WIP - Warhammer cauldron

a.leigh

So I'm taking cholden's advice and working on some Warhammer concepts to try and improve my texturing. This is the one I'm starting with:
http://amandaburrelli.com/images/warhammer01.jpg

Here's the model I finished up last night. I think I'm ready to start unwrapping, but I figured I'd run it by you guys first in case there's any glaring errors I should fix first.




Any feedback at all would be appreciated, as I'm really trying to get my work up to standard.
Thanks.

DInusty

are you planning on building a highpoly version first or just making a low poly?

a.leigh

I was just planning on doing the low poly for this one.

rares

*edited*

rares

Hy Leigh, not sure if this is good advice but i would just make the piramid spikes separately , by makeing an extrusion and then welding the top vertices you're wasting lots of triangles. To better ilustrate i modified one of the face groups :

cholden

Definately a fun concept, and a solid start to the mesh. One thing to keep in mind with orcs especially is nothing is perfect. No planar faces, nothing parallel, etc. It should appear slapped togehter with whatever they could find and held together by pure dumb luck.

I agree with rares about floating the thick spikes for reduced polycount.

Those little dings and notched knocked out of the metal base (bottom right) are great touches, add more based on the concept. You should also push the base further per my PM.

One more pass and you're geo should be final.

Oh and edit your original post to link the warhammer concept. It's too wide and breaks the forum format. It'll make your thread easier to read. I think it's any image of 800 wide.

a.leigh

Ok, so here's my updated mesh:

cholden

Good update. I would scale up the notches you've knocked out. They are a bit to subtle. I'd also scale up the oil cauldron just a bit so it make it more imposing. In general nothing should be subtle. Even exaggerated to the point of almost humorously exaggerated. Like the bullet holes in Robocop.

Got a plan for the textures? A 1024x1024 would probably be plenty.

Justin Meisse

nit-pick: the spout looks wider in the concept

also looks like you can remove most of those edges in the base of the a-frames.

breakneck

i'm just curious if anyone can help: what is the legal "rules" of using someone elses concept art to make 3d art for your portfolio?

Indecom

I'd like to know that as well. My guess is that as long as you dont take credit for the work, and link back to where you got it from, you should be okay, right?

Looking at the work on your site compared to this, i think you are definitely moving in the right direction. Learn from concepts that you find, obsorb what you see, then apply it to your own works. Right now much of whats on your site is rather bland, needs to be spiced up quite a bit, this so far is looking good. Scale up those notches, and the pot a little bit, then you can begin unwrapping this bad boy. Looking good so far.

cholden

It's usually cool unless listed otherwise. If you show that much interest in a company to do their concept art (and do it well) that often leads to opportunities with them

Sauron

i'm sorry, but why i can't see the images in this thread?

Indecom

strange, i have no problems, try refreshing the page.

Sauron

No result(
Only images in fifth post is shown, sorry for my bad english)

a.leigh

I scaled up the notches and the cauldron, and took a good deal of the edges out of the frame bases. I made the spout slightly bigger as well. I'm using a 1024x1024 for it, and I've got some base colors down so far.

a.leigh

Here's a quick post with a little bit of progress. Between visiting relatives and other such holiday shenanigans, the going has been slow, but now that that's all over I can get back to devoting more than a half hour here and there on it.



I've got the base materials down on the diffuse map, and I need to go in and beat it up.

Indecom

i see some smearing on the left side, the base holding the crank with the spikes, is that a uv problem or in the texture itself, its hard to tell.

It looks like you got a good bas to go from, just start painting in some lighting, heu shifts, occlusion and details and it will start to really pop out at you.

Sauron

Sorry, but no pictures again can you use another hosting, plz :-[

MoP

I can see the pictures fine, Sauron, are you sure there isn't something wrong with your ISP or connection?

a.leigh: While this model has made fairly good progress, I think you still need a lot of work on the textures, even at this initial stage it's just looking very... drab. To really make it fit with the Warhammer universe style I think you're going to have to knock the contrast up a fair bit, brighten the metal, and really accentuate the edges of all the elements when you get around to doing another pass on it.

