A beginner's WIP thread

chrono_llama

Hi everyone,

I've been watching this forum for quite some time, but I haven't posted until now.
I started modeling over a year ago, but I hardly finished anything, I was just learning and trying various modeling programs. Finally I decided to take a stab at game art, so here we go

This is a very simple highpoly model of an air vent of some kind, I didn't want to start with something complicated, so that I can quickly get the feel of the workflow. As I understand it goes like this: highpoly -> lowpoly -> uvs -> baking the normals -> texturing. Am I right? So the next step is the lowpoly model, which I'll post soon.

The model itself is done in blender 2.58, which I really like (I triex 3ds max and maya, but blender is my favorite so far). To all the beginners out there, I really recommend you give it a try (it's completely free). The welded seam is my first attempt at sculpting (also done in blender), I know it's far from realistic, but I wanted to give the model something interesting. The render is also done with blender's internal rendering system.

Comments and critiques are more than welcome.

chrono_llama

So here's the lowpoly model, it's at 236 polys. I'll unwrap it soon, and then bake the normal map using xNormal.

Baddcog

Looks like a good start.

I'd say you probably only need a flat plane for the vents.

Typically a low poly item like this in a game would probably just have black painted in the cracks as you really can't see through them anyway. Just the normals would give it a good 3d look.

Plus the high poly slats have no more shape anyway so you won't be baking down any data there.

if you choose to leave them it would be a cleaner bake to just not include them on either model. Then just add them to the low poly later with the base normal color on the tex sheet where they are.

---

To be nitpicky it is actually 472 TRIS. Polys can be misleading as they can have 5,6,20... tris per poly.

So for accurate in game counts it's best to list the tris, not polys. (This model is all quads so it's easy to calculate tris)

cdavidson

good start. will keep an eye on the thread as learning all this aswell

chrono_llama

Thank you for the replies, I changed the vents to a plane as advised and did a quick unwrap. I might change it, because I think the vents have too little texture space. What do you think?

@Baddcog: I'm aware that I shoud count the tris, not the polys, but blender displays polycount, not tri count, although there must be a way to get the tri count too.
(By the way, blender does not use n-gons, only tris and quads. It was a bit strange as I tried blender after 3ds max, but I know that I should only use quads when modeling for subdivision, so it's not a problem.)

EDIT -- I misunderstood you: I thought you meant a flat plane for each vent on the low poly model (they had even more geo). Now I get that you meant one plane for all the vents. I think I'll leave it like this, it doesn't take that many more polys.

chrono_llama

Here's a quick bake I did. It is just a test, I know that there's a lot to fix on it, I'm still learning how to use xNormal properly.

chrono_llama

Actually, I'm going to stick with this uv layout. The vents get enough texture space, there is little distortion and no seams to worry about. Here's a render with a checker texture applied to the lowpoly model, plus the wires.

I won't be able to post in the next two days, but after that, I'll continue working.

gsokol

If you plan on leaving the vents as you have...you may want to make them a box instead of a plane...or at least duplicate the plane and flip normals. Otherwise if you see it from a back angle...you won't see the vents at all. I mean..you can do a double sided shader, but it would be more efficient to just add the extra polys.

Good job so far...I like the welds..and your bake looks pretty nice.

Razgriz

If you really want to save some texture space and time spent texturing such a small asset like this, I would use no more than two vents which actually have unique UV's, then just chop, rotate, and mirror those after everything's done (or before) - that way you only are using up space for two, not eleven tiles.

feanix

Something else to consider is whether or not you actually NEED to have the slats in the vent individually modelled. Could the same thing be acheived with a normal map? If the slats aren't affecting the silhouette and theres just going to be blackness under the slats you probably can just bake it to normal without much loss of fidelity.

Another thing is that there appears to be a bit of a messy bake error on one of your above shots, shown below. This is porbably being caused by the hard smoothing of the line I've highlighted partially in blue. If you used smoothing groups to smooth out that line (sounds crazy but try it) you might not get the error anymore and the normal map will correct the smoothness and give you your hard line back. It could also fail entirely and make things worse but give it a try.

KazeoHin

I thought that was welding marks... either way it looks a bit messy.

chrono_llama

Thanks for the replies, I changed the lowpoly model a bit, now there's a flat plane for the vents. Here's the render of the lowpoly with the normal map and wires.

@feanix: I believe that's just the welding mark, take a look at the highpoly model, it looks the same there too.

Baddcog

You might want to make the high poly vents more 3d. Add some bevels to the edges and it'll give more depth the the bake. Right now you only get a little angle from the plane, but no depth from the side of it.

chrono_llama

@Baddcog: Thanks for the advice, I tweaked the highpoly model, so that there wouldn't be a gap between the vents. It doesn't look realistic on the highpoly, but it bakes better, and that is what really matters.

Here's a render with the new normal map:

chrono_llama

Started working on the diffuse texture, it's still a very early wip, but I'll post it, so that you can get the basic idea of the texture. There's still a lot to do, I'll post some updates soon.

chrono_llama

Quick update on the textue, I'm not finished yet; I'll paint some scratces in, overlay a grunge texture and refine the red stripe and the rust on it. If you have any other suggestions, feel free to post them.



