I did this model of a Jedi Starfighter a while back and decided to make a low poly version. The high res was modeled in LightWave (rendered here in 3D Coat). The retopology is being done in 3D Coat.
Thanks, I haven't actually touched the high-res model in a couple of years aside from slicing a couple ngon polys to make it display nicely in 3D Coat. Maybe I'll look into it.
I would like to see some wireframe on that. Also one thing that should be incorporated better is the R2D2, right now it looks like he sticks to much out, also the edges arround him should be tighter. But nice highpoly, some smoothing errors here and there but nothing to serious, should be easy to fix.
Here's wires. Sorry if my responses are a little delayed, I'm being moderated since I guess I haven't posted here before. Funny since I signed up months ago.
Well that's only the high-res. I think it should be easy enough to clean up the normal map after it's baked. Probably easier than tweaking the polys, just throw the Smooth brush at it real quick.
Generally its a good habit to fix errors in the HP rather than in the normals. It can get very problematic doing these sort of tweaks in the normal map, because its not just simple data 2d like a hieght/bumpmap, but you have compensation for the smooth/normals of the lowpoly mesh etc.
Also if you think about it in a production environment, what if you need to change some of the lowpoly geometry, or change the uvs, now you need to rebake. Now you're redoing the painting tweaks etc. Once you understand this stuff fully you really shouldn't ever need to paint out anything in your NM.
Its good practice to have all of these issues nailed down before you even start your lowpoly, and the more you deal with them you'll realize they are generally very simple and quick to fix in the mesh.
Yeah I had mentioned that I would look at the pinching in one of my earlier posts but I guess a mod forgot to approve it or something. It was a response to Beartraps way back in the beginning of the theread. Of course it's good to have it right in the first place, you are right.
I'm really looking forward to this finished. I'd love to do a star wars vehicle, they're really cool.
The only thing that bothers me is that little circular thing on the back right of the ship, if you're facing it head on. That little highpoly circular bit looks too messy compared to the rest of the ship. It's very obvious on the 4th picture at the top. It just seems like the only messy looking part to an almost perfect highpoly.
Thanks, I'm working on the canopy now. And a friend at a studio suggested I double the poly count on the engines, so I did that. I will go and see if I can clean up the high-res model some more, I'm just the retopology zone right now.
The interior detail on this model will look amazing! It will really make this thing stand out to have exterior and interior detail. Where are you finding your reference?
The model was originally done for a modeling contest on SpinQuad.com, they provided some reference, but then I used my friend Google Image Search and found lots of reference from model kits and toys as well as shots from the movies.
I like the detail for the paneling on the ship. Though, I don't know if it's me, but the size of the cockpit chair to the size of Artoo and his slot seem opposite, it looks like artoo would be gigantic compared to the size of the person sitting in the cockpit
Well if it helps, here's a shot from the movie showing both Obi-Wan and R4D2 (at least part of him)
It's funny that you mention scale. When doing this model I found a flaw in the design. R2 (or R4) will not actually fit in that socket. His feet and lower body would hang through the bottom of the wing. Even if he was half as tall (which I had to make mine) he barely fits.
Question for you game guys (probably most of you lol) When UV mapping does it make sense to keep all of the polys in the map the same relative size to the real polygons or is it better to make more important polygons bigger on the map so they'll get more detail. Like suppose I have some out of the way polygon "island" that may well never be seen, or it's going to be all one solid color. Would it make sense to make that one smaller than the others?
Yeah the seat is much too small man. Tip stick a proxy man in there, thats the best way to get a feel for scale.
With texel density try to keep it as consistent as possible, only increase the detail on something that majorly draws focus. Ie, the head and hands of a character. And yeah if there is an area that is very rarely seen you can make it smaller. Ie. the bottom of trucks and cars in last gen games.
Question for you game guys (probably most of you lol) When UV mapping does it make sense to keep all of the polys in the map the same relative size to the real polygons or is it better to make more important polygons bigger on the map so they'll get more detail. Like suppose I have some out of the way polygon "island" that may well never be seen, or it's going to be all one solid color. Would it make sense to make that one smaller than the others?
