The Kriss

The Keen

So I'm going to be making a submachine gun called the Kriss. This will be my first time trying to go from high poly to low poly. So I thought I would post my early beginnings and ask you guys what I need to look out for as I model this in high poly. I honestly don't know what I'm doing at this point so any advice would be HUGE for me. Thanks guys.

Jesse Moody

try to keep everything in quads... what i do is i make a reference (clone) of my object and add a turbosmooth modifier with an iteration of 2 to it and while I work on my object I can see how it looks in real time with the smooth applied. This will help make edges not so hard and you can control the sharpness of edges with loops rather than chamfering which is much harder to adjust on the whole later on down the line and it makes for a much cleaner mesh flow.

Plus when going to low poly from the high it is much easier / faster workflow.

Let me know if you have any other questions or hit me up on aim/msn/yahoo.

gauss

just wanted to say that this is the first time i recall seeing this gun (i reproached my gun nut friends on the subject), and it's really cool. interesting tech plus the styling makes me think of the SCAR. cool stuff.

EarthQuake

Dont model everything all in one chunk, theres is ABSOLUTELY no reason to do this. Look at the gun itself, it is made from multiple parts, why give yourself the headache of trying to model it in all one mesh? Also rails aren't simply extruded bits that stick up, they have a shape like <______> this.

Master_v12

I second what EQ said about multiple parts. You might also want to consider where your UV seams are going to be and base the separate parts from that. so when you extract your normal map, you can do it piece by piece and fix it piece by piece if need be. Keep at it! gun looks crazy cool, ive never seen that either.

Keg

I remember seeing it on future weapons. barrel is floating or something like that and there is little recoil to it.

The Keen

Awesome, all this is very helpful! Thank you. I think I'll probably start from scratch and build all the pieces seperately. Another question though, does the highpoly need to be a clean model? Cause I was thinking about boolean a lot of the details. I know you said I need to make it mostly quads jesse, but I thought I would ask anyway, cause I've heard (rumors) you can make it messy.

konstruct

forget boolean operations- just make a seperate piece of geometry (that looks like an indent or hole) and float it on top of the surface. the rays that pick up the HP detail, will look the same as if you cut the geometry in- (or booleaned the geometry in)

The Keen

Thanks konstruct, but I want to make sure we're on the same page here. Is this kind of what you mean?



Also on another note, if anyone wants to know more about this gun, heres a youtube all about it. It is a pretty cool gun.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=f2kEg8rEPl8

osman

thats 90degrees?I dont think the normal map will pick that up, here's an example(read through that, its somewhere in the middle about floating geometry).
http://www.iddevnet.com/quake4/ArtRefere...7ea3f511a7a1fab

Jesse Moody

yeah no no no 90 deg angles buddy. let me toss something together for you tonight to show ya what i mean. It might help out a bit.

also yeah do it in different pieces as this will help with lagging on your machine and be easier to unwrap later.

Ape.of.Gods

Interesting idea, I was checking this out in maya but seem to get a different result. The floating peice is pretty messed normal wise and isn't comforming with the everything else(kind of that yellowy colour and the piece in the blue channel is completely black)

Jesse Moody

hey I did a quick little work up on this with the method i mentioned. Some angles may be off as it was only done in a few minutes.

No booleans done on this. Just poly modeling and edge / loop work.

The Keen

Wow, that helps so much Jesse. I can't tell you how much funner it is to model when I know what I'm doing and not guessing all the time. Thank you! this new technique of making high poly is easy to grasp. Plus not having to build one solid mesh makes it much easier too.

Progress so far:



Goin to try and work on it more tonight. Critiques are always welcomed.

Jesse Moody

Well man no problem. I am glad I could help you with that and show you a new way to approach things.

The Keen

Taking longer than I'd like to admit. But I'm starting to get the hang of high poly modeling. Here's my WIP:



So we were talking about NO 90 deg angles earlier and I wanted to ask about the picture below. It becomes 90 deg after it's been chamfered. Is this still no good? Do I need to inset the angle slightly?

Cubik

There are plenty of tutorials how normalmap generation on polycount and elsewhere, so I won't go into any great detail

[ QUOTE ]
Do I need to inset the angle slightly?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, the indent will render as a flat plane (the bump in the middle will work though, sloping sides). Depending on your texture resolution you might be able to see the very slight bevel rendered corretly in the normalmap. Slopes creates gradients in the normalmap that are essensial to get the correct illusion of indents and bumps when used on the lowpoly. A very close to 90 or exactly 90 angle will try to generate said gradient but the size will be less than a pixel, making it impossible to see any difference in height. Make sure that you do some quick test bakes at your target texture resolution and increase the width of your bevel if they don't show up on your texture.

