IronHawk's Props and Enviroment thread

IronHawk

I am working on a series of props and I'd like to get some crits. I am trying to build up a enviroment focused portfollio.

Modeling the high poly meshes in silo then normal mapping in max and crazy bump, textures done in PS CS2.

PeterK

I think your detail is all high frequency, you need to concentrate on hitting the various levels of detail frequency to establish a more quality piece.

Don't worry too much about the object being used over and over in a scene, it's your portfolio, you control how it's displayed. This means you want to put forth your best overall effort.


I think this would benefit from some low frequency, macro detail. A chipped edge, a deep scuff, something to make it less uniform and boring. Secondly, consider more color variation. the bottom of these things tend to get really dirty from water runoff, and they are sometimes shit on by birds.

mikebart

I think that one in particular could maybe do with a bit of worn and flaked paint to make it more visable, it looks a bit dull atm, but im sure its a wip

A few variants of the barrier model which use the same material would be good too, like some more damaged ones, with cracks and broken corners.

I quite often extract crack patterns from photographs and multiply them several times at different scales onto the diffuse, bump and spec.



I make a tiling texture from a photograph,



and then multiply it several times onto the D, S, and normal maps at several different scales.


(probably not the best example)
Just an idea, please post more

John Warner

hey, that's quite good. cool stuff.

IronHawk

Thanks for the crits guys.

Peter - It was definitely intended to be reused in a row. Makes sense what you say though about making it less uniform in a portfolio piece. Funny I thought making a prop that could be reused would be best. Going to go the middle route and make it reusable but still push it further.

My props are all falling victim to lack of color variation of some sort. I'm beginning seeing this now.


Mike - Thanks for sharing that technique. I don't think it will work for this though as I don't want it too look overdone. I bike through several construction zones on my way to work and have been checking these out daily. I should have pushed the corner chipping harder and may still but the big one for me at this point is getting in more variation to the color. Mostly darkening the current dirt and then cutting through all that with some scrapes to reveal fresh concrete that hasn't been dirtied yet. Fairly similar to what your suggesting but not the same pattern of wear.

John - Thanks bro! This actually looks like most of the barriers I bike past on my way to work. Though I feel I can push the diffuse a bit more as suggested.

Once complete I'll be releasing all my props as mod pack for anyone to use with a simple request of getting credit for the work.

IronHawk

This is still very wip but I wanted to throw down some color and see how it looks. Going to warp and bang up the metal normals a bit tonight before continuing with the diffuse.

719 Tris on this guy will post wires later when I update this thread next.

IronHawk

Progress update here. A few small tweaks left but for the most part I want to call this done and move on to the building facade.

Em.

Looks good to me, believeable wear and tear and all that, good photosource usage, keep it up!

IronHawk

Started a scene to pull some of my recent props together.

I'll be exporting these props again to get rid of the messed up shading. I was using .3ds format and it messes up the normal maps in comparison to .obj when importing for me.

The grey area under the dumpster is going to be beat up concrete and the same goes for in front of the door. The short wall will be a beat up concrete wall using some of the crits I got for the jersey barrier. I'll push the dings dents and color variation further.

Square block embedded in the wall is going to be a window. There is some more debris and corner grime that will get added.

I'll be hand doing up a normal map for that door as well.

What I'm mainly looking for crits on is the current textures and the scene composition/ lighting.

anyways here it is so far.



sorry for the rambler of a post. Late night and I wanted to get this out there so I can work on it tomorrow.

- IH

sketchmaster

This is a bit amusing to me. Not in bad way. When we are considering hiring a guy for an environment position, I usually give them an a quick art test. The art test is to make a realistic dumpster. Yours is one of the best i've seen. Very Pro. Are you currently employed?

notman

Looking good. Like Sketch mentioned, the dumpster looks damn good. The scene is looking nice, but I think you should work on the pavement more. I know you mentioned the concrete is coming later, but I'm refering to the asphalt. Maybe add some tire tracks/paths going towards the dumpster.

adam

Iron do you have any spec or normals on that dumpster? It looks like a mid-range poly dumpster without anything but a colour pass.

How many tri's is that dumpster anyway?

You cut back a serious amount of triangles on this piece quite a bit, and add in some spec & bump to really sell it. Right now its really flat looking, even for the amount of cuts in to the geometry you've made.

I'd go back and remove the bevels you've done on those corners. Even for a 'next-gen' dumpster it's a bit high.

pliang

Even though you can't compensate depth with just normal maps for say the dumpster geometry, I'd say at least take out the bevels on the lid and the foot, its not that much on camera to be seen thus not really needed.

indian_boy

does that dumpster have photo-reffed textures on him? please say yes?

IronHawk

sketchmaster – You made my day bro! I’m not working for a studio at the moment. Wish I could apply. Timegate looks like a great studio, however I am stuck in Minneapolis for at least 2 more years due to family commitments.

Notman – Thanks! Going to add some dirt and tire tracks for sure. Nasty old newspapers and some crumpled fast food wrappers ect..

Adam – Current count is 719 tris. There is spec and normal. I’ll post the flats after I do one more pass on all the maps. I put it to the side to do some experimenting and studying Piors maps on his colt before finishing the spec ( damn he nailed that )

Indian Boy – A variety of photos/images were used in the texture along with painting. I didn’t have a specific dumpster that was shot and then the images just cropped into place and put on the model. Some of the textures are from Mayang and others are from shots I took around Minneapolis.

Thanks for the crits guys. I’ll be updating this weekend. Got some arch viz work that just came in and I have to nail that first.

MoP

Yeah you should really take those bevels out of the top of the dumpster, they're not adding anything and would never be seen in a game anyway (providing your normals are doing the work they should be).

Looks pretty nice though. I kind wish there was more saturation/contrast in it thought just to make the whole thing pop a bit more. Same goes for your whole scene actually, just looks a bit washed out to me (or maybe it's just my monitors )

Keep it up though, it's nice work, just needs that extra pass of polishing to really make it stand out.

IronHawk

Mop - Thanks for the Crit bro. Went and redid the lid with a normal map. One of the reasons my renders were looking blurry was I had filtering on. Turned that off and everything is looking crisper.

Here is the layout.

Armanguy

I love your dumpster keep up the good work!

oobersli

looking good. gotta say though, Waste Management has gotta love game artist. Making their marketing plan easier with all the dumpsters artist always make modeled with their logo.