Hey man, nice work so far!
It doesn't really make sense to model those holes into the low poly on the gun. These could easily be faked in normals and texture, and you will never see it because its not part of the silhouette.
Also, I do see several areas that are repetitive on your uv layout, but sometimes these things happen and you don't notice till after you bake. In any event nice job straightening things out, and getting it all squeezed in there, which is an art form in itself IMO.
Great work man. I think you did a great job of weeding out some of the high frequency detail to give the final piece a good balance of detail and rest area. Great bake too, can't wait to see the finished texture.
When you did your bakes, did you leave a lot of hard edges/normals? That's a very clean normal map you got there, without any obvious ray misses etc. around all the bevelled edges.
I'd hit it... err I mean I really really like it nice work =P
I agree with bbob, there is a lot UV space you could free up. Potentially keeping the pixel density the same but probably reducing your texture down to 1/4th of what you have now.
Meaning bigger pieces on a smaller sheet. OR keep the sheet size the same and pick up an amazing level of detail by using more of the space.
There are a couple practical reasons for the uv layout.
1. Hard edges. Pretty much anywhere I had to put a hard edge to fix shading issues, I had to split the uv shells. It was a balancing act deciding where I wanted to split the shells and where I wanted to keep the seam for texturing.
As you know, if you have a softened normal on >= 90 degree angle, the normal map bakes in the shading info to correct it.The first time I actually baked it, I did it with all soft normals, and it looked great in Maya High Quality viewport. Then I took it into Marmoset and mental ray, and the shading showed through the normal map. I found this tutorial http://www.svartberg.com/tutorials/article_normalmaps/normalmaps.html which explains when to use hard edges. I then redid everything adding in hard edges where I could, but it requires UV shell borders everywhere you have a hard edge, so I had to split up the UV shells much of the time for shading, and sacrifice having a unified shell.
2. Baking AO into the diffuse: I wanted to be able to bake the AO into the diffuse, both to make it cheaper, and to better help texturing. This meant that some pieces (for example the receiver piece of the barrels) had to have a unique upper and lower receiver because the AO was different. The AO isn't technically perfect since I couldn't bake AO on parts that could move, but it is good enough to fool the eye.
3. Mirrored pieces: While I've had mixed experiences with support for mirrored normal maps, I avoided these for the most part because of the texturing. I wanted to avoid repeated texture details that could be seen from the most prominent angles.
4. Repeated texture details: As mentioned before, I opted to give pieces unique texture space if overlapping would have meant seeing an obvious repeated texture.
5. High poly sculpt: There were a couple areas where I didn't mirror because I wanted the freedom to sculpt the high poly in mudbox with unique detail without being constricted by a mirrored edge seam. For example, it isn't obvious in the render but all relevant edges have been worn and dinged up.
Some specific decisions:
- The boxy receivers required a unique upper and lower piece due to AO, because I wanted the freedom to be able to paint grime and wear around pieces that joined into it, and because the receivers attached at different places and so panels and rivets got cut off halfway and were out of place if they both used the same texture.
- I didn't double up the sides of the leg when it looks like they could be because you can see both sides of the leg at the same time since the legs as a whole were duplicated. That was one area was I anticipated obvious repeated detail.
- The arms required unique uv space for left and right because, while it isn't shown in the single image I posted, in the high poly from other angles you can see that the crank assemblies on each side are very different. If I wanted to fill the blank space on one side with some paneling, it would clash with the attach points for pieces on the other side.
Basically, the bottom line for me was that this cannon had some asymmetrical design choices that limited how much I could use the normal uv optimization tricks. The other reason is that when on the job, you have hard limits and strict decisions that are dictated by programmers or leads. The whole point of this portfolio piece for me was to see what I could do, and how far I could push it when I wasn't restricted by those limits. That said, it is still a game art piece, so I wanted to employ as many optimizations as I could.
