Summer - Route 98
polycounter lvl 7
Hi,
I'm Currently working on an small environment for my portfolio. As i'm kinda still learning everything, i make a lot of mistakes. So it's always helpful to have have a community to rely on.
Concept:
An abandoned diner/gas station(60's style) located in the desert. Not that original, but quite a challenge for me.
Goals:
- My Main objective is to get familiar with baking normal maps.
- Learn to use UDK
- Finish it!
Props:
- Caravan
- Diner/gas station
- Camping props (chairs, table,..)
- Street signs
- Background rock formations
- rubble and vegetation
-...Time limit:
Not set yet. It 'll probably take while, since I'm working almost full-time.
I'm Currently working on an small environment for my portfolio. As i'm kinda still learning everything, i make a lot of mistakes. So it's always helpful to have have a community to rely on.
Concept:
An abandoned diner/gas station(60's style) located in the desert. Not that original, but quite a challenge for me.
Goals:
- My Main objective is to get familiar with baking normal maps.
- Learn to use UDK
- Finish it!
Props:
- Caravan
- Diner/gas station
- Camping props (chairs, table,..)
- Street signs
- Background rock formations
- rubble and vegetation
-...Time limit:
Not set yet. It 'll probably take while, since I'm working almost full-time.
Replies
High poly
Most of this is just some plain high poly modeling. For the ribbons I used a combination of path deform binding and advanced painter.
At you script writers out there: wouldn't it be possible to make a script like advanced painter with these features in it:
- Paint on a straight line between two points (like in photoshop)
- More control about the spacing. Now it's based on the speed you move your mouse.
- Ability to choose to put it all in 1 mesh, it would be a lot easier selection wise.
- Snapping possibilities: could be really handy to just follow edges of the mesh you are painting on.
- It would be really cool to be able to make some kind of library of bolts/screws/whaterver a bit like photoshop brushes that you can access without the need to have them in your scene.
mistakes i made:
- I often collapse to editable poly, while it comes in more handy to keep your primitives for the low poly. So for example the caravans body. Instead of adding a editable poly modifier after the main form was moddled, i kept on working on it. So I had to delete all unnecessary loops afterwards and reconnect the front and back with the middle part.
- Need to more organize my scene.
- Always have to keep in mind, that i'm not modeling for a final high poly asset. So I have to try to keep my edges smooth enough and avoid 90 degree angles.
low Poly
Since I'm still learning about normalmapping, it's kinda hard to know what's enough detail, what needs geo and what not. For example the windows at the front and back where baked on the body, but afterwards i added some detail (a simple box), because it came out a bit too flat in some angle. Instead of rebaking, i just matched those new uv's with the one i already had.
Texturing and normal bake
Normal baking didn't went that smooth. For some reason when i tried to do everything in one bake, max kept giving an unknown error. So after uv'ing, i've split up the model. That came in handy for baking, since i could hide intersecting parts. I did also spend some time making my uv's as straight as possible (where possible and necessary). It a lot easier to edit your normals in photoshop afterward. Especially the smudging tool can do miracle in photoshop for cleaning up your normals
After baking i used mudbox to add a bit more detail, mainly dents onto my low poly model. I Know that normally you work the other way around, but i think its a fast and very interactive way of workin. Only problem i've ran into are weird lines, but you can smooth them out. If anyone knows how to solve this, would love to know how to fix it.
For texturing i did also render out a couple of AO's, even one of the low poly for guidance while texturing (seeing where lights are on the body and so on..). For getting a good selection of the windows and other stuff that's kinda hard to select in photoshop itself, i rendered out a diffuse black and white map, where i set the white to 100 percent self illuminating. Gives you a good alpha map. Might be others ways to do this and i'd be interested to hear those.
A small update:
Started blocking out the diner. Looking for an interesting silhouette and i'm kinda happy with this one.
I also refined this camping chair a bit, with the things i learned while working on the caravan.
I like the chair btw, nice material definition.
Look forward to watching this one grow!
Forgot to add: The little lines you see in the sharp version where painted out with the healing spot brush.
epic work so far im loving the caravan!
Since you generated the dents separately, have you thought about converting it in Crazybump too further refine the depth through Ambient Occlusion?
@kaburan:
That's a nice idea, i ll check it out when i'm refining the texture.
But yeah epic work so far, if you were to make it game ready you could use an alpha for the seat and bacl of the chair., but its just a suggestion!
Blocked out the scene a bit, just to get a sense of where i'm going at.
I also started working on the high poly for the diner. Nothing special, just trying to reuse elements as much as possible.
I will also add arco's, electrical wiring and boxes, antenna's and satellite dish, but those will be separate props
Got a couple of questions though:
- How many tri's can i spend on this and what kind of texture size should i aim for?
- Is it better to go for modular pieces en put it together in udk or should i import it as one single mesh.
I'm guessing you're gonna go with red rocks / deep blue skies for the background, because that will make for a pretty phenomenal looking scene I think.
- Tri Count. Do enough to make it look good. It's hard to tell, especially if you're going to work modular.
- I would work modular if it was me, but others may tell you differently. I find it easier to make changes and add/remove things when I have modular bits. I think it's easier to bake too (and you can get more out of your textures).
One question though. Should I bevel all those sharp edges or is this just fine?
To combat this, you can go into the blue channel of the layer you want to overlay, adjust its levels, and adjust teh whites to be 127, so when you do overlay, you only get darks.
This isn't the most accurate way to composite normal maps together, but it works in the simplest way. You can also composite them together using Crazy Bump, which imo is the safer bet.
stuff is lookin coo though! just be careful not to nuke your normals!
^Above image, first window on the left has blinds half way down.
Or have curtains like:
As you can see in the image, i cant get the smoothing right with my smoothing groups and it keeps showing up in my normalmaps too. Now it's just 1 smoothing group. First of the bevel is just because i wanted to test this out and even if i don't bevel it, the mesh keeps having the same smoothing problems on that flat face. So what can i do to fix this.
I tried to:
-add loops for better smoothing-> weird smoothing on the edges with normalmap and when i delete the extra loop, the smoothing errors are back.
-Photoshop, erasing the lines. Just didn't work.
-edit the traingulation-> couldn't find a error free way.
So my question is: Can this be solved?
(and i noticed that there are 2 verts that should be weld together, but that because i went back to an older save after messing around. That doesn't solve the problem.
However, I'm just wondering: you spoke about re-using texture space, could you elaborate a little on this? What texture space did you re-use? Didn't that cause a problem with your AO/normal map baking?
For the normals i did bake it out in 4 or 5 separate pieces and put everything together in photoshop. You can easily fix normal seams in photoshop most of the times. Certainly for an object like this. It's also good to make sure when baking to not only include in your projection modifier the high poly of the the tile you are baking, but also add the tiles at both sides if it.
As for the AO's. I did bake different AO's of separate pieces. Just using what you like in photoshop.I also added a new uv set where everything is unique ( exactly like what you would do when preparing a mesh for lightmass) for a total AO bake. I think i heard you can store that in the blue channel of your normalsmap, dunno, but it can be stored somewhere:).
Hopefully this a bit of an answer, bit tired over here
btw, small detail, but the blinds on the corner window look weird. dont think thats possible...unless i've somehow never managed to see it like that in r/l
I want to see more! Great stuff so far, dude!