Greevar's WIPs
polycounter lvl 6
I thought I'd update this to help point out the amount of improvement I gained through the guidance of the folks here with a before and after comparison:
Before:
After:
Original Post:
Ok, here is my latest work. Looking for c&c.
It has normal, spec and diffuse. I don't think the lighting does it justice, but I'm better at environment lighting than beauty shots.
Diffuse:
Spec:
Normal:
Finally, the UV map:
A wood pallet, diffuse only:
Before:
After:
Original Post:
Ok, here is my latest work. Looking for c&c.
It has normal, spec and diffuse. I don't think the lighting does it justice, but I'm better at environment lighting than beauty shots.
Diffuse:
Spec:
Normal:
Finally, the UV map:
A wood pallet, diffuse only:
Replies
Yeah, it's missing dents, splits, and other damage. I was thinking that myself.
Also sections of the texture map are repeated, you could stack UV islands over these parts instead of repeating them and scale up your UVs to get more texel resolution.
Texture wise you could be more subtle with your brush work. You've applied "rust" and scratches rather liberally all over the metal. Think of instead where dirt and moisture would collect. Also consider how run off from the metal would effect the wood.
Good point.
Esprite:
"Kind of a waste to do a normal map for just surface texture. Consider doing high poly normals for it as well."
You mean to say I should sculpt it in high poly to get surface texture and depth?
I like what you're thinking about using the scratches more economically. I'll try that.
"Also consider how run off from the metal would effect the wood."
Yeah, I was trying to think of how to make that work with floating geometry. I'm not entirely certain where the effect would appear or should I just ball park it and add it to the whole region?
First things first.
The model isn't bad. It's definitely passable for a game.
What you'll need to do is duplicate it, and then go ahead and model a completely high rez version of it.
Not a Zbrush sculpt.
Model each plank of wood, model each sheet of metal that holds it together. Model them individually and then bevel the edges. then bevel the bevels.
Then model in the tiny rivets/nails that would hold the metal in place.
Then meshsmooth the entire thing 2 or 3 times.
Use that High rez to generate your Normal Map, and Ambient Occlusion.
Use your normal map to generate your curvature map.
Then proceed to give it the surface treatment you've already started with.
Curvature map? I'm working in Blender, so I'm not familiar with your terminology.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=52183
This is great advice
Like this:
http://www.blendercookie.com/2009/06/22/creating-a-wooden-barrel/
"Cavity map" is the primarily white map that has black lines that fill in the crevisses.
The "Edge Enhancement Map" (Not sure what the real name for this would be) is the primarily black map that has the white lines that highlight the corners and bevels.
Both of those textures are derived from that 'Curvature Map' (that grey map with both the cavity and edge information that's derrived from the normal map).
In fact, the metal overall looks too uniformly noisy. Like the "clouds" filter in photoshop, sort of.
XNormal has a photoshop plugin that loads during install that works very well and very fast.
Here's a little rundown on how it all goes.
1) generate your normal map to match the engine you will be using it for. If you are working in layers, make sure that it is all flattened before proceeding to step 2.
2)
3) adjust any setting necessary and hit "update" to see preview results.
4) select everything, and copy the result into your clipboard
5) open up your diffuse, lay down some basic color to start
6)paste in your cavity map result and viola! adjust levels, start masking, colorizing, etc.
don't just paste it in and call it a day.
try different things out of the plugin from XNormal. there's a bunch of different settings and effects you can achieve that can aid you in your texturing process.
again, use this as a starting point. i swear to bobo if i see some damn hack job copypaste adultry with no effort involved, i'll smack your momma.
ignore the 2nd grader hand writing. i asked my toddler to write this for me because i was too lazy... that and i had too much coffee over the past 15 years.
But I think I'll remap my UVs better before I do that.
So, don't just rush through your high-poly because it bores you, or whatever. Do it, or don't.
And not doing a high-poly is not really an option.
