I use xNormal almost exclusively for all my baking as the CUDA rendering is super fast
The only thing I ever render out of Blender are the base colour diffuse maps, but its mainly a speed issue.
Really enjoyed looking at the process. Simple and effective. Looks great but still more details to add on the bat. [HP] has the right idea. from good -> awesome if you know what I mean. Btw awesome idea with the baseball. Smiled a lil when i saw it. Keep on blending!
@SsSandu_C,
Thanks, man! I still have to get round to finding some more time to add some details to the bat. I'm getting there, but there isn't much to show, as of yet.
Just a small update for the Baseball/Grenade. Apart from thinking of a way to secure the barbed wire to the surface, I think I'm about done with it...unless anyone can see anything that I missed.
The way you've turned the grenade into a baseball is great. As for fixing it, could you tie it around the neck of the grenade and then bind the two hoops together at the bottom? Would prevent it from slipping off. But as has been said, I don't think it would need any serious fixing anyway, once bent into a shaped like that the barbed wire wouldn't give easily.
I finally got an hour or so to get stuck into this again and managed to do a first pass on the wood grain and leather straps!
The wear on the straps may be a little much at the moment, but I can always refine that later
I also did a light corrosion pass on the barbedwire, but I'm not sure if that is up to scratch. (no pun intended)
I was asked over at BlenderArtists how I did the damage for the end of the bat, so I made a quick animated gif to show the workflow and thought that maybe some of you guys would find it useful too
It's pretty simple and is basically the same technique that I use for sculpting stone (apart from the scratches and lack of multiple damage passes)
If you use ZBrush, you can grab the brushes I made from HERE. (I used the Morph_Spray1 and the Standard_StoneEdges brushes)
I also used Michael Vicente's (Orb) Orb_Cracks brush for the scratches, which you can get HERE (Cheers Orb!)
Thanks felipefrango
I'm not even sure if I will actually make the LP like that...depending on how many polys I have, I may even be able to model the wire
Big thanks for the gif and the eat3d tutorial too.
About the stripes, I don't know how they are in reality, but maybe you could smooth the leather from some parts and flatten some curvature, but just a bit) in order to simulate a strong hold.
I repeat, never seen a (used) baseball bat.
I'm really liking the way its coming together. What a clever idea with the nade as the baseball.
The only thing that stood out as a little strange was that most of the nicks in the grip tape were on the depressed surface and not on the raised padded areas. I get that the edges of the tape tend to get caught, especially around where the tape first gets laid onto the bat, but still. It's also looking a little even, like every depressed area of the tape has a similar amount of damage. I would consider toning it back in the center to push the damaged area of the tape to either end.
That's a bit of a nit to pick though, fantastic work!
Big thanks for the gif and the eat3d tutorial too.
About the stripes, I don't know how they are in reality, but maybe you could smooth the leather from some parts and flatten some curvature, but just a bit) in order to simulate a strong hold.
I repeat, never seen a (used) baseball bat.
No problem
I still need to do some more work on the grips for sure. I'm thinking about adding some compressed and smoothed out parts where hands and sweat would harden and smooth some areas out
I'm really liking the way its coming together. What a clever idea with the nade as the baseball.
The only thing that stood out as a little strange was that most of the nicks in the grip tape were on the depressed surface and not on the raised padded areas. I get that the edges of the tape tend to get caught, especially around where the tape first gets laid onto the bat, but still. It's also looking a little even, like every depressed area of the tape has a similar amount of damage. I would consider toning it back in the center to push the damaged area of the tape to either end.
That's a bit of a nit to pick though, fantastic work!
Thanks! Like I said above, I have lots of work to do
I should get some time over the weekend to do some further refining.
The wood grain sculpt pass turned out awesome, Andy. You may need to go a bit heavier with it to get a good bake, but it looks really great. Thanks for sharing your techniques dude.
Thanks! Everything is on layers, so its easy to fix if everything looks a little flat when I bake
It's looking great Andy! Just one thing though, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I never quite saw the point of adding in wood-grain and such details (except from perhaps on rougher and more noisy stone-materials etc.) in the actual sculpt.
Now, this would depend on how one texture it I suppose. But, seeing as you use an alpha for these details, the result shouldn't be too far off from generating a normalmap from that very alpha itself.
And, if you sculpt it, your normal/ao bake won't really line up with your diffuse, which would make it look rather noisy, no?
