M-12 Locust SMG (Mass Effect 2)
polycounter lvl 9
I've been working on this in my free time for the last few weeks. (scattered across about 4 days).
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Intention is to make this a low poly. I quite fancy doing a this with a engine 'synced' with either max or xnormals normal map baker. does this exist yet?
also
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[edit]
Intention is to make this a low poly. I quite fancy doing a this with a engine 'synced' with either max or xnormals normal map baker. does this exist yet?
also
critique is very very welcome,as are questions
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Replies
Whats the render done in? If its 3ds max, can you post up settings? my render work flow no longer works since i upgraded to 2012 xD
Love to see this textured.
Lazerus: How doesnt it work? I've not used 2012 except the demo.
Setup wise:
*Mentalray
*Sampler : Mitchell
*Samples 1/4 / 16
*Final Gather: low
*Lights: 1 Skylight with a B&W gradient as the 'light probe'
2 Photometric free lights. 1 Warm, 1 Cool.
Both of these are raytraced Area lights.
*Material is just a standard blinn with MR AO in its diffuse. The cast distance is set pretty low.
*Rendered Gamma Correct/Linear 32-bit. (32 bit isn't all that important in this case, just a workflow habit.) You can do your tone mapping in max just fine with MR Photographic.
*Minor post work in Photoshop (This is a bit superfluous and only done because it interests me)
do you got a average and what kinda time it took to get a HP going to that fine of quality.
also how did you do the really fine creases on the handle, is that modeled in or is it a spline?
it was about 3 or 4 days of work. spread across a few weeks.
My workflow for this was as follows.
The fine divisions between the forms are modelled in. although I think a floaters would probably suffice. I need to start using them more TBH, seeing the magic 3Point work with floaters makes me think I'm making my life harder than needs be.
Normals are displayed in max using 3Point shader. hopefully tomorrow ill get a chance to model the rest and I can start the unwrap/smoothing setup. I still need to work out where in need to harden the smoothing to get rid of those tiny 'razor' artifacts.
awesome model
Thanks for the positive feedback on the model
Perna: Thanks
Updates:
Right so I've unwrapped it and done the normal map bake.
Thanks for that' All my presets no longer work since i was in 09 and went to 2012. Gotten a good few working as of now but your Ao seems like clay which perques my taste ;D
Loving the progress. Definitely a cool gun.
Mcejn: its just a copy of the highpoly with the supports removes and some loops collapsed.
RED = topochanges
BLUE = collapse
anyway to avoid any burst blood vessels I've ditched the handsome Mr Kleese
Oniram: cheers mate, I really should have done more with that allright. I guess I got in too close without evaluating it against the rest.
You can optimize the mesh a bit, but honesly, the model looks like the highpoly, and that is the point after all. If you can cut out a bit but still maintain the look with no obviously lowpoly jaggedness go for it, otherwise there isn't really any need to optimize more than this, I feel sometimes people want their models to "look lowpoly" so they can feel good about how "well" they optimized.. #1 goal is to look like the highpoly, #2 goal is to be under budget. If you're hitting #1 and #2 on an asset like this(which will always have a set technical budget, over-optimizing is never going to improve performance) you're good to go.
Smoothing out curves, having some slight bevels in the right places, etc can really help to sell the look of a model, provided you're putting the detail in the right place, generally in the area you'll see most in FPV with this sort of asset.
For the high itself, I think you could stand to soften up some of your details, the smaller ridges and floaters and the like, you're really butting up against the limits of your texture res there, if this was 1-2 mips down, you would lose a lot of detail.
frell, adprince0418 many thanks glad you like it
generally you don't get to make the choice, your given a spec and you squeeze the most you can from it. if you want a guide take a look at an existing title and see what they used.
with the exception of a few small bits is a contiguous mesh derived from the high poly, basically i stripped the support loops from the HP and collapsed un needed edges. the Graphite optimise tool is great for this.
(The few small bits being the barrels, and the front grip.
There are also a couple of little floaters that need integrating, which im doing.)
like EQ said, 1 contiguous mesh means no overlapping geo which means less wasted uv space.
Right now I'm trying to do a high-poly of the M7 Assault Rifle. I was wondering how you get those clean lines or fine details in your high poly. Example areas below, sorry I blasted your piece with red squares, heh. (If you have time of course to explain, when a chance occurs, thanks!)
What I would consider important when approaching something like this breaking it down into its basic 'physical' parts, never model 2 separate parts as the same mesh if they are not 'physically' connected. The reason being is that when your sub-D modelling its best to keep the individual form's topology separate, this way you only every have to think of the local topology and not worry about how new loops effect the model as a whole.
Its also essential to block first, that way you allways have a base to work to.
pics: (edit- for some reason photobucket compressed them to death
the blockout is just a load of spline shapes with booleans cut from em. horrid topology but it lets me get the shape right before even thinking about topology
But all that talk about your avatar... makes me wonder what it actually was..
It was a photoshopped version of a guys face who was stealing folks art.