My hand painted textures are not as good as some of the people around here... but I am trying. Here is where I am at. I am almost done. Need to really finish the 2 ends and then do specular maps for everything.
I am aware of the hole in my model near the left side... something to do with my export settings on my obj. It is be fixed.
Thanks guys!
ScoobyDoofus - Thanks man! It is a 2048.
Been a while... since I posted in this thread. I like keeping all my work in one place!
Here is my current project. Some of the work was over here... Other thread
I am fairly new to this topology for character stuff... would love some feedback. Is it really bad? Passable? Are the tris bad? I see some people with straight quads down the legs and it looks pretty... but I would be missing some silhouette.
I plan on tweaking the bottom of the feet next. Didn't really do anything to those.
It is important to note that this is as far up the leg his actual leg goes. He is wearing pants so I just cut them off.
C&C very much appreciated.
well it depends...the density of the toes is a bit to much imo and i think some of the topo could be optimized as most likely feet are never seen that up close.
Regarding the silhouette: will these polys make a difference from the view/distance for the final presentation, if not why then put them there in the first place?..thats just how i think about that.
else the character sculpt does look really awesome and i am looking forward to the final.
RAWTalent - Thanks man! I hope it helps on your handpainted textures journey! That was one of my first attempts at it and I found it to be really difficult!
Lonewolf - Hell yeah man! That means a lot coming from you. I am always drooling over your hard surface. And I really dig the new site
Piesandbombs - Thanks man glad you like! Blood sweat and tears went into that thing! lol
Next - Thanks man! Yeah I know what you mean! I will try and knock down the tris on the toes when I get the whole character lowpoly blocked in. I am aiming a little bit high for this guy... 17,000ish. When I get all of him in there I will start pulling from other areas and putting it in the more important areas.
This is a TERRIBLE armadillo! What happen to the usual blue colored low poly eh? Can't wait to see this thing textured!...Well, I have to wait anyhow...:p
Here is the unwrap. I would really love some feed back... as I never really do get feed back on my unwraps. I found while doing this wondering if I am doing anything unconventional.
Like I end up being afraid to turn UV shells, or how tight is too tight, I have seen people have looser packs, how much variation in pixel density is okay, should I be squaring off pieces like his arm and leg, does that even matter?
Immediately I know that some of the stuff is too tight... there are some shells touching the 1 to 1 box. I will be moving some of those around. And I will probably be shrinking some things down too...
But overal for a rough pack is it okay? I think I am aiming for a 4096 texture. Is that too much? I am being pretty lenient on the size as this is only for my portfolio.
As Alberto said, 2048 should be quite enough. I usually turn my UV islands so that they make sense, as in have most stuff facing up (also having similar stuff close together for organization's sake) or maybe turned 90° if it fits better, but not at some random angle. It relates to squaring UVs, it's useful depending on the texture pattern for the polys on that island. Usualy stuff with straight lines and angles can benefit from squared UVs - even if it distorts everything a bit overall it could still be beneficial if the straight line in your texture translates to a straight line in the model. In some cases in a less distorted, relaxed island you would have to paint diagonal lines to make up for a straight line in the model and it could look blurry and more distorted than if you had squared the UVs. It's all a matter of compensating distortion with ease to paint IMHO. I don't think it's the case with your model though, I am no expert but the UVs seem pretty well packed considering the tightness you've just mentioned.
Here are some polycount threads with incredible information on the subject:
Really appreciate it guys I ended up getting everything packed pretty good. But now I am considering repacking.
I agree 4096 is overkill... but what about 2 2048s? I hadn't considered that until I saw onelunglewis doing it on his character.
In anycase... Been playing with some polypainting. It is my first time doing so. I feel comfortable enough now with posting it. lol Was really hating it until recently.
