Akira Bike for UT3 - WiP

senor-cojones

Hey guys,

Im such a lurker on here but I don't post too often. Thought I'd post one of my current Wips on here for a bit of feedback and advice.

I've been making Kaneda's Bike from Akira as part of the Mechanical Modelling module for my MSc 3D Games Modelling course. For those who don't know the Akira manga then the bike looks like this;



This is the actual real version of the bike and is made to be 'road-legal' and so has details and changes not found on the original. In comparison my design differs slightly from the original concept also, as I wanted to make it fit better into the Unreal universe, so I changed the tyre design and added machine guns, to aid the vehicle in its job of being a fast attack vehicle and flag running asset.

My renders so far;

Back Beauty



Front Beauty



Left Wires/Silhouette



Front Wires/Silhouette



Top Wires/Silhouette



Overall the mid-high poly without turbosmooth is about 200k tris and the high poly with turbosmooth applied (2 iterations, isoline display) is about 2 million tris

More images available on my public Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31285011@N02/

Any crits, comments, advice or observations muchly appreciated!

felipefrango

I almost jumped in to say it looked different from the reference, but then I settled down and you know, actually read what you wrote. Other than that it looks awesome, very clean shapes, I wanna see how it translates to the low poly.

Apophis3d

You're going to have a fun time getting a bike it work with UT3. Unreal is not quite fond of two wheeled vehicles.

Looks awesome can't wait to see the normal mapped verson.

Divine Rage

felipefrango wrote: »

I almost jumped in to say it looked different from the reference, but then I settled down and you know, actually read what you wrote.

Hehehe, I had exactly the same thing.


I was surprised to see you use an icosphere for the front weelcap thing. A little unorthodox. Worked out fine though. I have never used such meshes in subD modelling myself, might want to check it out really.

P442

cool. the scripting might be "challenging."

senor-cojones

Cheers for the feedback guys, nice to know I'm heading in the right direction

I've already started on the scripting and had a 2 wheeled test vehicle working in the engine- basically its a 2 wheeled bike with 2 invisible wheel nubs that act as stabilisers (so technically 4 wheels in total) and whilst it works it does have a few problems but I'm waiting for my final mesh to fix those.

I'm hoping the final bike has a look that goes with whats already inside Unreal, and also has an "is that the bike from Akira?" style too.

KyleJensen

I think you should work on the cannons more. They don't really fit with the rest of the bike.

Good work on the bike model though.

almighty_gir

KANEEEEDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

looks epic, true to the style with good variation =]

vcool

Looks great but imo the guns don't really fit. You have a hi tech piece of machinery and machine guns that look WW2.

senor-cojones

Small update- remade the guns so they look a little more like plasmas and more fitting with the bike as they are smooth shapes.

Added bit of floor detail to the footwell just to break up the flat surface. And also rotated the tyres, as I had no idea the tread was facing the wrong direction!





Hoping to move onto the low poly now- looking to be sub 15k tris (more like 10k) with that.

Willburforce

:thumbup: nice work, keep at it ... i like everything... please add the seat in the concept as it look slightly awkward as a flat surface imho

senor-cojones

Ok, so here's my next update! It's the low poly this time. At present the count is 6,351 tris, I did have it down to just over 5k, but I wanted more detail on the wheels etc as they are a fairly important area.

Areas that are obviously square/different are going to be normal and alpha mapped to give them the appearance of the high poly.

Rendered Back:




Rendered Front:




Wires Left:




More images on my Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31285011@N02/

Interested in hearing CnC and opinions before I move on to unwrapping.

Vailias

If you are looking to make this an actual vehicle there's a trick that makes motorcycles fairly easy to do.

You set up the skeleton so the bike has training wheels, but you don't have geometry for them. Set the back wheel to powered, the front wheel to steered, and the just mess withthe training wheel's suspension a bit, and the bike will still lean and turn and such, but won't require more complex coding and balance simulation. (of course you could go that way if you wanted more accuracy, as the training wheel bike tends to stay upright even without a rider.)

senor-cojones

@Vailias- cheers for the tip, thats exactly what I was intending to do. I'd already set up a test vehicle to find out if it was possible- so hopefully this will be a more polished version of that!

