Office chair
ngon master
Gonna try to use zbrush (I'm still not good with it) once I do the subdiv.
So if anyone has any tutorials for using zbrush on something like this let me know.
the block out:
So if anyone has any tutorials for using zbrush on something like this let me know.
the block out:
Replies
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6453343891721580218#
zBrush time
Not perfect but getting their, I'm surprised its actually turning out decently, not too bad for my first real zBrush.
Why does zBrush gotta be weird.
now doing that in 3.5 just makes things go super slow :P
Chair turned out really cool... at least you can get more practice in by doing it over again from scratch
Combine lazy-mouse with masking and you can get good edges.
so workflow might look like:
-export out mid dlvl mesh for ref
-retopo in topogun and/or maya/max
-touch up verts and whatever else and lay out uvs in maya/max
-export low poly, export high poly from zb too
-bake all your maps in xnormal
-???
-profit!
Does around 1k tris for something like this sound right?
low poly and the uv, the pixel density isn't exactly constant though out the whole chair, might have to tweak that later.
UVs are not great but definitely good enough for a test model like that.
For your next model, try grouping together all the rectangular bits (like the stuff you have on the bottom left and a few other places) together, they will be very easy to pack together.
Remember that you need to 'explode' the low and high before baking the normalmap ; however you should keep the unexploded one for AO.
Either split them up the middle and mirror the UVs to re-use it, or (what I would recommend) weld those UV seams so that the cushion and chair back have no really big obvious visible seam running up the middle, that would be a nightmare to try and texture across.
However if those are little bevels on the wheels at the bottom (can't really tell at this range) then you might want to collapse them, I don't think anyone would notice the difference since they're so small.
new UV's
That always helps the texturing stage and it's really not hard to do in most cases (especially easy in this one).
Have you checked the scaling of all your UV shells with a checker map? It looks like the arms might have too little space now (they had too much before) but it's hard to tell without seeing a fairly dense checkerboard pattern on it. Add a Checker map with 64 x 64 tiling and see how they all match. I can see plenty of room for you to scale up parts if you needed, especially after rotating the back and cushion to be nicely aligned.
Try not to rush through this part, it won't take much longer to make this UV layout pretty much perfect, and you will be thankful for a nice easy UV layout when it comes to texturing it!
Tried xNormal for baking, it went really well besides the AO and some of the cleaning up I'll have to do, but nothing big
anyone know whats up with the AO and how to fix it?
Hopefully I can build a scene, build up my portfolio, and get a job by the end of summer.
I just overlayed the cavity map. I think the AO on the leather spec wasn't working.
Time for the next prop
If you've got enough texture res maybe add some stitching to the leather parts.
Overall I like it and is convincing!
only 2 issues, the texture is lower rez than normal, and how do I get the light baking to work for it (I built all...). Oh and I need to make a collision mesh for it.
I forgot it at first, but I figure its kinda a waste of tris.
also need to figure out how to get the shadows cleaner (on the chairs, not the guy), high rez texture and use the material manager.
Hehe careful, it's very addicting!!!
Congrats!
My final feedback would be that it's a little grey overall, and maybe the specular could be tweaked so that the leather contrasts with the plastic better (either make the plastic more matte, or the leather more matte - they both seem to be about the same shininess right now, which doesn't feel quite right IMHO).
The greyness is fairly natural though, I mean those chairs usually actually do look pretty much like that, heh. Just a little more surface variation (tiny bit of wear on the edges of the seat maybe?) and a hint of stitching or some finer details here and there would really be the icing on the cake.
A quick project might be you could also try making variations with different styles, ie. have a version with polished wooden arms, or a chrome wheel base and piston, or red leather upholstery. You could re-use the model just as it is now and do 2-3 different textures to really get a solid grip on how to define multiple different materials in diffuse and specular alone. Might be fun
I'm trying to tweak the specularpower to give the leather a tighter specular and have the plastic a softer one. For me to to be able to have the specular power to look right on the leather I have to use a constant with a value of 30, is there a way to use a texture to control the spec power? cause I tried and it looks weird/crappy (as you can see in the image)
Different short cuts and camera control for every single app, its annoying when you have to switch between 10 different apps and they are all different.