wtf is wrong with it? Thats what i spent hours on going back and forth making it match the ref more and more.
The only problem i see is the....
Wait, by front do you mean the battery or where the buttons are?I havent finished that. Im still wondering how im going to model the battery.
Thanks DKK, ive been getting more determined to make this gun kickass And im not even done yet, im going to completely re organize the UV's so they cant breathe for shit.
If you just go by the way the eotech rests on the rails the front would be the battery pack and the rear would be the display/controls. Also you're missing the details from the side, you're probably getting to it, but don't forget.
Oh, after i found out the name of the sight i went looking at more refs and in one of them the battery only came out that far and i thought it looked better. All their sights look similar so it shouldnt be a big problem. I cant find the ref again so i probably will end up extending it.
Should those bolts on the side (big ones) be floating? They're on the complete opposite side of the gun in FPS view and when scoped in it wouldnt be visible at all.
Who would have thought a battery pack could be so frustrating.
Thanks racer, i just reviewed about 10 threads. I noticed that they dont use floating geometry very much, is there a problem with this? My top screws on that back panel are floaters along with the text. The ridges above the buttons and the arrows will also be baked into the mesh. Of course i tried to not use it too much because the sight is right in the players face when aiming.
Here it is so far, ill probably loosen that very front edge to be the smooth and round like its supposed it. But then ill probably call it done because the player really wont be that close to this side of the scope. In MW2 i never even knew that there was a huge battery pack in the front until i modeled it :P
Had about 3 threads on Crymod at once with EoTech sights going, that one got interesting. :P
I do agree with what others are saying - perhaps slow down a little bit, if only to review your work before you go onto the next stage. Not that getting an asset out in a little over.. i think 2-3 days (?) is a bad thing mind, you just need to be really, really careful not to rush it.
There aren't any key features you've missed I'd say - are you using any floating geometry, by the way?
There's nothing wrong with using floaters, in fact they're an essential part of production. Most of the guys doing the workshops were probably doing it for a solid high to show / working on complex modeling workflows.
Practicing complex mesh modeling now saves time later.
My opinion on that anyway.
Had about 3 threads on Crymod at once with EoTech sights going, that one got interesting. :P
I do agree with what others are saying - perhaps slow down a little bit, if only to review your work before you go onto the next stage. Not that getting an asset out in a little over.. i think 2-3 days (?) is a bad thing mind, you just need to be really, really careful not to rush it.
There aren't any key features you've missed I'd say - are you using any floating geometry, by the way?
Ive been fixing crits for the last 2 days :P
Yes im using floaters. All the bolts accept the bottoms on the front, the ridges above the buttons along with the arrows and text.
Yes im using floaters. All the bolts accept the bottoms on the front, the ridges above the buttons along with the arrows and text.
It was more in general I meant. Either way, my personal take is that it matters whether it looks good, the geometry is well distributed, and the texture is up to scratch - if it doesn't exactly match a reference.. well, its not really that much of a big deal in my opinion.
Only the anally retentive gamer will pick up on a bolt being in the wrong place, for example. :poly124:
Cheers for the clarification, was just interested where you were using it on the model.
Front panel cape out great but I never learned how to fix up those weird edges where the normal map gets cut off (right image). I guess ill have to fix it in PS?
Just add more geometry to your lowpoly, its too "jagged" right now, especially for something that will be very visible and very important in FPV, and even possibly zoomed in on in an iron-sight animation. You've just got much too little geometry to smooth out those curves right now, and fixing that will also fix any normal issues you're having.
It might also be a good idea to model the holes in the side for those larger screws, and there's some detail on that area that's missing in the normal map.
How does the sight look on a gun in a fps view? that can really help you see where you need to add more detail.
It might also be a good idea to model the holes in the side for those larger screws, and there's some detail on that area that's missing in the normal map.
How does the sight look on a gun in a fps view? that can really help you see where you need to add more detail.
Those bolts will never be seen by the player, because they go into the side rather than out. That, along with them being on the opposite side of the gun made me decide to just float them.
Heres the final bake, you were right EQ. I chamfered all those edges and it baked fine with TS turned on on the high poly. I also tried to make my uvs better. Just a note, the only empty space is at the top, some faces were baked straight on and are the same color as the backgorund.
Those bolts will never be seen by the player, because they go into the side rather than out. That, along with them being on the opposite side of the gun made me decide to just float them.
Heres the final bake, you were right EQ. I chamfered all those edges and it baked fine with TS turned on on the high poly. I also tried to make my uvs better. Just a note, the only empty space is at the top, some faces were baked straight on and are the same color as the backgorund.
