wow! I was really wondering how the normal maps would turn out in this particular zone (the strings/straps around the shoes) and I'm really impressed how well they finally are for a 1st test! looks very promising ! good job
very impressive, you have alot of triangles in just the right places, do you tend to make your lowpoly with mostly quads and then later slice it up to better represent the forms? how long did it take to do such a big low poly piece?
Thanks everyone for the replies! Here's where I am right now, still working on the weapon bake. I'm at exactly 9,000 triangles total
I'll try to add my details with texturing & the normal map filter.
kakikukeko;
Thanks! I did all my baking in 3dsmax9
Ged;
I'd say I make it with mostly quads, it gets much more triangulated as I start optimizing. I normally build my lowpoly a little higher than the limit then collapse edges to bring it down. A large lowpoly piece like the torso can take a few hours.
Dem & Massbot;
I'll try to put something together once the deadline has passed, I'm a bit short on time at the moment
fuck me !! that is golden. all his gear baked down wicked. can't wait to see the textures on this man. you're definitely working with a shot at the title
*cries&. thats beautiful work, I am really impressed by every aspect of your work, the design and execution are perfect! Have fun with the texturing, this kicks but.
Hey Foreverendering, this is just fantastic man. What do you have on this guy, just the normal or an ao map in your rendering? A quick question, did you render your maps out to 4096 and reduce?, as I keep having my maps crash when I try this, though i am in max8. Keep up the work, it's inspiring.
DAMN Jeremy! Seriously, dude, you always amaze me with each new model you create. I honestly thought I was looking at the hi-res mesh until I saw the wireframes. Fucking hell, dude! Solid work.
Please do when you have the time. It's really a fantastic model,i just love its just beautiful.
Im working on something and would like to get it baked like yours.
Just great work and i hope you win.
cheers
I wanted to show the finished textures by tonight, but it just didn't work out for me. Man, I just had a really hard time with the color scheme. I wanted to do black and green and I just couldn't get anything I liked for the life of me. Then I wasted days trying other color schemes, pretty much everything under the sun (maybe 30-50 different variations) and they all sucked.
The frustration level with the whole thing had me ready to just drop out. I finally decided to go back and try black/green one last time... And amazingly I think I stumbled on something that is decent.
Unfortunately I lost so much time figuring out my colors that I haven't even finished the diffuse map. Pretty much this shot is just wip diffuse + normal, and a pretty lame pose test (weapon textures are terrible and its even turned the wrong way) I have some bad seams that I will need to clean up by projection painting.
Still a lot to do and only a few nights left. Oh well
To answer a couple questions real quick,
Spark;
I just baked mine at 2048. I've worked with 4096's before at work, and in my experience they are a royal pain in the ass. Firstly they are almost impossible to bake unless you have a 64-bit machine. Then, any psd's you work on become unmanageable within a few layers. For me, it's just not worth it. My last post was normal + ambient occlusion. Oh yeah, your model is looking great. Great job man.
Neox;
My ambient occlusion bakes are really simple to set up. This is all you have to do
1. Put a plane under your model
2. Put a skylight in the scene
3. In Advanced Lighting, set it to Light Tracer with settings of Rays 400 and Bounces 1
4. In Render To Texture options, set Global SuperSampler to Hammersley
5. Set your cage and bake. Should be good to go
Man, don't be so hard on yourself. Although, I guess you have to be to get to the level of skill you are at. My only problem at all now is with the chest/body hair, it kinda doesn't read as hair. Don't know if you were planning on keeping it that way or refining it though, as you said it's not finished. This guy is so awesome, I can't believe you were thinking about giving up. Hope YOU are happy with him in the end and I think it's safe to say we all wanna see this dude finished.
But the texture doesn't do the model justice at all at the moment. All the nice detail is lost in the busy texture. It seems like you'd get the same result if you didn't use a normal map at all. Maybe because you added too much hand-painted shadowing to the texture?
The high contrast between the dark metal and the light gray edges of the armour also make the whole thing too busy.
In short, I'd go for less contrast in the painted texture, and use the normal and a specular map to create the overall contrast.
very nice texturing sir I'm a bit worried that the normal map will get flattened by the strong contrasts you have in the texture, but I'm pretty sure you're aware of that and that the spec/gloss will fix that.
I'd personally desaturate the diffuse and let the spec make up for the contrast you lost in the desaturation, but I'll wait for the spec to be done before giving any more advanced crit :d
Killer work man, will be tough to reach your level
Yeah, I'm not sold at all with the texturing atm. It's a shame because the baking was sooooo awesome . For me, there is a huge contrast between your model which is looking quite realistic and the texturing which is looking almost like an hand painted wow (cartoon) texture. (If it was the goal, then, my mistake and skip the rest )
- I'd maybe try to tone down the prelight on the texture (like dUb said).