The perforated barrel was a perfect example of this. Realistically, yea the holes could be done with a normal map, and it cut it down to about 14k. It doesn't look as good (I tried it, this is what it looks like LINK ). If this was outside in a crowded battlefield, the normal mapped method makes much more sense. But if it was in a bombed out building that occluded the view to most of the battlefield, or the player uses it as part of a mission, the polycount becomes a justified expense.
The point I'm trying to make is that is that as much as possible, all of the expensive parts of the model were carefully thought out decisions like they would be in on a real project, with the only difference being that art took more of a precedence being that it is a portfolio piece, and no programmer was going to kill me in my sleep for tanking the framerate .
Wow that post got long. Anyway, I don't want to come off as defensive, but I do want to explain that these were conscious decisions and what their rationale was. That said, if there are still areas you think are unnecessarily wasteful, I would welcome the critique.
All I'm saying is that theres a lot of stuff that is on separate sides of the model, that could easily use the same texture space, mirrored, without anyone noticing anything that repeats. Some of the cogs are exactly the same, especially the huge pivoting cog that the cannon is welded onto, that would be a huge space saver. But all those tiny things that could be put on top of itself without anyone noticing anything, could in themselves save up at least 265 squared for you, still having unique space for the bigger bits. Should you want to give them unique numbers or something.
Oh and i'm not nagging you to absolutely change this, but keeping it in mind till next time can also be a huge time saver.
Almost finished with the textures. I've got it almost to where I want it, but theres still some small stuff left to do, and a couple areas I'm not 100% happy with. I wanted to get some critiques before I did the final polish pass, so any and all feedback is appreciated.
Only significant thing that is left out is that I'll probably do either a fake environment texture, or an environment shader for the telescope lens. Anything else is fair game.
Some fantastic work here, some minor crits and suggestions:
The base seems a little flat, the way you have it set up it almost looks as if the 4 segments jutting out could bend down and prop up the main turret, you may want to explore that. Giving it a more dynamic base would also help this prop sit in any given environment, flat or rugged.
Right now the flaking yellow paint seems a bit too plain. It's as if the base turret was simply painted yellow, nothing more. You may consider putting less deteriorated paint in some solid areas, like some of the larger panels, or the base of the turret barrels, and give more nuances to the paint job. Nothin' major, maybe some red diagnol stripes, or simple military numbering. Just something other than the flat yellow. I know it's not easy given the overall detailing of the turret, but even just a single number or decal somewhere on the paint would add a lot of depth to the object.
Great piece though, certainly damn near finished, good stuff!
At first glance, i loooved the texture. but then i looked closely and i really dont get it... is it suppose to be camo? or paint has been chipped away in places? right now it isnt coming across as chipped paint, but more of the metal is suppose to be all sharp and stuff in spots, instead of straight lines, then its painted in the middle. i love the colour choices though.
To me, It just seems like the texture is missing something that will make it unique. It seems like its just a general texture. It needs something that will make it pop and eye catching.
Really clean bake. Marmoset is perfect for showing this off.
The paint is either totally unworn or completely scraped off, there's no in-between values. I'd highly suggest going back in and making some areas 50% worn off or similar, and making the middles of some of these areas worn off, not purely the edges. In addition, much of the worn off paint is located in areas where contact with humans/other parts of the machinery wouldn't happen enough to warrant the heavy scrapes there. I'd also consider dropping the spec brightness on the paint a lot.
The gears and other bare metal areas that are exposed or are moving parts are barely touched at all. I'd go back in and add in some scrapes to those areas while removing a lot of the overdone paint scrapes.
Only significant thing that is left out is that I'll probably do either a fake environment texture, or an environment shader for the telescope lens. Anything else is fair game.
Create a separate mesh chunk for the lens, give it a new material, and then set spec sharpness either really high, or to zero(full on reflection) in marmoset.
great asset but texture is bringing it down man. Just not feeling how it's worn at the moment even for a first pass.
almost feels like you want to go for a worn construction equipment wear on this. Go all the way with that and it could look cool. get some ref though for sure. CG textures is ace.
