Tasco Binoculars
polycounter lvl 13
Heeeeyyy Polycount.
Been watching from afar for a while and finally made something I'd really like a real critique on, even if it is something as boring as binoculars. It's the first in a series of exercises I'm undertaking to improve my hard surface modeling skillzzzz, and I want even the simple objects to look as perfect as possible before I move on.
I recently watched Racer445's AK74 tutorial and it was EXTREMELY helpful in the bakedown process, so many props and thanks to him. Who knew smoothing groups were so important!! Anyways, here's some shiaaat:
Textures are rendered at 1024 btw.
Been watching from afar for a while and finally made something I'd really like a real critique on, even if it is something as boring as binoculars. It's the first in a series of exercises I'm undertaking to improve my hard surface modeling skillzzzz, and I want even the simple objects to look as perfect as possible before I move on.
I recently watched Racer445's AK74 tutorial and it was EXTREMELY helpful in the bakedown process, so many props and thanks to him. Who knew smoothing groups were so important!! Anyways, here's some shiaaat:
Textures are rendered at 1024 btw.
Replies
A few things that may help your texture... The stickers and dial numbers would be near black on the spec, since they're usually printed with a matte material. The color of the stickers and the writing on them would also not effect their specularity, it would all be the same level of shiny. I'd highlight the screw on the dial too. It might help add another detail to the model.
Consider bumping the stickers out on the normal map a tiny bit, it may help catch more light on the edges of it.
I'd take the speckly pattern off the eyepiece on the diffuse, and leave it on the specular. I think it would help keep that material smooth like that kind of rubber really looks like.
Some of the wear is uneven, particularly the metal bits near the eyepieces. Everything is scraped up except that?
More color always helps too. Seems like a great start so far, though!
Agree with the crits on the specular of the stickers, right now they don't make much sense. If they're printed on glossy coated paper or plastic then the specular over the whole sticker should be a kind of uniform mid grey-ish colour. You should not be able to see the text on the stickers in the specular, that doesn't make any sense.
You also seem to have made the diffuse a lot darker than the reference picture, any reason for that? As a result I think you're losing a lot of the larger forms since the lighting doesn't pick out the contrasts in surface very well. That may be partly due to your lighting setup for the screenshots.
Additionally you'd benefit hugely from a specular exponent (gloss) map to really help separate the materials - there's a big range of highlight widths on these binoculars, from the very tight spec on the bumpy grips, to the wide soft highlight on the rubber eye pieces. Right now I think you're lacking a lot of material contrast due to the highlight widths all being the same.
I actually disagree a bit with Racer445 about "bumping out" the stickers in the normal-map, that doesn't make any sense to me. Stickers like this are usually super thin and rarely show up as a raised surface at all. If you did want to bump the stickers out a bit you would have to be very very subtle, or risk having them look weird and bulging.
Still, it's a good piece of work - I think with a little more time spent on the textures it could be awesome.
Exactly, it should only be bumped out a tiny tiny bit so that it does shadow and highlight the edges just that little bit. Otherwise it would indeed look pretty dumb.
I agree with most everything that was mentioned here. I'll go back and fix the spec on the stickers and probably bump them out the tiniest bit, because they do bump a smidge.
The diffuse is that dark because the reference picture I took was in blaring sunlight on a bright white plastic surface. This is making them appear far brighter than normal. I'm including a shot of how I normally see them.
I REALLY wanted to make a gloss map, but I'm quite new to Marmoset, as in...I just got it working yesterday...and I didn't see a slot for a gloss map. So, I'm not sure what to do there.
As far as lighting goes, Marmoset doesn't appear to allow for much light manipulation since it's lit using an HDRI map. I used the trilight environment for this setup.
On another note, is there a way to setup a cubemap reflection effect in marmoset for the eye pieces?
Maybe a note for the future... glass is more shiney, so give it more white love in the specular. That being said, it's also a completely different surface property, and would require a specular power map to control the attenuation of reflectivity (smaller highlights, making it appear more gloss-like).
Its looking awesome but i think if you figure out the reflections it'll push it over the top. keep it up!
I think I'm gonna call this one done. I've put too much time into it already, but I'm satisfied with the result.
Once I stopped being stupid and remembered that Marmoset uses HDRI maps as its lights, I realized all I had to do was crank up the spec on the lenses and they would simply reflect the HDRI map without any extra work. They come out a little fuzzy, but it still ends up being a much nicer effect than a dull specular glare. Added some color to the spec too to give it the orange tint.
I still wish I could throw a gloss map into Marmoset, but the "Specular Sharpness" as it calls it, has no slot for a map. So I'm stuck with everything being either very glossy or very dull. Oh well...
Also not sure what this FUNKINESS is all about. It seems to happen to that one piece the most. It's unaffected by post process, shadows, specular or anything at all it seems.
Anyways, final update:
Many thanks to all for support and critiques!
i have yet to model anything hard surface aside from weapons and a shield =P. and i have yet to model anything at all that's not from imagination. i think you did well in both the execution of hard surface and the accuracy of your mesh and maps. good job!
EDIT: i also think it's hilarious that you started off your post by saying "i've been watching from afar" when you just in fact modeled binoculars.