SC2 Turret wip.

IronHawk

Working on finishing this up and my low poly is at around 12,000 right now. Is that grossly over for a modern FPS? I think the circle base is whats killing me on the polycount.

any feedback appreciated.

Thanks

Cody

Looks pretty sweet, man. Ya, it's a high polycount, but I suppose if you make it worth it with an amazing texture job, it's be all good. Maybe you should try some LOD stuff and make 1 or 2 lower polycount versions.

MLinderholm

Looks nice, all depends on what it is supposed to be used for, if you are going to have 10 of those on screen in a fps it might be pushing it

IronHawk

Thanks guys. I have a couple ideas I'll play around with to try and get this down. Maybe some test bakes at lower counts to see if it just looks like ass. Updated first post with wires now.

oobersli

theres quite a few areas you could optimize. The tubes at the base of the muzzle thing could use less sides since they are shrouded by the guard most of the time. Everything doesn't need a chamfer either.

Just using one smoothing group and a good normal map you can afford to cut out some of the chamfers and save a lot of polys.

IronHawk

thanks oober. I was pretty liberal on the chamfers. just trying to get good bakes. I'll do some experimenting to see what I can get away with on the normals.

EarthQuake

oobersli wrote: »

theres quite a few areas you could optimize. The tubes at the base of the muzzle thing could use less sides since they are shrouded by the guard most of the time. Everything doesn't need a chamfer either.

Just using one smoothing group and a good normal map you can afford to cut out some of the chamfers and save a lot of polys.

Yes, except that using 1 smoothing group without the chamfers will make it *impossible* to create a good tangent space normals map, if you forget about that then you have a very good point.

oobersli

EarthQuake wrote: »

Yes, except that using 1 smoothing group without the chamfers will make it *impossible* to create a good tangent space normals map, if you forget about that then you have a very good point.

said some chamfers.... ...some.... not all of them. :P

IronHawk

I here ya EQ wish I could use object space.

I only chamfered 90 degree angles. There is some geo I think I can eliminate and just capture the detail with normals and a good AO bake. I was checking out a manta in UT3 and there is alot there they just did with normals. Though they also didnt chamfer some edges and got decent results which is frustrating.

This will be good practice for trying to make normals do more work and getting creative with geo.

CheeseOnToast

The only things which look like they could obviously be reduced are the small barrels leading to the main one. You could possibly drop the four raised plates on the circular base and maybe the indents there as well, then build the silhouetted bits of them into the base plate itself. Maybe collapse an edge ring on the outer part of the base as well.

It's already nicely made, pretty hard to find ways to reduce it without ruining it.

IronHawk

Thanks Cheese. I definitely don't want to lose any of the high poly detail. I'll model in those plates and reduce the barrels along with combining them like per points out.


Thanks for the paintover Per. A lot of what you point out makes sense and I'll get after it. The bullet chain thing is denser in that one area cause it curves up and then back down tighter then the rest. It's not represented well in the screen grab. I do need to clean it up a bit still.

IronHawk

Here is the low poly with normal maps.



wires.

This is at 5800 tri's now. Perna pwns. I could shave more tri's off this yet just sticking to silhouettes and letting the normals do the work but I'm ready to get to texturing and dropping this in ut. Learned a ton on this one.

Havok

Looks really nice, IronHawk. Hurry up and start texturing! I can't wait to see it finished.

IronHawk

quick update for today.

DInusty

woot!!!! keep goin!

RazorBladder

Half the polycount and I can't even tell
Good job, looking forward to seeing this textured.

Wiktor

Looks smashing man! Keep it up!

Jeremy Lindstrom

:poly124: it sucks, you might as well just give it too me and let me put it in my portfolio.

j/k man its rocking keep it going. Thanks for the enviro help. Working on that now at home.

IronHawk

getting close on texture..

odium

Fucking awesome work, hope to see that get dirtied up

Armanguy

squirt! awesome work normal maps is so crisp and clear great job!

IronHawk

Thanks everyone. Little bit left to go and some final renders Then it's on to the next peice and trying to get a job.

adam

Bake the AO to your diffuse pleeeaaaaase..

IronHawk

yep still coming bro. was debating to lightmap it. Thanks for the reminder.

East

This is really nice. The thing that stands out to me is that the blue paint on the rounded base plate thing screams Photoshop. It looks a bit too much like it's been painted on using a digital application, rather than being real paint that's been worn down.

