So now to make the Hi Poly Version:
*using maya 2009*
Here was my first go around with critiques made while polycount was being slow to activate my thread...:P
In addition to those critiques, I also skipped out on some detail on the wooden base.. >.>
<.<
So here was my second go at it.
Ok so issues with the wireframes..
Using two methods there, PolySmooth (up one subdivision) and then Maya Vector Render in the first sheet.
Disadvantage: Can't render smooth without going up one subdivision
Then the second method I used Maya's High Quality display, slapped on a surface shader, and screen captured it.
It's not really working for me.
Any suggestions of how to Render a high quality wireframe in maya without MayaVector?
Having major issues around the speaker at this point:
Some pointers from raul, thanks raul!!
So at this point, I've spent a majority of my week trying to just get normal maps to work in general rather than working on my real maps.
I made sure that my speaker lined up perfectly with the high res mesh, but still even in my "final" go, it doesn't look quite right. I noticed that even without the normal map, the light didnt seem to be bouncing off consistently around the edges... so if anyone has any thoughts on that...
oh, and yea, I gave my color map an alpha channel for the record, and also tried hooking that up in the transparency, and it seemed to ignore me, here's my alpha if anyone can see something immediately wrong with it:
What I think what gives it the "not quite right look" is that your normal map looks really flat... looking at your highpoly model it seems like the floaters arent wideenough to get casted onto the normal map properly.
Your diffuse is fighting against your seemingly hard work on the high res. Give it some love or it just breaks it entirely. gradients are nice and all, but it doesnt look like you are attacking the color in any logical manner. Beat it up! Paint with a bit harder brush and commit some color variation in areas where its actually tarnished instead of soft gradient over the whole thing.
You have a TON of wasted triangles at the end of the cylinder. You should be using more tri's to help your silhouette. If its not helping your silhouette then you should be doing more with less. 2924 is to high for an object that size. For an FPS at least.
Starting off by building out the main shape and trying to get proportions right.
Proportions are going pretty good so far. I see in the reference that the handle part of the phone is actually sagging a big, probably from age, where mine is perfectly straight across. So i do plan to fix that, but figure it will be easier to get the detail on there on a straight model, and then do some deforming as my last step.
So as far as detail goes, I think im just going to start from the bottom, and work my way up! This is going to be an adventure! :poly108:
Oh interesting, I do plan to go back to that prop... after i finish this phone. I started the gramophone a year ago, but then got busy on unrelated projects. I'm hoping this phone will motivate me to go back and finish the gramophone.
Hi, there. Not sure if you found a satisfactory method for rendering wireframes yet, but if you are still looking you should try Mental Ray's contour feature:
You have to go into the mental ray section of your shader's shading group and select 'Enable Contour Rendering' - this is also where you choose the color and width for the wireframes. Then you also have to go into the Features tab of the render settings window, and select 'Enable Contour Rendering'. In this section, 'Over-Sample' increases the anti-aliasing quality of your wireframes and under 'Draw by Property Difference' selecting 'Around All Poly Faces' will give you what you're looking for.
This might seem a bit involved when reading it, but it is really only choosing settings in two locations and you end up with very nice, anti-aliased wireframes. If you want to add your wires via compositing, you can render pure white wires on an otherwise pure black image to give you a matte for your wires. Otherwise, this feature just slaps the wireframes on top of your final render.
Hope this helps. Also, I dig your gramophone. Best of luck with your antique phone.
Had to take a break and work on some school work. Making a short and if you're interested, you can check out our blog site for it. http://www.cabinfevershort.blogspot.com/
Here is what I made today. Probably will look at it tomorrow and want to change everything!
haha thank you! Yea, im pretty excited about making some displacement barnacle stuff for his face... but havent quite decided what direction to go with that... The concept (by me) is real cartoony, so i have to distinguish the fine line between to much detail and too little detail.
Your highpoly looks good, and you seem to have a good understading of modeling. What you lack though is texture experince doing props. What I want to say is : Go through the modeling process faster and use more time on baking and texturing where you need it. Good idea though to make small props, usually its a good way to practice texturing. Good work nevertheless.
Yea my goal with this model isnt really the high res, but the low poly version. That's what i really need practice on. And when i get a nice low poly version working with my normal map, i plan to really work on creating an awesome texture too!
Oh and also now that school is over for the semester... (WOO SUMMER!) I can concentrate more on personal projects!
Here is my starfish guy textured. Sculpted displacement in Zbrush, and painted textures with a combination of zbrush and photoshop. This is for my MFA project, an animated short.
This is rendered in Mental Ray, and our short is going to be rendered in renderman. So there will be changes to some of the actual shaders.
I'm pretty proud of the color scheme, and i really like his displacement! what do yall think? go on, lay it on me!
I think overall the character looks great, I really like the design and colour scheme. The only thing though that strikes me are the dark lines on the back of his head. I'm not sure if that is a characteristic of star fish, but it just looks off to me. Otherwise no other crits, nice work!
The character looks great! You might want to scale his hands up a bit to give an extra boost to the cartoony proportions and because everyone loves oversized hands
One thing that confused me is how you got the base lower, space invader type shapes on the gramophone to bake properly as they look like 90 degree angles with no chamfering going on. So I was going to say chamfer more but hey it worked.