Well, even being smaller in size having two textures would mean more texture fetches and draw calls, not sure it's much cheaper. Even so cause I imagine you would have two sets of 2048 textures with two diffuse, normal, spec, etc, right? How does the UV layout look at the moment, if you really do need the extra space I think you could just put things in a 1:2 layout. 2048x4096 but really 1024x2048 should be enough unless it's seen ultra close. I think separate textures are justifiable when there's the need to load things isolated. If your character was customizable and it could swap between different armors it could make sense to make the naked body and the armor in separate sheets, for example, but if it's going to be seen as a whole all the time one texture should suffice.
felipefrango - yeah I can see where you are coming from and all of that makes sense. You said something in there that I sort of have been thinking all along. You said unless it's seen ultra close... My thought process is more along the lines of that. I have never really been able to discuss this with anyone, but if this is for portfolio... is that not technically like being ultra close? Similar to like an in-game cinematic... I had heard of such a situation where a character had been textured on 4 4096 maps because of how close it was being viewed within an in-game cinematic. Does that not seam like overkill? lol
Kinda seems like artists are always more forgiving of map size when the final piece is jaw dropping.
Well, as I said, you'd only need multiple textures in a scenario where they could not be loaded together all the time, as in customizable parts, etc. (unless you mean like, one diffuse, one normal, one spec and one whatever, but four 4096 sets of each sounds crazy!) If you really need the resolution I'd still use one huge texture but still, 4096 is HUGE, when I say the model would have to be seen ultra close I mean like, really really close.
You can check what resolution is being used by the engine by using a custom mip map texture, where each mip level is manually given a flat color. You then apply it on the model and you can see by the colors the distance needed for certain levels to show up and the area they actually cover.
I did a quick texture here so you can try it out (preview below, size is drastically reduced). The red square is the original 4096 texture, and to the right you have the mip levels (2048, 1024, 512 and so forth). It's compressed as DXT1 but still takes 10mb of disc space, I think it's even more when its loaded into memory?
I've applied it to the character I'm working on at the moment for a side project. You can see that while it fills a good part of the screen and can be seen in detail, its using a lot of the 512 and 1024 levels, the 2048 shows up in a tiny, unimportant bit and the 4096 pixels are far from being needed.
I had to get really close to his face for the 4096 level to begin to show up, and even then it appears only on a few polys.
I had to fill the entire screen with his face for the 4096 level to show up properly, but really, it wouldn't look that blurry if all you had was a 2048. What game retains such a high level of detail at this distance anyway?
Here it is the way it would look during gameplay. It's actually using the 128 level for most of it! I'm working on a 2048x1024 texture cause I'm assuming he could be used for cutscenes and other situations where he would be seen upclose (the gameplay model could be a LOD mesh but use the same texture, I reckon it'd be more expensive to have a different texture for the small version, would be two separate textures loaded into memory).
In the game I'm working on, we had 1024 textures for every ship, but when inspecting the models through this method it was clear that the highest level was almost NEVER seen, the camera would only show the 512 version 99% of the time!
And this was for the player ship, other players and NPCs use the 256 level at best, and that's only when they get closer to the camera.
I guess my point is I see no necessity or advantages in working with huge textures for now. Working on such a high resolution can actually make your final texures blurry if you downsize then in the end (I'm all for working straight at the final resolution), not to mention handling such big files can be very CPU intensive.
I agree with you that in the end you just wanna make sure your porftolio piece looks as awesome as possible and of course, that might involve methods, post fx and other stuff that wouldn't necessarily fit a real production scenario, and I think people who browse portfolios looking for employees know that, or at least they should. My advice would be to not use multiple texture sets (again, unless you split body/accessories or something that makes sense) and try different resolutions, you'll see there's no visible gain in working with gigantic textures. There are simply more pixels in the texture than pixels on the screen.
Personally, I'm all for making the portfolio piece look good but if you can do that AND show that you understand the technical tidbits that go on in the background I think it's a lot better.
Anyway, sorry for the long ass post, hope it helped! haha
Wow man! Best visual example of mip mapping I have ever seen. I really appreciate you taking the time to post this. Extremely informative!
So you are definitely right about the 4096. I went ahead and did a couple of test casts and the 4096 I am realizing is overkill. It is HUGE! lol Though I am not lying about that friend of mine who did a character for a game on 4 - 6 4096 maps. The head was on a 4096, the hands were on a 4096, Torso, Leg, ect.
Which I guess is why I didn't think it was a big deal. Because it seems we are just moving in that direction.
Yet, I still think the 2048 isn't enough. With the 2048 I am getting some stair-stepping on his armor pieces and his fur. And just to be on the same page... I would like to have images at this close.
So with that in mind and since the 4096 is ruled out. I guess I am unsure of what to do. You said to stay away from multiple textures. Yet a 1:2 ratio texture for a character seems unconventional? Never really heard of that till now.
So the directions I could go are...
A) 2 2048 sets. He has enough equipment (3 swords and armor) that I might be able to justify putting all the armor and swords on one set. And all the skin and cloth on the other. Which would give me that ability to adjust shaders uniquely. Could have control on the skin, and control over the metal individually. I understand it is more texture calls... but this isn't necessarily going into a game? Seems like people forget about the technicalities when you slap them in the face with an awesome piece of art. They go... "texture size? Who cares it looks amazing! Tri count? Who care it is next gen! It looks amazing!"
lol
A 2048 x 4096. This would give me the amount I needed yet keep it all on a single map. Not sure how I feel about this method as I never see people go with a 1:2 or 2:1 character texture layout. Just seems odd. I know it can be done... but why do I not see it very often?
Sorry if I am testing your patience. :P And I am leaning towards Method A...
Hah, glad to see it helped. 4096 textures are so huge, I actually think 2048 are big enough then for a 4096 you have FOUR times that resolution, it's insane. Now, what game was that character your friend did for? Hard to believe it actually shipped that way.
Now, as far as those two directions, you can get the exact same visual result with either approach, you could even have two separate shaders for the skin and armor in the same texture sheets. Technically it could go either way depending on the needs of the game but portfolio-wise IMHO its not all that important. I think I'd go with A as well. Non square textures for characters aren't all that uncommon I guess, I agree it looks ideal to keep it square but sometimes it just fits better in a rectangle. In my character what made me do it was the big square cape, and I couldn't just cram it in there as it would be viewed from behind a lot. But, for example, Yuna from FFX used 3:1 textures:
You mention you're getting stair-stepping artifacts, that sounds more like the result of bad UV unwrapping than lack of resolution but we can only help ya further with some pictures of the UVs and the test bakes you've been doing.
Interesting! I can see where you are coming from. Here is the unwrap I was using.
I am mirroring an entire shoulder and arm, leg, leg armor and shoulder armor. There are one or two pieces that are turned kinda arbitrarily but those really aren't the ones I had problems with.
Hmm, your UV layout seems fine, if anything it could use a bit more padding, but as you said, things aren't rotated arbitrarily. Looks more like aliasing artifacts from the bake?
If you're using Max, try activating the supersamplers in the Render Settings (F10). You don't have to use these specific settings/filters, play around with the different filters and compare the results:
Thanks man! Yeah I knew about turning on the AA for normal maps. Guess I should thought about that. As said earlier they were test casts. Well in anycase I tried a second unwrap and ended up going with a 2:1 ratio. 2048x4096.
When I tried separating them into separate maps it didn't seem to want to work as efficiently as I thought it would. Seemed like any way I split it up there was too much on one set and not enough on the other, and the only way around it was to start mixing up the material types which defeated the purpose of having two maps to begin with.
So all on one map
Worked out pretty nice actually. Got the swords on there this time too. Initially It was going to be a 1:1 with a smaller 2:1 for the swords. But having them all on one worked out. I get a bit more resolution (not a ton more) and less texture calls
Wow, I allways thought mips were selected per pixel, rather than per triangle, Now am wondering how I failed to notice the transition. Do all engines do this??
Honestly, I've got no idea since I know jack about shader code and I've only tested this in Unity. I assume stuff like anisotropic filtering evens out the transitions? Maybe it's dependant on how the shader is written? Plugging the texture into Xoliul's shader it shows much better transitions between each level:
Yeah, weird, huh. I don't know if it's Unity in general or just the shader I chose though. I'll test other shaders later tonight to see how it goes, I think that screenshot from Unity is just a default Diffuse Shader with nothing fancy in it. Also, maybe all game engines do it like this and Xoliul's has some sort of filter that looks better but isn't really worth it performance wise? It's a portfolio shader after all.