Anyways I think I've pretty much completed my unwrap, not much to show except the UVW map and the checkers on the bike so here it is;

UVW




Unwrap Front




Unwrap Back




The weird coloured bits at the front are intentional- its a different checker material as they are intended to be decals. Not the most efficient unwrap ever but Im hoping it should be ok!

senor-cojones

Another update. Spent The past 2 days figuring out how to work XNormal efficiently, baking, collating and cleaning maps. Hopefully it's starting to look ok and come together!

Renders are with max default light and scanline

Back Normals



Front Normals



Back Normals and AO



Obviously the AO is fairly dark in places, but it wont be used as is in the final diffuse, its just to show that it works. Once again the logo decals make some of the smoothing look a bit odd, ignore that- no alpha work done so they arent perfect and any holes arent see through just yet.

Next step is to work on getting it into engine, so that I can see if these maps are ok, and help my with the diffuse

Xoliul

Hey man, you got a few baking errors that would need fixing. Or are those decals? Worst offender I see is at the front fender.

btw; did you happen to use my HP render method in those first beauty renders? they look similar to the technique I showed in my engine video.

senor-cojones

I did indeed, I hope thats ok? I really loved the renders you can get from it!

Yeah those horrible square error looking areas are actually a few decals Ive put in but obviously I've not alpha'd them or anything yet so they look really odd.

Thanks for the feedback

Tom Ellis

Sorry no crits other than what's been mentioned about the baking errors, apart from that... looks awesome, love Akira and you've done a great job so far!

marlfox8

hmmmmmmm... it looks pretty good except that the seat doesn't look very comfy.

senor-cojones

Quick update: The bike is now rigged and in engine. Tweaked the smoothing groups a bit.

Front



Back



The windscreen looks weird at the min, and that due to the AO that I'm using (its uneditted, and the windscreen didnt AO correctly), but the windscreen is on another material id so wont even use AO in the final piece (I want a glassy looking material)

The front fender area is fine, but you'll still notice the decal areas- these are geometry used so I can have decals easily, and not normal map errors.

Anyways it looks better than I thought it would! Gonna have a look over my material ids in Max and then move on to getting this textured/working!

senor-cojones

Alright guys- progressing with this in engine now after a few hiccups. Is anybody here a savant with the Unreal engine? I'd like a bit of advice regarding wheel code.

Does anybody know how to make "neutral" wheels (that I can say whether they are powered or not)??- as having to name them RR/LR/RF/LF Wheel isnt ideal (and seems to be overriding anything I do). For example if I wanted a 6 wheeled vehicle, how would you make the middle wheels?

Any help appreciated. Images/Videos will be posted as soon as theres something more substantial to show

senor-cojones

Hey guys, update time. Had some major issues regarding my pc- stupid issues with the editor, and my graphics card basically died, so been stressing over that. Back on track now though, although I've run into a new problem... (I've posted this in the UDK thread, on the off chance...)

Basically I've created a vehicle and its got several Mat Ids, I'm getting it all sorted fine but I'm creating different materials for each mat id (one translucent shader for glass, one for chrome, one main diffuse and one for computer screens) and I've thought that in the code the way it references the difference between red and blue team colours is through the material instance;

TeamMaterials[0]=MaterialInstanceConstant'VH_Scorpion.Materials.MI_VH_Scorpion_Red'
TeamMaterials[1]=MaterialInstanceConstant'VH_Scorpion.Materials.MI_VH_Scorpion_Blue'

So obviously its only referencing one material for each colour.

To better explain heres my skeletal mesh (ignore the actual texture/etc- wip!);



And that has 4 different shaders applied to it;

Red Glass



Red Chrome



Is there a way that I can tell the material editor to only apply a certain material to a certain material id? Could I set up a MIC that references the shaders I've already created, and applies them only to set mat ids?

Obviously it all works fine as is in the editor, but if I swap to the blue material, and its still got with red glass/chrome materials, its going to look a bit odd.

I don't mind remaking any of the shaders I've already set up or anything like that, I'm just wondering if theres a way to only apply materials to set mat ids.