As a side note, it seems there are quite a few pattern details missing on the gramophone and the shapes created to represent them are quite simple in comparison to the reference. It might be a good idea to concentrate on making those shapes more complex and pleasing to the eye which should help ao produce more interesting results.
ps: are you using the edge clone technique with a plane or modifying primitives to make those shapes?
@GCMP Yea, A couple ppl have told me to make his hands bigger... so im seriously considering that.
As for the gramophone.. that was my first low res model ever, so i didnt know about that whole chamfering thing... Ive since learned that normal maps work better with 45 degree angles, and that makes sense. Haha slooowly learning how to do this stuff.
Absolutely, 45 degrees or less is a good idea on both the high and low poly models. Missed the part where you said this is your first normal mapped model so great job considering.
There's plenty of cool and useful threads on here if you get stuck and most people love to help out as well
ok update... im almost finished with the hi-poly... but i still need to do the actual dial part of the phone (which is on the other side). Then i can start low-polying this sucker.
Replies
Unfortunately none of your images are showing up (or did you not post any?).
Welcome to the board, Liz.
p.s.: I see dead people O.o
It exists I tell you!
The Subject:
So now to make the Hi Poly Version:
*using maya 2009*
Here was my first go around with critiques made while polycount was being slow to activate my thread...:P
In addition to those critiques, I also skipped out on some detail on the wooden base.. >.>
<.<
So here was my second go at it.
Ok so issues with the wireframes..
Using two methods there, PolySmooth (up one subdivision) and then Maya Vector Render in the first sheet.
Disadvantage: Can't render smooth without going up one subdivision
Then the second method I used Maya's High Quality display, slapped on a surface shader, and screen captured it.
It's not really working for me.
Any suggestions of how to Render a high quality wireframe in maya without MayaVector?
ok now, no joking about her models not showing up. She is still waiting on her post to be approved.
Also, as far as wires on a render goes I generally use Multitool for my wireframe renders.
First draft:
Checking the silhouette:
Having major issues around the speaker at this point:
Some pointers from raul, thanks raul!!
So at this point, I've spent a majority of my week trying to just get normal maps to work in general rather than working on my real maps.
I made sure that my speaker lined up perfectly with the high res mesh, but still even in my "final" go, it doesn't look quite right. I noticed that even without the normal map, the light didnt seem to be bouncing off consistently around the edges... so if anyone has any thoughts on that...
oh, and yea, I gave my color map an alpha channel for the record, and also tried hooking that up in the transparency, and it seemed to ignore me, here's my alpha if anyone can see something immediately wrong with it:
With all that said...
Here are some sheets:
Color:
(exactly like it is described here:) http://wiki.polycount.com/Normal%20Map#Modeling_The_High-Poly_Mesh
Proportions are going pretty good so far. I see in the reference that the handle part of the phone is actually sagging a big, probably from age, where mine is perfectly straight across. So i do plan to fix that, but figure it will be easier to get the detail on there on a straight model, and then do some deforming as my last step.
So as far as detail goes, I think im just going to start from the bottom, and work my way up! This is going to be an adventure! :poly108:
You have to go into the mental ray section of your shader's shading group and select 'Enable Contour Rendering' - this is also where you choose the color and width for the wireframes. Then you also have to go into the Features tab of the render settings window, and select 'Enable Contour Rendering'. In this section, 'Over-Sample' increases the anti-aliasing quality of your wireframes and under 'Draw by Property Difference' selecting 'Around All Poly Faces' will give you what you're looking for.
This might seem a bit involved when reading it, but it is really only choosing settings in two locations and you end up with very nice, anti-aliased wireframes. If you want to add your wires via compositing, you can render pure white wires on an otherwise pure black image to give you a matte for your wires. Otherwise, this feature just slaps the wireframes on top of your final render.
Hope this helps. Also, I dig your gramophone. Best of luck with your antique phone.
http://www.cabinfevershort.blogspot.com/
Here is what I made today. Probably will look at it tomorrow and want to change everything!
Reaaaallly want to get back on the phone!!
Yea my goal with this model isnt really the high res, but the low poly version. That's what i really need practice on. And when i get a nice low poly version working with my normal map, i plan to really work on creating an awesome texture too!
Here is my starfish guy textured. Sculpted displacement in Zbrush, and painted textures with a combination of zbrush and photoshop. This is for my MFA project, an animated short.
This is rendered in Mental Ray, and our short is going to be rendered in renderman. So there will be changes to some of the actual shaders.
I'm pretty proud of the color scheme, and i really like his displacement! what do yall think? go on, lay it on me!
The character looks great! You might want to scale his hands up a bit to give an extra boost to the cartoony proportions and because everyone loves oversized hands
One thing that confused me is how you got the base lower, space invader type shapes on the gramophone to bake properly as they look like 90 degree angles with no chamfering going on. So I was going to say chamfer more but hey it worked.
As a side note, it seems there are quite a few pattern details missing on the gramophone and the shapes created to represent them are quite simple in comparison to the reference. It might be a good idea to concentrate on making those shapes more complex and pleasing to the eye which should help ao produce more interesting results.
ps: are you using the edge clone technique with a plane or modifying primitives to make those shapes?
Look forward to seeing more from you!
As for the gramophone.. that was my first low res model ever, so i didnt know about that whole chamfering thing... Ive since learned that normal maps work better with 45 degree angles, and that makes sense. Haha slooowly learning how to do this stuff.
There's plenty of cool and useful threads on here if you get stuck and most people love to help out as well
Nice work so far.