Briefkasten

Rhoutermans

Briefkasten, appearantly German for mailbox. Anyway, this is a Dahlhaus style mailbox and it's gonna be my first hard surface piece in Zbrush. Not going for an exact copy since I'm still a rookie. Here's my first WIP:



And my reference:



Making this a WIP thread, please comment on this piece and any hardsurface sculpting tips are welcome

Thanks

Rhoutermans

Mark Dygert

Two thing really quick.

1) Watch the size of the details and make sure you're not sculpting a city on the head of a pin, then stepping across the street and taking a picture. You're dangerously close to having details that are smaller than the pixels you would bake this out to.

2) Sometimes sculpting detail isn't the best otpion for detailed hard surface stuff and it shows around the lettering and some of the other details. It would probably better to do more high poly sculpting with a bunch of separate pieces than to punch, pinch and puff out the details. The eat 3D Old Damaged Pillar tutorial comes to mind...

Rhoutermans

Thanks for the tips

I decided to start over again and am using subtools and projection master a little bit different now.

still need tweaking but adding more 2night/2morrow

Rhoutermans

Got another hour or two of work in
according to a German friend of mine these are public mailboxes used to deposit -> collect mail.

Rhoutermans

And another update..

Rhoutermans

now onto the metal leg..

Rhoutermans

decided to do the leg in max (Left my mailbox files @ work -'go me')
Not really sure how the normal will hold up but will do some test renders soon

P442

pretty cool. I would smooth out the bugle a bit. I suggest you create a base color map in zbrush based on the depth, otherwise, texturing that is gonna be a headache.

Rhoutermans

the bugle is based on a photo so I hope I can just overlay it in the end. But Im gonna try the color map suggestion as well, will see how it turns out. Thanks!

DrunkShaman

Rhoutermans wrote: »

wow.....imagine what could shadow box do for you.

Nice work so far sir.

Rhoutermans

Viewport for the leg:
High and Low poly + Normal and an AO.



Now onto the low poly for the mailbox

Rhoutermans

Low poly done;



I know the polycount is high for an object like this. Normally it would have a 256 texture and maybe like 500 tris but this is just hardsurface practise for me Fixing the bake tonight

Rhoutermans

oh and a high poly skylight render for fun;

Rhoutermans

Normal + AO viewport:


And the flats:


What am I doing wrong here? Pretty sure my cage is okey?

Mstankow

It looks like your normals are flipped but I dunno. Did you try flipping the green channel to see if it looks any better?

Razgriz

Flipping the green channel in your normal map should fix the huge visual error you're getting, but you also have a couple black seams that come from not having UV seams matching all of your hard edges.

Rhoutermans

I did flip the green channel. I'll have a look at the UV stuff now cheers!

Snader

I'd say 5K is rather much for a prop like this. Also, your proportions are off when compared to the ref, causing this one to look fragile - the top seems far to big/heavy.

Rhoutermans

Looking at the proportions now Cheers!

Couldn't help myself and started painting a bit..



Still working on improving the polycount as well.

Razgriz

Big improvement - this is starting to look great, but take your time on the specular, that's what will make the metal sell itself.

Rhoutermans

Thanks! Pushed the texture some more and fixed the specular as well, toolbag render;



Thanks for any feedback on this!~

nordahl154

So much improvement, it looks awesome :P
I like how you actually paid attention to where what kind of damage was going to be received, and how much.