EDIT: Bens Cloward writeup on normalmaps:
http://www.bencloward.com/tutorials_normal_maps1.shtml
Refreshing gun design, good luck. Post updates!

vahl

this mesh would have been so much easier to work with/read if you used floating geometry instead of modeling everything in.

especially for assets like this, modeling everything in is a waste of time (since a lot of stuff is reused, like rivets, indents, etc) and ressources, plus you can throw in way more details instantly and make fixes more easily with floating geo.

this may not be the best example, design whatever, but here's a gun modelled with floating geo:

http://wip.global-illusions.com/WarGeneral/Gen_sniperHi.jpg

and yah, avoid plain 90° angles scale the inside part a little so that it reads better as an inset form on the normalmap

Ape.of.Gods

I was about to post the problems I was having with that when I did a test of it, vahl, but then it works, so yeah, thats the way to totally go.

Jesse Moody

While he can use floating geo for a lot of this gun it doesn't hurt to learn how to control mesh flow and make it as solid sections. While the rivets and such are a no-brainer to use floating geo other parts might not be.

This gun had round shapes that transitioned into sharp edges and all kinds of shit and it was a major challenge but honestly it is probably one of my better pieces now.

Nice update on the progress sir and yeah no 90 deg angles...Very bad.

JKMakowka

[ QUOTE ]
I recently did a gun for a company and they said no floating geometry. NONE...

[/ QUOTE ]

And the reason why? Sorry just curious

EarthQuake

Wow wtf, what sort of retarded company would tell you something like that?

Ghostscape

[ QUOTE ]
Wow wtf, what sort of retarded company would tell you something like that?

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe they were going to use the highpoly for cutscenes or something?

But if he wasn't providing the high poly I don't see why they would ever care.

Jesse Moody

I had to ask to float the rivets, screws and that was tough to get approved.

KeyserSoze

Maybe they were using some sort of displacement or parallax mapping. I think I remember seeing a mod for Doom 3 that converted the normal maps to parallax maps, and on the assets were floating geometry was used, it was really obvious with the parallax maps.

The Keen

Alright, still trying to grasp the floating geometry concept, so to do so, here's a picture of what I think it it your telling me! The groove is slightly inset (any idea how much I should inset? make it 89 deg? or a lot more?)



And Vahl I don't get the example you provided. First it looks like it's made with NURBS and second the grooves don't look like they are floating. The buttons and screws do, but the grooves don't. maybe I'm missing something.....

Ape.of.Gods

Yeah Keen, I checked out that reference I think its more the angle of the images to make it look like they aren't floating. But yeah your example should work and I believe the inset is essentially what kind of effect your going for, so you just do some quick rendered tests to see what it does.

Jesse Moody

yeah best thing to do is do some test renders man. just take a plane since it's a quick unwrap and make some pieces that float on it and see how they react.

example. I have been working on cleaning up my bits and pieces files and document them all for easier use.

I took some indents i made and gave each one different angles going in and put them next to each other spreading them out just enough and then wrote them down in a notebook. Rendered them out and added the text and info in photoshop.

It's a long anal process but easy to grab a binder and just see what I have for pieces to toss into models.

Again spend lots of time doing prep work and it will save your hours in the end.

The Keen

Cool, I'll do some test renders, that'll be better than trying to tackle the whole gun at once, good advice!

So I got this side of the gun done. Just have to inset all the grooves slightly, and model the variations on the other side of the gun. So if you see any major errors or small mistakes, let me know!



The other side.

gauss

looking pretty close! the trigger holes should be circular, not square as you seem to have them now, but that's not really major... other than that, you're going to want to refine the forward grip shape more. the grip should look squeezed in toward the top before it widens out at the very top. while yours does taper, it doesnt really have the same shape.
most of the major elements seem to be pretty spot-on at first blush, but what separates the good from the great is a real attention to detail. keep it up!

Jesse Moody

Well there you go man. looking pretty pimp.

Hows that method working out for you? It seem a lot easier to control the mesh and such?

Cubik

Neat, but you really need to get more refs and be more exact in your modeling. Be careful when floating models, you can miss things in the basic shape which you have done in several places.