And here's the diffuse, it's 1024*1024, but I'll resize it; as I know a 512*512 map is enough for a prop like this.

MonkeyMHz

This isn't bad, your making progress. :thumbup:

I agree with all the feedback you received above, I'm nitpicking here a bit but to get the most use out of textures I think going for a flat plane for the vents. Then having the unwrap of the circle just flattened out in a straight line, would allow you to make the most of that square UV space.

Keep the work coming.

biofrost

Looking pretty good but I really feel the slats on it should be a different color to make it stand out, or at least a darker shade. The only thing keeping it from looking flat is the shading from the AO map.

passerby

you should reduce or pull out a lot of the scratches you got in the diffuse and put them in the specular when you start on it.

Un_Delincuente

I was about to say what passerby mentioned. scratches work better on metal is you do it on the spec

gsokol

Coming along well. In general, your specular is making this hard to read. Are you using one at this point? The flat highlights that you get suggest no. Take a shot at that.

chrono_llama

Thank you all for your replies. It's been some time since I updated, I wasn't able to work much. But I'm slowly making progress.

I realised that my diffuse looked flat, so I'll try a different approach: instead of a metal texture, the vent will have a flat color (with a minimal grunge), I'll paint in the larger scratches along the edges and, as suggested, I'll indicate most of the scratches in the specular map.

Right now I'm just experimenting with the main colors, also I fixed the red stripe (It used to follow the edges, now it's round; it look better imho), and added a white one to break up the vents. Also, I removed the rust, because I didn't like it.

Here's the render (only diffuse and normal, I haven't done the specular yet)

As always, comments and critiques are welcome.

Vegas

Hey mate, nice work. If you aren't going to be using an alpha for the slats then one thing I feel you need to emphasise is the gap between each of the slats and the slats and the cap. Right now they look like they are welded together and the to the cap. Please excuse the crude paintover. Keep it up mate.

chrono_llama

@Vegas: Thanks for the advice, I'll definitely do that.


Note: I'll be on vacation for a week, so I won't be able to work. Just posting this so that you know that I haven't abandoned the project, it's just on hold. I'll be back with some updates in about a week.

chrono_llama

Sorry for the delay; I finally had some time to work on the maps. I improved the diffuse and started the specular. It's not final, I'll probably work on the scratches on the specular a bit more. Anyway, here's how it looks right now:

chrono_llama

I's been some time since I last posted, but I fell ill for a couple of days, so I couldn't work on it.
Anyway, I toned down the scratches in the specular a bit, I think it looks better this way. I'm quite happy with it right now, I think I'll call it finished (unless you have any critiques). The next step will be bringing it into UDK I think.

(The render still uses 1024*1024 maps, but I'll scale them down to 512*512 for udk)

gilesruscoe

Looks like it needs the spec pushed up more to me, looks kind of rubbery at the momentm nice progress so far though

nfrrtycmplx

so, why exactly does this little guy have a racing stripe? Props like this shouldn't have features that make them so distinct. You want them to be interesting, but if you have a white stripe on the thing, it limits how many times you can use it. PPL passing it in the game will be like, "oh, there's that fast looking vent thing again."

other than that, and the specular, i'd say it looks pretty good... might want to tone down the brightness of the bolts a bit and bump up the contrast slightly on the grunge.

it also looks very smooth... like the paint is scratched and whatnot, but the metal itself is relatively untouched, almost like they painted the thing to look scratched up.

Keep it up! Also, I'd start making some other props soon to go with this as some kind of set, and then maybe try building an environment with them. That way you'll see how this piece would work in an env situation.

chrono_llama

Thank you for the replies,

@gilesruscoe: Thanks, I pushed up the specular as suggested.

@nfrrtycmplx: You are right about the stripe, I just added it to make the vent more interesting, not really thinking about it in an environment, where it's not supposed to be the main focus of the player. I might go ahead and start putting together an environment, then I'll definitely remove the stripe.

Here's the render with little tweaks in the texture, the biggest change is that I emphasized the gap between the vents (it might be an overkill, but I'll see how it looks in UDK).

chrono_llama

Here is the vent imported into UDK. There seems to be some error where the vents meet the side of the main body, but overall it looks pretty good I think. I didn't do anything in UDK yet, just imported the model, so I'll go ahead and start playing with the settings to see if I can get better results.

_Erik

Not really sure, but you might want to flip the green channel of your normal. I could be wrong though, kind of hard to see. Nice prop. The big screws on the side make the model look small, but that might be your intention. Also, add some more rust and crack up the contract in the AO map.

Baddcog

I do see shading gong towards the top of the side rivets, but the light is pointing down, so yeah a channel needs inverted for sure.

chrono_llama

I flipped the green channel on the normal map, it looks better now, but the problem at the edge of the vents wasn't caused by that. It's a smoothing group issue, I'll reexport it from blender with correct somoothing groups and post some pics soon.

chrono_llama

Here's the screenshot from UDK.
(The left one is the newly exported mesh, the right one is the old)