Sketchbook: Zooch

Zooch

Brief background:

I started modeling about 3 weeks ago and have been bouncing between a few personal projects and stepping through the various modeling vids from Eat3D. I'm also new to Unreal, but my goal is to get all my models and textures set up within the engine. Needless to say, the work shown here is more for criticism than showing off. I would appreciate technical or artistic feedback as I continue to model and texture. With that said, my first complete model + texture as seen from inside the UDK:

261 Polys, 2x512 maps (diffuse and normal)


My times (In work days, not 24-hour days):
Modeling: 4 hours
UV Mapping: 1 day
Texturing: 1 day

A.Kincade

Not bad. You got wireframes?

Zooch

Sure:

A.Kincade

You could probably cut out a few of the loops on the part at the bottom of the holder, where as the two above it are squared out. Not a major issue tho.

SHEPEIRO

my main cocern in the asset you have made is the scratches and wear dont look real, or more importantly, convincing at all, they look "gamey" and by that i maen done without reference to the real world, lamps do not get this sort of damage without the bulb going, no one would subject a lap/light to this much consistant damage, it needs dust and grime not scratches

Zooch

The asset is being created for a specific game that calls for these sort of unrealistic characteristics. With that said, you're right. There seems to be a ton of scratches but not really any dust or grime at all. Going beyond that, I think the entire texture needs a revamp - it looks too "bulky" I think. I'm going to try and rework a type of bolted-together sheet/scrap metal...you know the thin stuff that oil drums are made of.

I'll have to do some lamp research (lol) first though to see how I can incorporate the rusted sheet metal grunge/dust feel while still maintaining a certain level of realism (or fantastical realism in this case)

Thanks for the responses guys! Most of my focus is still aimed directly at scene optimization and simply "press this button and pray it does what you think" so my artistic thoughts are really suffering. Your comments really help to re-align my thinking.

Zooch

Hey guys,
Been a little bit since I've posted an update - had some other higher-priority things to get done. I haven't had much time to work on my 3d art since this post, but I've spent a bit of Easter sunday playing around with the diffuse and an (new to me) emissive texture. I'll admit, when you add an emissive texture to a light it pretty much covers up a lot of sloppy/rookie texturing mistakes...at least in this case I feel that way. I still don't feel this asset is finished - I still haven't adjusted the wall mount or pipe in any way.

Of course once again - any crits are welcome!

EDIT: I've been playing around in Unreal and I've found out how to toggle my emissive map to act as a static light. Very cool feature. I've also figured out how to make the emissive light "flicker" by using the time/sine/etc. nodes in the material editor. Also very cool. The issue I'm running into right now is that the emissive flickering doesn't update on the geometry around it (i.e. the wall my lamp is attached to only reflects the emissive light pre-flicker and doesn't update). I assume that's why the box was called "use emissive as static light" instead of "use as dynamic light", but is there a way around this? I love the emissive light and I love the flicker, but cant get all the objects around my light to love it too!

Zooch

Hi all,

Time for another update. You may rejoice - this time it's not a lamp! However, I do have a question to follow up with the pics...

This is a windmill model created from a team member's concept. The drawing isn't mine so I can't post it here but I will post pics of the model in its current state. You'll have to take my word for it (until I get permission) that the model's geometry matches exactly with that of the concept, minus a couple high-poly details that also didn't make sense.

The model is done and UV Mapped and I've thrown some base colors on it to help stay organized. I've imported it into UDK with a collision model (180 polys) and spent about an hour physically jumping all over it (required, obviously). Anyways, my question is about the texture resolution. Why is it that my textures always look good from about 15-30 meters away but get very grainy when viewed from further and, even worse, turn into sloppy 8-bit polygonal cubes when right up next to the model? I start pretty far from the texture and squint my eyes thinking "I think that looks okay...I need to get closer though to see the detail" then when I walk up to it my texture turns into diarrhea!

I'm only working on a diffuse texture right now (haven't applied a normal map). Is this the reason? Are there other reasons in the UDK that are doing this? Maybe something to do with LODs that auto-set when I import, or that I need to make multiple textures that load based on LOD information? Below the model pics is an example of what I'm talking about...

(Click the images for zoom)

ENODMI

What size of maps are you using? It looks like the filtering that happens when zoomed in close enough to see the pixels that make up the image. Maybe you need to be working at a higher resoultion map for an object that size.

Zooch

The model posted above is using a single 2048 diffuse material with a multiply attached for the specular. No normal map.

I've since solved the problem by tiling the pole's material and almost tripling the size of the UV map, then breaking the map down and overlapping it. The seams aren't showing up since it tiles and the increase in UV size has given me the details up close.

Zooch

Finished first session on the windmill. I was told during the texture process to remove the legs and chains for non-obvious reasons. Please let me know what you guys think.

http://vimeo.com/11121257

(Not sure how to embed)