Good refs:
http://www.defensereview.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=974

Ok, lets get started:



1. The most glaring error, check the reflink I provided, this whole part needs to be lower and more rounded. The rail doesn't connect to the rest of the gun like that.

2. Too thin and too wide. That won't fit your hand at all. Check refs and give the grip a more rounded shape.

3+4. Needs sharper angles in profile from the side, yours look too soft.

5. Missing the grip and whatever that tiny shiny metal part is. A possible magazine realease?

6. Watch your floating meshes. You need to go back and model the gap into the model by preferably detach the bottom part and give both it and the main part rounder top resp bottom edges.

7. Same thing here, you haven't gotten the silouette right, this area of the gun should look more like it is made up of three different parts. From what I can see you should taper the middle part toward the barrel a tiny bit. This will give the angle you can see it refs.

There are plenty of other tiny differences between your version and the realworld one, but if you fix all these and are a bit more precise in your futher modeling this will be one sweet portfolio piece.

EDIT: If you have problems with getting angles and such right a good tip is to create a camera simulating the fov and standard orientation of whatever pontential game you imagnine your gun will go into. Just either make sure to switch back and forth so that you get a gun that look decent in thirdperson or do two version and mark them as such in you portfolio.

breakneck

hey - are you done yet??? wednesday is getting closer and closer. . .

The Keen

Awesome critiques guys, thank you! Got most of the errors fixed. Cubik, #5, I'm just going to paint in the normal map. Started on the other side but not enough to show progress.

Breakneck, ha, Faaaarrr from it! But you'll be seeing a lot of progress in the next couple of days. I work better UNDER PRESSURE!

Jesse Moody

Ahh nice man. It's really moving along. Good to see but painting that part in now when you have already modeled this much. Oh man come on just model it in there.

Some more feedback

-What does the other side look like? Have you modeled the ejection port yet?
-Get us some higher res images to really see the detail on this. Be easier to crit some finer details as well
-Your grip isn't accurate compared to the reference.
-You are missing a screw hole near the front part of the gun.
-Missing a few holes here and there towards the front. Look like screw holes in the ref images.
-The rails on top don't look to be of the right size compared to images.
-Missing switch stop for firing mode selector
-Missing screw on selection switches.

Ok thats a lot of stuff and it seems picky but it will make a bad ass piece even better.

Let me know if you need a paint over for the exact areas I meant.

EarthQuake

Still has some basic problems. Load up the image in the background in your modeling app and see if everything lines up. Also i think its overall too thin. Find some good refs from different andgles and you'll see.

The Keen

Here you go EQ. Yeah it probably is too thin. I'll fix that. Jesse here's some good images Cubik showed me: http://www.defensereview.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=974
I'll try to fix your other critiques tomorrow. And since I'm sure someone will suggest it, I'll push out the front area.



EDIT: Whoops! accidentally posted the wrong side. the right image is up now.

The Keen

Alright got the other side of the gun modeled. Did some of the fixes but not all of them. Once again I'm going to just paint in the small screws. It just takes too much time to get get the geometry correct when it's going to be such a small normal map. I'll tell you one thing, floating geometry is definitely something I'm going to put into practice on the next project I do.

I'm glad you caught the rails error Jesse, looks more accurate now. Just about finished with the highpoly so hopefully I can move on to the low poly today or tomorrow.

Jesse Moody

ummm...the images look like you have the ejection port on the left now and everything is switched...

might want to look into that

beauty about the low poly is you can take this high poly and get rid of a lot of those extra edge loops and stuff and keep the same form and just optimize it from there. Goes much quicker that way.

The Keen

Whoops, your right it is reversed, I'll fix that. But yeah I'm loving this high poly technique it's awesome. Gonna do all my future projects like this.

EarthQuake

It looks like you're missing a lot of the variation of edge softness from the model, right now everything is boxy and all the edges are the same hardness. If you look at your ref more you'll see thats not the case, and some of them have a lot more curve.

indian_boy

dude that's just sweet! how many polies are u churning lol?
its looking fantastic!

as for matching the ref, well yeah it looks exactly the same until u start staring at everything closely. lIke, now, whenever i look at it, the first thing i realize is that the part behind the front grip is lacking that detail.

but yeah. awesome stuff! and just wondering, how is it gonna be easier to make this into lowpoly? isn't removing all those edges etc. gonna be a pain? i just wanna ask cuz to me it seems low -> works out better [yes i know its a matter of preference, but i'm just wondering ]

looking forward to updates!
cheers!