This UV layout is a lot better. There are still quite a few things you could do to improve it, however they are all relatively minor. Look into how you're placing the smaller bits, as i think you can make that more efficiant, and scale up everything by a small %. Something to pay attention to specifically, where you have some long thing peices but you have one horizontal and the other vertical, right next to each other like this:
___ |
and instead you could stack them like this:
___
___
or
| |
These sort of things can go pretty far in maxing out your layout. One thing i like to do is scale my layout so that it stretches farther than you would think is possible to pack, and then try to really fit some of the smaller stuff in the cracks and be creative with how you lay it all out.
it also looks like you aren't rotating your light at all... well you may be, but this is probably because you might be using the same light setup?
hold shift, LMB to rotate -or- shiftRMB to spin it. hold down ctrl to rotate your model as opposed to alt to move the camera. this can be useful for getting a different lighting angle... sometimes useful.
I rotate the light the best i can in some views. I mainly find the sunny environment to be the best, but sometimes it doesn't light everything it could.
Thanks for the link to EQ's skies.
Heres another picture, id say the scope has just about everything done to it i can do. The color scheme is really just so bland on the actual ones. I added in the tan for personal preference.
Heres the normals. I really started to get cornered towards the end and couldn't find anything to move to fill the gap at the top and take advantage of space :S.
Hopefully thanks to everyone that helped me fix up this gun i wont make the same mistakes on my next gun. Im glad i got the sight done because it can be a great asset to customize my guns with, and came out surprisingly well.
Im getting cornered by a team project so im going to toss this in my game art folder and texture it in my spare time.
you're stillnot getting what I was talking about about with your unwrapping.
sure you can get away with this on a pretty easy going mod, but I cant imagine any art director or lead at a professional studio would be ok with this.
To give you an idea of how much work is involved, it will sometimes take me a whole day to unwrap a single asset. What you've shown looks like it was done in less than hour
That unwrap is pretty dire mate. You should be focusing on that before texturing. For some reason you keep jumping the gun (no pun intended) and rushing into stuff before the stuff before are nowhere near as good as they can be. You are wasting like a collective 40% of your UV space which is going to result in some poor details ingame, not to mention everything is split up like its just come right out of a "click here to unwrap" program.
Don't forget you don't NEED to use 1:1 textures, you can use for example a 2048x1024 (2:1).
Also, model those screws on the side of the sight, they look poor flat like that.
That as well. Usually what I do is unwrap everything even if it wont fit on the unwrap, then move all the pieces together to form a square, then scale up or down as needed. Sometimes you can get away with giving a few areas more pixel density (Like iron sight areas) so its not a set rule. But at the moment, the weapon has quite a lot of really random breaks in the unwrap, and even more random scaling.
DO NOT just say "oh i'll move onto a new gun, get it right next time". Just fix what you started. A good unwrap makes a huge world of difference and you may even be able to get out 2x the detail with the same resolution textures, just from making a better unwrap.
listen to what they tell you about the unwrap. It's definetly very important for getting hired.
still i just wanted to give you a headsup. I think you are improving very fast and doing good progress. Just try to get really down to the nuts and bolts of unwrapping and a little bit better lowpoly modelling.
I didn't re-unwrap the uv, which is why its probably still messy. The pieces were sloppy and didn't fit together that well. My sight was unwrapped and then packed by hand and it looks alot better compared to the gun which i don't have time to re-unwrap, but it could be better.
Odium, 2 things. 1, no one will see the bolts on that side of the sight so i would prefer not to spend time fooling with it. And actually, they're there i just had the rays too low to get the full indent so i might just re do the normal map. And I have been fixing stuff constantly on the last 2 pages of this thread instead of putting it off until the next gun. I have a request for another gun that i need to get to work on, and hopefully thanks to this thread i wont rush anymore pieces and i can unwrap it much better to pack.
Yeah don't forget you still want room for padding. It won't be fun doing it again because everything bled over.
Thats what i worry about. Ill put them real close and then worry that they might touch each other so i move them apart, and then in the end it looks really spaced out.
You also made the mistake of mapping both sides of a lot of parts that are perfectly symmetrical - wasting UV space and texturing time. Like the stock and magazine, to name a couple.
You also made the mistake of mapping both sides of a lot of parts that are perfectly symmetrical - wasting UV space and texturing time. Like the stock and magazine, to name a couple.
Im trying to learn to use Tangent normals. I actually did my first test bake for the UMP with tangent space and it looked good except for a few smoothing errors. And the quality of the map looked really bad too.
Replies
No, he's right
The only problem i see is the....
Wait, by front do you mean the battery or where the buttons are?I havent finished that. Im still wondering how im going to model the battery.
Thanks DKK, ive been getting more determined to make this gun kickass
If you just go by the way the eotech rests on the rails the front would be the battery pack and the rear would be the display/controls. Also you're missing the details from the side, you're probably getting to it, but don't forget.
Im guessing i should have this as a separate asset? 1024x1024 should do fine. That was my original plan.
Should those bolts on the side (big ones) be floating? They're on the complete opposite side of the gun in FPS view and when scoped in it wouldnt be visible at all.
Thanks racer, i just reviewed about 10 threads. I noticed that they dont use floating geometry very much, is there a problem with this? My top screws on that back panel are floaters along with the text. The ridges above the buttons and the arrows will also be baked into the mesh. Of course i tried to not use it too much because the sight is right in the players face when aiming.
