Antique Cupboard
polycounter lvl 10
Hello! These are my highpoly and lowpoly versions of a cupboard I did for my modeling class. Critique welcomed 
Highpoly
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Lowpoly
Thank you,
Jessica Dinh
Highpoly
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Lowpoly
Thank you,
Jessica Dinh
Replies
Have you baked it down yet? Would be awesome to see some colour on there!
Can i see you reference picture?
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im excited for the bake
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URL=http://img823.imageshack.us/i/diffusemaxrender02.jpg/]
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But over all good work
Keep it up
Hugh
Also, the reference photo has a lot more use of black paint on the details around the lower drawers. It really broke up all of the brown wood and added a nice sense of richness and detail to the original piece. I'd recommend including it in yours as well.
From the top down shot of the front it looks like the texture density between the shelf like part, and the cabinet face behind it is pretty uneven. Its not too bad in this case and sort of a minor thing, but its something a lot of artist will look for when evaluating a piece. If its not easily fixed, you can render from angles that minimize it. Always a good idea to unwrap with a grid texture on, if you're not doing so already.
That's a lot of crit... I don't mean to be harsh though. I actually really like this piece. There's a nice sense of history and uniqueness to it. I'll enjoy seeing it with a spec map to really bring out the normals. Also, post unwraps/maps. Its a lot easier to see whats going on in a piece with them.
Thanks again! ^_^, Jessica
Anyway, I'm glad you like my piece!
Here are my unwraps and maps:
Normal Map:
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Diffuse Map:
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Specular Map:
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Bump Map (before being placed in CrazyBump)
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Normal Map with Bump Map overlay on top:
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UVW Sheet:
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Now I have a few things to say about my maps here. This is my second time creating a specular map, and the first time I have created one for a dielectric object. I read some tutorials on how to make them and I kindof just took a stab ahaha. I am about to put it into UDK, so I don't really know what it looks like yet, but if anyone sees that it is glaringly wrong, or that there is anything wrong with it at all, please let me know.
Bump Map: I am having a VERY hard time with the bump map. It is just too crazy intense, and it could be that I just need to learn more about CrazyBump, or it could be that my desaturated bump image is just wrong. This is my first bump map, so if anyone sees anything wrong, also kindly let me know
Thanks!
Jessica
The wear that comes with age like that would be in the spec map. Sure some tiny divots from being hit by objects but that's all. But those are not needed to get the effect that you posted as your reference. What you need to do is pull back some of the wear on the diffuse and spend a few days working JUST on the spec map. Also make a gloss map, it will help with changing the fall off of the spec that comes when something is less polished in one area vs another.
Really tone down the edge highlighting in the diffuse, its killing the prop. render out a good AO map for this thing and add that as a multiply at %50 opacity. Pull back the yellow aged layer. Pump up the wood grain layers intensity so that the contrast really pops. Wear down the saturation in layer above that in spots that might have gotten too much sun over the years. (not too much)
For the spec map kill the blue! you can add some of that back in later, but only a little. Rite now your values are all the same. sure one area is blue and the painted areas are black but they are both the same value. you need WAY more contrast in something like this. Really invest time into this map. Bring in the AO as well in here, and crank up the edge highlighting (again not too much) Have wear that's ONLY in the spec channel so that it breaks up the lighting better.
Your bump map, you could use that as a base for where to start on the gloss map. Make sure you have details that are different from the spec map so that this map can be of more use. The wood that just stained should get some age variation showing up as value changes (slight)in this map. The painted parts should be very bright so that the spec fall of is nice and tight. Where as the wood stained areas should be a bit wider, then even wider yet in the placed where its been aged the most.
Oh and get a better wood grain texture that is meant for this type of wood. And break up the orientation of the wood by how it would be constructed. All you need is the wood grain rotated 90 and to mask out sections that you don't want going that direction.
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Oh, also I made sure to take down the sharpen a bit on my diffuse texture. It was kindof obvious
New and improved bump and normal maps:
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Now this is just me nit picking over what is a pretty model but...
The detailing on the far left and right of the drawers seems to be suffering a little compared to the rest of the detail on your model, it looks like the normal map is almost pixelating? I might be wrong though.
But yes very pretty i look forward to seeing updates.
As i said, really, it was nit picking at what is a good model
Some critique for future models:
There are a lot of areas where similar features are mapped twice in the Unwrap, or where large areas of UV space seem taken up by surfaces that are inside the model. You can get a lot more detail from your texture if these spaces are put to productive use.
in particular things like the sides of the cupboard, which can never both be seen at the same time, can share texture space.
One trick I like to use is creating strips across the bottom of my texture for anything that can be treated as a trim. Since the strips of trim tile horizontally, I can create any length of that trim anywhere i need it. The remaining space can be devoted to more unique details.
Its always good to wring the most mileage you can out of your texture memory.
All in all a very cool piece. Keep up the good work.
If you're never gonna see it, delete it (unless you want to keep a hard edge) don't be afraid to float geometry inside other geometry, don't worry about connecting everything into one mesh in a contiguous piece of geometry.
I'm a sucker for anything textured from wood, so I really like it, very good prop
As an example, a model I made recently for work had about 20,000 tris and used a tiled 1024 texture. Here's how the filesizes broke down.
Exported Model: 320 Kb
Diffuse texture (RGB no alpha): 683 Kb
Normal with greyscale spec in the alpha: 1366 Kb
As you can see the very high poly model is still pretty small compared to the textures. So a little waste in the polycount can be preferable to losing the use of some of that precious texture memory. Also more and more the number of polys in a model are less important that the number of different models being rendered in a scene. Its a balancing act for sure, and it can depend on things like which engine you're working in and what sort of platform you're developing for.
The more efficient you can be, the more you can get away with using smaller textures, or cram even more detail into large maps if you have the luxury. It also helps optimization proof your textures, so when things start getting down-sized to get the frame rate up your models will still look good.
For the hell of it I outlined the spaces the don't seem to be doing much in green. It adds up to a good bit of space. especially when you consider that it is unused in all maps; diffuse, normal, and spec.
For portfolio work the first priority is to look awesome, though, and most artists I've seen use pretty large textures for folio stuff. Showing that you made the most of that space is always a good idea.
So yeah! If anyone has suggestions, (or even their own concepts they'd like me to tryy XD) let me know!
As for suggestions on what to model next, maybe an antique clock of sorts?
or maybe one of those grandfather clocks?
in any case, looking forward to updates and good luck!
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Messin' around in my simple lit scene haha - I haven't learned how to add collision yet, so it took about 15 or 20 tries to get a printscreen of this before I fell through the floor XD
for the next prop, try to be more efficient with the unwrapping and baking. dont have 100% unique unwrap. share some parts.