Also, maybe model some of the larger cracks in the wood, and such. Also, assuming this barrel is meant to hold liquid, it also needs a bunghole (don't laugh.) This is a hole in the wood that is corked after being filled up with liquid. It can be on the top, or the body of the barrel.
Small things like this can make or break a model - be sure to get plenty of reference, even for something you think you know, such as a barrel or a crate.
It will help in the end.
I mentioned it because I care, haha. But seriously, this isn't bad at all so far - it just needs to be taken further.
Edit: Had to change the image, but this one shows the same thing. The other one did the ol' switcheroo with a "THIS IS COPYRIGHTED, BITCH" image. Polozad laughed at me. I feel defeated. Anyway, yes, carry on.
Actually, I've seen the type of barrel which a smith will actually place solid bands on the barrel while they're still hot. That's the style I was going for.
please post the problem you are experiencing. whatever is happening, copy and pasting and creating multiple passes for multiple individual pieces of geo is one of the most unproductive things you can do in the baking process.
what do you mean by terrible.... gotta post teh images of teh problem so people can help.
it's the equivalent of someone starting a topic in TechTalk with a title "I Have a Maya issue" and they say "i can't use the keyboard functions anymore, what's wrong?"
I can also see that my high poly isn't translating well with my low poly. I may have to do another high poly instead.
It looks like you're overlapping your UVs. All overlapping UVs should be translated -1 (or something).
BTW, in the low rez, you have a choice to do 1 of 2 things...
Create an Air-tight low poly mesh (which is more desireable, but more work).
Or separate the metal bands from the wooden planks in the high and low rez, and bake them separately (combine them in photoshop).
Oh, remember to keep everything on ONE smoothing group when you bake normal maps. The low rez should have no hard edges in the model.
sorry, you don't know what you're talking about. Coopers (the profession) made barrels for centuries without rivets, screws, or bolts. just clever placement of solid metal rings which WERE made out of one piece.
sure, MODERN barrels have rivets (only in some rings). but overall the process is largely unchanged as the old methods still work very well.
so telling someone that they HAVE to put x or y onto their artwork for the sake of "realism" really holds no water when that realism is based on incorrect information.
http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap?highlight=%28\bCategoryTexturing\b%29#Solving_Wavy_Lines
Ok, my mistake - I had never seen a barrel without rivets; and to me, the rivets add more character and interest to the model. But since I am wrong, you can feel free to ignore me.
So please continue.
anywho, i get your point and that's cool. but i dislike people citing realism without factual basis.
Blender 2.56 Beta
I've been tweaking the it in Blender as much as I can and this is the best I can get:
It doesn't look all the bad in render, but I think I'll need to tweak it in Photoshop.
No need to apologize - I should have been more thorough in my research before criticizing him. An eye for an eye, so to speak!
It's the internet - we need not take it so seriously.
Also, note to Greevar - can we see the UVs? I would be interested in seeing how this is laid out, in a clearer way than just seeing the texture. Thanks!
I did an all new UV map after I made the barrel and bands into an integrated mesh.
Wish I could help more.
Looking at your normal maps and this, I'm guessing it could be a smoothing issue. You seem to have smoothing enabled for the metal bands but not for the body of the barrel.
Here's the result on the low poly mesh:
I think it turned out well don't you?
The detail inbetween your planks is too fine now and getting lost in the normals, you should edit your HP so those planks have softer edges, so it transfers over. Its very important to model your high for your low, and what I mean when I say this is, to model your details so that they will read well at the intended size of the end result model, and at the intended texture resolution. Right now the plank detail would only be noticed when you zoom in on the highpoly model, its barely there on the lowpoly model, and would disappear completely with mip mapping when viewed ingame.
Its good that you took the metal bits out of the low, they add a LOT of geometry and will only make a mess of things when you're doing your first bakes, on top of that they only represent a small hieght difference, so its not really essential to model them in, as they wouldn't be noticed in most situations. Extra sides on the mesh to give more roundness will be noticed however.
