Sketchbook: Zelenkov

Zelenkov

Hi there. I'm Zelenkov. I've been modeling for about a year and currently a student studying 3D and trying to improve. I'm taking a few classes and decided to post up some work for critique, so I can improve. I'll post new stuff every week. Cheers!

Zelenkov

Here is the first piece I did last week. It was a bit of learning curve as far as asset creation goes. I've learned a lot, especially about the lowpoly modeling, but there is still lot of stuff I need to learn. In Marmorset I could get the alphas for the lamp wires to properly show. From one angle they would look fine, but from the other you would simply see a shadow. And I also need to learn a lot about texturing

raul

Not a bad start. I see a bunch of things that should be tweaked out. What im really curious is, how close are you to the reference? Can you post that up?

Zelenkov

Here is the the reference I was working from.

Spark

Zelenkov, you are missing an important map to make alphas work, and that is called an opacity map. Hence the reason your wires going around the glass are showing up as the solid lopoly planes, try creating the opacity map ( white is opaque, and black is transparent, with grey being inbetween ) and make sure you have the culling box checked.

Spark

Zelenkov

Here is the highpoly of my next prop. This week I'm doing binoculars.

Right now working on the lowpoly. And wondering how I'm doing to do the glass pieces of the binoculars...

raul

Holy crap dude! Is this the same zelenkov? High poly looks clean.

for the stuff we doing for class. You will have to detach the pieces and use a combination of a really high spec on ur on your material as well as painting in values in your spec map to control the highligths and such. So that you can use different materials inside of marmoset.

Zelenkov

I'll probably spend another day on trying to fix this.

raul

Cast looks almost clean!

SOme of the things i would recommend you do, 1st is to fix your uvs a little bit. Not sure what you are using for uv mapping. But clicking pelt and doing a relax doesn't cut it. Using uv layout and all those programs dont give you perfect uvs at the click of button either. You need to be sure that you are checking your a) pixel density on your uv islands. b) that you are going through by hand move things like the big chunk i highlighted in green. That should be one huge rectangle. It will make it a lot easier to texture. One thing i would recommend is thinking ahead when you are modeling, how will your modeling will affect your texture and how you will a uv map it.



The next thing are the weird waves you are getting all over the place. If you are using a cage, your cage needs to be really tight. i prefer just adding the needed geometry to avoid them. Normally you get waves because your low poly cannot hold the normal map too well, as you are lacking geometry. Which in most cases are things like bevels and such. Do a 1st pass on your low poly, add "shit uvs" ( thanx Spark! ) and do a quick cast. see what works and what doesn't. Then go ahead and fix what doesn't work. Your clean uvs should be the last thing you should be doing.





For the lenses you migth want to try using planes, test to see what they look like. An alternative to that, would be collapsing the inner edges that make up the inside of the lenses. In that same note, you have a lot of inner tris you dont need, collapse them to help your final budget.

and you might wanna post a wireframe of the back. god knows what you are hiding back there! :P love Raul.

phillip.bailey

Raul summed it up for the most part. I agree. Also, remember to get rid of vertices that don't make up part of the outer silhouette. I can see a few that Raul didn't point out. Did you find reference for the back of binoculars? It would help a bunch.
-Phil

Zelenkov

Well, here is what I've the normals looking better.

raul

hey man, casting came out clean! Now, take some time to work on the textures. I did a little pant overs for you dont mind.

Spark

Gene, the binoculars are definetely looking good, though you need to work on some of your layouts and such of your lowpoly along with working on reduction and adding to certian parts. One, show your hipoly wires, as I want to make sure you are having good topology flow and handling things correctly. And second, make sure you dont just take your diffuse and throw it into crazy bump as raul is suggesting:P ( specular maps take time and there should be no shortcuts in its creation ) Seriously better in these few short props then I have seen from you, keep up the good work.

Spark

Zelenkov

Spark, raul, phillip thanks guys! I definatelly learned a lot these last few weeks. As far as highpoly, lowpoly and normals go - I'm improving. But as far as diffuse and spec goes - I'm lost. I still don't understand how to properly execute them and enhance my model, instead of ruining it. So, I'll be focusing more on that from now on.

Here is the highpoly wire:

raul

What spark said!

Zelenkov

Hey guys! Sry, for not updating last week, was very busy. Here is the PPK Walther handgun I've been working on. I'm still working on the textures. I'm determined to texture this gun properly and polished. But on the bright side, I'm doing good a far as lowpoly and normals go. Cheers.

Zelenkov

Here is the reference I was working from.

Zelenkov

Starting to get better with textures. Still could use a lot of work.

Vrav

Not bad. Seem to be some smoothing errors in the normal map (ie also in the mesh)... maybe the lighting. Ahdunno. Most obvious is there in the main barrel above the trigger, second image - the whole thing sort of has that wonky-smoothing feel... just me?

Doesn't look like you unwrapped it with any mirroring going on. In that case, you could always try baking object-space, though it's better practice to get TS looking right.

Texture looks pretty cool otherwise if you ask me, even if the material definition is a bit plastic-y. No spec map?

raul

hmmm...your final textures, some details seemed to be left out from your high poly. You either didnt model the stuff, or maybe they are not showing. Also, i see lot of unused tris and stuff you could fix. Next to that is the textures. Diffuse is looking alright, keep working on it. And you defineately need a spec map in there. Looking like a toy gun right now, like vrav said.