Dungeon Door WIP

cdevens

Hi all,
This is my first post in the forums, though I have been admiring the work here for a while. I am trying to put together a collection of environment assets for a portfolio. This is a dungeon style door work-in-progress. I did the first texture pass this morning. I still have to do the spec map, so the lighting looks pretty bad. I have some nail heads that go on the horizontal beams on the door, but they didn't bake out in the normal map. I guess I had them hidden or forgot to select them. All crits are welcome. The door is currently about 400 polys/800 tris.

Butthair

You might be able to lower the poly count by removing some edge loops that run along the curves of the locking bolts and handle. For something that probably wont be moving, and if they do move, the player won't be 2 inches from it, smoothing groups will help create the illusion it's more curved than it really is. If they don't move, then you may also just want to have them as part of your normals, it looks like you did a good job popping the rivets out enough.

I like how the wood looks and the colors go nice together, have yo got a concept in mind? Are these assets (assuming there's going to be a set) focused on making modular environments? If so, breaking up some pieces like the top bar, to be it's own element might also serve a good use somewhere else. Also, on the note of modularity, you could model one side metal beam, duplicate and rotate it to the other side, etc etc.

One thing this texture is lacking is an AO pass, maybe even some grunge or grime. It's a dungeon, probably in the medieval era, people don't wash their hands, the prisoners probably throw their poo at the doors, whatever.

Last thing I wanna say is that it looks good, I like it, it's a door, looks like one, that's nice, but maybe if you had a concept to go off of? Or post it if you have it? It might help you know where your going towards, in terms of a complete piece, rather than making things up off of reference alone. I've done it, doesn't turn out too well, concepts are helpful, the person who did it already solved a lot of problems for you, there are just different things to handle instead.

Anyways, good job, I want to see more of your stuff, make sure it looks cool right away, aside from a presentation, no biggie, but the piece itself, even if it's a door, make it the coolest looking door in a dungeon. That's the fun challenge.

Enough ranting, time for sleep.

Boyso

I'd say the wood looks ok, its more the metal (?) around it that kills it. Is it metal? It almost has the texture of concrete as well as huge scratch. I'd make the scratches smaller as now, it looks like it was slashed by a giant sword or paws from a dinosaur :poly121:

I would re-work a bit the color of it too, would help identify the material. If its rust, its too pale and too uniform.

Spec would help of course.

But you're on the right track, its a good start!

billredd

looks good, needs hinges though, the door frame itself should be much thicker/deeper and the door set into it more, maybe more variation on the wood plank lengths and placement of the rivet/studs which really should be placed on the horiz cross beams as they are not doing much for the doors construction just stuck in the planks, also add them to the middle cross beam...keep it up, take it up a notch

cdevens

Hey everyone, thanks for the feedback! I still haven't had a chance to make the spec map. I spent this morning trying to redo the normal map to optimize the mesh and fighting with the AO map. The horizontal beam on the door has some AO that was rendered in max, the rest of the AO was made from the normal map. Ignore the bad looking wall, that was just thrown in to illustrate my reasoning for the depth of the door.

Butthair: My AO pass is giving me some issues. I keep getting problems with my renders. I have an AO on there that I generated from the normal map, but it doesn't look very good. I did bake out the locks like you suggested and got down to 286 tris. I think the result is pretty good. I still have to add all of the grime and stuff like that to the diffuse. I realized that I didn't mention that the diffuse was just a base at this point, so I agree with everything you wrote for that. I don't have any concept for this piece. I just knew the feel that I was going for and started modeling. I know this isn't the best process, but I did browse some pics to get an idea of what I wanted. I want this to be modular, but not to the extent that it is broken into individual pieces. It aligns to the grid, so I should be able to use it in conjunction with other meshes without any problems.

Boyso: As I mentioned above, the diffuse is just a base right now. I completely agree that the texture doesn't represent the material very well at this point. As for the scratches, I was going for some big battle axe type gashes mixed with some smaller sword strikes. I was imagining a dungeon that has been there for a very long time and has seen a lot of action. If it still doesn't translate when I finish the texture, then I will make some adjustments.

Billredd: I will add the hinges and bake them into the normal map. The reason for the shallow depth was so I could place it against a wall mesh or bsp without cutting out a gap for it. (See the screenshot below, ignore the bad look of the wall, the material wasn't set up for tililng and there is no diffuse) I was trying to make it more versatile in that respect. The new bake has the nails in the cross beams. The round rivets were more of a deco door kick. I was really just trying to add something to make the door less boring. I think I still need to make the nails on the cross beams bigger so they pop more.

Thanks for taking the time to give me feedback, I really appreciate it.

alloa

I think your wall's normal map is inverted! maybe the green or red channel or the two!

cdevens

Alloa: You are absolutely correct. The xoliul shader has the "flip green channel" box in the normal map slot checked by default. I just threw the wall up there to illustrate a point about the depth of the door. The wall looks pretty terrible, definitely not a correct finished project. Thanks for pointing that out though.

cdevens

Not sure why that came out in bold.

cdevens

I reworked the textures some and got the AO worked out. I still have to make the nailheads bigger on the horizontal beams on the door and tweak the spec map some. Crits are always welcome!

nightshade

i think your metal frame needs to be a darker iron look, right now it looks as though if i sneezed it will disintegrate from too much rust.
if this door is supposed to exist in the medieval time period then it wouldn't already be rusted to bits. metal doesn't rust that fast and the door would be >20 years old.

alloa

i agree to nightshade said.
I think you can add more OA and more grunge texture on the wood boards but you must be careful not to make a too noisy texture.
keep in mind that you must make highlighting the volume of your wood boards and metal bars than the wood texture details and rusty metal.
Sorry my english is limited, so i will try to explaining you with this paintover.

cdevens

Thanks for the crits. I was going for an old painted metal look with some rust coming through, but the colors are too similar to distinguish the difference. I will rework the texture.

Alloa: Beautiful paint over! I have a new direction to take the colors now.

Thank you both for your input!

alloa

I forget to said that you can make some color and brightness variation on your wood boards and push a little bit the texture contrast! ^^

Jessica Dinh

I like this! Especially how the forms are nice, big, and easy to read. Sometimes people make bolts and stuff too realistically miniscule and you can't really see them haha.

cdevens

Here is another update. I was out of town all weekend, so I didn't get to finish this up completely. I am not real happy with how the spec map is behaving. I can't tell if it is the map or just the lighting with the Xoliul shader. Either way, I haven't gotten the spec map where I want it yet.