WIP: Breastplate Armor

KyleJensen

I'm currently working on a breastplate for my modeling class. Here's what I have so far on my high poly model and I'll be posting a low poly sometime tomorrow. Crits are appreciated.




And here the reference I'm basing my model on:



Once again, crits are appreciated. I need them to live.

Piflik

There are quite a lot of dents in your model...also I think I wouldn't model these ornaments...far easier to paint a b/w version of it, once you' texturing, and convert it into a normal map. That would make it far easier to keep a smooth shape.
A shaded wireframe would be nice, but considering the modeled ornaments, I doubt it would be pretty...

{scumworks}

Think piflik is right. Considering the plate details are paper thin, modelling it out seems overkill.

KyleJensen

Piflik wrote: »

There are quite a lot of dents in your model...also I think I wouldn't model these ornaments...far easier to paint a b/w version of it, once you' texturing, and convert it into a normal map. That would make it far easier to keep a smooth shape.
A shaded wireframe would be nice, but considering the modeled ornaments, I doubt it would be pretty...

Thank you for the input. So basically I should just try normal mapping all the surface detail for the high poly to low poly as opposed to modeling the little detail on the high poly and projecting it onto a low poly? I'm still a noob at modeling. Every bit of input helps.

KyleJensen

{scumworks} wrote: »

Think piflik is right. Considering the plate details are paper thin, modelling it out seems overkill.

Thanks for the input. So the bottomline is that I should have a smoothed-out high poly, then normal the surface detail later. I'll get to it.

Piflik

You can of course also model the details, but it would require a quite dense mesh to not to produce ugly dents...so basically smooth it once, add the detail there and smooth again. That way the bumps will be far less ntoicable. But painting the normal map will be far easier.

Neox

Piflik wrote: »

You can of course also model the details, but it would require a quite dense mesh to not to produce ugly dents...so basically smooth it once, add the detail there and smooth again. That way the bumps will be far less ntoicable. But painting the normal map will be far easier.

it could all be floaters, no need to model it as a solid piece

KyleJensen

Here's an updated model. I actually remodeled the whole thing. It's better than the one I originally posted. There are some issues with edge control around the geometry with holes. Holes seem to be my weakness, but I'm working on ways to resolve that. I'm probably just going to fill those in and normal map them later.



Here's my in-progress low-poly. I'll post a full low poly later as soon as I'm done.

odium

It would have been so much easier with floaters and/or doing those details in post. As it stands, it looks like these will render quite badly on the normal map because there isn't any real angle to the edgework, meaning that it will hardly show up.

Cap Hotkill

By looking at the references, you only have to stick the details a lil bit closer to the main body, i think it will bake ok, on the normal map, you just need to make the silhouettes softer, since right now they look a lil bit harsh. keep going

KyleJensen

odium wrote: »

It would have been so much easier with floaters and/or doing those details in post. As it stands, it looks like these will render quite badly on the normal map because there isn't any real angle to the edgework, meaning that it will hardly show up.

Everything you see on the armor is floating geometry. None of it is extruded or beveled.

Andreas

looking good but I would model those belts in if I was you...would be some nice detail. plus you'd only really have to model one.

Also, if you are going for reproducing it as closely as possible to the original, you are fairly off in most areas, but I'm guessing you aren't going for that?

odium

Shad0wForce wrote: »

Everything you see on the armor is floating geometry. None of it is extruded or beveled.

But everything is still very, very sharp, which will never show up on a normal map correctly as theres no angles for the normals to work with.

KyleJensen

Blenderhead wrote: »

looking good but I would model those belts in if I was you...would be some nice detail. plus you'd only really have to model one.

Also, if you are going for reproducing it as closely as possible to the original, you are fairly off in most areas, but I'm guessing you aren't going for that?

I was under a time constraint. I'm going to be adding more detail though.

Mark Dygert

odium wrote: »

But everything is still very, very sharp, which will never show up on a normal map correctly as theres no angles for the normals to work with.

I agree, maybe this will help illustrate it.


I see quite a few smoothing/polygon errors here and there and there isn't much detail there to capture, and what is there will probably be hard to capture when baking.

