Frankenstein Vats Scene

feanix

So I'm working on making a scene based on this concept art from Stephan Martinier:



Here's my progress on a vat so far:





I've just kinda gone for it for this model and figured I could reduce polies later. Hence I have a rather high polycount of 11048. I'm not really sure how far over my poly count I really am since I'm making this for the UDK.

ZacD

11048 seems like a lot for something like that, wires?
and is that the tri count?

feanix

I agree! I'm just wondering what to reduce the polycount to. Here are some wires. Oh, and yes, that's triangles.

Swizzle

Why don't you just put the smaller details like the bevels and spirals into a normal map?

feanix

I was thinking about doing that. It's good to have feedback before I start on that though, in case I'm going horribly wrong at a basic level or something.

Swizzle

Yeah, I'm sure you could cut the polycount in half by getting rid of the bevels and reducing a lot of the smaller detailing. You could also get rid of some of the loops in the lightbulbs without hurting their silhouettes and I bet you could make the tubes that go around them four-sided without any noticeable loss of detail.

Alberto Rdrgz

can't wait to see this all done.

Sa74n

lovely setting. the concept looks great - i hope you can turn it into a great piece of game art.

ikken

subscribing

feanix

Okay, Swizzle's estimate was astoundingly accurate. I got the vat down to 7435 triangles which I'm pretty happy with. I got it unwrapped and ingame. What do you guys think of the texture so far? It's meant to be bronze and copper (in case anyone mistakes the brown bronze for wood or something).

feanix

Here's some WIP renders of the grinder/generator. 5791 tri's so far.

Joshua Stubbles

I think it's a good start so far. I'm a little bit concerned about the copper on the vat, though. It looks like you have it pretty nasty and banged up. When copper gets really chunky like that, it's bound to oxidize, which would lead to some greenish oxidized build up (statue of liberty).

The specular on the copper also doesn't seem right to me. Right now it looks far too even across the surface, and appears white. Copper (even old, brushed industrial copper), has more broken specular, usually having a slight yellow tint to it, even reflection. Here's a good example of some rather old copper:



You can see some slight oxidation in the creases and dents, spec coloration and overall broken up spec.

Looking forward to the rest of the scene!

feanix

My only concern about the lion head is that it looks a lot like bronze. :S I actually already have oxidization on the bronze parts. I wanted to give the tank's cap a different look.

I totally get what yer saying but I'm not sure if I should just replacce the copper with bronze now.

Joshua Stubbles

Well visually yeah, the lion is a bit dirty and bronze-ish looking. But the same principles apply. You definitely need some colored spec and need to break up the specular highlights themselves.

AstroZombie

feanix wrote: »

Okay, Swizzle's estimate was astoundingly accurate. I got the vat down to 7435 triangles which I'm pretty happy with.

That still seems EXTREMELY egregious IMHO. You need to take that target and probably 1/3 it at, least. That kind of tri count is something that is typically reserved for characters in current gen games.

ZacD

yeah post some cleaner easier to read wires so we can make suggestions on what to remove.

feanix

Here you go!







I've been a bit iffy about the whole thing tbh. I'm seriously considering redoing the entire model. Its so many tri's and not really that detailed. I was experimenting with redoing the tracery:


Already I have a lot of quads that only poorly define the shapeof the tracery. perhaps I should do a very highpoly version and bake it onto a cylinder?

I am currently using coloured spec for the current model:

Jet_Pilot

I feel as if your stuff is to high to be your low poly version, but on the other hand its to low to be used as a high poly. your in this weird poly limbo area.

feanix

Okay, I've redone the tracey panel on the front. The highpoly version (left) is sill a bit bare, but I'm focusing on something the maintains the same sillouette while using as few tris as possible. What do you guys think?

The low poly mesh is 198 triangles. That means for the final product the tracery will use 1584 ( 198*8 ) triangles.





Forgot to mention that I haven't added polygons to the other side. This is important since you will be able to see the tracery from the otherside through the glass tube.

Titus S

The texture on the vat needs a lot more humanity...

Blood smeared by someone running their hand on the vat trying to grab onto something

A sticker on the glass labeling the specimen, or maybe just an oil crayon writing on the glass itself.

Some leaked fluids on the glass

Some rust on the base and tops

Those are all suggestions... Also, add some small scratches and scores on the metal

feanix

Okay, so I had a brainwave on how to solve my high polycount. It comes however, at a cost of an additional material.



I'm using an opacity mask to make the panel transparent instead of modelling it in. I can make a variation of this texture for the back as well. The tri count for this mesh is 158 leaving me with a final poly count of 1264 tri's for the panels alone, which is quite workable.

I've also worked on the material to try get a nice bronze effect. What do you guys think?

Gallows

Are you using modo?

feanix

Yup!

Gallows

Haha, sick, how is it?

feanix

It has it's pro's and cons. Great to model and UV with, not so great to do normals with. Max is better for stuff like rigging and animation.