So it has been a while... Just been focusing on non 3d related school stuff. Got some time, got my polypaint cast, got him rigged, posed, and right now I am just doing some tests in 3point Shader.
Just base diffuse/polypaint, no spec... Just trying to get a SSS effect going. Still need to make the translucency map, but I have a pretty good idea on how to get that in and working.
Thank you Emma!
Got an update on that cylinder he was standing on in that last update.
I was kinda following the "anything goes" for stands in character contests. Not that this is too crazy... but I meant more for tricount. I tried to make it look not so decimated... yet still very generous.
I played around decimating in sculptris. Kinda interesting using the reduce brush... though not very practical. The base lowpoly was a combination of decimation master, sculptris, and some manual crunching in max.
Cheers! Almost onto texturing !!!!!!!! hfgjksah erwl
Was also playing around with rendering out some fur tiles for his goatee!
I think it is a lot easier to do in photoshop because you can do anything. I can't get it like yours because it actually breaks his wrist to get that silhouette. I tried to get it close but overall the pose feels forced and doesn't show his dagger too well.
I tried a second one but I am not a big fan of it either due to the foreshortening on his arm and overlap of the dagger and his arm.
Idk man I appreciate you taking the time though. If anything else we can take this over to my thread that way we are not cluttering the WAYWO thead.
Both of those look great !
They give more intent to the pose, looks much more threatening.
I think the left one would look better with the dagger pointing the other way around.
The thing I was thinking about is when the hand is bend in (but no bend sideways like in your pic) .. and ye it will probably hide part of the dagger.
Man, just needed to jump on here and say- great stuff. I love how your rat guy turned out. I feel like I might've mentioned before, it's very skaven feeling- love it.
Replies
I am aware of the hole in my model near the left side... something to do with my export settings on my obj. It is be fixed.
Looks good, let's see how the final turns out!
You can check the breakdown of each piece over in this thread.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1337559#post1337559
And I also sell all of it over on this site here!
In, that note..[ame="
Hope to see some awesome work from you soon!
ScoobyDoofus - Thanks man! It is a 2048.
Been a while... since I posted in this thread. I like keeping all my work in one place!
Here is my current project. Some of the work was over here... Other thread
I plan on tweaking the bottom of the feet next. Didn't really do anything to those.
It is important to note that this is as far up the leg his actual leg goes. He is wearing pants so I just cut them off.
C&C very much appreciated.
Regarding the silhouette: will these polys make a difference from the view/distance for the final presentation, if not why then put them there in the first place?..thats just how i think about that.
else the character sculpt does look really awesome and i am looking forward to the final.
Lonewolf - Hell yeah man! That means a lot coming from you. I am always drooling over your hard surface. And I really dig the new site
Piesandbombs - Thanks man glad you like! Blood sweat and tears went into that thing! lol
Next - Thanks man! Yeah I know what you mean! I will try and knock down the tris on the toes when I get the whole character lowpoly blocked in. I am aiming a little bit high for this guy... 17,000ish. When I get all of him in there I will start pulling from other areas and putting it in the more important areas.
Slew of updates on the lowpoly...
Here is the unwrap. I would really love some feed back... as I never really do get feed back on my unwraps. I found while doing this wondering if I am doing anything unconventional.
Like I end up being afraid to turn UV shells, or how tight is too tight, I have seen people have looser packs, how much variation in pixel density is okay, should I be squaring off pieces like his arm and leg, does that even matter?
Immediately I know that some of the stuff is too tight... there are some shells touching the 1 to 1 box. I will be moving some of those around. And I will probably be shrinking some things down too...
But overal for a rough pack is it okay? I think I am aiming for a 4096 texture. Is that too much? I am being pretty lenient on the size as this is only for my portfolio.
Here are some polycount threads with incredible information on the subject:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=70378
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80947
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53002
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=69961
Edit: Also, great character, looking really interesting so far.
I agree 4096 is overkill... but what about 2 2048s? I hadn't considered that until I saw onelunglewis doing it on his character.
In anycase... Been playing with some polypainting. It is my first time doing so. I feel comfortable enough now with posting it. lol Was really hating it until recently.
C&C always welcome.
felipefrango - yeah I can see where you are coming from and all of that makes sense. You said something in there that I sort of have been thinking all along. You said unless it's seen ultra close... My thought process is more along the lines of that. I have never really been able to discuss this with anyone, but if this is for portfolio... is that not technically like being ultra close? Similar to like an in-game cinematic... I had heard of such a situation where a character had been textured on 4 4096 maps because of how close it was being viewed within an in-game cinematic. Does that not seam like overkill? lol
Kinda seems like artists are always more forgiving of map size when the final piece is jaw dropping.
idk... just curious as to some thoughts on that.
I really appreciate the the time and advice man
You can check what resolution is being used by the engine by using a custom mip map texture, where each mip level is manually given a flat color. You then apply it on the model and you can see by the colors the distance needed for certain levels to show up and the area they actually cover.
I did a quick texture here so you can try it out (preview below, size is drastically reduced). The red square is the original 4096 texture, and to the right you have the mip levels (2048, 1024, 512 and so forth). It's compressed as DXT1 but still takes 10mb of disc space, I think it's even more when its loaded into memory?
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5691557/mip.dds
I've applied it to the character I'm working on at the moment for a side project. You can see that while it fills a good part of the screen and can be seen in detail, its using a lot of the 512 and 1024 levels, the 2048 shows up in a tiny, unimportant bit and the 4096 pixels are far from being needed.
I had to get really close to his face for the 4096 level to begin to show up, and even then it appears only on a few polys.
I had to fill the entire screen with his face for the 4096 level to show up properly, but really, it wouldn't look that blurry if all you had was a 2048. What game retains such a high level of detail at this distance anyway?
Here it is the way it would look during gameplay. It's actually using the 128 level for most of it! I'm working on a 2048x1024 texture cause I'm assuming he could be used for cutscenes and other situations where he would be seen upclose (the gameplay model could be a LOD mesh but use the same texture, I reckon it'd be more expensive to have a different texture for the small version, would be two separate textures loaded into memory).
In the game I'm working on, we had 1024 textures for every ship, but when inspecting the models through this method it was clear that the highest level was almost NEVER seen, the camera would only show the 512 version 99% of the time!
http://www.taikodom.com.br/images/midia/3/59_large.jpg
Even in the free rotation camera where the player can get up close the 1024 level only showed up in the parts closer to the camera.
http://www.taikodom.com.br/images/midia/3/55_large.jpg
And this was for the player ship, other players and NPCs use the 256 level at best, and that's only when they get closer to the camera.
I guess my point is I see no necessity or advantages in working with huge textures for now. Working on such a high resolution can actually make your final texures blurry if you downsize then in the end (I'm all for working straight at the final resolution), not to mention handling such big files can be very CPU intensive.
I agree with you that in the end you just wanna make sure your porftolio piece looks as awesome as possible and of course, that might involve methods, post fx and other stuff that wouldn't necessarily fit a real production scenario, and I think people who browse portfolios looking for employees know that, or at least they should. My advice would be to not use multiple texture sets (again, unless you split body/accessories or something that makes sense) and try different resolutions, you'll see there's no visible gain in working with gigantic textures. There are simply more pixels in the texture than pixels on the screen.
Personally, I'm all for making the portfolio piece look good but if you can do that AND show that you understand the technical tidbits that go on in the background I think it's a lot better.
Anyway, sorry for the long ass post, hope it helped! haha
So you are definitely right about the 4096. I went ahead and did a couple of test casts and the 4096 I am realizing is overkill. It is HUGE! lol Though I am not lying about that friend of mine who did a character for a game on 4 - 6 4096 maps. The head was on a 4096, the hands were on a 4096, Torso, Leg, ect.