- Find some other good photo ref texture and rework a bit the skintones/texture for the flesh part.
- I'd try to make the scratches and rust less generic and "painted". Just try to think about the areas you'd find them IRL, like metal piece junctions, edges, etc. Not just "dropped" here and there
It looks like you didn't touch your specular map yet, so I won't hammer you with this part
anyways, this model is one best I've seen in this comp so far, and it really just needs a few tweaks to move from "really cool" to "awesome-omfg-I-die".
Don't psych yourself out this close to the finish -- I think your concept / model / technique are as good as anything I've seen in any forum. In my opinion, you're a contender to win the whole thing... so don't flake out in the final hours!
Deep.
Breath.
Better?
Have confidence in your modeling -- your model and normal maps are so strong, you shouldn't feel the need to include too much additional detail in the diffuse map.
The only real suggestion I might offer is to reduce the use of green even further -- perhaps just the sword, belt, and visor. I think it might help to give the eye a more recognizable entry point, and distract less from the terrific details you so carefully built into the rest of the model. I also kind of agree that his chest hair is, you know, DARK. Shave him down, let his chest serve as contrast to the surrounding armor, and send him on his way. (Or not.)
Hey thanks guys for your comments, I think that your critiques are all dead-on and I'm going to follow all of them. I don't know why exactly, I just went overly painterly with this texture and it really isn't working.
Also I just haven't been happy working with the scanline render. My friend Redfish on CGTalk sent me the shader he has been using for Max and I'm going to try it with that and try to get away from this look I have paint myself into (ha ha)
I agree that some of the diffuse seems to have too much painted light/shade, especially the flesh around his torso - looks quite strange on the model since it's the normalmap plus the painted diffuse. I'd also lose the highlights on the sword hilt straps, again that's something the normal/spec should be doing, not the diffuse.
i wish you had fought for another forum so you could have used a different color scheme. still, it's looking pretty good. i agree with the comments about the diffuse looking too painted. your normals are amazing and i wish i could see them coming through more
Anyways I can't help but think of it when I see your piece. Your normals and model are so good a simply greyscale color scheme with a hint of the green glow (like in your concept art) would probably work perfect. You really need to finish this as it is truely one of the coolest most unique characters I have ever come across.
Don't get me wrong, what you have diffuse wise is awsome, and takes a crap load of talent to do, but; a slightly different approach will tie it all together much better in my opinion.
That's a pretty good base I would say.. lower the contrast (especially on the skin), the saturation, add a spec and gloss map and you should be good.. keep it up!
Replies
edit:did you use Xnormal?
(sound of door slamming)
and I agree with Dem :P that leg bake is amazing.
- BoBo
Love how you merged the guy on his back and the level of detail is amazing.
I'll try to add my details with texturing & the normal map filter.
kakikukeko;
Thanks! I did all my baking in 3dsmax9
Ged;
I'd say I make it with mostly quads, it gets much more triangulated as I start optimizing. I normally build my lowpoly a little higher than the limit then collapse edges to bring it down. A large lowpoly piece like the torso can take a few hours.
Dem & Massbot;
I'll try to put something together once the deadline has passed, I'm a bit short on time at the moment
Thanks everyone
very nice normal-bake!
love to see more
Spark
DAMN Jeremy! Seriously, dude, you always amaze me with each new model you create. I honestly thought I was looking at the hi-res mesh until I saw the wireframes. Fucking hell, dude! Solid work.
-caseyjones
Amazing Normal Map bake.
Im working on something and would like to get it baked like yours.
Just great work and i hope you win.
cheers
Oh nice I didn't know that one.
Seriously, just woooo and weeee and waaaaa fantastic.
Fuck me dead with a chainsaw.... (shit I really love it
The nice AO adds a lot to it
Thanks everyone so much for your encouragement,
I wanted to show the finished textures by tonight, but it just didn't work out for me. Man, I just had a really hard time with the color scheme. I wanted to do black and green and I just couldn't get anything I liked for the life of me. Then I wasted days trying other color schemes, pretty much everything under the sun (maybe 30-50 different variations) and they all sucked.
The frustration level with the whole thing had me ready to just drop out. I finally decided to go back and try black/green one last time... And amazingly I think I stumbled on something that is decent.
Unfortunately I lost so much time figuring out my colors that I haven't even finished the diffuse map. Pretty much this shot is just wip diffuse + normal, and a pretty lame pose test (weapon textures are terrible and its even turned the wrong way) I have some bad seams that I will need to clean up by projection painting.
Still a lot to do and only a few nights left. Oh well
To answer a couple questions real quick,
Spark;
I just baked mine at 2048. I've worked with 4096's before at work, and in my experience they are a royal pain in the ass. Firstly they are almost impossible to bake unless you have a 64-bit machine. Then, any psd's you work on become unmanageable within a few layers. For me, it's just not worth it. My last post was normal + ambient occlusion. Oh yeah, your model is looking great. Great job man.
Neox;
My ambient occlusion bakes are really simple to set up. This is all you have to do
1. Put a plane under your model
2. Put a skylight in the scene
3. In Advanced Lighting, set it to Light Tracer with settings of Rays 400 and Bounces 1
4. In Render To Texture options, set Global SuperSampler to Hammersley
5. Set your cage and bake. Should be good to go
Thanks again everyone
it always looks different on the nm-model than on sketches an so on...
but i have to say, i always do the spec-map too, some colors look boring with diffuse only but with a spec it comes to live ..
all in all i can say.. use less colors than you would if you draw..
i also use a lot black, metallic and leatherbrown atm.. i think this works the best with our colors and the nm-look
but keep on.. drop out so close to the end is a no-go!! esp. if your model is one of the best
But the texture doesn't do the model justice at all at the moment. All the nice detail is lost in the busy texture. It seems like you'd get the same result if you didn't use a normal map at all. Maybe because you added too much hand-painted shadowing to the texture?
The high contrast between the dark metal and the light gray edges of the armour also make the whole thing too busy.
In short, I'd go for less contrast in the painted texture, and use the normal and a specular map to create the overall contrast.
I'd personally desaturate the diffuse and let the spec make up for the contrast you lost in the desaturation, but I'll wait for the spec to be done before giving any more advanced crit :d
Killer work man, will be tough to reach your level
- I'd maybe try to tone down the prelight on the texture (like dUb said).
- Find some other good photo ref texture and rework a bit the skintones/texture for the flesh part.
- I'd try to make the scratches and rust less generic and "painted". Just try to think about the areas you'd find them IRL, like metal piece junctions, edges, etc. Not just "dropped" here and there
It looks like you didn't touch your specular map yet, so I won't hammer you with this part
anyways, this model is one best I've seen in this comp so far, and it really just needs a few tweaks to move from "really cool" to "awesome-omfg-I-die".
Keep up the good work !!
Don't psych yourself out this close to the finish -- I think your concept / model / technique are as good as anything I've seen in any forum. In my opinion, you're a contender to win the whole thing... so don't flake out in the final hours!
Deep.
Breath.
Better?
Have confidence in your modeling -- your model and normal maps are so strong, you shouldn't feel the need to include too much additional detail in the diffuse map.
The only real suggestion I might offer is to reduce the use of green even further -- perhaps just the sword, belt, and visor. I think it might help to give the eye a more recognizable entry point, and distract less from the terrific details you so carefully built into the rest of the model. I also kind of agree that his chest hair is, you know, DARK. Shave him down, let his chest serve as contrast to the surrounding armor, and send him on his way. (Or not.)
Love it, man. Best of luck the rest of the way!
Also I just haven't been happy working with the scanline render. My friend Redfish on CGTalk sent me the shader he has been using for Max and I'm going to try it with that and try to get away from this look I have paint myself into (ha ha)
Well, I'll just have to see how it goes.
Thanks again
I agree that some of the diffuse seems to have too much painted light/shade, especially the flesh around his torso - looks quite strange on the model since it's the normalmap plus the painted diffuse. I'd also lose the highlights on the sword hilt straps, again that's something the normal/spec should be doing, not the diffuse.
You have probably seen this Crysis image before right:
http://www.crysis-games.de/crysis.jpg
Anyways I can't help but think of it when I see your piece. Your normals and model are so good a simply greyscale color scheme with a hint of the green glow (like in your concept art) would probably work perfect. You really need to finish this as it is truely one of the coolest most unique characters I have ever come across.
Don't get me wrong, what you have diffuse wise is awsome, and takes a crap load of talent to do, but; a slightly different approach will tie it all together much better in my opinion.
Thanks for all the helpful comments. I took all of your critiques to heart, and stayed up late every night this week reworking and tweaking my entry.
Here is a post of the model right now, I hope that you find this to be an improvement over my last update. I will post my final images tomorrrow.