Concrete Pillar

quyeno

Hi guys n gals

This is my version of the Eats3D pillar, made this to learn Max tools better (after coming from a Maya background). I just kinda deconstructed the DVD cover but may get the dvd anyways. Anyhoo its not perfect, I'm not really too happy with the damage as it has turned out like rotten flesh! I think it should have a more faceted form with rough detail ontop, so i may got back to the mudbox sculpt and fix it.

Its just about 1900 tris and uses three 1024 for diffuse, spec and normal.

All comments and crits would most appreciated.

HAL

Looking nice, though I agree that the damage is a litl bit to soft, I guess that was what you ment.

Keep it up

frubes

i dont know, i like the way the damage looks if im honest. It feels right but i dont know if thats because i have seen billions of pillars? The texturing is what does it for me. Only comment would be to add some dripping kind of rust or mold where the top strap on the pipe meets the pillar itself. Currently it just feels like its floating. Same with the bottom strap too now i look at it. Anyway, nice texturing and good sculpt

StJoris

Ohh this is quite a nice rendition of that notorious pillar, I like the paintjob you gave it, and the cracks and all, sets it apart a bit. Care to show some flats?

Delaney King

Nice work- its great, so all thats left is little things to polish it up.

May I suggest you tone down the surface noise on the upper part of the concrete - that will make the cracky bit at the bottom pop. Having lots of contrast everywhere takes away a little impact from the peice. Jazz man.

The damage is rather smooth where the flat concrete gives way- this would be really sharp in some places - cracks form in small straight sharp lines, its crumbles away in little clusters - but would be smooth where water and rust trickles down and disolves the plaster.

You could also fake a little ambient occlusion shadows where the metal bands grip the pipe to make them sit more realistically.

Finally damage always reads better when there are undamaged peices to contrast - so having some straight edges there to contrast the bashed and screqy bits would be excellent.


But thats all gravy. Nice work!

quyeno

cheers for crits guys. I think there is prob loads i could do more to it but i think i'll do something about the metal clamps against the pillar and may correct the damage in the sculpt to be more faceted. I did add some cracks around the damage but it started to look too busy...i might have another shot at it...maybe use just a few cracks here and there.

Not the tidiest of texture sheets. :P



The high res version was crunched using Maya. MeshLab (free tool, check it out!) also did a great job and between MeshLab and Maya it was pretty much of a muchness. Where as Max was just disappointing...it choked and crashed on the 3mil poly pillar.

fast1

nice but i think you could rough up the damaged part a little? seems a little too neat.

quyeno

in terms of form, i think the damage looks ok. I've looked at loads of damaged concrete references and broken concrete structures do break off relatively clean due to the reinforced nature of the concrete used.

stimpack

That video makes the mistake of just polycrunching down and calling the mesh complete. There are TONS of waisted tri's in that mesh. You should spend the time and clean it up. If i saw this in a portfolio, id pass it over based on that alone....Its also really good practice clean and tidy is a must! I enjoy the texturing, if anything its a bit too noisy but thats just nit picking.

quyeno

i have cleaned it up . the sides of the pillar isn;t flat....i added surface wear on mine so the surface undulates. also if you optimse it too much and remove alot of the inner edges you'll get smoothing issues which will affect your normal map bake. I've tried rremoving all the inner edges and let the NM do the work but like i said i got smoothing issues which gave artefects in the NM. i could use smoothing groups but then that'll create harsh seams in the NM as well. Smoothing groups in max isn;t so hot...not as good as maya's smoothing edge approach. the only other way is to create a very clean mesh and avoid smoothing issues would be to remove all the inner edges and bevel the border edges but then that'll increase the poly count. if you have any ideas, it would be appreciated.

keltickennedy

I don't know if I believe you created this from just looking at the Eat3d cover. You definitely watched the video tutorial for this. How did you know to use mudbox and polycrunch the model just from looking at a cover? Anyway, nice job on the model and textures. Now all you need is to bring that bad boy into Unreal and capture some nice shots.