The second one. When UV'ing you have limited space to show off parts of your texture map, so large surfaces get more uv space, also for where the player will be viewing it. If it's first person all of the things that are eye level will be allotted more UV space.
Yeah, and sometimes the concept art is a little off and you have to go with what feels right and not what's exact with the reference
A lot of unneeded UVs from my angle. Do you really need unique UV spacing for EVERYTHING? Are those one pixel pieces of UVs gona matter that much? Why not overlap a few things.
Well 1 pixel yeah, in this small sample image. Of course the actual UV maps would be bigger. As for the gap size, I don't know that's just the default "128" size the PLG plugin uses. I could change it I guess. Overlap would be fine depending on the type or quality of the game. I considered it but I wanted everything to be different, it looks a little strange when you see copies everywhere. I guess it could work for a few small things Of course I'm not sure if the packing plugin would recognize the overlaps though, It would probably try to separate them.
you really dont need to unwrap those tiny knobs and stuff cuz you can bake that with a nice proxy mesh, especially for a game. i think you need to rethink your low poly mesh in general. find a poly/tri limit and dont exceed that. plus thos knobs wont even be noticed, invest more real estate in your map on important surfaces instead.
The idea with this project is to model the interior and exterior so that it could be shown as if it were a 1st person or 3rd person game. I think if it were a first person flying game you would definitely see those knobs, they'd be pretty much in your face the whole time.
I have actually started to redo the maps. I doubled up some of the symmetrical parts and scaled up some of the more detailed areas just a little bit. Here is the interior, I'll be working on the exterior tonight.
hi there, like your works. Wanna ask you something about uv mapping. Im new in this industry and just one question. Making one map with all those uvs on, how big do yo uspecify your texture so that when you work it up in photoshop, that you still keep those details.
your choice of size is dependant on memory constraints for the most part, but obviously taking into consideration how big it will appear on screen and how large it is physically.
these will determin how you map them and the choices you should make regarding duplicate parts etc.
philnolan3d- id say your uvs are over complicated, and you will struggle to finish texturing as there are so many tiny peices, try to reduce the complexity as much as possible and it will make the painting process much easier, the more parts the more seams and the harder it is to tell what goes where
I will be painting in 3D Coat so it really doesn't matter how many pieces there are, heck the map could be all individual polygons if I really wanted it to be.
As for the size question I haven't quit decided yet. I'll probably see how it looks while I'm painting and adjust the size while I work to see what looks best. Of course without going too high since it is supposed to be a game model after all.
I will be painting in 3D Coat so it really doesn't matter how many pieces there are, heck the map could be all individual polygons if I really wanted it to be.
As for the size question I haven't quit decided yet. I'll probably see how it looks while I'm painting and adjust the size while I work so see what looks best. Of course without going too high since it is supposed to be a game model after all.
erm bollox... try it and see, but each of those divides will be a small seam, which in game will most likely have AA or mipmapping issues, no matter how clean a bake, less peices always leads to a cleaner normal bake and better diffuse
anmd by AA i mean texture filtering is split by UV seams and anistropic filtering is like free AA for lines within a texture, so use it.
Edit- also if you made every poly seperate, most game engines will crawl with this on screen, it isnt effecient, every shader, uv, smoothing group/hardedge split is increasing the amount of vertices and therefore transform costs, as your normal mapping this from highpoly, stretching is less (but still quite) important, make the map as simple as you can.
Well, all I know about is painting seeing as I don't work at a game studio, so I couldn't speak about anything other than that.
Edit:
BTW, just for the sake of argument I took this character and adjusted the UV map so that half of his face was individual polys and the other half I left as 2 or 3 islands. Then painted a simple skin texture on it. Can you guess which half is which?
The idea with this project is to model the interior and exterior so that it could be shown as if it were a 1st person or 3rd person game.
So, you pick and choose what game specs you want to go by? Just a little confused on what exactly your trying to accomplish by the uniqueness of everything without considering the optimization part of it. I'm with SHEPEIRO on this.