I agree the paint looks kinda weird the way it's peeled off. Also, I'm not sure if the yellow is working too well, it kinda blends with the metal too much I think. Adding a different hue to the spec on the metal may make the contrast better, or try another paint colour.
Where the paint has been worn away, try adding some primer/base coat that expands a fair bit further than the paint coat, it's likely that the paint coat may have been worn away but only through to the primer for the most part.
There is some scratched paint in the normal, partly from the high poly bake, and partly from the overlaid detail map. However due to the combination of the map being so big and shrunk down, the thinness of the scratches, and the low opacity of the overlay, its hard to see it in the map, but there is a noticeable difference to the model when applied.
Been lurking this thread for a while, as a former avid Ork player back in the day (Circa 95-98 - back when Gorkamorka was all the rage and a new sculptor came on the scene to redefine the look of the previously gimpy-ape style orks) I'm digging the style.
The only crit I have so far is - More Blood Angels Red, More Boltgun Metal, More Mithril Silver and less Burnished Gold/Brazen brass and Bad Moon Yellow.
Definitely going to experiment more with the metal colors, I kinda like that metal tinting you showed, but I'll experiment and see what works.
I did full color wheel tests on the paint, and red and yellow were the best fit for the look I was envisioning. I'm trying to steer a bit away from red for totally unrelated reasons, which are that a lot of stuff in my portfolio is red already, including some future warhammer style props I might work on next. So I think I'm gonna stick with the yellow primarily for the variety, but I agree that red was the other obvious choice.
Maybe a darker yellow then, I think the main thing from the shot (and could also just be a by-product of the lighting) was that the yellow and the highlights on the metal seemed to look a little monochromatic, with some blues/purples/colder colours in the metal, it'd contrast nicely with the bright yellow paint.
Keep it up, loving the progress, would be great to see this in a mock-up enviroment, some grass, mud, shells and other paraphernalia littered around.
the paint is wayy too scraped. I think less is more with something like this, definitely don't scrape every edge. Some decals, lettering, grime, and rust would add some interest too, right now its just clean metal and paint. Also, add some scratches on the paint instead of just 100 percent scraped off, right now on the texture it looks like landmasses. If something were really that worn it would show in other areas other than edges.
I'm pretty happy with this version. I did a major redo on the paint job which I think is looking a lot more realistic, and did some detail and color tweaks as well as a red basecoat under the yellow.
There was some stuff I wanted to add like decals and a more orky color scheme to add a bit more of a warhammer feel, but there wasn't any of that in the reference, and I didn't take that into account when I built the model. As a result all the details in the sculpt prevented me from adding much because there wasn't any logical space. That factor is definitely something I'm going to take into account at the start of my next model to try to plan out better.
I don't think I'm going to include it in a scene at this point.
Orks like to paint symbols on their armour, get a couple Ork faces on there and it'll fit right in. And, if you want to take it further, get some dark smoke coming out of a few areas to make it look like its ready to break down (most Ork things are).
You could, in a matter of an hour or 2, have a pedestal built for this that has a grass texture and some grass planes to quickly, easily, and most importantly, effectively ground it in some context.
I'm going to pass this around to the team tomorrow, they'll love it I'm sure.
I'll experiment with some symbol placement and see if I can get something I like. I wasn't going to do an environment because I'm planning out some environment pieces that I wanted to focus on instead, but doing a small patch of ground seems like a reasonable compromise.
DOW2 was what got me interested in the warhammer style in the first place, so thats awesome. I kinda moved away from the painted style a bit, but the dow2 stuff is great texture/style reference.
Replies
It doesn't really make sense to model those holes into the low poly on the gun. These could easily be faked in normals and texture, and you will never see it because its not part of the silhouette.
Also, I do see several areas that are repetitive on your uv layout, but sometimes these things happen and you don't notice till after you bake. In any event nice job straightening things out, and getting it all squeezed in there, which is an art form in itself IMO.