Maybe try first blocking the colour in as a sharp-edged rectangular area, and then "wear it down" using various brushes, while retaining some of the sharp paint edges? Just a thought. It looks really nice, though

IronHawk

quick update before I hit the hay. Thanks to everyone for crits.

MoP

Looks cool, good job.
There's one part of the texture which doesn't make any sense to me - the top of the "blast shield" panels at the front have a kind of \ \ \ \ pattern, which looks like a vent or something, yet the blue paint actually goes inside those indents, which looks pretty weird.
I'd probably make all of those angled indents a darker colour, or maybe even remove them from the normal map completely, I don't think they're really adding that much (or making any sense - what are they?). Currently they just don't fit in with the blue paint trim stuff you have going on.

Although I guess this is probably still WIP, so maybe you have some cool plans for them

Keep it up!

SHEPEIRO

realy nice work, not sure about the blue paint placement on the circular base peice, doesnt seam to match the forms in quite the right way.

also IMO the diagonal shapes that cross the panelling on the armour dont really work, one or other of the shapes would but both together looks odd.

IronHawk

Here is the blizz concept

Thanks fellas.

Yeah the top indents kinda bugged me as well but i kept them because they were so prominent in the concept. I'll take a look at darkening them or maybe removing them altogether. Not sure what to do about the paint at the bottom I'll try some paintovers with some different styles.

My goal with this piece was to work from a concept designed for the RTS and build a FPS model done in the style of the cinematic and storymode. Then submit it to Blizz for there fan art site. I'm very psyched for the game

Thegodzero

those \\\\ things go all the way threw just so you know... For yours just cut the blue out drop in a shadow and wear it down around them. Also add some blast scorch marks on the blast shield.

IronHawk

good call Godzero on it man.

SHEPEIRO

the contrast in darkness between the bare metal and blue paint is greater in the concept, which i think works a little better

IronHawk

Thanks Shep. I added more contrast to the blue.

Tried to get some blast marks on the front and just wasn't feeling it.

Calling this done for now. Thanks for all the crits and help everyone!

Cody

Coolio. Like the glowy parts. Very nice normals. So clean.

Cheapjuevos

Working on finishing this up and my low poly is at around 12,000 right now. Is that grossly over for a modern FPS? I think the circle base is whats killing me on the polycount.

any feedback appreciated.

Thanks

Yup, 12k is huge man. Working on a 360 title we're pushing about 3k poly's on the high side for a building for our RTS.

SHEPEIRO

Nice

Cojax

Nice job man, looks awesome. Very solid.

Joao Sapiro

specular could be alot better, and you could have a better ambient oclusion map ,and use that to maybe rust some parts as an inverted mask , but nontheless it looks good

Generalvivi

looks pretty awesome! love the glowy bits! wish there were more :P

konstruct

yeah man this turned out real nice. Something to look out for next time cause I do this all the damn time too- is it would be cool to have more difference in your materials. having a shiny rubber, or plastic, along with your banged up metal. right now the whole thing has a flat tone across the whole thing.

Cheapjuevos

Cheapjuvenos: 12k for an rts would be very steep for this asset. He's made it for FPS specs though.

LOL doh! I'm dumb. I thought I read "rts". My bad.

It's an awesome piece Ironhawk! Love your attention to detail. Keep it coming man.

-cheapjuevos

Thegodzero

Looking good!
I'd make the paint more matte, pull the levels on the metal overlays so that it has way more contrast.

BTW are the grey bits paint? As is i can't tell, id either make some of the parts rubber like konstruct said or paint. Just don't leave it as mystery material.

Also you could try adding some rust, or weld marks into the normal map. Also when i said blast marks i ment something like like it was hit with a blaster. something like this,

http://www.roboterkampf.com/html/props/ywing.htm

In that you can get lots general detailing ideas.

SHEPEIRO

looking at it again and reading the other posts, the spec could do with more range in the metal bits, and maybe less range in the paint (a plastic based paint has a very consistant spec)

bugo

so nice! my congrats for the tower!

Marcan

This is a very good piece, I like it. It could have been an entry art test for them! hehe.

And I think this is a personal opinion in this case, because your piece really holds itself up, but I think the model itself could be just a bit more worn, especially on the edges (since it's a war weapon.)

Anyways I love your baked normal map, it looks very clean. I think the spec could have used just a bit more contrast, especially on the edges to make it pop.

IronHawk

Thanks everyone.

I'll do another pass on the spec after all the responses here.