Be carefull with silly workflows where you use a "middle" mesh, as changing your mesh normals after you bake is never a good idea, it will almost always result in smoothing errors. A better solution in this case is again, just to use double the sides on the asset(24?), this will make any "wavyness" in the result minor enough not to be noticeable/problematic.
I always like to caution against any workflows that require editing after the bake, when you get to more complex assets you *will not be able to do this* so its a bad habit to rely on, better to study and understand why you get problems, and then fix them with your final geometry, than do stuff like this.
Here is another barrel thread that I talk about some of the same points, but a bit more indepth with some example shots: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=79443
A thread on wavyness/a couple general baking issues: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=72713
One of the reasons your previews bakes were so bad, was that those metal bits were separate meshes intersecting the main mesh. When you have intersecting meshes you will want to keyframe both the low and high elements, and move them apart to bake. This will avoid errors as the rays from the different elements intersect when projecting the normal.
In most cases, you simply wouldn't model it this way, it would all be connected and a nice solid seamless mesh, but its important to understand the intersecting issue as you will need to learn how to do "exploded" bakes for more complex assets.
It looks like you have some smoothing errors on the top/bottom of the mesh, this is most likely caused by changing the mesh normals after baking, however these sort of "caps" can be problematic when baking unless your baker and renderer is properly sync'd up(which most arent, wont go into that here tho).
What you want to do is separate the top and bottom caps onto different smoothing groups. Make sure your uv are also separated there as well, which they should be with any conventional layout. You always need to have your uvs separated where you have hard edges/smoothing groups, or else you will get artifacts in your bakes.
Make sure you're using the "cage" method(default in max) and not "use offset" as the cage is averaged, where the "offset" method is not, which means it is bad for any meshes that have hard edges/smoothing errors, as you'll miss details on the edges of those hard edges.
There, hopefully that helps, that covers most of the basic problems people run into with normal maps, it takes some people years to learn all of this on their own, so hopefully you can soak it in.
I don't know what to do at this point. Every bake seems to have some kind of imperfection. Maybe it's time to call it good enough and move on to texturing?
It now looks like your metal rings are too hard edged, go in and add a nice big fat bevel to these(on the high), that should fix the errors there. Aside from this and the smoothing errors on the top, its looking much better actually.
Now, it looks like you have some smoothing errors at the top, what I would do here, is make sure these 2 rows of quads(the inner > shape) are one 1 smoothing group, the top cap is on one smoothing group, and the sides of the barrel are on one smoothing group. Also make sure your uvs are split accordingly too, to avoid errors. This should help with those smoothing issues.
It looks like you're previewing via renders? I would look into a nice viewport shader. If you follow the link 3ps my link in my thread you can find our shader, which we have a free version of, that has a shit ton of features, and has a mode to render normals very accurately.
Xoulio's shader is also very good and a lot of people like it, just so you dont think i'm trying to pimp our shit shamelessly here. I think with the latest version of max it has the normals fix too.
When you finally get the bake sorted and looking good, you should throw RGB colors onto your highpoly, so you can bake a diffuse map and easily split the channels to create masks for the different material types.
Edit: Oh I keep saying max but I see you're using blender, well the same advice should be applicable, tho I'm not sure exactly how blender's renderer works, and I doubt it has properly sync'd up normals.
Like I wrote about on my last post, I highly suggest NOT doing multiple bakes, attack the problem at the root, do not try to simply fix the the symptoms of the problem. These sort of methods will be much harder to use on more complex assets, so its best not to rely on them, instead to understand why the problems occur.
The metal ring thing is just a matter of highpoly content, nothing to do with baking method.
Actually, I'm using GLSL in the viewport. They look 99% the same though. What appears to be a smoothing error is actually some geometry from the high poly object transferring down on the faces below it. I think I want to reshape the barrels a bit so there isn't any occluding geometry. I'll try the beveling on the rings and see if that doesn't solve the problem I'm having.
I know the map is huge. I thought a higher res image could be scaled down to remove the errors. Here's the render with the new map: