Ironhawks work thread
polycounter lvl 10
Starting a work thread for dumping my projects after there finished. Last shot is one of several reference images. Taking crits but not going to be iterating on them at this time.
Thanks for looking.
- Jesse
Replies
How you modeled the clip/bullets is pretty strange, I dont think i've seen it done this way before. Generally I wouldn't do this, as it limits your options when it comes to animations. IE: you wouldn't be able to have any empty clip and then a full clip with the reload animation, I would try to avoid doing this again unless you know it will never be seen. - But in that case, you could get away with much less detail anyway. Also, the detail prioritization here is pretty out of whack, you could have modeled full bullets, and used more reasonable geometry on the rest of the clip and still came out with lower tris than you have now, just seems a strange place to add so many edges for really subtle curves; that you'd never really notice.
It would have been nice to see those groves on the slide modeled in, it wouldn't take up too much geometry, and you've got other areas that could be optimized to put towards it, I think in a FPV it would be noticeable, since they are big and chunky shapes, and there isn't 50 of them or anything, so the extra geo wouldn't be a big deal.
The high looks great, generally I would say you have some edges that are too tight, but the final bake looks good so its a moot point.
I think the weakest part of this asset is the texturing. Right now the texture is just generally boring. You've got your "base" type material with some random wear and such, but no specific detailing. Nothing to give the asset character, nothing that tells a story, no real focal points in the texturing that you look at and say "oh that is cool". Right now it just looks like a first pass base material. It would be nice to see it presented with a more interesting shader with IBL etc too, as you've got that plasticy-doom3 type look going on now with the presentation.
generally don't say this, but this is a very good start. Some minor changes (as suggested, would take this piece to the next level)
I wouldn't go over board with the "character" addition to the texture though... one thing people tend to do with weapons that drives me nuts, is to make every edge fucked up... like someone took a hammer to the thing.
Your texture is going in the right direction too... your spec could use a bit more contrast... and the diffuse could use some more variation... but going from your reference, i could see why you wouldn't take the "character" too far...
I wouldn't say it looked too much like plastic (at least not on my monitor
good work on this piece so far... take it to great!
If i saw this in a game though, I don't think i'd upset... good job.
So basically, when texturing an object there are three distinct phases/types of detail:
1. Base materials, this is where you define your base overlays, diffuse and spec value, etc
2. General grime and wear
3. Specific areas of interest type where, this is where you want to tell a story, a few areas on the model where you look at it and something specific happened, a big scrape here, some chipped off plastic there, etc. Something unique.
As far as the plasticy comment goes, this comes from the bland monochromatic pointlight setup. A shader with IBL(image based lighting) would help to add some color and detail to the reflection/spec, and some nice color in the ambient. This goes a long way.
EQ - Totally agree on the clip. I was thinking it would save me verts when I decided not to do individual bullets. However I hadn't considered the animation.
I see what you mean now about the optimization. I think I tend to go heavy on geo sometimes smoothing for normals and should have put some more time into doing some test bakes and optimizing.
Thanks for the comments on the texture and renders. I will definitely be coming back to that. I was going for a stock gun with mild wear and tear but what you are saying about giving some areas of interest makes sense. I also need to experiment more in general with viewport lighting setups and IBL.
Kevin - Thanks man!
nfrrtycmplx - Thanks man. Yeah I'm going to take quite a bit of what EQ said into consideration and push this further. I wont be doing it right off as I've started another project already but I wont be leaving this as is for long.