Vehicle Design

Patackular

It’s a bit insane but here is my first vehicle design. It’s based on a hot rod design, surrounding a post-apocalyptic setting where the brain of lead guitarist for ZZ Top, Billy Gibbons has mutated and been fused into the infamous Eliminator that has been patched up with various parts.

I’ve listed some of the parts to help identify them:
Bone wing mirror
Skull gun support
Brain driver
Fedora Hat
Toxic barrel waste fuel with tube
Open hood engine
Exhaust pipes running along the side
Custom fitted plates to cover damage on the wheel covers



This is intended for the Unreal engine and I want to get as much feedback on appearance, modelling....anything really, before I move on. 4983 tris.

n88tr

It's a bit all over the place. Some symmetry might help pull it together with the wheel spikes and big exhaust pipes.

I feel the concept but it just needs a bit more polish... continue your vision for it, expand on it some more.

Patackular

Been having some difficulty with getting my vehicle into Unreal. As far as I’m aware I’ve set up the .ini and .uc files correctly, having corrected them from before and although the Unreal editor compiles, it comes up with the following errors.

http://i740.photobucket.com/albums/xx49/Patackular/Compile_error_1.jpg

I’ve tried to remedy these by implementing the files the directory appears to be looking for, but to no avail.

Patackular

Thanks for the advice n88t, by the way, I'll get around to it but I wanted to try a test design in the Unreal engine as soon as I could.

Patackular

Here's my latest design. I've squashed and simplified the shape which I think gives it a more appealing and stylised look.



4120 tris

Matroskin

looks cool to me.

The spiky stuff on the roof have rectangular shape from Front view, but instead they could sharpen.

Kitteh

It looks like a ridiculous cartoon car. If that's what you're going for, then good work.

gsokol

I can't lie..I digged the first version much more. Still had a stylized look, but more believable. Your new version looks like sonic the hedgehog.

The first one had a cooler feel to it. The style of the car and the hat on top made the car look like a 1920's gangster. I think that could be a really cool theme to go with.

Rufuss

I prefer the first version aswell though i dont like the 6 wheel thing.
I think the first version with 4 wheels and maybe a more symmetrical front would look cool.

Clay renders would be nice aswell :poly134:

Patackular

Much appreciate all the feedback guys. I've thought it over and in considering all the suggestions I've had as well as what I wanted to head towards, this design seemed the most appropriate alteration.

Clay renders as requested:









3966 tris

Unwrap, 2048:

Matroskin

looks cool.

The hat would bother driver though (it's edge will be pushing into driver's back).

Exhaust pipes r too straight, they could be more shooth and curved.

And a minor thing - skull could have a hole on the side for empty rounds to come out

roosterMAP

i like the style. kinda like Dr. Zuse. (misspelled)

Alterboy

Really cool design nice work

Patackular

looks cool.

The hat would bother driver though (it's edge will be pushing into driver's back).

Exhaust pipes r too straight, they could be more shooth and curved.

And a minor thing - skull could have a hole on the side for empty rounds to come out

How do you mean, I didn't intend that the driver sit on the bonnet.....but that does sound cool.

I'll have a play with the pipes and like the hole idea

Thanks for all the comments guys.

Patackular

Completed a sculpt which has basic refinement around the hubcaps, hat, barrel lids and the front grill.



Also thought of including my modelling work-flow too.

Patackular

Hmmmmm, 12,000 tris too many for Unreal 3 vehicle?

PredatorGSR

No, not really, but your vehicle doesn't look like it needs to be anywhere close to 12k tris, at least from what I can tell. Basically you just need detail to define the silhouette on something like this. The body in that screenshot you posted looks like the right density, but all the details look way to expensive, and for no real reason, they are just dense all over. The lights, hat, skull and wheels in particular look like they are way more dense than they need to be.

Patackular

Ok, thanks for the input. I'll get on it :thumbup:

felipefrango

Yeah, I second what Predator said. Pretty much every part there could be optimized. Even the cannons shooting out of the skull's mouth has loops that could easily be removed. Great design though, wanna see it textured.

