Home 3D Art Showcase & Critiques

Manhole Cover

Here's my latest prop made... a manhole cover! Exciting I know :\
Anyways, looking for any crits and critiques before I move on to my next prop.

Maya Viewport Screengrab:
manholecovertyl3r.jpg

Reference Image:
manholecoverreference.jpg

Textures at 50% res:
manholecovertextures.th.jpg

Replies

  • jett12
    Wireframe? How did you manage to get a manhole cover to be 600 tris? seems a tad bit high to me.
  • Target_Renegade
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    Target_Renegade polycounter lvl 11
    It looks ok, but not very exciting as you stated:) The outer edge looks rounded when in the reference its flat. At the moment the spec map looks flat, you could make it more interesting by tweaking the spec values. For example, in the reference, the indented parts (dirt bits) have a very dull and varied diffuse/spec, and is more brown/green in colour. Also, its not really a prop, more of a texture. You could cut the size down to 256 for an in-game texture of this. 662 tris is not valid with this sort of thing, the screenshot you've used is flat anyway, so i'm not sure where all of the tris have gone. You might as well just use the normal map, a circular alpha and use it as a decal.

    Keep progressing,
  • teaandcigarettes
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    teaandcigarettes polycounter lvl 12
    Simple, yet really nice.
    You could add these tiny pieces of dirt to make it look a little bit closer to the reference.

    On the other hand, the tri-count scares me a little bit.
    While I am generally not a purist who tries to remove as many tris as possible, I see no reason why this manhole couldn't be a decal.
    Simple, normal mapped plane (or even a parlax map, depending on the engine you would like to use) with an alpha channel would do just fine.
  • Jesse Moody
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    Jesse Moody polycounter lvl 17
    Yeah most likely in a game this would be baked down to a flat plane with alpha around the edges or just used as a projected decal.

    And yeah a 1024x1024 for something like this would be a bit insane.
  • pyromania
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    pyromania polycounter lvl 18
    Your normal map is the opposite of the reference. The lighter area of the manhole cover should be raised up, not sunken.
  • tyl3r
    Thanks for the quick feedback everyone!

    I wanted to make this an actual prop, or mesh because I have seen it done before (Unreal 3) and nowadays I don't think it is too much to ask to have it as a separate piece and not just a decal.

    I did agree with the tri count being a bit too high though, so I took out some bevels and it now sits at 342 tris, almost half of what it was.

    I also took the maps down to 512 x 512 to better suit an in-game model.

    Here's the new render, as well as a wireframe, as requested:
    manholecovertyl3r.jpg
    manholecoverwireframety.jpg
  • imb3nt
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    imb3nt polycounter lvl 14
    That outer lip can be removed as well, all of that can be achieved in the normal map. So did you actually model out a high poly for this or is it just a crazybump normal?
  • whats_true
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    whats_true polycounter lvl 15
    Make a cylindar, delete the bottom face and your good to go. No need for the inner mess like the bevel edges or cut out holes. No one is gona see that.
  • Kitteh
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    Kitteh polycounter lvl 18
    You don't need ANY of those details modeled (the bevels, the little holes). All it needs to be is a cylinder with a texture on it.
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Maybe he plans on having man hole covers lying around not just covering map holes?
  • Kitteh
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    Kitteh polycounter lvl 18
    ZacD wrote: »
    Maybe he plans on having man hole covers lying around not just covering map holes?

    even then, the holes are so tiny that even in real life they'd probably just look black.
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    A 3D manhole? Cool. These days you can certainly spend the triangles on such a thing if you thought it'd help the scene. However, you need to be sure you're not inefficiently and unnecessarily adding that geometry.

    Unless this was for some front-end type of environment, where the manhole was an important piece to that environment, there's no way you'd need that kind of geometry you've added. The lip you've made for the outter trim is not needed at all and can be achieved by a normal map. Same for the 2 tiny holes. They'd be so small on screen, in-game, that you'd never (ever, really) notice that there's geometry showing their depth.
    I also took the maps down to 512 x 512 to better suit an in-game model.
    I was going to write a bit about watching your texture scale when dealing with environments but instead I thought it would be better to ask you why you think a 512x512 is a better suit for an in-game model of a sewer cover.
  • Vrav
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    Vrav polycounter lvl 11
    This would be excellent with a slice of pizza as the companion piece.
  • System
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    System admin
    Textures look nice, dirt overlay and some rust masked inbetween the shapes could make it pop more. Agree on 256x256 and using a primitive cylinder, it would still retain the same quality...
  • eld
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    eld polycounter lvl 18
    You could even go as far as to only have a 1/4th pie piece of the texture, mirror and flip it all the way around, since even the real life construction is designed that way.

    that way you could drop the texture 1/4th and still retain the crispness with some smart avoidance of mirrored dirt spots, since the dirt is small enough.
  • Mark Dygert
    If this was to be a decal type overlay you would want to include the slight depression around the outer edge and possibly the mossy bits too.

    Alternatively if the center logo didn't matter, you cut the texture in half or quarter it and still keep the same pixel density.

    8 tris. 9 tris if you map the logo uniquely.
    ManHoleCover50.jpg

    4 tris. 5 tris if you map the logo uniquely.
    ManHoleCover25.jpg

    You could redesign the logo so it symmetrical too but it almost works as is.
    If the logo was important you could do a another floating opacity mapped tri for the logo. There is probably enough unused space in the texture to handle that.