Here it is so far, ill probably loosen that very front edge to be the smooth and round like its supposed it. But then ill probably call it done because the player really wont be that close to this side of the scope. In MW2 i never even knew that there was a huge battery pack in the front until i modeled it :P
Did a quick fix on the back
I do agree with what others are saying - perhaps slow down a little bit, if only to review your work before you go onto the next stage. Not that getting an asset out in a little over.. i think 2-3 days (?) is a bad thing mind, you just need to be really, really careful not to rush it.
There aren't any key features you've missed I'd say - are you using any floating geometry, by the way?
Practicing complex mesh modeling now saves time later.
My opinion on that anyway.
Yes im using floaters. All the bolts accept the bottoms on the front, the ridges above the buttons along with the arrows and text.
It was more in general I meant.
Only the anally retentive gamer will pick up on a bolt being in the wrong place, for example. :poly124:
Cheers for the clarification, was just interested where you were using it on the model.
Front panel cape out great but I never learned how to fix up those weird edges where the normal map gets cut off (right image). I guess ill have to fix it in PS?
Before i read that I tried disabling the TS on the inner and outer shells and it looks pretty good.
How does the sight look on a gun in a fps view? that can really help you see where you need to add more detail.
Heres the final bake, you were right EQ. I chamfered all those edges and it baked fine with TS turned on on the high poly. I also tried to make my uvs better. Just a note, the only empty space is at the top, some faces were baked straight on and are the same color as the backgorund.
This UV layout is a lot better. There are still quite a few things you could do to improve it, however they are all relatively minor. Look into how you're placing the smaller bits, as i think you can make that more efficiant, and scale up everything by a small %. Something to pay attention to specifically, where you have some long thing peices but you have one horizontal and the other vertical, right next to each other like this:
___ |
and instead you could stack them like this:
___
___
or
| |
These sort of things can go pretty far in maxing out your layout. One thing i like to do is scale my layout so that it stretches farther than you would think is possible to pack, and then try to really fit some of the smaller stuff in the cracks and be creative with how you lay it all out.
But yeah, much better layout than before.
Still working on the texture, marmo has a hard time getting the light on it right:
have you tried using one of the different light setups provided by 3PS in your toolbag install?
toolbag_install\toolbag\base\sky
there's 5 different setups available, or you can create your own
see here from the Toolbag thread. Really buried in there now that it has become a monster....
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=921855&postcount=337
it also looks like you aren't rotating your light at all... well you may be, but this is probably because you might be using the same light setup?
hold shift, LMB to rotate -or- shiftRMB to spin it. hold down ctrl to rotate your model as opposed to alt to move the camera. this can be useful for getting a different lighting angle... sometimes useful.
and Johny made some more skies you can use here.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=921916&postcount=338
OH, and to load a new sky, load toolbag, go to the Sky tab, select Open Environment, and then go directory your skies are stored.
Thanks for the link to EQ's skies.
Heres another picture, id say the scope has just about everything done to it i can do. The color scheme is really just so bland on the actual ones. I added in the tan for personal preference.
Heres the normals. I really started to get cornered towards the end and couldn't find anything to move to fill the gap at the top and take advantage of space :S.
Hopefully thanks to everyone that helped me fix up this gun i wont make the same mistakes on my next gun. Im glad i got the sight done because it can be a great asset to customize my guns with, and came out surprisingly well.
Im getting cornered by a team project so im going to toss this in my game art folder and texture it in my spare time.
sure you can get away with this on a pretty easy going mod, but I cant imagine any art director or lead at a professional studio would be ok with this.
To give you an idea of how much work is involved, it will sometimes take me a whole day to unwrap a single asset. What you've shown looks like it was done in less than hour
Don't forget you don't NEED to use 1:1 textures, you can use for example a 2048x1024 (2:1).
Also, model those screws on the side of the sight, they look poor flat like that.
DO NOT just say "oh i'll move onto a new gun, get it right next time". Just fix what you started. A good unwrap makes a huge world of difference and you may even be able to get out 2x the detail with the same resolution textures, just from making a better unwrap.
still i just wanted to give you a headsup. I think you are improving very fast and doing good progress. Just try to get really down to the nuts and bolts of unwrapping and a little bit better lowpoly modelling.
Odium, 2 things. 1, no one will see the bolts on that side of the sight so i would prefer not to spend time fooling with it. And actually, they're there i just had the rays too low to get the full indent so i might just re do the normal map. And I have been fixing stuff constantly on the last 2 pages of this thread instead of putting it off until the next gun. I have a request for another gun that i need to get to work on, and hopefully thanks to this thread i wont rush anymore pieces and i can unwrap it much better to pack.
Ill keep working on them though, thanks guys.
if you are using a 1024 texture you might want a little more padding than that, I believe Rens said that was for a 2048.
Yeah but he's using object space normals