Any help appreciated.

senor-cojones

Haven't updated this with some proper work for a while. Ive started texturing and fiddling with Unreal material shaders. Made a quick video of things so far as I think it looks better in motion.

It does drive and shoot and all those other things, but its more about what it looks like than how big its gun is

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79u0BTV2rBo"]http://www.youtube.c...h?v=79u0BTV2rBo[/ame]

Ignore the awesome res of the video, youtube seems to have messed the colour slightly, as well as my awesome mouse movements!

It is still WiP but atm thats my diffuse, specular and normal map- with some masks and shader stuff. Decals are not set in stone yet, but are referenced from and inspired by the original.

Any crits appreciated.

senor-cojones

Major Update: I think I've nearly finished with this, my final presentation on this is in the morning. Overall I've managed to fix most of the problems I encountered such as the material problems.

The fix was achieved by both condensing all of my materials and mat ids into 2. In the code I then setup an array in the same style as the Hellbender license plate material, which allowed me to have both the normal material and the glass material displaying in game at the same time.

In keeping with the style of the unreal vehicles Ive tried to include most things that you would find- so my vehicle has animations, morph targets, damage textures, gun/boost/etc, effects and is about as complete as I can make it at the minute.

One thing I'm curious about though, I have turn animations (left lean and right lean) and I cant set them up to run in a variety of ways in the animtree, but I cant seem to set them off at all in game. I'd really like to have the bike lean when the player pressed left/right, or even looked left/right. I just cant seem to do it! Any ideas?

To make my vehicle a little bit different from others in my class I've added a mph speedo on the hud and look steering (both thanks to Unwheel_modeller, Xyx and CaptainSnarf) just to add a little extra to the bike.

Overall though this has been a project more about the overall look and feel, rather than the final mechanics in the game, and I'm hoping that people like the way it looks and plays really.

In Max my bike looks like this (Xoliul Shader 1.5);





And in engine;





Video of it in engine:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBJ-2aN4jNo[/ame]

Video of it in game (awful framerate!):

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDzBFVR4xqI[/ame]

Seems that the jpgs and vids have a lot of lossy compression on them- the colours and details dont look so washed out when you see them in realtime in game. This is particularly evident with the cubemap reflections and glass shader. Apologies for the awful framerate on my vids- not sure why Camtasia had such a fit!

The bike can be downloaded for UT3 at http://www.aaronmwhite.co.uk/downloads/Kaneda.zip

Any CnC appreciated!

senor-cojones

Just to redeem myself from the bad quality renders and vids I put up before I've uploaded the ones I'm handing in- just because I was so tired at the time I originally posted I thought better versions should be shown.

I redid the videos. I found that Camtasia likes the editor, but not the game- so I used fraps for the in game stuff, something I didn't have time to fix when I posted. So here's a better in game version;

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acVTIDuLqmU[/ame]

and I also did a presentation video explaining some of the better aspects of the project like the material I created etc, but its slightly too long for youtube so I uploaded to my site;

http://www.aaronmwhite.co.uk/downloads/Kanedas%20Bike.mp4

Also made a few in game shots;





I noticed when I released the Kaneda files that a few bits needed tweaking and the specular needed a bit of sorting so I did that- it now handles a bit better and goes faster, but is also slightly more fragile (if you boost at an inappropriate time you'll be likely to die) so thats all reuploaded to the same link;

http://www.aaronmwhite.co.uk/downloads/Kaneda.zip

and finally- I just thought I'd put up the diffuse I'm using... I followed Racer445's tutorials on texturing and came out with the following;



Texturing has always been one of my weakest points, but I think this is probably one of the better textures that I've made.

Hopefully anything I make from now on will be much better- I've learnt alot from this project and I'd definitely do things differently next time- such as the smoothing groups, unwrapping/baking and try to make the texture have much more depth and detail. Overall I'm fairly pleased though.

As always, CnC is welcome

JasonLavoie

Honestly for me... the textures leave a lot to be desired man. I mean I know its a bit harder cause its cleaner metal, but you still can get some material definition in there... like the tires and seats etc. The stickers just look like you slapped them on and called it done.

Hopefully that doesn't sound mean, i just think you can reaaaaallllly push these textures (and should).