So even though you packed it nicely, you are still wasting space.
I agree with bbob, there is a lot UV space you could free up. Potentially keeping the pixel density the same but probably reducing your texture down to 1/4th of what you have now.
Meaning bigger pieces on a smaller sheet. OR keep the sheet size the same and pick up an amazing level of detail by using more of the space.
Pseudo tech talk aside, its great lookin!
1. Hard edges. Pretty much anywhere I had to put a hard edge to fix shading issues, I had to split the uv shells. It was a balancing act deciding where I wanted to split the shells and where I wanted to keep the seam for texturing.
As you know, if you have a softened normal on >= 90 degree angle, the normal map bakes in the shading info to correct it.The first time I actually baked it, I did it with all soft normals, and it looked great in Maya High Quality viewport. Then I took it into Marmoset and mental ray, and the shading showed through the normal map. I found this tutorial http://www.svartberg.com/tutorials/article_normalmaps/normalmaps.html which explains when to use hard edges. I then redid everything adding in hard edges where I could, but it requires UV shell borders everywhere you have a hard edge, so I had to split up the UV shells much of the time for shading, and sacrifice having a unified shell.
2. Baking AO into the diffuse: I wanted to be able to bake the AO into the diffuse, both to make it cheaper, and to better help texturing. This meant that some pieces (for example the receiver piece of the barrels) had to have a unique upper and lower receiver because the AO was different. The AO isn't technically perfect since I couldn't bake AO on parts that could move, but it is good enough to fool the eye.
3. Mirrored pieces: While I've had mixed experiences with support for mirrored normal maps, I avoided these for the most part because of the texturing. I wanted to avoid repeated texture details that could be seen from the most prominent angles.
4. Repeated texture details: As mentioned before, I opted to give pieces unique texture space if overlapping would have meant seeing an obvious repeated texture.
5. High poly sculpt: There were a couple areas where I didn't mirror because I wanted the freedom to sculpt the high poly in mudbox with unique detail without being constricted by a mirrored edge seam. For example, it isn't obvious in the render but all relevant edges have been worn and dinged up.
Some specific decisions:
- The boxy receivers required a unique upper and lower piece due to AO, because I wanted the freedom to be able to paint grime and wear around pieces that joined into it, and because the receivers attached at different places and so panels and rivets got cut off halfway and were out of place if they both used the same texture.
- I didn't double up the sides of the leg when it looks like they could be because you can see both sides of the leg at the same time since the legs as a whole were duplicated. That was one area was I anticipated obvious repeated detail.
- The arms required unique uv space for left and right because, while it isn't shown in the single image I posted, in the high poly from other angles you can see that the crank assemblies on each side are very different. If I wanted to fill the blank space on one side with some paneling, it would clash with the attach points for pieces on the other side.
Basically, the bottom line for me was that this cannon had some asymmetrical design choices that limited how much I could use the normal uv optimization tricks. The other reason is that when on the job, you have hard limits and strict decisions that are dictated by programmers or leads. The whole point of this portfolio piece for me was to see what I could do, and how far I could push it when I wasn't restricted by those limits. That said, it is still a game art piece, so I wanted to employ as many optimizations as I could.
The perforated barrel was a perfect example of this. Realistically, yea the holes could be done with a normal map, and it cut it down to about 14k. It doesn't look as good (I tried it, this is what it looks like LINK ). If this was outside in a crowded battlefield, the normal mapped method makes much more sense. But if it was in a bombed out building that occluded the view to most of the battlefield, or the player uses it as part of a mission, the polycount becomes a justified expense.
The point I'm trying to make is that is that as much as possible, all of the expensive parts of the model were carefully thought out decisions like they would be in on a real project, with the only difference being that art took more of a precedence being that it is a portfolio piece, and no programmer was going to kill me in my sleep for tanking the framerate
Wow that post got long. Anyway, I don't want to come off as defensive, but I do want to explain that these were conscious decisions and what their rationale was. That said, if there are still areas you think are unnecessarily wasteful, I would welcome the critique.