You might have better luck using a stencil or alpha brush and just putting the detail in a sculpt?

ridley075

I recognize that in your last post, the image on the bottom is of a low-poly, is the image above your high? If so, be careful of your edges. Looks like you have floating geo which is okay, but you got to have some kind of beveled edge on it. Normal maps do nothing but calculate edges. So, if it's completely flat, it will appear like that. Whenever I create a high poly (which is hardly ever characters, so may not be pertinent towards this case) I always create basic shapes, and let turbosmooth do the rest. Around the edges I need sharper, I just add more edges close to it. So, in your case, if the designs are flat, just extrude them back a little and scale it up slightly, in order to create that edge. That will work fine, but you're going to have to be a little more tricky with the inside of the designs, which you're probably going to need to scale in instead of out. Then, turboshmooth it to make it look smooth, adding edges near the corners of the piece on the extruded pieces. Sorry if this sounds confusing, hope it helps though. Also, not sure if you're planning to have a separate texture on the inside of the armor or if your planning on attaching this to a character, but the entire low-poly could technically just be a plane modeled in that shape, without an inside to it. Or, if you want to create the inside texture differently, you can delete the inside and edges, copy the outside part, scale it down, and flip the normals so as to have an inside portion, without the edges. Just be sure you make it very close in scale to the outside, but still on the inside, and make it double-sided, or else shadows might not read for it (especially in engine). Just my thoughts.

KyleJensen

Vig wrote: »

I agree, maybe this will help illustrate it.


I see quite a few smoothing/polygon errors here and there and there isn't much detail there to capture, and what is there will probably be hard to capture when baking.

You might have better luck using a stencil or alpha brush and just putting the detail in a sculpt?

Ohhhhhh. I understand now. I didn't know sharp edges were that big of an issue in normal mapping. I'll go back and smooth them out a bit. Thanks.

Ott

Really?

KyleJensen

Ott wrote: »

Really?

Well, if they are talking about the high poly, yeah. I don't recall running into problems with high poly parts being a bit sharp. I know that my low poly model still needs some beveling/chamfering. If they were talking about my low poly, then I already knew that. Perhaps I misunderstood which of my models they were referring to.

KyleJensen

Here's a more recent iteration. I'm still trying to work out some edge control issues with a few pieces of the high poly. Additional crits appreciated.

High Poly:



Low Poly:

KyleJensen

I added straps and improved some of the edge control. Crits appreciated.

High Poly

BigErn

better, but I also feel your going to be with the normal map. I did something similar once before, you put in a lot of work and the normal map just shows pretty much nothing. You might need to actually slope all your edges out to catch more detail, not just smoothing them. A quick test would show you though, just do a quick normal map grab asap!

ps. Low poly has a LOT of wasted faces, like a ton. As you can see a lot of front detail is mostly flat, so you would not really need so many vertical divisions.

JonathanF

Here ya go man, every line I have in red you can delete those all the way across... those are all waisted geometry that doesn't help the actual form or silhouette, There are some on the back to, but I'll let you figure out what you think should stay or go for there, as it is a learning process for all of us to figure out what should stay or go. Actually a couple more i could have lined in red going vertically... but this is a good start for ya to get all those horizontal ones. Keep up the good work!
Also, can you show the wires of your high poly?

Ott

Dead image Jonathan.

JonathanF

fixed it. i decided to fix the vertical lines

KyleJensen

JonathanF wrote: »

Here ya go man, every line I have in red you can delete those all the way across... those are all waisted geometry that doesn't help the actual form or silhouette, There are some on the back to, but I'll let you figure out what you think should stay or go for there, as it is a learning process for all of us to figure out what should stay or go. Actually a couple more i could have lined in red going vertically... but this is a good start for ya to get all those horizontal ones. Keep up the good work!
Also, can you show the wires of your high poly?

Thanks for the crit. I'll go back and take care of those edges in my low poly. I'll post another iteration of my high poly + wireframe later today.

torontoanimator

i didnt have time to read all the comments but i do have to say, this isnt really a breastplate. it IS looking good so far, but most breastplate focus the bulk on their material on the chest, your suit look more like half or full plate since the bulk of it is shielding the abdomen and lower back. Still a cool model though! Maybe try exaggerating some of the shapes a bit more? it looks a bit flat atm

KyleJensen

Here's an update:

I finished my texturing for the most part and put it into unreal. Crits welcome.





Even though this is a final project render, I will continue to improve this. Crits are still appreciated.

JonathanF

Hey, looks pretty good. you able to clean up your geometry? I would say the leather armor looks a little bit like plastic right now and the leather straps seem not so leather like. Its a tricky art that I'm learning my self, but the specular map is what will allow your leather armor to really looks like leather in how light treats leather.... of course your diffuse will have to work with your spec map as well though... I like how the gold plate is looking though!
You should also try the marmoset engine, its free and really simple to use.
Keep up the good work!

KyleJensen

JonathanF wrote: »

Hey, looks pretty good. you able to clean up your geometry? I would say the leather armor looks a little bit like plastic right now and the leather straps seem not so leather like. Its a tricky art that I'm learning my self, but the specular map is what will allow your leather armor to really looks like leather in how light treats leather.... of course your diffuse will have to work with your spec map as well though... I like how the gold plate is looking though!
You should also try the marmoset engine, its free and really simple to use.
Keep up the good work!

Thanks, man. I'll continue making adjustments to my diffuse and spec map.