Grenade

engelmanna

I made this grenade (loosely based on the mk2 grenade) to hone up on my zbrush workflow and expand my portfolio. Any feedback on it would be most appreciated.


612 polygons
1024 diffuse, normal, and spec

Reference:
http://2db.free.fr/images/grenade_mk2/grenade.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/MkII_07.JPG/250px-MkII_07.JPG

Beauty Shot:


Wireframes, etc:

raul

you will get better feedback by posting your breakdown shots. ( wires, texture sheets, high poly, low poly, u know, the works! ) Hard to tell without looking at your reference.

It seems you still have some of the reds from your casting in the inside of your granade. Not a whole lot going on on the textures. 612k polies, consider using planes for some stuff. Such as the ring on the sides, and maybe even the sides of the top cap.

phillip.bailey

Also, post some reference! Always helps the critics to be more constructive. Overall, looks a bit too sea-green. It may be appealing to have variety in the texture. I know a grenade is mostly green but, it would be interesting to be able to see more contrast in the specular information as it appears to be flat. You could push the diffuse further with grime and wear where they would naturally settle. I see a bit around the bottom edges yet the top piece is brand spankin' new. I hope this helps!
-Phil

engelmanna

Thanks to both of you for the replies. I've updated my first post to according to your posts.

-Raul: its only 612 polygons, not 612,000 (not sure if the k in your post was in there by accident)

-Phillip: I'll work on the textures and post an update with texture sheets next post.

Thanks!

BradMyers82

Nice job so far.

The biggest problem is it seems to have too generic of a texture. The thing that will sell a texture the most, is having detail in the right places. Yours just seems to be have a slight random noise going around, except you have a bit of edging at the bottom, and that yellow strip.
What would help you the most here is a good old AO pass. Checkout this tutorial here: http://donaldphan.com/tutorials/xnormal/xnormal_occ.html

It should give you a good understanding of how to create AO, and cavity maps.
Now you don't have to bake in xnormal, but definitely do the normal to cavity trick he uses, and definitely bake AO in 1 program of your choice and multiply it over your diffuse.
Good luck!

engelmanna

Here is an update to the grenade. I've added more wear and tear. I've also refined the AO pass.

Thanks Brad for the ao link. I've used xnormal before but I couldn't get the right results when it came to ao before.

As always, any crits or comments are appreciated. The feedback I've received already has been very helpful.

Lastly, I have a question since it's been a while since I've done any game art. Is 600 polys about right for a grenade in a modern day game (e.g. call of duty)? I am a bit rusty when it comes to appropriate poly counts these days.

EDIT: Apparently, I'm having some gamma issues with my images. I'll see If I can get this fixed up soon.

Beautry Shot:


Texture Sheet:

BradMyers82

Its def. looking better imo.

Now I would give it what I call a blob pass, where you add a slight random cloudyness to your textures. I have a cloud brush I use for this in photoshop, but you have to make it really subtle.

This will make your textures look less flat.

Also, did you really look at that link I sent you? Towards the bottom he goes over Cavity maps, and from the look of it, it seems you didn't use any cavity maps on your texture.

It makes a huge difference. Also, you could use the trick with find edges to highlight your edges more.

What you do is, in photohsop take your normals: go to Filter > Stylize > Find edges. Then desaturate it, and invert it (cntl I) .

You can turn the opacity way down on this and set the blending to screen. Use it very weak on your diffuse, and stronger on your specular. This will make things pop much more.

You can also get a similar effect via cavity maps, which is actually the way I do it now, but more complicated.

Also, painting your edging by hand is also a good idea. Again, edges like this should be really weak on your diffuse and stronger on your specular. It appears you painted edging in your specular map, however its not very believable currently. You need to vary your line width much more. My suggestion for that is to create a layer of really bright metal via a texture from cgtextures, that is almost white (level it if you have to). Then use a mask and make it completely invisible (fill the mask with black) then use a white paint brush to paint in your edges. This will give you slight variation in the value of white (because you are using that metal texture) and you can easily undo and redo your painting. Getting a good brush for this is really important too. Checkout Racers tutorials here on polycount: http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=63496
Good luck!

BradMyers82

Oh yeah, and also leveling your final textures in photoshop will help you a lot here. I think it should be darker and possibly more saturated than what you currently have. You can do this easily via an adjustment layer at the top of your layers in Photoshop. The great thing about doing it this way, is you can always change the adjustment layer, and its nothing final.