M60a3
polycounter lvl 18
finished this one a while ago:
its about 9381, probably shoulda reduced it, been on a bit of an emo ego-trip lately, which has hurt my work a lot. also finally getting to grips with specular maps, and how much to apply.
been a bit liberal with those, heh.
its about 9381, probably shoulda reduced it, been on a bit of an emo ego-trip lately, which has hurt my work a lot. also finally getting to grips with specular maps, and how much to apply.
been a bit liberal with those, heh.
Replies
It looks a bit monotone texturing wise. Get in some more dirt, chipped paint, decals and stuff like that that give the model a personality. Right now, it just looks like a generic tank. Think about color variation, use different types of metal, maybe add camouflage.
Perhaps look at the tank models in COD 4 or something...
Having seen my fair-share of Pattons, I have never seen one with chipped paint, but they are pretty much always covered in dried mud and dirt.
Also, are you meant to be able to see through the wheels like that?
didn't add more dirt, added some minor scratches.
where should there be more dirt?
and what kind of dirt?
wet dirt? dry dirt?
added some simple test markings. they're part of their own decal texture, and not very realistic at all.
so the alice packs should be more brownish then instead of khaki.. hmm.
oh well.
a bit afraid i might overdo it, and make the whole tank look garish..
(default render settings usually suck big time on that)
as for the lack of "meatyness" thats because of the boat-shaped hull. the torsion bars are standing out from the hull side.
more updates:
Also.. the text... it doesn't fit
Keep it up.
maybe i should try and add a bit more of this:
giant ref image!
and this:
second giant ref image!
I disagree with Shepeiro - while he's right that improving the lighting will help a lot (and I've tried to include this in my paintover), I think you can do a bit to the diffuse and specular to really make this look great.
It's very close to being awesome, but just needs a tiny extra pass to really make it look right, I think.
Here's what I identified from the photo, I think it would improve the texture:
Basically:
1. Look at the photo, the wheels and around the track area is MUCH more brown and yellow with dust and dirt. Yours currently are the same green as the rest of the tank's paint job, which makes it look monochromatic and unnatural.
2. There's a bit more colour here and there on the photo, like the red stripes painted around the barrel make it look a bit more interesting (although if this is some sort of military code for "this tank fires blanks" or something I don't know about, ignore me!).
3. The specular needs an extra pop around the edges. I think it also needs a bit more brightness and blue tint, as seen on the photo. Your tank currently seems to have a grey or brown specular, which is boring. It might help to make the ambient brighter, more blue and saturated. A Crazybump pass on the normalmap to pick out the high edges and indent lines would be good to blend on top of the spec and diffuse to really pop out the "pits and peaks" of the normals.
4. There is potential for more material contrast in the diffuse. The mud flaps ( ? ) on the front of the treads are currently quite close in value to the main paint job, I made them darker and shinier, it adds a bit more contrast. Same with the hinge-accordion bits around the barrel join onto the turret, they could be a bit lighter and more yellow.
5. There could be a small amount more staining / water run-off / rust / dust around the various attachments. You have a little bit in between the boxes above the treads, which is good, but then all the parts around the turret are the same green all the way around the join. Even a tiny bit of brown or yellow and a lighter or darker value there could help. I also think it might help to darken some of the metal panel seams in the diffuse to make the shapes pop out a bit more, but that's pretty minor.
The main problem is that there's just too much of the SAME GREEN everywhere. Get rid of this issue, even just to a small degree (I left most of the paint job unchanged), and it will look a lot more natural I think.
Hope that helps. Like I say, it probably won't be much effort (a few more layers and painting on the diffuse and spec, and 10 minutes fiddling with a better light setup) and this will be much better, and a really strong portfolio piece if that's what you want.
Edit: It's possible that I made the blue shininess too much, it looks even shinier than that on the reference photo, but I'm not sure if that's because the tank is a bit wet or something? Hard to tell since it's low-res.
Also I edited your other post cos those dirt ref images were huge and making it hard to read the thread
actually its so shiny its faintly reflective, so the blue highlight you see is actually the reflection of the sky in the paint coat.
the spanish tank is also just off the washrack, its probably just been in the field for about half a day.
the 2 red rings around the barrel i believe indicates the unit number in the spanish army.
they have different colour depending on the company and unit, like red yellow, red blue, etc.
the american equivalent is the "vee's" although i'm not sure if thats for the modern ones only,
but they were used on the marine corps M60A1 RISE ERA.
they are black on desert camo, and white on woodland camo.
older ones probably used numerals like on this m60A1 painted in MERDC colours:
this is a really old one though, its even got a searchlight for active IR, and lacks smoke grenades on the side turret.
as for the symbol on the front hull, its not really a star, but this:
yes, specular and lighting are my 2 weakest points currently, because they are so interdependent its very hard to tell which one to adjust.
i like the rust runoff from the coincidence rangefinder cavities, and smoke grenade launcher, and the yellowish dirt.
UPDATE:
and i already added the specular to the gloss slot in that pic.. hmmh.
i think that floating shadow is actually an illusion caused by the bright sand i have running off the lifting lug base.
You could also add a little variance (hue/brightness) on the different parts, ie. the barrel, gas tanks, turrets, extra bits on the turret.
I figured that reference was probably of a more glossy tank since a lot of the other pics weren't shining as much or reflecting quite that blue amount. Still, it looks better to have a bit more specular like that I think.
And yeah, the specular and lighting are very interdependent - a lot of the time what I do is set up a lot of very different light setups (like, sunny afternoon, overcast thunderstorm, orange sunset, hazy morning) and try out the model in all of them. That way you don't just end up tweaking it to match one specific lighting arrangement, you end up altering the textures to look good in ALL light setups.
I think this is really important for game assets. Not so much for film or prerendered stuff since you know what the lighting will be, and adjust accordingly, but for this sort of asset I think it makes sense to try it in many different light setups to see how it holds up.
As for sharpening up a bit, I dunno what resolution your texture is (seems like a 1024 x 1024 ? ) but the white star logo on the front is very blurry around the edges, maybe just go in with a small brush and paint the edges a bit sharper.
Any chance we can see the flat diffuse / specular textures? I think they probably look quite good, and would give us a better idea of if it'd make sense to sharpen or not. I wouldn't try to do it with just a filter, that does tend to produce a very grainy effect as you said. Usually there are fairly fast ways of fixing up "blurriness" without spending ages re-painting, or relying on a heavy-handed filter. Maybe a bit of both
-MoP
now i see it the changes have made a good bit of difference =P still dont like the lighting though. the ray traced and the mapped dont really fit well together, and as a whole im not sure what is causing the lighting. if the soft shadow/light had quite an shallow angle and came from behind (bit of rim lighting)like the dying sun then the top raytraced shadow could be ommited from an electric hanging light, i like to light objects like this as though they are in an environment even though they are not.
its looking real good
The 'wrinkles' behind the barrel, decals, threads, the darker bit above the threads and the bags on the turret.