Patackular

Thanks! Oh, yeah. Missed those on the gun. I really wanna get around to texturing it although I'm really pushed for time at the moment and lacking a tad for inspiration, but it will be done!

felipefrango

Yeah, I understand, but you really should clean the mesh as much as possible before you even unwrap it, as it can get pretty ugly if you try to change the topology once it's textured.

dfinlay

I agree with the others about optimizing your mesh. It looks pretty cool, but here are some things you may want to consider:

- Drop the poly count of your skull in half or more. Just make sure the profile shape of the skull is correct and that you have indentations for the eye sockets and nose cavity. Your texture can take care of rest of the detail for that.

- The backs of your headlights (chrome part) seem pretty heavy on polys. You could probably drop the poly count in half on them and add those saved polys to the side of the car and maybe even add some door seams to it

- There is some weird shading on the hubcaps. See how the mesh looks like a web going around your hubcap? Take those floating verts and snap them to the center vert of your hubcap. That should fix your shading.

Patackular

Sweet. Cheers guys, much appreciated. :icon60:

Patackular

I've got a problem. Whenever I go to Render to Texture, in 3ds Max 2010 to render out my Normal, with the projection modifier, it keeps introducing 'Automatic Flatten UVs' modifier into the stack. Doing this just flattens out the UVs, disregarding my unwrapping. I had this problem with Max 2009 and could solve it by re-introducing UnwrapUVW and collapsing it, but this hasn't worked after several attempts. I've also tried exporting and importing my mesh but to no avail. Anyone have any suggestions?

ManxViking

In the Render to Texture dialog you need to change the Use Automatic Unwrap tickbox to Use Existing Channel, it's assuming that you don't have an unwrap on your model, and defaults to the oh so amazing results of automatic unwrap.

Patackular

Just fixed it. Cheers Manx, it turned out that the Mapping Co-ordinates channels weren't right.

Patackular

Had a go at optimisation with the suggestions in mind, now at 5160 tris.



Finally got a base texture on, with my envisaged design. I know there are plenty of seams showing and parts that need touching up but it's only in base format and I wanted to show the kind of thing I'm going for. Need to think about what I'm gonna do for the engine part, given how bare it is.

felipefrango

Honestly I think it could be optimized even more. You could get rid of a lot of geometry on the hat and on the ending caps of the exhaust pipes coming out of the back. The tri count isn't high or anything it's just that those loops aren't doing you any good where they are, IMHO they could be used elsewhere to enhance the silhouette where it's too blocky.

Ghostscape

God that skylight render is really killing the texture work right now. I'm not sure if its just the bad lighting or if you're using unsaturated colors but it looks really misfit with the cartoony style of the vehicle. Also it looks like someone attacked it with a sandblaster - anyone putting a giant hat and a skull with a gun on their car is going to have it evenly painted.

Patackular

Honestly I think it could be optimized even more. You could get rid of a lot of geometry on the hat and on the ending caps of the exhaust pipes coming out of the back. The tri count isn't high or anything it's just that those loops aren't doing you any good where they are, IMHO they could be used elsewhere to enhance the silhouette where it's too blocky.

Ok, well I wanted to help emphasise the lip of the barrels (yeah they're meant to to be barrels) buy using extra geometry there. I know the normals aren't doing much for it at the moment but I hoped to increase their intensity around areas like the barrels and I thought that shaping them as much as possible with geometry first would help to do this.

I'm running out of the time I have available with this project but I appreciate your advice. Are there any parts of the model you can suggest that could use more loops?

Patackular

God that skylight render is really killing the texture work right now. I'm not sure if its just the bad lighting or if you're using unsaturated colors but it looks really misfit with the cartoony style of the vehicle. Also it looks like someone attacked it with a sandblaster - anyone putting a giant hat and a skull with a gun on their car is going to have it evenly painted.

It's probably both, what is the best way to show this texture? Self illumination and three Omni lights?
Regarding the texture I was hoping to go for a kind of hybrid, mixing a comic style with realistic surface definition and as if it had received some wear and tear, hence the abrasion around the sides. Perhaps more of an overkill you reckon?

Patackular

Hey guys, I've been trying to get a sample of music to play on entering my custom vehicle in the Unreal 3 Editor and I've had some success. The music plays on entering the vehicle but then continues after I exit and then starts up on top of the playing one. Ideally I want it to stop and start as I get in and out of the vehicle but I don't know how to do this.

I've had a look online and basically got it to play through entering

"EnterVehicleSound=SoundCue'VH_Vehicle_Test_3.Audio.Radio_1Cue'"

in the Content.ini. I'm pretty sure that I need to be running it as the 'Engine Sound', like...