Yea, there are a few schools of thought on sculpting these kind of details. I usually stick to adding this kind of stuff with a Normal map, but I thought I would try sculpting it for once, as I will have plenty of texture space to capture all the details.
I'm not sure what you mean by the Alpha part and the Diffuse/Normal/AO not lining up. Could you explain please?
Actually, I'm not really sure if I'm making any sense to myself at the moment. Might have stayed up for a bit too long. I just had a look at my own latest wooden sculpt and realized I sculpted it in myself
What I meant though, is that when taking a look at a lot of photos of wood, which would be used as a base for the texture; the woodgrain can be seen both as darker lines, where there's cracks, and different levels/hues. And most of the time they wouldn't be flowing in a very straight line.
Now, in your sculpt, you sculpted in this detail, where the normalmap and AO will add in even more cracks and details. And they wouldn't necessarily line up with the grain in the diffuse. Which I figured could make it look a bit noisy.
While as when you generate a heightmap from the diffuse, by adjusting levels and painting in details if necessary, you'll be certain that it lines up perfectly.
As for the argument 'generating normals from a diffuse doesn't look as good compared to when you sculpt it', it is indeed true, most of the time. But if you're sculpting it, using a sculpt mask/alpha, generated from a texture, then there shouldn't be much of a difference, except from the loss of AO that you'd get from the bake. Usually crazybump, xnormal etc could help out a bit there though.
Now, in the end, whether the grain is lining up in the normals and diffuse doesn't really matter. What matters is that it looks good. And having thought about it lately I'm rather curious as to what would look best.
Personally, I tend to stick to sculpting in the bigger and more prominent details, and generated the smaller ones from a heightmap.
Love that morph target, Never leave home without it .
How'd you go about your wood grain? reveal your secrets!
The wood grain isn't very complicated, really.
I made 3 wood grain alphas from a photo of some wooden planks by desaturating them, adding a levels adjustment to get some more contrast and then matched the colour to a flat grey by going Image> Adjustments> Match colour.
I then imported the alphas into ZBrush, blurred them by a little bit in the Alpha pallet, set the mid value to 50 and increased the radial fade to 3 (iirc).
I then made a new layer and using the standard brush, drew the alphas onto the bat (with drag rect), whilst trying to line up the grain as much as I could and constantly swapping between all 3 to stop any obvious repetition.
Once the wood grain was applied, I then reduced the strength of the layer to .3 or .4 (iirc), to give the whole layer a look that was more consistent with baseball bats.
Sorry about the late post. I only found some time today to crack on with the first pass of the LP. It's currently weighing in at 3739 tris.
I still have to do some more optimisation yet, like removing some back faces etc. which I hope to get onto soon
Also, due to a issue with Blenders culling, some of the verts. look like they they are intersecting in the middle of some faces, where in fact they aren't. (on the top and bottom of the grip), so please ignore them :P (it doesnt show when zoomed in a little more, as they are below the surface of the overlapping geo.)
Thanks guys
I haven't had any time to work on this over the past few days but I should be able to fit in a few hrs tonight and over the weekend. I'm hoping to get the baking out of the way by Monday
Looks good
I'm wondering might be something messy with that screenshot, but I think maybe you can remove some poly's on the top and end of the bat.
And maybe remove some of those edge loops I am no sure if I am seeing :P
I made a little paint over in paint to show where I mean.
Hey guys!
Long time no post I somehow missed the notification emails again, so this reply is a little late.
@Stromberg90,
Thanks, man!
I optimised it a little but didn't bother with the part you circled as I liked the silhouette and it really wasn't that many tris, considering this is for fun/folio.
The edge loops on the cylinder for the barbed wire are there to make sure the bake doesn't skew because it stops the rays from averaging out.
@MeintevdS
No problem, man Yea, ZBrush layers are amazing. I really do use them very heavily in my workflow. It's really helpful to be able to tone something down that is maybe a little too strong or ramp something up and move it around.
I have really wanted to get back on this and I have managed to fit in a few hours to optimise the LP a little and do some baking (in xNormal) and a first pass at texturing (still lots to do)
I also did a nDo2 pass on the normal to create the AO for the wood and the grip tape. I am really amazed how well nDo2 worked for the AO generation
The LP is 3659 tris in total (I'm still working on the LP for the grenade :P)
WIP Diffuse, Normal, Specular, baked + nDo2 AO and Alpha
Would the barbed wire not catch little things in it?
the bat itself looks like its had some use, the barbed wire looks brand spanking new, maybe some colour variation over it would help?
looks nice! but as stromberg pointed out, the lowpoly mesh is wasteful and a bit messy.