Ausonian

You forgot to bake the ambient occlusion map, it would improve the look a lot

Saman

You should do an ambient occlusion render to texture and apply it to your diffuse map. Use the high poly mesh for baking.

Edit: Didn't see Ausonian's post before posting mine.

senor-cojones

Cheers guys, thats the kind of honest crits I'm after.

Texturing is one of my major downfalls and I do really need to improve. Aside from ao, how would you guys recommend I improve my technique overall? Any tutorials or techniques that I could browse that would really help me understand and improve?

kdm3d

Think about on your bike, where the "wear" would occur on a used bike. IE, when the bike turns, that ground clearence would cause a lot of scraping on hard turns on the bottome of the engine/foot holds) go with it thinking like that and put scrapes/wear in those places. make them directional!

And yeah AO FTW.

Calabi

With this sort of material, going by the reference theres no actual textural information, only lighting, reflectivity.

I'd be interested to hear how people would do this also, as I've been trying to emulate these sorts of materials, in a low poly environments.

senor-cojones

Exactly Calabi, really interested in how to achieve a good look with this style.

I've tried to make my texture slightly more interesting than just fill red, and then get some specularity with cube mapped reflections, but id love to know how to really push it.

kodde

You probably want some reflections though a cubemap texture and a fresnel falloff to tweak how much a surface should reflect depending on how much it is facing the camera. Aren't there pre-made shaders like this in UDK?

Calabi

There might be a way to get matcap shaders to work like in Zbrush.

I managed to find a way to get them to work in Unity(I did find a mention of UDK for it as well in my searches).

I think its better performance than a cubemap.



It looks like plastic when you rotate around the object. All you need is a simple circular texture like the one in the corner(obtained from zbrush or 3dcoat) and it projects that onto the object all baked in. So you can emulate any material you want.

You might have problems with having the decal things, you'd have to separate the parts that you only want to treat as plastic I think though.

dur23

The first thing i noticed above all else was the use of hard edges instead of baked normals. I don't know if that's what you did, but hard edges ruin specular and the overall look, imo. You modeled a high res and didn't transfer?

Saman

I agree with dur23. Something is not right about your normalmap and I think the hardedge matter might be it. The normalmapped lowpoly version looks flat compared to the high poly, it might be the shader you're using for the lowpoly but it would be nice to see a comparison between the high poly and the lowpoly with the same specular and material settings.

Saiainoshi

What would REALLY help your texture from looking less flat would be to render the lighting top to bottom, or bake the lighting into the textures. There is nothing value wise to differentiate where the light is coming from other than the lighting in-game. Also, paint some where and tear on all of the hard edges. Look at army tanks for some good ref, they're always scuffed up. Awesome model!

Xoliul

Defo an improvement on the last one. I agree you should boost the textures a bit, but you could do a lot with reflections too. And defintely look into baking AO and light. Like mr Saia says, a top bottombake also works very nice, you could even combine with AO.

marlfox8

cool love this stuff

senor-cojones

Cheers for the feedback guys, definitely some things I've never heard of before/never thought of to improve my texturing skills. Could I ask what exactly is a top-bottom bake of the lighting and how would I go about doing that?

Sounds exactly what I'm looking for but I've never heard of this technique.

Thanks for all the input

Xoliul

Instead of baking AO, you place a direct light that shines directly on the top of your mesh. Then fill the rest up with omni's placed around the object, or an ambient color or something. i use the omni's. Then just bake that lighting to texture.

felipefrango

Xoliul wrote: »

Instead of baking AO, you place a direct light that shines directly on the top of your mesh. Then fill the rest up with omni's placed around the object, or an ambient color or something. i use the omni's. Then just bake that lighting to texture.

Hmm nice. Couldn't you benefit from doing this AND an AO bake, though? Or would it end up being overkill?

Neox

felipefrango wrote: »

Hmm nice. Couldn't you benefit from doing this AND an AO bake, though? Or would it end up being overkill?

just a matter of balancing it out imho

however, do you use the cubemap right? it looks like its turned by 90°

RexM

Great idea, always liked that bike design.

However, as others have said... that texture leaves a lot to be desired.