Alleyway in Brussels
polycounter lvl 6
Guten Tag Polycounters,
This is my first CG project of any kind, my reference is from an alleyway in Brussels which leads to a very old pub called Au Bon Vieux Temps...very nice is it too!.. I've done this in 3D Studio Max which I've been learning for 3 months. Previously I was learning Maya for 8 months.
I wanted to see how accurately I could model/light and texture a scene and match the camera. The scene gives me enough props to practice with without being too overwhelming, the texturing should be fun, lots of grime & character.
Any advice/constructive criticism appreciated, other ways I could do things etc. I have a few queries I hope you can help with which I have at the end of this post. I could start another thread in 'technical talk' about these issues but thought I'd keep it all here and in context.
First of all some of the reference I used.
I then matched the camera, not perfectly but I was eager to start modelling. This is some of the early stages of modelling and the pic shows the photo I have tried to match.
I then had a big problem, lots of tools were playing up and it was driving me mad for about a week. I found out that it was due to me scaling the poly using transform rather than scaling it in the sub-object, anyway after resetting the x-form for scale on everything I continued.
This is how it now stands:
I am now quite far into unwrapping, though Im not sure sometimes when to use the Unwrap UVW Modifier or the UVW Map modifier, I'm slowly but surely getting my head around that though. Following the unwrapping I will go back into modelling some areas, just adding some cracks and lots of imperfections, basically make it all wonky. Ill leave smaller details until the texturing.
A query about unwrapping: I have cables/pipes which I created with splines and then rendered, these splines have mapping coordinates. Is it normal to texture such things on a UV map or would you just do them procedurely?, Im presuming its up to the invidual but thought Id ask. I also have a chain which was modelled with polys, would you not normally unwrap such things?
For when I have done all my unwrapping and then want to assemble all my UVs how do I make sure all my UVs are to the same scale, does max have a tool for this or do you know of a script that can do it?
A query on texturing: For a scene like this would it be normal practice to do bump mapping or normal mapping?, or is that purely dependant on whether I am doing this project as a games environment?, also would you advise to you use displacement for the ground for instance?. I know the difference between normals, bump and displacment but not always when it is suitable to apply them.
The polycount at the moment is 320.096. I started this not sure exactly what I was aiming for as far as for games or film etc. Can someone give me any advice on what kind of polycount an environment like this may have for a next gen game compared to film?
Thank you for reading, I look forward to your advice and constructive criticism.
Martin
This is my first CG project of any kind, my reference is from an alleyway in Brussels which leads to a very old pub called Au Bon Vieux Temps...very nice is it too!.. I've done this in 3D Studio Max which I've been learning for 3 months. Previously I was learning Maya for 8 months.
I wanted to see how accurately I could model/light and texture a scene and match the camera. The scene gives me enough props to practice with without being too overwhelming, the texturing should be fun, lots of grime & character.
Any advice/constructive criticism appreciated, other ways I could do things etc. I have a few queries I hope you can help with which I have at the end of this post. I could start another thread in 'technical talk' about these issues but thought I'd keep it all here and in context.
First of all some of the reference I used.
I then matched the camera, not perfectly but I was eager to start modelling. This is some of the early stages of modelling and the pic shows the photo I have tried to match.
I then had a big problem, lots of tools were playing up and it was driving me mad for about a week. I found out that it was due to me scaling the poly using transform rather than scaling it in the sub-object, anyway after resetting the x-form for scale on everything I continued.
This is how it now stands:
I am now quite far into unwrapping, though Im not sure sometimes when to use the Unwrap UVW Modifier or the UVW Map modifier, I'm slowly but surely getting my head around that though. Following the unwrapping I will go back into modelling some areas, just adding some cracks and lots of imperfections, basically make it all wonky. Ill leave smaller details until the texturing.
A query about unwrapping: I have cables/pipes which I created with splines and then rendered, these splines have mapping coordinates. Is it normal to texture such things on a UV map or would you just do them procedurely?, Im presuming its up to the invidual but thought Id ask. I also have a chain which was modelled with polys, would you not normally unwrap such things?
For when I have done all my unwrapping and then want to assemble all my UVs how do I make sure all my UVs are to the same scale, does max have a tool for this or do you know of a script that can do it?
A query on texturing: For a scene like this would it be normal practice to do bump mapping or normal mapping?, or is that purely dependant on whether I am doing this project as a games environment?, also would you advise to you use displacement for the ground for instance?. I know the difference between normals, bump and displacment but not always when it is suitable to apply them.
The polycount at the moment is 320.096. I started this not sure exactly what I was aiming for as far as for games or film etc. Can someone give me any advice on what kind of polycount an environment like this may have for a next gen game compared to film?
Thank you for reading, I look forward to your advice and constructive criticism.
Martin
Replies
...anyone got any comments/advice/critiques?.
For the ground I was thinking to do a displacement map, though I don't know yet how to do one I presume that would be a good way to go about it... do you think I should model some/all of it?, I presume then I would do a normal map afterwards to keep the polys down?
Also, I think displace is the way to go for the ground
Yep, that window was intentionally put higher as I wanted the lamp and chain to be more of a focal point, I thought the window behind was distracting
Jeremy, first of all I'd like to just render it with a walkthrough and then perhaps strip it down for a game engine, if I knew how to bake the ironwork down to an alpha I would, it sounds like something I need to look into