yeah thanks ironbear, I tried everything it was just the cage being too close to the meshes, it wasnt even touching them but it was still too close. Heres max viewport with normal and AO and all items added to the character.
Im going to make the base for him now because I dont have much time and Id like to do all the texturing in one go.
- Try always to enable the "Ignore backface hits" and the "Use closest hit if ray fails".
- If you see strange things with normals enable the "smoothing normals" option... that will compute them automatically for you. However, enabling this will average them so the smoothing groups will be lost... but usually to make good normal maps and to keep the cage closed and coherent you should enable it.
- The scale up/down trick and to extrude the cage a bit more than should be is due to floating point precision errors. I know is hard to understand but the number 0.5 does not exist really in computers.... it's 0.499. That 0.001 thing can be a great difference sometimes... specially if your mesh is too small. Also got strange cases like -0.0, 1.0f/0.0f, etc... so I need to add some error margins.
Two advices if you find too many rays failing .... 1)Try to scale up or down a bit your mesh and 2) Try to extrude down/up a bit your cage.
Heres some colour, I will work on the base next then 2 poses as required. Phew Ive literally worked on this all day 10am - 9pm with only a break to eat lunch.
thanks for the tips Jogshy, I will be sure to make my mesh really large before I even import it into xnormal next time because making the meshes bigger and smaller in xnormal didnt seem to effect the fact that the cage was too close.
Heres Mint in Xnormal, gotta love that emissive glow hehe
Hey, good for you that it all worked out. Seems like it was a big learning experience and it's really coming together into a strong piece. The textures work pretty well with the normalmap already and i like the emissive too
thanks jerry, yup dom war is a good education. Heres where Im stopping for today Ive worked literally all day. Still some bits and pieces to do, I plan on doing a material pass and using some phototexture overlay or ps brushes for minor details like fabric and grime etc. Then I gotta make the poses, Im thinking of just trying to move verts for the poses cause I dont have time to rig it.
Are you still gonna work on the spec? Cus it all still looks a bit glossy, even the cloth.
And to get a nice lightning try placing a colored rim light somewhere too
He's stylish dude! Wanna see him in!
Don't forget - you still need a litle time for the sheets!
Im learning how to transpose in zbrush 3.1 anyone know if I can save polygon selections in zbrush so I can traspose each part of his anatomy seperately(1 selection for forearm, 1 for thigh, 1 for lower leg, 1 for hand etc etc?) and not be drawing masks all the time?
thanks c023 Ive got a bit of leather texture on the chest armour but its not easy to see in such a small pic, I might put a tribal polycount head tattoo on the leather dunno.
Are you switching to move/rotate/or scale and then drawing your mask?
yup, I mask off all the areas I dont want to move or rotate or scale and then I go to work, then I do the next part, it will take ages if I have to do it this way...maybe moving verts is faster.
this is probably the best I can get out of zbrush, stretching all over the place arrgh...poses suck.
I still need to make the second pose and then clean up the messed up verts causing all the stretching on both poses. Not gonna mess with the hands, dont have time for that.
Then I wanted to import this into UE3, honestly Ive only used that a few times and Im not even sure what format to export to for it to work in UE3
You can export .ase to get him into UE3, though I thought the Xn Viewer grabs looked nice.
The first pose isn't bad! Glad to see you're so close to finish.
he seems to tilt forward a bit too much, check the balance to the feet, you need to lock one foot holding the weight and the other representing the motion...
he seems to tilt forward a bit too much, check the balance to the feet, you need to lock one foot holding the weight and the other representing the motion...
thanks but its actually the fact that the toes arent turned up so he looks off balance but he is supposed to be about to pounce hehe
is there a way to make the "in editor game" view in UE3 bigger? I cant get good screenshots of my model when the window it comes up in is only about 800x600
yeah thanks everyone for your support and criticism!
Ive learnt alot during this Dominance War and I think Ive managed to achieve some of my goals considering this is only the 3rd normal mapped character Ive ever tried to make.
Things I need to learn more about in the aftermath:
1. texturing and uvmapping - how the hec do you guys cram all that lovely gritty detail into the texture?
I only had a specular colour map, do gloss maps and specular power maps really add alot to the character?
2.where to use the polygons to best effect? I only used 5621 tri's of the 9000 and its really noticable when I compare my character to others.
3.Posing is a b!"$% and Ive gotta get better at quickly rigging a character with biped or something.
4.When importing to UE3 how can I get my textures to be sharp and clear and the normal map really strong? there must be settings Im missing out on or something or maybe this relates to the specular power map question.
heres a pic I nearly used for winning pose but used ue3 instead cause his weapon glowed properly and the lighting looked better, but honestly the textures look better here.
Thanks! I actually followed that exact tutorial in order to get him in there, and when I moved the light around the normal maps were definitely there, I think I just had too much AO in the diffuse and no specular power map so it all became rather flat well you live and learn.
It looks like the glow map is affecting the skin in the ue3 screen? Seems like alot of folks were using max scanline renderer for their win pose.
I had some time tonight to check out the UE3 stuff and it seem like its baking away the normal map when it bakes the lighting cause hes a static mesh. theres all sorts of stuff just not displaying right. I really dont understand enough about using ue3 it was a bad move to learn it the night of handing it in haha.
