First post and a Pistol WIP
polycounter lvl 17
Long time lurker, first time caller!
I visit polycount daily finding insight from all the brains here. Threads like "How do you model dem shapes" and " Games don't use colored specular" are my reading material for entertainment and advancement.
I decided to take the plunge here where all the pro's go, because I feel that I am finally working on my first 'serious' piece and want to get it right and start my portfolio on the right foot, with your guys' help.
Enough jibber jabbering.
This weapon is based on a concept by Keith Thompson., an amazing artist and inspiration.
I have only put down the base colors for the gun along with AO/cavity/ and a rudimentary spec map. Still a lot of work to do on the diffuse/normal/spec.
First person style "golden gun".
Personal tri limit of 6,000, actual tri count 5,500.
[Low]
[High]
Xoliul's max shader was used for the screen grab.
Questions:
When using xnormal how long should I let the ray distance calculator go? Sometimes if I wait for it for too long, it spits out numbers that give me a crazy bad normal map.
When exporting to .obj from max, is it okay to have the top item in the stack be the turbosmooth? I noticed some wierd artifacts that are in the normal map (may post a picture tomorrow) that seem like they are coming from the polys on the high res version.
At one point I wanted to use max to render to texture, but when I set everything up and hit the 'render' button in the RTT dialog nothing happened. Anyone encounter this before?
Why do my low poly normals sometimes affect the normal map? In my top picture you can see the first piece above the handle has some funky normals where the triangles are in the low poly. I battled high and low and could not find a compromise.
I'm sure I have more, but am too tired. See ya in the morning.
I visit polycount daily finding insight from all the brains here. Threads like "How do you model dem shapes" and " Games don't use colored specular" are my reading material for entertainment and advancement.
I decided to take the plunge here where all the pro's go, because I feel that I am finally working on my first 'serious' piece and want to get it right and start my portfolio on the right foot, with your guys' help.
Enough jibber jabbering.
This weapon is based on a concept by Keith Thompson., an amazing artist and inspiration.
I have only put down the base colors for the gun along with AO/cavity/ and a rudimentary spec map. Still a lot of work to do on the diffuse/normal/spec.
First person style "golden gun".
Personal tri limit of 6,000, actual tri count 5,500.
[Low]
[High]
Xoliul's max shader was used for the screen grab.
Questions:
When using xnormal how long should I let the ray distance calculator go? Sometimes if I wait for it for too long, it spits out numbers that give me a crazy bad normal map.
When exporting to .obj from max, is it okay to have the top item in the stack be the turbosmooth? I noticed some wierd artifacts that are in the normal map (may post a picture tomorrow) that seem like they are coming from the polys on the high res version.
At one point I wanted to use max to render to texture, but when I set everything up and hit the 'render' button in the RTT dialog nothing happened. Anyone encounter this before?
Why do my low poly normals sometimes affect the normal map? In my top picture you can see the first piece above the handle has some funky normals where the triangles are in the low poly. I battled high and low and could not find a compromise.
I'm sure I have more, but am too tired. See ya in the morning.
Replies
Jogshy - That makes perfect sense now that you mention it, will do that going forward, thanks for the great tool!
Not much time to work on it today. Updated the diffuse / spec. And in this pic I can see a couple shading errors that I will have to figure out how to fix. The low poly normals seem to be causing it, don't know why though.
Minor update. Gonna rebake the problem areas tomorrow to fix the normals issues.
story of my last 3 weeks...
I'm digging the engraving and details you decided to add
Soft Hands - All the style goes to Keith Thompson since he created the concept.
roosterMAP - I'm going for an ivory look in the handle, playing with textures right now to see what I can do to add more interest as you suggested.
Here is a minor update. Spent more time working on the spec map then I have on the diffuse trying to make this look more like metal and less like stone.
Is this the right direction?
Anyone have any tips on setting up a 3 point lighting system in Unreal? I threw my model into it as a static mesh (is that right?) and unreals lighting seems to make my model come across as stone like. Even after I make a 3 point light setup, it seems they aren't effecting the model as much as they should.
Max viewport, Xol's shader.
Shotgun - I also agree with the grey areas. I have some references of ornate guns and will see if I can add in some more detail. Thanks for the comments.