Everett McGuire

Good work. I would add some stains near where metal and stone meet. Either rust or wear marks something that adds to the different materials being there.

Some light could drastically change the look of this too so you should try to apply it to the scene you had in mind and see what the shadows look like.

Other wise just some of the same thing as other replies. The damage looks very nice but a little smooth and the texture should be cleaner at the top and more worn as it goes down where it would have come in contact with things.

vladino

The texturing is amazing, but the model is killing it a bit. The pillar is too bumpy in it's shape. The indents are kinda fine, but you won't get sticking out bumpiness on a concrete like that. This makes it feel clumsy, but I still like it a lot!

Mark Dygert

Looks great, nice texture work. Really great tutorial too.

The one thing that bugs me. Everyone (including the tut author) erodes the base to a nub. Where did all that material go, considering the damage done you'd have to damage the crap out of the floor also, making it a difficult to piece to place. Also gotta remember that test types of pillars don't float freely in space but anchor in and actually support things.

Might of been nice to add some spider web cracks around some of the damaged areas.

[HP]

Pretty nice, I already followed that tut as well, and your result came out much better than mine! :P

I like your texture work better than the original from the tut, but the high poly don't convince me! nevertheless, good job!

quyeno

thansk for the replies guy...currently looking to fix some issue like making it planar again and remove the subtle wear and tear.

keltickennedy - nope, i didn't watch the dvd. I used mudbox cos thats what i use, i don't use ZB. For organic hard surface forms I usually poly reduce the high poly and then tidy up the low poly mesh, its alot quicker than creating modelling it. (although the mesh is a bit untidy due to the subtle indentations i added, the poly reduce did try and keep some of these subtle indentations). I assume you're talking about Mootools Polycrunch? I didn't use it i used Maya and also did a test with MeshLab as Max's tools were rubbish

Everett McGuire - cheers dude. already added some grunge around those areas. I added alot of rusty drip grunge on the top as i kind of envisioned it getting damp damage from some sort of ceiling. No scene in mind tbh, just made this for fun and learn Max's texture baking tools.

vladino - yeah i'm starting to think adding those slight wear and tear indentations was a mistake now. will try and remove them or reduce them as best i can.

Vig - I think the damage on the base 'could' be due to concrete rot by water damage or whatever. meh. I'm currently adding cracks and stuff to the damage areas, doing a test to see which gives better results...sculpted cracks or textures cracks converted into a NM.

[HP] - The original texture looked ok but i just wanted to do it differently. What do you mean by 'the high poly don't convince me'? currently tweaking the mudbox sculpt and any feedback would be cool.

cheers

[HP]

What I meant, is that the cracked concrete on the high poly looks more of a organic piece, like a flesh wound, than actual concrete.
I made the same mistake when I made my concrete prop.

When concrete breaks, it keeps hard edges, and harsh cracks.
to better show what i mean, here's a pic:



And:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Broken_concrete_road.JPG

Also, you really should get back into that low poly, and optimize it! running polycruncher shouldnt be the end of it, after than there should be a low poly optimization phase.

quyeno

nice pic. cheers for that. The mesh does look messy but its actually conforming to the subtle wear and tear i had sculpted, so actually even though it looks messy it is actually conforming reasonably well to the mudbox sculpt. To make it more tidy, i would need to flatten the sides of the high poly pillar first.

quyeno

Resculpted the damage a bit and remodelling the low poly version. Used smoothing groups this time round and flattened the sides of the low poly version. Looks alot better than before. Added some cracks in the texture (not 'too' happy but it'll do for now). I did sculpt cracks in the mudbox version but to get decent cracks the polycount was too high to import into max and mudbox was rubbish at baking NMs.

vladino

Much better now Looks believable to me, good job!

HAL

Yeah, great improvement!