Especially the end of the bat itself, you can use triangles you know :P
Replies
Nice assets and thanks for sharing tecniques.
Just a question, what did you use for normal/ao baking?
Cheers!
I use xNormal almost exclusively for all my baking as the CUDA rendering is super fast
The only thing I ever render out of Blender are the base colour diffuse maps, but its mainly a speed issue.
Thanks a lot.
No problem
@SsSandu_C,
Thanks, man! I still have to get round to finding some more time to add some details to the bat. I'm getting there, but there isn't much to show, as of yet.
Just a small update for the Baseball/Grenade. Apart from thinking of a way to secure the barbed wire to the surface, I think I'm about done with it...unless anyone can see anything that I missed.
Comments and critique are welcome
But Jenn0 is right.
Maybe some sort of transparent tape would be in order
I finally got an hour or so to get stuck into this again and managed to do a first pass on the wood grain and leather straps!
The wear on the straps may be a little much at the moment, but I can always refine that later
I also did a light corrosion pass on the barbedwire, but I'm not sure if that is up to scratch. (no pun intended)
ZBrush beauty render wood grain and straps
ZBrush beauty render straps close up
Comments and critique are welcome
It's pretty simple and is basically the same technique that I use for sculpting stone (apart from the scratches and lack of multiple damage passes)
If you use ZBrush, you can grab the brushes I made from HERE. (I used the Morph_Spray1 and the Standard_StoneEdges brushes)
I also used Michael Vicente's (Orb) Orb_Cracks brush for the scratches, which you can get HERE (Cheers Orb!)
Thanks man.
Glad you enjoyed the gif
I'm not even sure if I will actually make the LP like that...depending on how many polys I have, I may even be able to model the wire
About the stripes, I don't know how they are in reality, but maybe you could smooth the leather from some parts and flatten some curvature, but just a bit) in order to simulate a strong hold.
I repeat, never seen a (used) baseball bat.
I'm really liking the way its coming together. What a clever idea with the nade as the baseball.
The only thing that stood out as a little strange was that most of the nicks in the grip tape were on the depressed surface and not on the raised padded areas. I get that the edges of the tape tend to get caught, especially around where the tape first gets laid onto the bat, but still. It's also looking a little even, like every depressed area of the tape has a similar amount of damage. I would consider toning it back in the center to push the damaged area of the tape to either end.
That's a bit of a nit to pick though, fantastic work!
You are sick!!
(It's awesome
No problem
I still need to do some more work on the grips for sure. I'm thinking about adding some compressed and smoothed out parts where hands and sweat would harden and smooth some areas out
Thanks! Like I said above, I have lots of work to do
I should get some time over the weekend to do some further refining.
:P Thanks, man!
Thanks! Everything is on layers, so its easy to fix if everything looks a little flat when I bake
Thanks again for the kind words everyone!
Now, this would depend on how one texture it I suppose. But, seeing as you use an alpha for these details, the result shouldn't be too far off from generating a normalmap from that very alpha itself.
And, if you sculpt it, your normal/ao bake won't really line up with your diffuse, which would make it look rather noisy, no?
Yea, there are a few schools of thought on sculpting these kind of details. I usually stick to adding this kind of stuff with a Normal map, but I thought I would try sculpting it for once, as I will have plenty of texture space to capture all the details.
I'm not sure what you mean by the Alpha part and the Diffuse/Normal/AO not lining up. Could you explain please?
What I meant though, is that when taking a look at a lot of photos of wood, which would be used as a base for the texture; the woodgrain can be seen both as darker lines, where there's cracks, and different levels/hues. And most of the time they wouldn't be flowing in a very straight line.
Now, in your sculpt, you sculpted in this detail, where the normalmap and AO will add in even more cracks and details. And they wouldn't necessarily line up with the grain in the diffuse. Which I figured could make it look a bit noisy.
While as when you generate a heightmap from the diffuse, by adjusting levels and painting in details if necessary, you'll be certain that it lines up perfectly.