Cubik

Eq is right. I see that I probably should have given you more crits on the basic shape than on the details. What you need to understand is your basic refs.
Look at the light and shadows. Why is there such wide highlight there or such a subtle shadow here? A wide highlight or a wide shadow should translate into a wide, soft bevel on your model.



There are plenty of other places where you have incorrect angels, find and tweak. This image is more to show you the way.

Details:
Missing hinge for the stock.
No rail? at the barrel on the ejectorport side.
Rails needs to be higher but they seem to have the correct number of "ridges" now.

EarthQuake

http://adrianzamora.carbonmade.com/projects/75305#3

If you check this out you can probablly see a bunch of things you dont have quite right.


Found this in a thread of a guy looking for work here: http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=230071&Main=230071#Post230071

The Keen

Dang! His looks good. Alright, I'll kick it up a notch and try to fix all my errors....Man, he got every little detail in there that I keep struggling to model.

Well in the meantime I am desperately trying to figure out how this XNormal program works that Jogshy made. Went through all the tutorials and still can't figure out how to generate a normal map. So I wanted to show you guys my process and hope maybe you can show me what I'm doing wrong.

As a test I made a high poly and low poly object:


I exported both objects separately as ASE files naming one highpoly.ase and the other lowpoly.ase

Then in the xNormal program, I put the lowpoly.ase in the low definition meshes tab and the highpoly.ase in the high definition meshes tab.


After that I went to the 3D viewer and made a cage.


Once the cage was where I wanted it I clicked save meshes and saved the file as an .sbm. Then replaced the lowpoly.ase in the the low definition meshes tab a put the .sbm file in there. Then I clicked the checkbox that says "Use Cage"


Then I went to the normal map tab and created an output and selected bake highpoly base texture in lowpoly.


Then I click Generate Maps and wait and wait and wait but nothing happens, not even a progress bar. it just says "waiting completion". Can anyone help me? I would love to figure this out.

jogshy

It's a bug in the 3.11.0, sorry... it selects the hxGrid map renderer by default(which is a distributed renderer that requires the agent.exe running on the cluster of computers + one running the coordinator.exe). It's solved in the 3.11.1 beta 1 and in the final 3.11.1 that i'm going to release in 2/3 days.

To fix it change the current renderer to use ( in the normalmap tab, by the "Renderer" groupbox ) from "hxGrid distributed renderer (experimental)" to "default scanline renderer". The default scanline renderer just uses the computer which is running xNormal.

Btw... why you wan't to bake the highpoly base texture? To render a normal map don't need to enable that option, only in case you want to project and bake the highpoly base texture into the lowpoly mesh.

Also a small advice... I saw you exported them as .ASE so I assume you use 3dsmax... You can use better the .SBM xNormal exporter to save the cage directly without having to enter the 3d viewer and edit there your cage. Just sure you use the 3dsmax "projection modifier" over an "Edit mesh"(doesn't work with "edit poly" quad/n-vert faces, must be applied over a triangular mesh in order to work) and check the "Export cage information" option in the options dialog.... It saves time.

Hope it helps and btw, very nice weapon, can't wait to see it finished!

The Keen

Yes! Jogshy you da man! So glad it's working, that's quite a relief. Ok, whew, let's finish this project.

Jesse Moody

Any updates? Whats going on with this sweet gun?

The Keen

Yes sir, here's an update. Believe it or not I scrapped my old model and started from scratch, so this is a brand new model. There were just too many problems with my old model I thought it would be easier to start over than to try and fix it. This time around I made the lowpoly version look decent as well as the highpoly. Last model I was only focusing on making the highpoly look good.

Still have to model the otherside, but I thought I'd show you my progress. C&C's are always welcome here.

EarthQuake

yep this seems quite a bit better, one thing tho: i wouldnt have that hole modeled into the highres near the barrel, or in the trigger for that matter either. What i would do in these situations is modeling a floating bit thats indented, and then when you make out your maps, just make those areas black in the specular and diffuse. You're going to have problems rendering if you dont model the holes in the lowres, so always remeber that. Never add holes unless you have a hole in your lowres, and in this case i think it would be a waste to add the geo you'de need for holes in either case. Same goes for the hole in the stock.

Also dont forget to model in the hinge on the folding stock as well.

Jesse Moody

wow yeah this is much nicer. Still the shape of the front grip is off. I would look at the photos closer and the other guy that did the gun and see what he did.