[WIP] Electric Sign

Wonkey

I am working on a piece that hopefully ends up in my portfolio. Planning on doing a High to Low Poly model of a sign. I am inexperienced so any feedback is welcome, I will even try to use it to the best of my abilities.

Concept art is by Cafaro Oscar



Block out so far.



Planning on starting the High poly tonight. If you see any proportions wrong please point them out, I am trying to follow the concept pretty closely-at least in the beginning. I am saving the wires for later.
Thank you for looking

c0ldhands

The bars in the middle could be a bit thicker, it would add to the feeling of a solid construction. Same goes with the "one direction" sign plate. I have a feeling that the traffic lights should be bigger too. Everything else looks good

Wonkey

c0ldhands wrote: »

The bars in the middle could be a bit thicker, it would add to the feeling of a solid construction. Same goes with the "one direction" sign plate. I have a feeling that the traffic lights should be bigger too. Everything else looks good

Thank you for the reply c0ldhands. Let me know if I need to make the bars even thicker. I was thinking of those boxes as call boxes, intercoms, or mini-computer terminals.



Planning on adding the wires and working on the 'computers' next.
Please let me know your C&C's.
thank you for looking.

Wonkey

Made more progress, Feedback welcome!





I am thinking of having the low poly limit to be around 5k.

Thoughts, Feedback, C&C welcome.
Thank you for looking.

myles

Nice progress so far, my only real suggestion would be that your edges are a little too tight in places, try and widen the gap between your support edges. Also be careful about those smaller details like the wires, maybe thicken them up and group them where you can, otherwise your going to have a hard time getting them looking nice in the LP without the polycount going through the roof.

Wonkey

Some Progress, around studing for Midterms. . .

Myles, thank you for the Crits. I am very worryed about the wires, and especially the antenna on the top-thinking about poly strips for them, and just very optimized wires elsewhere. As for the sharp edges, I am new enough that I am not sure which ones I will have trouble baking and not, sorry for failing you.

So, more Progress. . .




Crits and comments are very welcome and begged for. Starting the low Poly

DDuckworth

Lol you are begging for crits on a piece that I cant see anything wrong with man, the wires look awesome (the hanging ones - very realistic lay to them) all of the weight of the objects looks correct and you have some nice details going. I'm very curious as to how you are going to do the low for the little squiggly things on top without wasting a ton of geo on them, maybe a curved plane with a normal bake would work, let me know your solution, keep it up, awesome concept and awesome piece!

Uly

here's a simple crit, or moreso of a cautionary bit of advice:
Those wires are probably going to cause some problems, and be very expensive to recreate in a low poly model.

Game artists often artificially beef up wire sizes because without a very high resolution and very good anti-aliasing, those wires will show up as a little mess of pixels. Depending on how you want to present this asset in its low poly form, you can sidestep that problem by doing a render, or putting it inside an engine (along with the insanely high resolution and anti-aliasing) in order to get a good screencap.

Second, the more curvy and fun the shape of the wire, the more polys youre going to have to spend on such a small detail. Where polys would be best spent on the silhouette of the hanging sign, major tubes, and other curvy shapes, the polycount of your wires will likely dwarf everything else in the piece. (particularly if you try and closely match the silhouette of the high poly. alternatively, a chunky wire can really bring down what otherwise is an excellent asset.) Same goes for your little curly antennae on the top of the lights. You could do those with alpha, but you'll need an additional map which isn't cheap or warranted inside a studio. That being said, you aren't in a studio, so take this all with a grain of salt and do what you want to do. :]

It's looking pretty ace, can't wait to see how it wraps up. Good luck!

Wonkey

Ha ha ha, thank you DDuckworth! beginning to feel like the red headed step child after being beaten-ignored, while everyone quietly feels sorry for your poor soulless <sorry can't think of a good noun to finish that>!

Wonkey

Uly: Thank you for the Crit and advice.

My plans for the wires and that curly bastard, which may not work, but going to try... Put them all on a seperate (and smaller) map with alpha mapping fun. Use 2 sided poly strips and curl them nice and tight. and see how it looks. I have a Plan B, which is have a straight antanna and a couple of floating dounuts- "The Jetson's" style! not as challenging, but, kind of sci-funny.

Wonkey

Forgot to post this, finally got the normal map cleaned up.








Not sure what size to make the map. Let me know what you think. C&C always begged for!

feanix

Looking good! How many sides do those wires have?

Wonkey

@feanix The Wires have three sides.

Mike Yevin

why not just render out the wires to a plane? it seems like you could save quite a bit, and get a better result (although it might just be the viewport shots that are making them seem this way). also i think you may be able to optimize some of your shapes like the small rings on the top. other than that it looks good, now lets see some diffuse love

Wonkey

The Wires all told, are 464 polys/926 Tris. I have wires twisting around the model in places. I don't know if poly count is high or not, or if I could make them planes and keep them looking decent.

I imported the model into UDK, and the wires look better than in the view port. Unfortunately, I have some other issues I need to clear up. But I will post those in the UDK thread later.

Contrails

The poly count would depend on how prominent it will be in a scene, the scale, etc. I'm sure someone else can give a much better judgement, but I'd think that 2-3K tris would be reasonable.

You have a lot of room for optimization, especially on the bottom circular sign and the two round things on the sides at the top, as well as the wires. And feel free to post UDK issues here - you've already made a thread dedicated to the prop and they'll probably get more exposure in this forum.

Looking forward to progress!

feanix

I'd say actually having modelled wires is a good idea. It does look a LOT better and these days the increased tri count is acceptable, considering the increase in visual quality.