ATX C-7

UncheckedDemon

I've been working on this for a little while and I thought it was time to get some feedback before I move forward on it. Everything is fair game, so critique away.

First some of my reference:

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Now my progress:

burtonyang

From what I know and noticed, the neck on the guitar looks too fat as you move upwards to the tuning dials and the amplifier dials look like they're going to fall off, but that's just me.

UncheckedDemon

Thanks for the comment burtonyang. Do you mean the width of the neck, or the front to back thickness? The tuning pegs are held in place by a small screw at the back as well as a nut on the front. Here's a close up of the back of the tuners.



You are right about the floating volume and tone controlls. I get right on that.

WillMac

good effort lad! It rocks. Is this just high poly glory rock or will there be game model outro?

I like the back render especially, model seems clean. If only you had done a fender jaguar... i woulda came. No offence.

burtonyang

Sorry I was unclear :P I was talking about the width of the neck and the volume and tone control knobs next to the pickups; out of the many guitars that I've seen, I haven't seen those kinds of bevels before. At most, they are only slight inward extrusions instead of bevels. I also noticed that the headstock seems a bit too long based on your reference. Hope my suggestions help.

Av7xrocker97

Ah...7-strings...mmmmm, I want ten of them

UncheckedDemon

WillMac: lol. No offence taken. Glad you like it. I'm working on the low poly.

burtonyang: No problem, I just didn't want to make the wrong adjustments.:) After looking at it for a while it did look a little wide, so I took a screen grab from the same angle as the full body reference image and it in photoshop and compared the two. I couldn't notice a difference. I'll take a break from it and look at it again to see if it sticks out any more.

Av7xrocker97: I'm the same way. It was either get this beast, or build a new computer. The computer won out, so I'm making it to occupy the time while my coffers refill.

I shortened the headstock, and made the volume/tone control indents shallower.




LET THERE BE LOWPOLY \m/:poly127:\m/

UncheckedDemon

Forgot to mention the lowpoly is at 6309 tris. Sorry about that.

NoctyQ

You should have made Loomis signature!.. :shifty:

Looks awesome! Solid modelling :thumbup:
The only thing that I think looks a tad bit off is at the knob section. I can't really localize what I think is off. Might just be because I'm used to Ibanez and low-profile knobs. The neck is thick but that's one of schecter trademarks.. Looks cool Can't wait to see more!

UncheckedDemon

NoctyQ: I thought about doing the Loomis. But had I made just one tiny mistake anywhere I fear that he would have materialized right next to me, and played a solo so epic that my very being would have been obliterated from existence; past present and future. I don't want that. I like existing. :poly142:

Started on the textures. I got some funky stuff in the normal projection that I'm working on solving, and I'm still working on the specular. I'd say the diffuse is done with some minor level tweaks.

Off the shelf


Post world tour

scotthomer

It looks lovely, really nice high poly modelling and the low poly has come out quite well too. I think in terms of texturing you could probably do with building up some layers of paint, and even some areas of variation within the diffuse, as at the moment as far as I can tell the diffuse is a solid colour with some noise on top (correct me if im wrong) The paint would probably have a fair bit of scratching around areas that have worn away.

Other than that, its pretty "bang-on". I love it.

ZacD

You have a lot of wasted tris on the low poly, and its still really geometric for 6k, I'm sure you could have off 2k and have it be smoother.

Razgriz

I honestly think you could get away with another thousand polies or so. Right now, the silhouette is killing it for me, there just aren't enough edges. You put a good deal of effort into getting the curves and volumes right on the high poly, and all of that is gone in the low poly. I think if you really smoothed the edges into a more cylindrical shape, it would make the guitar more successful as a whole.

UncheckedDemon

Thanks for the crits guys.

scotthomer: Thank you. You were right about the noise, more or less. I had a layer of darker and lighter blotches along with the noise, but it was just to subtle.

ZacD: You're right. There were a lot of wasted tris. So far I've gotten rid of 1k give or take, and am still looking for more.

Razgriz: I chamfered the hard edges, and it looks a lot better now.


After working on the textures some more I took it into UDK to see how it looked real time. This is in the default Static Mesh viewer




Also worked on the low poly. Now its sitting at 5379 tris.




I'm open to more suggestions and critiques. So have at it.:thumbup:

Heartless

Looks really good. The only thing that I noticed that seemed off is the screws. The "X"s are too big and looks like they reach all the way out. Small nitpick.

Kitteh

I think a lot more paint should be worn off around where you would pick the strings when playing it.

Cordell Felix

i dont understand how its 5.3k tris..are all those tris in the wires or something?

Snader

My guess is there's a lot of (and too much) polies in the bridge and the tuning keys.

Could you give us a breakdown of where the polies are, and some close ups of the detailed parts (bridge, keys, dials/tremolo, strap screws)?

sltrOlsson

The holes for the level controller don't need that geometry. Stuff like that works perfectly fine with normals. Feels like you should get some problems with what you have compared to the mesh with them (:

Looks cool!