So I decided to see what it would look like in xnormal
Yeah that render looks better, but don't worry the UE3 shot you submitted was good too, just loses a bit of detail.
Nice model anyways, he's got a little Protoss vibe to him which is cool.
Yeah that render looks better, but don't worry the UE3 shot you submitted was good too, just loses a bit of detail.
Nice model anyways, he's got a little Protoss vibe to him which is cool.
Submit an Xnormal render for that poster thingy!
Thanks! it was when I saw your entry that I realised that xnormal can do a really good job of showing off a well made character.
Replies
Did you also test adjusting ray distance on the lowpoly in Xn instead of using a cage?
Im going to make the base for him now because I dont have much time and Id like to do all the texturing in one go.
(in general, fingers and face don´t need to be pushed as much as the rest)
oh wow I didnt even know that existed, Ive been tweaking verts manually to try and get him back in shape and less puffy haha, thats better.
Ive been cleaning up the normal and AO maps now I better get to work on the base for him to stand on.
mint on his base in max.
About the options:
- Try always to enable the "Ignore backface hits" and the "Use closest hit if ray fails".
- If you see strange things with normals enable the "smoothing normals" option... that will compute them automatically for you. However, enabling this will average them so the smoothing groups will be lost... but usually to make good normal maps and to keep the cage closed and coherent you should enable it.
- The scale up/down trick and to extrude the cage a bit more than should be is due to floating point precision errors. I know is hard to understand but the number 0.5 does not exist really in computers.... it's 0.499. That 0.001 thing can be a great difference sometimes... specially if your mesh is too small. Also got strange cases like -0.0, 1.0f/0.0f, etc... so I need to add some error margins.
Two advices if you find too many rays failing .... 1)Try to scale up or down a bit your mesh and 2) Try to extrude down/up a bit your cage.
I hope it helps.
TEXTURES!!! (i like that
Can't wait to see some color and his pose
Heres some colour, I will work on the base next then 2 poses as required. Phew Ive literally worked on this all day 10am - 9pm with only a break to eat lunch.
thanks for the tips Jogshy, I will be sure to make my mesh really large before I even import it into xnormal next time because making the meshes bigger and smaller in xnormal didnt seem to effect the fact that the cage was too close.
Heres Mint in Xnormal, gotta love that emissive glow hehe
Good job dude.
And to get a nice lightning try placing a colored rim light somewhere too
He's stylish dude! Wanna see him in!
Don't forget - you still need a litle time for the sheets!
Nice work on the color and pedestal so far!
Try a bit of dirt on the vest!
Like the blades, look like action
thanks c023 Ive got a bit of leather texture on the chest armour but its not easy to see in such a small pic, I might put a tribal polycount head tattoo on the leather dunno.
yup, I mask off all the areas I dont want to move or rotate or scale and then I go to work, then I do the next part, it will take ages if I have to do it this way...maybe moving verts is faster.
I still need to make the second pose and then clean up the messed up verts causing all the stretching on both poses. Not gonna mess with the hands, dont have time for that.
Then I wanted to import this into UE3, honestly Ive only used that a few times and Im not even sure what format to export to for it to work in UE3
The first pose isn't bad! Glad to see you're so close to finish.
thanks but its actually the fact that the toes arent turned up so he looks off balance but he is supposed to be about to pounce hehe
Ive learnt alot during this Dominance War and I think Ive managed to achieve some of my goals considering this is only the 3rd normal mapped character Ive ever tried to make.
Things I need to learn more about in the aftermath:
1. texturing and uvmapping - how the hec do you guys cram all that lovely gritty detail into the texture?
I only had a specular colour map, do gloss maps and specular power maps really add alot to the character?
2.where to use the polygons to best effect? I only used 5621 tri's of the 9000 and its really noticable when I compare my character to others.
3.Posing is a b!"$% and Ive gotta get better at quickly rigging a character with biped or something.
4.When importing to UE3 how can I get my textures to be sharp and clear and the normal map really strong? there must be settings Im missing out on or something or maybe this relates to the specular power map question.
heres a pic I nearly used for winning pose but used ue3 instead cause his weapon glowed properly and the lighting looked better, but honestly the textures look better here.
Model looks great.
For your Beauty shot, did you render it out in UT3? I thought you might of since you were asking about it.
In that case it doesn't look like your normal map is working.
This might be because of the compression settings When you load your texture into UT3.
Take a look down the bottom of this tut, to learn how to change it.
http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials_3/Unreal%203%20Basics/unreal_3_basics01.asp
Hope that helps a little
Again awesome work dude.
Thanks! I actually followed that exact tutorial in order to get him in there, and when I moved the light around the normal maps were definitely there, I think I just had too much AO in the diffuse and no specular power map so it all became rather flat
I had some time tonight to check out the UE3 stuff and it seem like its baking away the normal map when it bakes the lighting cause hes a static mesh. theres all sorts of stuff just not displaying right. I really dont understand enough about using ue3 it was a bad move to learn it the night of handing it in haha.
So I decided to see what it would look like in xnormal
dammit I shoulda used xnormal!!!
Nice model anyways, he's got a little Protoss vibe to him which is cool.
Submit an Xnormal render for that poster thingy!
Thanks! it was when I saw your entry that I realised that xnormal can do a really good job of showing off a well made character.
Gratz.