"// Engine sound.
Begin Object Class=AudioComponent Name=HellBenderEngineSound
SoundCue=SoundCue'A_Vehicle_Hellbender.SoundCues.A_Vehicle_Hellbender_EngineIdle'
End Object
EngineSound=HellBenderEngineSound
Components.Add(HellBenderEngineSound);"

..but I don't know how to set up my audio, within the editor so that it compiles properly.

All I have is at the moment is a USound and a USoundCue in my package.

Can anyone help me with this.?

Patackular

Coming towards the end of this texturing, although I seem to get this annoying divide in my texture where the mirrored parts meet down the centre of the vehicle. I'm pretty sure it's not a seam issue and wondered if it was a lighting one instead, since it appears with three Omnis in Max and in Unreal 3 but not with a Skylight in Max. :S

It's most noticeable down across the hat and windscreen.

Anyway, here's my vehicle with a diffuse, normal and specular.

Patackular

If anyone would like to test this in the Unreal 3 Editor then please do from.....

http://www.4shared.com/file/ckdUdCd9/Vehicle_Distribute_1.html

....and let me know what you think.

Patackular

I tried to get this working in the Unreal 3 game using the Vehicle Set Mutator but for some reason it doesn't appear in the level when I play it.

felipefrango

I know jack about Unreal so I can't help out with that...But regarding the rest, I really think you should revisit the textures. They feel a little bit whashed out and desaturated. Plus the damage you tried to convey doesn't look convincing, it just fades too smoothly to look like damaged paint. Try removing big chunks of paint and showing the naked metal plates underneath, you can play with the specular maps too and make the bare metal parts shine differently than the painted parts.

On a less important note, I think the green channel on the normal map for the floor plate is inverted, the details seem to be carved in instead of popping out.

Patackular

Ok, I'll have a crack at that.

Ohhh yeaaaah, so they are, haha. I'll change that too, thanks.

felipefrango

I hope I didn't sound too harsh on my previous post, it was not my intention. It's just that I like the model, it reminds me of Whacky Racers in a very positive way, but I feel you kinda dropped the ball on the textures and I'd hate to see the potential this model has wasted because of this.

Patackular

No, no, I really appreciate the advice. Haha, cool I'll have to see if I could add some 'Whacky' back into the texture.

gauss

I'd like to see you go all-out in one direction with the car body finish. Now it seems like it's holding on to its original look but with some rust creeping in, and it just looks muddled. It'd be a lot cooler just to see it wearing a balls-out super high gloss paint job. If you haven't noticed already, there are more than enough chipped and peeling metal anythings around in the 3d game art world; and if you're just learning Unreal (a good idea for anyone making games right now) it'll be a good exercise to learn to get the shaders looking like you want it. A thought.

Patackular

Thanks Gauss. Yeah, see what you mean and it seems something that's been highlighted a lot by people. When I've got a moment for this I'll try for a smooth finish.

I think my problem is that I don't know how to go about painting a gloss finish for a car and the only way I could think of projecting some sort of surface definition, was through wear and tear. Can you recommend me a method of creating a 'new looking' surface?

felipefrango

Just go for a bright color on the diffuse and make a nice specular map and use high glossiness values on your shader. That is, assuming you're going "next-gen", with specular and normal maps and such. If you're aiming for old school diffuse only I don't know what to recommend, really. ;T

Patackular

Had a spare 5 minutes.

jacob07777

This has come a long way since I first saw it Patrick. I definitely think the texture could still use a bit more work. Those pipes look like one solid metal texture without any kind of detailing on them right now. There may be a bit too much grain on them also, the exhaust on cars like that usually looks much more shiny and clean. If you want a dirty look for em, maybe just put some blackened burned marks around the ends of the pipes or whatever else soot n such may build up. That hat looks to have symmetry on it? If your normal map doesn't match up well near the ends you'll get that dark to light look where the split meets in the middle. Get some rims on them wheels too, but keep it at. It's comin along

Patackular

Hey, Jacob! Much appreciate all the suggestions. I had to submit my work by April the 28th so I didn't get a chance to improve on much, but your advice is still really helpful for future work Thanks for all your help throughout, helped me get me the grade I wanted.