Not to jump on you philo. But mip-mapping and AA will make all those little squares appear (using your face as an example). Each one of those individual polygons will have a black outline around the edges. No good. Least amount of pieces and seems is usually the best way to go.
Seeing as I've never worked on a game before I don't know what specs are even options. I'm just playing it by ear.
if your up for making your own mistakes, and it is a good way to learn, (as spending alot of time on an object to find that you made mistakes at the begining that comprimise the visual quality really sucks), then try some quick tests, do a very quick sculpt on that head with plenty of sharpe detail then bake out the normals and get it in a realtime engine, say marmoset its nice and easy and see what the results are like.
When you say marmoset I assume you're talking about the game engine from 8 Monkey Labs (that's what Google thought anyway). According to their website it's a proprietary system that can licensed.
I have a copy of UT3 I assume UnrealEd would work as well.
Edit: Oh OK I found this toolbag thing. No LWO import I see... Oh well OBJ will do.
Since the baked normal map wasn't quite to my liking I basically just used it as a guide to repaint most of the normals by hand. I think the exterior is done. So what you see here with no interior details is 3985 polys.
I wouldnt call myself a star wars universe authority by any stretch of the imagination, and I might be considerably late in mentioning this, but I'll mention it anyway as stuff you could maybe take into account on your next piece or something.
Basically I don't think it looks consistently "rebel" in design. The TIE style front windshield gives it a distinctly more imperial look, as does the bubbly cockpit. The rebel stuff in the movies always had a distinctly more utilitarian look, and usually had panels removed, exposing engines and other components underneath. I guess what i'm getting at, is that it looks too cutting-edge to suit the rebel style of warfare. I'm just talking concept here, and I'm only going by what's in the original trilogy (aside from those movies i have next to nfi about star wars, but I noticed these common themes to their hardware design)
The main armaments look correct to my eyes though, as does the overall shape of the wings. The engines look like the tubey x-wing ones which works (and if that's intentional, a very nice touch imo)
Oh, the R2 unit looks to me like his legs would be going all the way through the wing and out the other side, too. I know it's a moot point now but I would have seated him behind the cockpit, in the conventional position from the movies.
EDIT: and i might be nitpicking but the pedals look too far away to be used comfortably (ive been painstakingly recreating some ww1 cockpits so i'm a little obsessive about this stuff, feel free to ignore me)
I didn't design the ship so if you have a problem with the design talk to ILM. LOL Here's a shot from the movie (Episode II I think) with Obi Wan in the cockpit (Anakin's is grey yellow)
BTW I agree about R2, his feet would stick through the bottom. Later I found some different reference that had space for him under the wing, but my original reference had no space under there.
I didn't design the ship so if you have a problem with the design talk to ILM. LOL Here's a shot from the movie (Episode II I think) with Obi Wan in the cockpit (Anakin's is grey yellow)
Oh righht, yeah the prequels had totally different design philosophies to the original trilogy.
Replies
Was the wing detail created with floating geometry?
Keep it up!
There's also an animated flyby in my demo reel: http://philnolan3d.com/
Also if you think about it in a production environment, what if you need to change some of the lowpoly geometry, or change the uvs, now you need to rebake. Now you're redoing the painting tweaks etc. Once you understand this stuff fully you really shouldn't ever need to paint out anything in your NM.
Its good practice to have all of these issues nailed down before you even start your lowpoly, and the more you deal with them you'll realize they are generally very simple and quick to fix in the mesh.
The only thing that bothers me is that little circular thing on the back right of the ship, if you're facing it head on. That little highpoly circular bit looks too messy compared to the rest of the ship. It's very obvious on the 4th picture at the top. It just seems like the only messy looking part to an almost perfect highpoly.
I dig it though. Keep it up.
Oh no, I just realized I forgot R2D2! Poor R2. OK so interior details and R2 remain.
It's funny that you mention scale. When doing this model I found a flaw in the design. R2 (or R4) will not actually fit in that socket. His feet and lower body would hang through the bottom of the wing. Even if he was half as tall (which I had to make mine) he barely fits.