Oh and i'm not nagging you to absolutely change this, but keeping it in mind till next time can also be a huge time saver.
Only significant thing that is left out is that I'll probably do either a fake environment texture, or an environment shader for the telescope lens. Anything else is fair game.
This is rendered using Marmoset.
The base seems a little flat, the way you have it set up it almost looks as if the 4 segments jutting out could bend down and prop up the main turret, you may want to explore that. Giving it a more dynamic base would also help this prop sit in any given environment, flat or rugged.
Right now the flaking yellow paint seems a bit too plain. It's as if the base turret was simply painted yellow, nothing more. You may consider putting less deteriorated paint in some solid areas, like some of the larger panels, or the base of the turret barrels, and give more nuances to the paint job. Nothin' major, maybe some red diagnol stripes, or simple military numbering. Just something other than the flat yellow. I know it's not easy given the overall detailing of the turret, but even just a single number or decal somewhere on the paint would add a lot of depth to the object.
Great piece though, certainly damn near finished, good stuff!
The paint is either totally unworn or completely scraped off, there's no in-between values. I'd highly suggest going back in and making some areas 50% worn off or similar, and making the middles of some of these areas worn off, not purely the edges. In addition, much of the worn off paint is located in areas where contact with humans/other parts of the machinery wouldn't happen enough to warrant the heavy scrapes there. I'd also consider dropping the spec brightness on the paint a lot.
The gears and other bare metal areas that are exposed or are moving parts are barely touched at all. I'd go back in and add in some scrapes to those areas while removing a lot of the overdone paint scrapes.
Create a separate mesh chunk for the lens, give it a new material, and then set spec sharpness either really high, or to zero(full on reflection) in marmoset.
almost feels like you want to go for a worn construction equipment wear on this. Go all the way with that and it could look cool. get some ref though for sure. CG textures is ace.
cool stuff so far!
Where the paint has been worn away, try adding some primer/base coat that expands a fair bit further than the paint coat, it's likely that the paint coat may have been worn away but only through to the primer for the most part.
Nice piece though, looks great in Marmoset.
I agree about the paint. U can check out Stefan Morrel's hard surface texturing tutorial (if u google this it should work)
Also i see only hi-res bake in the Normal. Didnt u plan to overlay it with scratched paint Normals?
The only crit I have so far is - More Blood Angels Red, More Boltgun Metal, More Mithril Silver and less Burnished Gold/Brazen brass and Bad Moon Yellow.
I did full color wheel tests on the paint, and red and yellow were the best fit for the look I was envisioning. I'm trying to steer a bit away from red for totally unrelated reasons, which are that a lot of stuff in my portfolio is red already, including some future warhammer style props I might work on next. So I think I'm gonna stick with the yellow primarily for the variety, but I agree that red was the other obvious choice.
Keep it up, loving the progress, would be great to see this in a mock-up enviroment, some grass, mud, shells and other paraphernalia littered around.
Very nice bake!
There was some stuff I wanted to add like decals and a more orky color scheme to add a bit more of a warhammer feel, but there wasn't any of that in the reference, and I didn't take that into account when I built the model. As a result all the details in the sculpt prevented me from adding much because there wasn't any logical space. That factor is definitely something I'm going to take into account at the start of my next model to try to plan out better.
I don't think I'm going to include it in a scene at this point.
-Buddikaman
You could, in a matter of an hour or 2, have a pedestal built for this that has a grass texture and some grass planes to quickly, easily, and most importantly, effectively ground it in some context.
I'm going to pass this around to the team tomorrow, they'll love it I'm sure.
DOW2 was what got me interested in the warhammer style in the first place, so thats awesome. I kinda moved away from the painted style a bit, but the dow2 stuff is great texture/style reference.
at first, i really didnt like the toothed gears, but u made it work! I