JonathanF

great looking high poly!!

here is a guitar I did. your lowpoly count is way to high still. Let the normal map carry a lot of that detail.

lowpoly Wire

Lowpoly Textured

UncheckedDemon

Thanks for all the feedback guys. I don't have time to post any images right now, but I've continued optimizing and right now the tri count is in the neighborhood 3250. There are still a few areas I havent got to, yet but I hope to get it closer to done by tomorrow. I'm also aiming to have new images up tonight.

sltrOlsson

And yeah, the strings can go as an alpha. It's kinda hard to see, but thous screws looks kinda highish..

tda

Strings do look over-detailed but then again, it could just be that they are too small on the sceen to be discernable. The best way to do guitar strings was mentioned in another guitar thread a while back. I don't remember who said it, but having 1 long stretched out quad (of the appropriate width) for each string that shares the same tiny piece of tiling texture is more efficient than using a big ol' alpha plane for all 6, it's a lot crisper too because the edges are defined by geo. And if you need them to be more visible from acute angles, you can always add a split down the length of each quad and make em a V shape as opposed to flat.

burtonyang

Other than what was said above, the only thing I can think of is that it needs really (and i mean really) subtle scratches where the pick would hit the body of the guitar since there's no pick guard.

UncheckedDemon

As promised, here are some renders from today's progress. The main changes being to tricount and wireframe stuff. On the texture side, I added scratches were the pick would potentially hit the body. I took burtonyang's aproach and made them subtle since it would rarely be hit like that. I'm including closeup wireframes like Snader asked for. The tricount is now 3131. Enough of me here's the images.

(UDK screen grab)




(not sure with the string rendered black, mental ray I think)


pickup selector and knob


strap button

burtonyang

My nitpick would be those knobs, you can take off that extra inset, but you would have to re-bake normals which would be a pain. And I feel like you might want to give your texture a little revision.

Check out this image I found.



You're missing the little extra details that would make your guitar really pop since you said you had this guitar going on a world tour. This guitar is probably way too damaged but notice how there are little details that you can add on such as the fading of the paint; it is eased in so it doesn't look like you ripped off the paint without chipping away at it. There is also rust in the pick up too. Personally, I would change the color of the body too.

Cordell Felix

nice wires man, looks like you've optimized the geometry almost completely. very clean!

UncheckedDemon

burtonyang: That's an awesome ref pic. Thanks! As to the knobs, the insets are there so the body of the guitar doesn't clip through them. Since the body is an arch top, I think it would look worse than it is if I took them out.

Cordell Felix: Thanks! I think I can squeeze a few more out from where the string wrap around the tuning pegs and maybe the nut, but I don't think it would be more than 20-30 tris at most.

UncheckedDemon

I worked on the texture some more by softening the paint edge and added a few other details and corrections. I'm starting to feel like I might be overworking it, so unless there are any glaring issues I'm going to cut my losses and move on.

UDK screen grab

roosterMAP

ur specular map needs more work. There should be more differentiation between materials. Make the spec of the paint brighter so it shines more.

dekorkh

+1 to what roosterMap said.

pushing the spec breakup would make this read a ton better. Otherwise it's a valiant effort well done.

UncheckedDemon

Thanks guys.

I upped the spec a little. I don't want to go to much because I'm trying for a matte finish.
http://schecterguitar.org/files/2010/07/-4021705143344820.jpg

I also played with diffuse values and colors to get them truer, probably to much.

threepointzero

I really like this, it's nice and clean and offers some great detail as well (love that the strings are actually coiled). I like the new silhouette of the low poly too. Keep it up!

Snader

Looking at those wires you posted, I think you definitely have too much polygons around the bridge. You could get away with making it a whole block, or possibly something like this (288 triangles). Let the texture do the intent for the string, let the texture handle the super narrow strips, let the normals take care of those bolts. It'd render nicer too because the mesh splits are quite jaggy (look at the strings in your last render for example).

Similarly, the nut only needs to be 10 triangles, no need to model the indents for the strings. While we're on the subject of strings, why are those not geo?

Anyway. You can save a bunch more on the tuning pegs. No need to model in the wire coils and several stacked rings - let the normals do that. These examples are 13 and 26 triangles per peg, where yours look like they're at least 62. Doesn't sound like much, but because there's 7 pegs, these optimized versions would save you several hundred triangles.

Here's a relevant thread on why you shouldn't model each ring:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=81154

I'd probably make those 3 large dials 12 sided, and the tremolo 4&8 sided (4 on the thin parts, 8 on the thickest part) and the stap screws 8&4 as well.
Here's what I mean by that:

dekorkh

UncheckedDemon wrote: »

I upped the spec a little. I don't want to go to much because I'm trying for a matte finish.

It's not the overall level of spec, its the difference in spec levels between wood, metal, and paint.
right now the naked wood looks like it has the same finish as the painted parts.

UncheckedDemon

threepointzero: Thanks!

Snader: Great tips man. Thanks for the link.

dekorka: OK, I just misunderstood on my end. Most of the problem was probably the lighting. I'm still pretty new to UDK in general and am having a hardish time finding a setup that shows off the model well from a static pose. It looks OK when moving around it.

I'm going to have to stop working on this so I can focus on some other projects thats come up. So it may be a couple of weeks (at most) before I can mess around with the mesh and bake new normals based any missing geometry.