Which I guess is why I didn't think it was a big deal. Because it seems we are just moving in that direction.
Yet, I still think the 2048 isn't enough. With the 2048 I am getting some stair-stepping on his armor pieces and his fur. And just to be on the same page... I would like to have images at this close.
So with that in mind and since the 4096 is ruled out. I guess I am unsure of what to do. You said to stay away from multiple textures. Yet a 1:2 ratio texture for a character seems unconventional? Never really heard of that till now.
So the directions I could go are...
A) 2 2048 sets. He has enough equipment (3 swords and armor) that I might be able to justify putting all the armor and swords on one set. And all the skin and cloth on the other. Which would give me that ability to adjust shaders uniquely. Could have control on the skin, and control over the metal individually. I understand it is more texture calls... but this isn't necessarily going into a game? Seems like people forget about the technicalities when you slap them in the face with an awesome piece of art. They go... "texture size? Who cares it looks amazing! Tri count? Who care it is next gen! It looks amazing!"
lol
Sorry if I am testing your patience. :P And I am leaning towards Method A...
Thanks for your time man!
Now, as far as those two directions, you can get the exact same visual result with either approach, you could even have two separate shaders for the skin and armor in the same texture sheets. Technically it could go either way depending on the needs of the game but portfolio-wise IMHO its not all that important. I think I'd go with A as well. Non square textures for characters aren't all that uncommon I guess, I agree it looks ideal to keep it square but sometimes it just fits better in a rectangle. In my character what made me do it was the big square cape, and I couldn't just cram it in there as it would be viewed from behind a lot. But, for example, Yuna from FFX used 3:1 textures:
You mention you're getting stair-stepping artifacts, that sounds more like the result of bad UV unwrapping than lack of resolution but we can only help ya further with some pictures of the UVs and the test bakes you've been doing.
I am mirroring an entire shoulder and arm, leg, leg armor and shoulder armor. There are one or two pieces that are turned kinda arbitrarily but those really aren't the ones I had problems with.
http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap#Anti-Aliasing
If you're using Max, try activating the supersamplers in the Render Settings (F10). You don't have to use these specific settings/filters, play around with the different filters and compare the results:
When I tried separating them into separate maps it didn't seem to want to work as efficiently as I thought it would. Seemed like any way I split it up there was too much on one set and not enough on the other, and the only way around it was to start mixing up the material types which defeated the purpose of having two maps to begin with.
So all on one map
Worked out pretty nice actually. Got the swords on there this time too. Initially It was going to be a 1:1 with a smaller 2:1 for the swords. But having them all on one worked out. I get a bit more resolution (not a ton more) and less texture calls
Wow, I allways thought mips were selected per pixel, rather than per triangle, Now am wondering how I failed to notice the transition. Do all engines do this??
Cool test bro.
Just base diffuse/polypaint, no spec... Just trying to get a SSS effect going. Still need to make the translucency map, but I have a pretty good idea on how to get that in and working.
Blah blah blah Update.
Keep it up!!
Got an update on that cylinder he was standing on in that last update.
I was kinda following the "anything goes" for stands in character contests. Not that this is too crazy... but I meant more for tricount. I tried to make it look not so decimated... yet still very generous.
I played around decimating in sculptris. Kinda interesting using the reduce brush... though not very practical. The base lowpoly was a combination of decimation master, sculptris, and some manual crunching in max.
Cheers! Almost onto texturing !!!!!!!! hfgjksah erwl
Was also playing around with rendering out some fur tiles for his goatee!
Full article
Seems like some engines also can make a pretty smooth tansition betwen the mip-maps.
To stay on topic, nice progress! I love the goatee alphas.
Got an update! Everything is a flat color except the hands and face. No speculars yet either.
Mainly just testing out the lighting and presentation. Angle will change slightly.
Both of those look great !
They give more intent to the pose, looks much more threatening.
I think the left one would look better with the dagger pointing the other way around.
The thing I was thinking about is when the hand is bend in (but no bend sideways like in your pic) .. and ye it will probably hide part of the dagger.
Aight I wonder what others think ?
That's Too Sexy!