to accomplish, it looks like you tried using cut aways but it ends up looking like an impossible object.

Jesse Moody

damn i would not want to be sitting at my desk and have someone say hey model this. heres the concept. I'm very confused for what it is and does.

rooster

hmm if I was attempting this complex a concept I'd probably follow gauss' example and model the basic forms then paint over the details, so at least you can show other views of the model to give further hints of the shape if its not clear from one view (and no mirroring it does not count as a back view)

BUT it looks pretty funky, I like the feel of it a lot

momoko

Very nice.
I always like this kind of complicated old style mechs.
I'd like to see front view.

StJoris

Thanks for the comments, I appreciate them.
I've also got some crits on them from #model_design, w13 or alpha said something along:
If this is a firehydrant, I don't want to see how a firetruck would look like.
Which kind of illustrates a point, that it's hard to make something another notch more complex looking, takes too much time, hell it would take ages to create a city this complex.
I'm the one who is also going to model it.
It seems best to go back and thumbnail properly this time, and try to establish something complex 'looking' without making it unworkable. Updates soon:)

StJoris

I did some thumbnailing, anything that pops out as nicest?

StJoris

I picked nr. 8, and worked it out, I like it quite a bit more now, it seems to do more with less.

oobersli

looks cool, although the valve things from the horizontal tubes seem a bit small n weak. Maybe bulk em up.

momoko

Yup, 8 is the best I thought.
Rocket kinda shape looks good.

StJoris

Finished up the modeling sheet with a front view aswell, going to model it now. I bulked up the valves slightly in the front view.

oobersli

looks great, although I think you should swap the "fire hydrant" out with something like the name of a city ,fire protection district or maybe like a station logo.

StJoris

Thanks oobersli, good point on the text!
Almost done with the highpoly, just going to make some sweet deco in Zbrush tomorrow.

StJoris

I finished the highpoly and the gamemesh almost:


Crits on optimisations, which parts to intersect and which not to, and wether I should make geo for the bolts are highly welcome!

StJoris

Allright I've been messing with normal mapping, got most things working and it's pretty much going fine, but I get all these kinds of artifacts. For example without changing anything, when I rerender to texture I get one filled with artifacts and the other it doesn't have that:

andym12

I reckon it could use some more bolts around the edges of panels and whatnot. Can't answer your normal map questions though, sorry.

StJoris

Yeah I did them on a seperate pass andy, they are here now.
The randomnness of the artifacts opened up an easy although dodgy work-around, just re-rendering it couple times and composition the bad parts away. Here is a screengrab of the standard DX Shader: