Metra Train Model

DennisGlowacki

This is a Metra train car that I got inspired to make after riding it every day to college.

My Process/ Postmortem:

I started off with a high polygon version which to my surprise turned out not to be the hardest part of the process.

The low polygon version was the challenge. It took hours of contemplation and planning. I wanted to have several modular/mirrored parts that could be instanced within the Unreal engine and help me save as much texture space as possible. I also found a major challenge in finding the right amount of detail to use to provide the best possible normal map transfer results.

Mirroring the Unmirrorable:
You may have noticed some weird cuts in my wireframe. This was to counteract some mirrored text and images. The cuts allowed me to unmirror the UV's in that section. The downfall is that it created texture seams.

Software Used:
Maya
Photoshop
Xnormal

Crits are welcome.

System

Nice result, I think you could optimise it heavily in certain areas, though, it's hard to tell exactly from your wireframe where so I took a guess. paintover

kodde

If you do decide to optimized these areas that GCMP mentioned make sure you don't loose all those great details. I'm liking your piece, especially because of those details and not really the quite flat sides of the train.

serialkiler

nice mesh well done if u just scale down the metra a bit (height) i think it will look even better

raul

nice piece!!

Matroskin

agree abotu mesh optimizations.

My suggestion would be to add some more contrast to rusty metal areas (like wheels etc.). Right now they look kinda monotone brown, but u have all the details there (like nice edges, rust variation) they just dont pop.

serialkiler

wy ppl want rusty everywhere ^^ this could be a new train aswell ^^

tyl3r

Nice work! I'm currently doing a prop and I too have found the same problems as you with the low-poly being harder and requiring a bit of thought before the baking process.

I like the texture work as well, especially because it isn't overly grunged-up! Good stuff.

What was the final low-poly tricount?

DennisGlowacki

Thanks guys! All this will come in handy when I do my next pass on it.

tyl3r-
Triangle Count:
400 (Battery boxes)
1600 (Main Body)
1700 (Top Junk)
2600 (Wheel Section)
4000 (Bottom Junk)

These pieces are combined in UDK.
The battery boxes and wheel sections are duplicated/instanced.



Question for the Unreal Engine people. I think I heard/read somewhere that loading models between 1000-2000 triangles is the most *efficient*


*efficient might not be the best term