Robot: WIP Need Texture help

Valkier

I was working on a character earlier but got fed up with it and decided I needed a break. I thought maybe going a new route and doing a robot of sorts might be fun, so a few nights ago I sat down and sketched out a rough concept of a beast. Here's what I have so far.





Critiques are welcome. I'll try to upload a page or two of the concepts later after I get the scanner to cooperate with me.

Some details I'd like to point out is that the gun is in two pieces which rotate around the arm connector. The top part is the cannon, the bottom hooks underneath it to make the exhaust port and brace. I still need to do the fingers for the hand before I mirror it over to the other side. Otherwise, baring any little details I decide it needs, it is completed. Legs, obviously, still need to be made entirely.

Also, this is the low poly. High poly will be built from this one once it's complete.

AsylumSeaker

Hrmm, not much there so far but it looks interesting! I think you could probably cut some polys out of the ball shapes on the joints of the lower arm.

Valkier

Slight update. Finished the hands and started the head. I need to put the inner eye on the inside of the helmet.



One question. I have a lot of floating objects forming up. Some of them it's a simple matter of linking them. Others will have to be skinned (like parts of the arms) when it comes time to make it animate. Is this a problem or as long as I keep the poly count down and know what I'm doing am I all right?

artstream

I agree--it does look interesting. I think it looked more interesting w/o the head...but i'm sure if you keep it up, the head will look awesome too.

What do you mean about the seperate pieces? Maybe if you show what's seperate and whats not, it will help clear up the question

Valkier

Near finished low poly now. I'm pretty much just tweaking shapes and geometry now to make sure it's nice and clean for the high poly. I did fix my floating objects issue. Basically the bars connecting his arms (the ones that the guns were rotating on) were floating, his elbow guards were floating, and then there's the gun pieces. I managed to find tactful ways to attach them all to the main mesh however, so now it's just the guns, and that's not a huge deal to my knowledge. I also reworked the head. It may still change in my cleanup phase but I sorta like it now.

Basically it's ready to be normal mapped and rigged now unless anyone can find some glaring problems with the mesh and/or design.







As a side note, he lifts his shoulders up a bit to bring his guns out since his legs are in the way. Just so you functional guru's know I am aware of the design. Also, this is not his "relaxed" standing position, so no he won't be off balance looking after he's rigged.

Johan Carlsson

Looks like it can turn out quite cool But if you're heading for any kind of a triangle limit, then maybe you should try and cut down on the edges that are covering areas where they will barely do any good. Some of the orbs and his head seem to have quite a few too many. But that's just my opinion

Valkier

I'm trying to keep the poly count as low as possible. I was trying to keep it basic enough that you could tell what was meant to be curving and the like, as well as be able to connect everything. I have succeeded in cutting down the polys I use, but right now I believe it's about 3,280 polys at the moment. This is with symmetry on however and once I make it a solid object I should be able to clean up some of the unnecessary stuff in the middle, such as the head and around the mid section.

I figure as long as it's below 8,000 tris I'd be somewhat happy with it. This is just my own personal project to make something new for my portfolio.



Edit: Put in the high poly. Unwrapping the low poly now.

vertexguy

I like the concept! The modeling looks pretty clean, although from the wire there appear to be a few unnecessary divisions in the head area. For the texturing I hope you inject some color into this guy and give him a strong personallity. Look forward to seeing the updates.

Valkier

Here's an update. Took awhile cause A: Needed some time to figure out what I disliked and wanted to change. and B: Work seems to get in the way of play.

Basically I was unhappy with the model. The arms didn't look like they could raise up from the sides due to how limiting the shoulders were. The leg joints were so small he probably couldn't have bent more than a few inches at the knees. While the overall look was nice, I think functionality wise it didn't look nearly as impressive as it could have, IE how I pictured it moving, it's balance, etc.

This may still not be the finished version as there are still some little tweaks and flashing up I'd like to do to give it a more militaristic look, but I'd appreciate any critiques.





Oddly enough, the changes actually reduced the amount of polys in the model. It's a win win!

Valkier

Finally finished unwrapping him and began doing color. I'm trying to keep him fairly metallic looking, but so far I'm not getting quite the evil doom machine feel I'd like. The diffuse is still in its early stages however, and I think once I get the normal map done with various bolts and lines cut into him it should help a bit. Still, any idea how to give him some oomf with the coloring are welcomed.

pangarang

Looking awesome there. At first, i was wondering what it was. But as the piece continued to progress, it's become much clearer.

Those pie faces at the elbows, kill em. They eat up tris. The edgeloops at the top of the head, use em or lose em. Personally, i'd use them. Looks like you could get some nice shaping to the head with them. Overall not much to complain about. Very nice.

Valkier

I can't seem to get the metal to look metallic enough. I'm not certain what to do about that at the moment. Other than that I think it's making some progress.



I'm making this entirely in 3Ds Max 2008. Now, I am not familiar with advanced shaders. This particular scene is using MR Daylight and MR rendering, but nothing incredibly fancy about either of them. I'm going to be making a short with this guy, so he's already bone rigged and the like.

What I'm looking for is advice on improving the diffuse texture to make it look more realistically like metal. I am not too sure on how to go about doing this, and looking doesn't seem to be helping as google is yielding terrible images.

buddikaman

throw it in a game engine, source or something add some shaders. Diffuse looks a bit bland, i say go more realistic.

-Buddikaman-

El Z0rR

Perhaps you could try going for some scratched painted metal. That way you can have the coloured paint with the shiny metal showing through where the paint has been scratched off. Grunge it up a bit in general with dirt / rust / scratches etc.

Valkier

After several hours of tinkering and finding a new shader, I think it's finally on track. The weapons need a proper normal finished for them and a diffuse yet, but I feel the body is nearing a comfortable point for its textures. I plan to add some rust spots where the paint looks worn.

Any critique is welcomed and appreciated. I've learned a lot from this project.



Hopefully the next post of this will be the final version ^_^

frubes

check out this hard surface texturing tutorial from Stefan Morell, its awesome for stuff like this and maybe it will help you with that metal look. Hopefully this link from 3d total works

http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials/stefan_morrell/stefan_01.asp

Valkier

Thank you frubes! After much trial and error I did come up with a texture I am much happier with. Still gonna rework it here and there, but overall I think it pulled the piece together nicely.

garriola83

looks like a good start, but you need to show that this mecha has paneling on the texture. how that this is built in separate parts just to have this to be deliverable

Wells

I don't have a problem believing this futuristic mecha has molded metal parts of a single piece.

I think the more important thing to look at is making all that wear and damage make sense. Right now it is just everywhere with no rhyme or reason. Make the scrapes and missing paint appear on the places where that would actually happen. think about where it would be getting hit enough to remove that much future-paint [quite durable].

pangarang

Your texture has definitely improved from the first version. Details in the textures are important, but so are where you place those details. Right, it looks like the metal paint has worn off on his upper thigh. Objects usually wear off at their edges - ie: pant cuffs, cup lips. How often does a saucer get chipped in the center as opposed to the middle of the face? I think you get my point .

I'd finish texturing the pristine version of hte robot first, then go back and strategically place the wear and tear, instead of having it all over the darn place. It just doesnt' make sense that the thigh would be equally worn out as the bottom of the feet. And what is that black strip on his right forearm? The arm holding the gun.

Also, I could be wrong, but it looks like you selected the entire model and hit "soften edges" which would explain teh bruising on the model. I'm not sure you should be doing that, because a mech has properties of props (hard edges) and organics (smooth edges). You have to harden up some of those edges to show the mechanical quality of the character. Soften only the edges that are meant to give a gentle curve.

keepAttr

... (get it?! getAttr, setAttr from mel script?! keepAttr?!?! HAHAHA ... ok ... )

Valkier

pangarang wrote: »

Your texture has definitely improved from the first version. Details in the textures are important, but so are where you place those details. Right, it looks like the metal paint has worn off on his upper thigh. Objects usually wear off at their edges - ie: pant cuffs, cup lips. How often does a saucer get chipped in the center as opposed to the middle of the face? I think you get my point .

I'd finish texturing the pristine version of hte robot first, then go back and strategically place the wear and tear, instead of having it all over the darn place. It just doesnt' make sense that the thigh would be equally worn out as the bottom of the feet. And what is that black strip on his right forearm? The arm holding the gun.

Also, I could be wrong, but it looks like you selected the entire model and hit "soften edges" which would explain teh bruising on the model. I'm not sure you should be doing that, because a mech has properties of props (hard edges) and organics (smooth edges). You have to harden up some of those edges to show the mechanical quality of the character. Soften only the edges that are meant to give a gentle curve.

keepAttr

... (get it?! getAttr, setAttr from mel script?! keepAttr?!?! HAHAHA ... ok ... )

I actually didn't hit soft edges at any point. What I think is going on is when I use turbo smooth on the mesh, it's rounding the edges more than I'd like and when the normal is applied to the low poly it's taking the sharpness of the edges away.

Unfortunatley, I'm not sure how to solve the problem. I select the edges I want sharpened and use a chamfer at 0.0 but when I smooth it it still makes a soft edge. I considered building up the high poly by hand instead of using turbo smooth but honestly it seems to take a lot of time, and it won't help me for when I take it into mud box and build on some detail there.

Any ideas or something I'm missing?