Also, to really see the textures working, I think you should try cranking the self-illumination of the textures so that there's no gouraud shading from the default lighting, then you can really push the texturing quality and see it on its own merits, the default lighting just makes everything look boring (shading to black).

Anyway, I think if you really focus on the texturing stage now, and pay close attention to the art style of the Warhammer universe (not just the games, but the newer paintings and the miniatures "official" paint job styles) then you will really be able to make a cool portfolio piece out of this.

Sauron

Is it difficult to use another hosting?
I can see all pictures on this site exept in this thread. sorry for my bad english again :-[

a.leigh

I brightened up the metal in most places. The bottom areas of the cauldron I darkened a bit since it would have soot all over it from having a fire going under it. I also tried to highlight the edges a bit, and generally up the contrast.

Using the self-illumination suggestion was helpful, btw. Thanks. I feel like I'm making progress with the textures, but I know I can push it further. Any more suggestions/critiques?

cholden

Overall, your previous texturing looked better. You texture now is too noisy and bright. A couple more things that will help is an Ambient Occlusion bake to add some nice soft shadows and metallic highlights to all edges.

Also, your background color needs to be neutral. Being as bright as it is hurts the presentation.

Irreal

I think it may be worth offsetting some of the verts a little. It's all looking very angular at the moment. The concept looks far more organic than is coming across in your modelling.

As far as texturing goes, really think about how the grime and dirt would build up between the grooves and crevices. At the moment everything is just sitting on top of each other.

a.leigh

Obviously a quick fix, but is this more in the right direction for the metal?

sampson

are you doing a specular or are you limited to diffuse? i find a subtle diffuse and a stronger,bright specular gives me good metal results... atm yours looks too much like concrete than metal.

BradMyers82

Well I think it is a step in the right direction.

The thing about metal is it has a really high level of contrast which makes it look shiny. (Assuming your going with just diffuse...) Also, it looks like you did a good job painting the shadows in there, but now you need to hit it up with some strong highlights. Painting the edges, making small scratches and some basic shine should really give it that metal feel, and make the forms pop out more.
Keep at it!

ThatDon

The scaling of the metal texture on the feels a bit too big, try making the detail smaller/tighter.

a.leigh

So I went and changed things up a bit. I did an ambient occlusion bake, and I switched the base metal texture to something that was less grainy.


I did put a spec map on this as well. I'm happier with this version than I was with my last one.

Justin Meisse

cholden wrote: »

Overall, your previous texturing looked better. You texture now is too noisy and bright. A couple more things that will help is an Ambient Occlusion bake to add some nice soft shadows and metallic highlights to all edges.

Also, your background color needs to be neutral. Being as bright as it is hurts the presentation.

quoted because your metal keeps getting lighter and cleaner. It's starting to look less like cast iron and more like aluminum!

a.leigh

Yeah, good point about it looking like aluminium... Guess I went a little too metal-y after seeing the comments about it looking more like concrete. I darkened it up and made it a little more dirty. It could probably use some more dirt and grime in places, but is this more in the right direction now?

00Zero

modeling is pretty good. texturing is iffy.

your texture is way too noisy and it seems very uniform all over.

for example, if you put a flat shader on it (no highlights or shadows), all the forms would almost get lost in each other because you wouldn't be able to tell them apart from by the textures.

thats what i would recommend for you to do. put it on flat shader/self illuminated and then fix your texture so you can accentuate the forms and be able to clearly see them.

EDIT: oh, and i dont mean just a 1 or 2 pixel light grey line to simulate "scratches". a lot of people do that on EVERY edge and it destroys the texture. good luck :poly121:

Millenia

Hey, you mind sharing the model? I really love the style and I'd like to take a stab at texturing this as well

vj_box

can you also share the construction sheets with us?
I would like to see the way you have approached the textures. right now,they kinda appear muddy.
Vj