With texel density try to keep it as consistent as possible, only increase the detail on something that majorly draws focus. Ie, the head and hands of a character. And yeah if there is an area that is very rarely seen you can make it smaller. Ie. the bottom of trucks and cars in last gen games.
Thanks for the thoughts on map scale.
The second one. When UV'ing you have limited space to show off parts of your texture map, so large surfaces get more uv space, also for where the player will be viewing it. If it's first person all of the things that are eye level will be allotted more UV space.
Yeah, and sometimes the concept art is a little off and you have to go with what feels right and not what's exact with the reference
Also, why so much space between the UV's?
I have actually started to redo the maps. I doubled up some of the symmetrical parts and scaled up some of the more detailed areas just a little bit. Here is the interior, I'll be working on the exterior tonight.
these will determin how you map them and the choices you should make regarding duplicate parts etc.
philnolan3d- id say your uvs are over complicated, and you will struggle to finish texturing as there are so many tiny peices, try to reduce the complexity as much as possible and it will make the painting process much easier, the more parts the more seams and the harder it is to tell what goes where
As for the size question I haven't quit decided yet. I'll probably see how it looks while I'm painting and adjust the size while I work to see what looks best. Of course without going too high since it is supposed to be a game model after all.
erm bollox... try it and see, but each of those divides will be a small seam, which in game will most likely have AA or mipmapping issues, no matter how clean a bake, less peices always leads to a cleaner normal bake and better diffuse
anmd by AA i mean texture filtering is split by UV seams and anistropic filtering is like free AA for lines within a texture, so use it.
Edit- also if you made every poly seperate, most game engines will crawl with this on screen, it isnt effecient, every shader, uv, smoothing group/hardedge split is increasing the amount of vertices and therefore transform costs, as your normal mapping this from highpoly, stretching is less (but still quite) important, make the map as simple as you can.
Edit:
BTW, just for the sake of argument I took this character and adjusted the UV map so that half of his face was individual polys and the other half I left as 2 or 3 islands. Then painted a simple skin texture on it. Can you guess which half is which?
Here's the UV map:
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/5346/uvguymap.png
So, you pick and choose what game specs you want to go by? Just a little confused on what exactly your trying to accomplish by the uniqueness of everything without considering the optimization part of it. I'm with SHEPEIRO on this.
if your up for making your own mistakes, and it is a good way to learn, (as spending alot of time on an object to find that you made mistakes at the begining that comprimise the visual quality really sucks), then try some quick tests, do a very quick sculpt on that head with plenty of sharpe detail then bake out the normals and get it in a realtime engine, say marmoset its nice and easy and see what the results are like.
I have a copy of UT3 I assume UnrealEd would work as well.
Edit: Oh OK I found this toolbag thing. No LWO import I see... Oh well OBJ will do.
Basically I don't think it looks consistently "rebel" in design. The TIE style front windshield gives it a distinctly more imperial look, as does the bubbly cockpit. The rebel stuff in the movies always had a distinctly more utilitarian look, and usually had panels removed, exposing engines and other components underneath. I guess what i'm getting at, is that it looks too cutting-edge to suit the rebel style of warfare. I'm just talking concept here, and I'm only going by what's in the original trilogy (aside from those movies i have next to nfi about star wars, but I noticed these common themes to their hardware design)
The main armaments look correct to my eyes though, as does the overall shape of the wings. The engines look like the tubey x-wing ones which works (and if that's intentional, a very nice touch imo)
Oh, the R2 unit looks to me like his legs would be going all the way through the wing and out the other side, too. I know it's a moot point now but I would have seated him behind the cockpit, in the conventional position from the movies.
EDIT: and i might be nitpicking but the pedals look too far away to be used comfortably (ive been painstakingly recreating some ww1 cockpits so i'm a little obsessive about this stuff, feel free to ignore me)
http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/3516/openingbattle20054vd.jpg
Anakin in his:
BTW I agree about R2, his feet would stick through the bottom. Later I found some different reference that had space for him under the wing, but my original reference had no space under there.
Oh righht, yeah the prequels had totally different design philosophies to the original trilogy.
game time started