Itsa bike!
polycounter lvl 19
Hey guys, I don't really post all that often (considering I've been lurking for what seems like forever), and even less with starting my own threads... so *gasp* here goes!
Here's a bike I've been working on. The high poly is basically to the level that I consider to be done enough to start on the low poly. Not entirely sure on what polygon budget to aim for, but I'd like to see quite a few of the details come through because for the wheels especially they add to the silhouette in the side profile.
Anyway, too much text, here's some images.
Ideally I'll go through what seems to be a strange process of jumping through hoops (at least from the small glances I've seen on forums) to get this into GTA4 once I'm done and take it for a spin
Cheers!
Here's a bike I've been working on. The high poly is basically to the level that I consider to be done enough to start on the low poly. Not entirely sure on what polygon budget to aim for, but I'd like to see quite a few of the details come through because for the wheels especially they add to the silhouette in the side profile.
Anyway, too much text, here's some images.
Ideally I'll go through what seems to be a strange process of jumping through hoops (at least from the small glances I've seen on forums) to get this into GTA4 once I'm done and take it for a spin
Cheers!
Replies
You sir are a freak.
P.S. hi babe
just kidding , that's great !!!
not sure it everything needs to be proxy modeled, be nice to see a few hard break ups. other than that wow fucking awesome
One crit....the back tire is looking pretty skinny.
How were planning on doing the low poly?
ShadowFox: cool bike! different design though, I went for more of a "Honda CBR 600 RR" look
oukruk: cheers! yeah should be fun doing bakes o_O
vcool: haha
OrganizedChaos: ta! lurking is so easy though
HandSandwich: thanks!!
AutospySoldier: yeah that's what I thought when making it too! had to double check, and yeah the bike that I was referring to only has a slightly bigger rear tire. Maybe when I do a different bike next time (hah!) I'll go with one with a fatty rear tire.
Monkeez: Very painfully! combination of topogun and max atm. Going to be tricky to get it to a polygon count I consider to be acceptable for GTA4. Not entirely sure on their polygon counts, but looking at their bikes they definitely don't have as many components to them.
Will post low poly progress soon.
for critique I also think the back tire looks a little thin
Progg: sure!
EricV: haha yeah, you should see my uv's! and yeah, might give in and widen the back tire a bit. The photo ref I had for this bike doesn't have a fatter rear tire though, only slightly larger one overall.
and now, results from the monstrous uv job and bakes etc. taken into marmoset
Will touch up the AO on the disc brakes a bit (it didn't blacken all the holes like i wanted, so will do that manually)
Now to get painting!
Thanks guys!
pretty flawless bake man
So, this bring a question I think. What happens if you apply a very shiny/cubemappy material to that lowpoly ingame mesh? I think the bake looks fantastic but wouldnt you get some strange surface artefact considering that the low is so optimized?
The reason why I am wondering about this is because the quality of the model reminds me of high end games like Gran Turismo or Forza3, and I feel like such games rely heavily on dense meshes to get the body of the cars just right, instead of normalmaps. What do you think?
Can't wait to see more! Fantastic job again. Inspiring!!
The cubemap would be "reflected" with the normals of the low+ normal map, not the lowpoly normals themselves. Marmoset's lighting/specular system is infact a glorified cubemap(one for diffuse, one for specular highlights). You'de have to have a pretty terrible shader to do it the way you mention it being done.
[edit]
Electro: the bake looks fantastic in most spots, but it looks like you have errors on your edges in a few places. If you're using hard edges(smoothing groups etc), you need to make sure to also split your uvs off on along those edges to avoid the same pixel trying to represent the "seam" there and giving you those ugly black edges.
That's why I really liked the Samus Aran model for UT3, it was all oldschool hard edges on dense enough geo and it looked a hundred times better than say, the Necris stuff.
Can't wait!
What he said! Well done!
very hardcore to get this all modeled unwrapped and baked btw. I remeber 3DFinlay telling me they just didn't bother making baked normalmaps for the bikes in Midnight Club since it's too much effort. Instead they'd spend like 50.000 tri's.
As is marmoset
If you set sharpness to 0 you get the full-res cubemap. Now, i personally think that looks really cheesy on anything but full on glass, but thats more of a subjective thing.
[edit]Looking here at the latest build, this may actually have been disabled at some point. It was never actually used for anything in development, so that could explain it.