    There isn't much of a difference between pushing 9 tris vs 5, but the texture savings is pretty big so it might be a good idea.
  • eld
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    eld polycounter lvl 18
    cut in half horizontally, and rotate the other half instead of flipping, and the design still stays :)
  • achillesian
    Vrav wrote: »
    This would be excellent with a slice of pizza as the companion piece.

    YES
  • John Warner
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    John Warner polycounter lvl 18
    I'm gonna go ahead and sort of disagree with the whole idea of making the texture too teeny. Scale it down, sure, but I wouldn't cut it up.

    I would add some grunge across the whole thing. You can't really do that well if you've got the texture mirrored twice.

    edit- you know what? i'm goign to suggest to just keep it at 512. i love the little rough metal detail that you've got in the normal map, and there's no reason why this couldn't be 512 if it was part of some cinematic or something. fuck it, why does everything have to be lower rez, all the time?
  • jett12
    Who is going to pay much mind to a manhole cover? thats why it should be lower rez, i think the texturing is fine, but i think this could be done with a fraction of the triangles.
  • System
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    System admin
    I'm gonna go ahead and sort of disagree you know what? i'm goign to suggest to just keep it at 512. i love the little rough metal detail that you've got in the normal map, and there's no reason why this couldn't be 512 if it was part of some cinematic or something. fuck it, why does everything have to be lower rez, all the time?

    Because it would be a small element of a large scene and therefore it should be 256x256 maximum size, especially if there are a few of these.
  • eld
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    eld polycounter lvl 18
    you would notice a big varied splash of junk on a manhole cover if you use it everywhere, but tile'ing the texture and cutting the memoryusage in half while still keeping it sharp is a bit plus.

    ps.

    tyl3r, I forgot to say, great work!
  • whats_true
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    whats_true polycounter lvl 15
    256 seems low to me but to each his own. I do think that cutting it up will cause issues if it was in UT3 like visible seams and stuff.
  • eld
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    eld polycounter lvl 18
    even if there were issues, with a flat surface such as this, it couldn't be a problem.
  • tyl3r
    Wow, I never knew a 3D manhole could garner this much discussion. With such a wide variety of views too. Taking all of it in I think i'm going to try to lessen the tri count, and cut the texture size down to 256x512, by rotating it 180 degrees to keep the logo in the center looking the same.

    Thanks for all the inputs and I will post the new version when it's done!
  • Mark Dygert
    why does everything have to be lower rez, all the time?
    Because mini games during the load screen shouldn't have more logged hours than the actual game =P

    Why lower res? Because our appetites for micro detail on manhole covers have progressed but the current generation of consoles hasn't. I think low end PC's now push more polys and textures than the 360...
  • John Warner
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    John Warner polycounter lvl 18
    If this was for a close up in an NIS, i think it would be perfect. on COH (and RTS game) we were making pretty fucking high res props for NISes

    Look -- personally i don't understand the mentality of making random props-- i find it quite boring. but if you're going to make a manhole cover, and you want to make it high detail, that could technically be appropriate for the right scene -- and this guy CLEARLY wanted to make a detail manhole cover. I have no idea WHY hahaha but it's not inappropriate in the right context, so my opinion issssss fuckinhaveaterbuddy.

    if this is for a large environment that you're building -- which i see absolutely no evidence for--??? yes, I agree, 512 is way too large. doesn't seem like that's the point though.
  • Avanthera
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    Avanthera polycounter lvl 10
    fuckinhaveaterbuddy.
    best word evaar
    anyways, very nice manhole cover. In a next gen sewer game this would be awesome, just needs a glow map.:thumbup:

    also: if this is meant to be practice for game art (i would guess) then try to keep your maps at a perfect square (256x256, 512x512) or make a cone to sit on top of the manhole cover and use that to take up the rest of the texture space... although god knows what will happen on this forum if you make a cone:poly122:
  • tyl3r
    Alright, so finally got this re-textured, getting the pattern to match up was a bitch, and I had to change the center logo as well. But all in all I think it came out just as good.

    It now sits at 118 tris, which is way less than it was at the beginning, and yes I know it could be lower, but I wanted some depth, therefore no alpha on a plane.

    The texture is now 256x512, and that is as low I could get it before it looked like a total blurry mess that no sharpen filter could fix :P

    I'm happy with the outcome and of all the comments/critiques! Think I'll call this done unless there is a heap load of things wrong with it still. (I might make another pattern to fill out the texture to 512x512 with 2 sewer covers, but we will see.)

    manholecover2tyl3r.jpg
    manholecoverwireframe2t.jpg
    manholetextures2tyl3r.jpg
  • Pope Adam
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    Pope Adam polycounter lvl 11
    good work mang - I think it would look cooler if you cranked up the contrast in your spec map quite a bit more.... also, consider going in and painting in some highlights on the edges of the rings and raised patterns to help light catch those edges a bit more!
  • Pope Adam
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    Pope Adam polycounter lvl 11
    also, you could shrink the size of your texture by 1/2 if you just cuz this geometry directly down the middle... the texture is pretty much quartered... with exception to the little square keyhole shaped things on the sides... of course, those would then show up on the top and bottom as well... but you'd be saving a lot of texture space.
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