As for the argument 'generating normals from a diffuse doesn't look as good compared to when you sculpt it', it is indeed true, most of the time. But if you're sculpting it, using a sculpt mask/alpha, generated from a texture, then there shouldn't be much of a difference, except from the loss of AO that you'd get from the bake. Usually crazybump, xnormal etc could help out a bit there though.
Now, in the end, whether the grain is lining up in the normals and diffuse doesn't really matter. What matters is that it looks good. And having thought about it lately I'm rather curious as to what would look best.
Personally, I tend to stick to sculpting in the bigger and more prominent details, and generated the smaller ones from a heightmap.
Hope this makes sense ^^
Cheers
I will be doing an image based normal pass too, which will hopefully make everything tie in a little better in the end
Cheers
Just had a bit of time to work on the Logo for the bat, which will be engraved into the surface by a small amount.
I give you the Thwacker Pro 2000!
Comments and critique are welcome
How'd you go about your wood grain? reveal your secrets!
The wood grain isn't very complicated, really.
I made 3 wood grain alphas from a photo of some wooden planks by desaturating them, adding a levels adjustment to get some more contrast and then matched the colour to a flat grey by going Image> Adjustments> Match colour.
I then imported the alphas into ZBrush, blurred them by a little bit in the Alpha pallet, set the mid value to 50 and increased the radial fade to 3 (iirc).
I then made a new layer and using the standard brush, drew the alphas onto the bat (with drag rect), whilst trying to line up the grain as much as I could and constantly swapping between all 3 to stop any obvious repetition.
Once the wood grain was applied, I then reduced the strength of the layer to .3 or .4 (iirc), to give the whole layer a look that was more consistent with baseball bats.
That's it really. No real sculpting based magic
Just a small update with the logo applied before I start to tinker with the LP
Updated Logo
ZBrush beauty render with the logo applied.
Comments and critique are welcome
The bat looks great! when do we get to the textures?!
Get texturing man, i'm curious to see how it will turn out!
@ Gannon,
I plan on starting the actual LP tomorrow, so textures will follow pretty soon after that is finished
@HP,
Yea, I don't plan on doing much more to the HP and will start the LP tomorrow
Sorry about the late post. I only found some time today to crack on with the first pass of the LP. It's currently weighing in at 3739 tris.
I still have to do some more optimisation yet, like removing some back faces etc. which I hope to get onto soon
Also, due to a issue with Blenders culling, some of the verts. look like they they are intersecting in the middle of some faces, where in fact they aren't. (on the top and bottom of the grip), so please ignore them :P (it doesnt show when zoomed in a little more, as they are below the surface of the overlapping geo.)
Comments and critique are welcome
Can't wait to see it textured!
I haven't had any time to work on this over the past few days but I should be able to fit in a few hrs tonight and over the weekend. I'm hoping to get the baking out of the way by Monday
I'm wondering might be something messy with that screenshot, but I think maybe you can remove some poly's on the top and end of the bat.
And maybe remove some of those edge loops I am no sure if I am seeing :P
I made a little paint over in paint to show where I mean.
Thanks for the gif of the damage layers. Never knew layers were that useful in zbrush.
Long time no post
@Stromberg90,
Thanks, man!
I optimised it a little but didn't bother with the part you circled as I liked the silhouette and it really wasn't that many tris, considering this is for fun/folio.
The edge loops on the cylinder for the barbed wire are there to make sure the bake doesn't skew because it stops the rays from averaging out.
@[Q]uik,
Thanks, man!
@MeintevdS
No problem, man
I have really wanted to get back on this and I have managed to fit in a few hours to optimise the LP a little and do some baking (in xNormal) and a first pass at texturing (still lots to do)
I also did a nDo2 pass on the normal to create the AO for the wood and the grip tape. I am really amazed how well nDo2 worked for the AO generation
The LP is 3659 tris in total (I'm still working on the LP for the grenade :P)
WIP Diffuse, Normal, Specular, baked + nDo2 AO and Alpha
WIP with baked AO and Alpha
WIP with baked AO, Wires and Alpha
Final LP with wires
Comments and critique are welcome
Would the barbed wire not catch little things in it?
the bat itself looks like its had some use, the barbed wire looks brand spanking new, maybe some colour variation over it would help?
Especially the end of the bat itself, you can use triangles you know :P
Post a FPV shot of the bat