Your shader and marmo are actually very similar, in terms of the results you can get with it, obviously your shader has more options for customization, support for pointlights, glossmaps etc so its a bit more flexible, but marmo is really easy and just works and has other benefits like the post effect editor. So its all about what you prefer i guess. I would say what both your shader and marmo excell at is nice shiny reflective materials.
just curious...can we see the UV's?
nice work !
Ah well when i tried there seemed to be no real sharp reflections. I understand you guys do full IBL and I sorta do a hybrid, but I didn't get the impression the options in Marmo allow for this sort of reflections. At least i've never seen a picture of anybody doing that ?
Anyway sorry for derailing, I just know for me, one of the most fun parts of doing baked normals is when you can start doing the sexy reflections, really shows of the hard work even more, that's why i suggested it.
The transformation of the low poly with the bake is redonkulous.
May be a dumb question, but how many tris is the low poly? I see the 38k in your viewport grab, but I feel like your bike doesn't look like its that high at all...just wanted to clarify lol.
I think you could save yourself some more geometry if you were to make the brake discs a flat plan with opacity instead of geometry. Given that they are inside the wheel, you will probably never miss the thickness.
I would really like to see this in GTA4, that would be cool...where did you find documentation for importing stuff into it? I can't seem to find anything about modding except being able to manipulate textures...Doesn't seem nearly as easy to add user made content as San Andreas.
pior: woah, THE pior replied in my thread? haha cheers
roosterMAP: thanks!! and yeah... texture time, ohhh boy
Raider: a/s/l?
EarthQuake: yeah, curse those errors! *shakes fist* I'll tidy up the main ones, using xnormal so the best way for me is to just bevel the edges and keep the normals averaged.
conte, Thegodzero: haha, thx!
ENODMI, Dan K: cheers :P
Xoliul: I'm actually a technical artist by profession (writing shaders). So I've actually got my own shaders that I can use, and get running in-engine on X360/PS3 if need be... I MIGHT do this, but capturing off the consoles is a pain in the ass, I'd much rather use max and camtasia. Only problem with max is... it has completely wrong tangents from what I can see. Both your shader and one of my own that I've tried have the same artifacts, I can take a pic of it later.. but trust me, it's busted. I'll most likely be using some other engine to show it in, I don't want to use UE3 because I see it as an opportunity to show my shader stuff as well, and marmoset doesn't support the things that I want (emissive being one, as well as the ability to use my own shaders, which is a shame).
chrisradsby: thx dude
AnimeAngel: a few minutes?! xnormal is pretty quick!
phredH: thanks! glad you appreciate it
r4ptur3: hah, glad to make people try and push themselves! so many people do the same to me on these boards, it's the way to keep on getting better. Just need to keep encouraging each other and sharing tips! As for the UV's.. you asked for it! (note: this is actually resized, the original is larger so that all the stuff like text on the license plate and tires comes out nice-ish)
felipefrango: lol
LOOM: cheers, you lazy mofo. Show me some of your stuff on msn damnu
gsokol: thanks mate! I trust max's triangle count, haven't counted myself, but pretty sure it's the same! haha I thought about making them flat planes, and it holds up at a distance, but up close it's really noticable
ZacD: count stands at 39,122 tris atm... but we all know that it's the verts that the engines care about
Thats one hell of an Unwrap...looks painful!
THANKS PEDRO FOR DIGGING UP OLD MEMORIES hehe
r4ptur3, gsokol: yeah... bit of a uv nightmare, WHATEVER, and thanks!
ElysiumGX: hah! no thank YOU sir.
Pedro Amorim: sure did, could have probably used some more work, but at the time my workplace kind of fell through, so I just quickly took screengrabs from within maya (after redoing all the normals... thanks to max's tangents showing everything busted, sigh. If only the 3ps stuff was available back then eh! (nice work on that btw guys)) So the presentation isn't how I'd like it to be, but it's "done enough" for now. Excuses aside, here's some pics from maya viewport.
I might present it better one day when I can be bothered, and I'd still like to get it into GTA4 which was my original goal for it, I just can't be bothered going through all the hoops getting it into their format/setup.
Some more pics available on my portfolio -> http://www.bendarling.net/index.php?page=art
Well.. since 3ps shader is available now.. might be worth it to take a stab at it? no?
Sweet job tho'!