modular rocks
Hello everyone!
I have been trying for a while now to make appealing looking stone structure in a time efficient manner.
I first tried to design, then sculpt, and then go through map backing and all that. But it took far too much time and energy for just a piece of rock.
So I tried to make a generic and very reusable set of rocks models and materials so I could "build" different looking structure rather than having to sculpt them. I used 3 simple 1024x1024 stone textures that I pulled of the internet with very minor editing and made a simple normal map with Crazybump. There is 7 meshes which I just sculpt the rough outline in Zbrush, and then retopo the lowpoly version on top of it.
My meshes may be a little to heavy in polys I think. There is 9548 Tris in the following structure.
Is it the right way to go?
I have been trying for a while now to make appealing looking stone structure in a time efficient manner.
I first tried to design, then sculpt, and then go through map backing and all that. But it took far too much time and energy for just a piece of rock.
So I tried to make a generic and very reusable set of rocks models and materials so I could "build" different looking structure rather than having to sculpt them. I used 3 simple 1024x1024 stone textures that I pulled of the internet with very minor editing and made a simple normal map with Crazybump. There is 7 meshes which I just sculpt the rough outline in Zbrush, and then retopo the lowpoly version on top of it.
My meshes may be a little to heavy in polys I think. There is 9548 Tris in the following structure.
Is it the right way to go?
Replies
They look really nice from the distance in your shots, but how do they look from up close?
I will be doing the same thing in a few days on a personal project, mind if I ask for a little more detail about the sculpting process you used for these?
One thing I would say is that you could spend some time hand painting some highlights and wear onto the texture around the edges of some of the flattened parts which sort of form steps, to make the texture adhere to the model a bit better. At the moment some parts of it look a little too much like a great texture has been wrapped around a great looking rock model, but neither of which were made for one-another.
Another thing you can do which I haven't tried out myself (but I've heard is very effective), is to take your model and it's texture into Max or Maya or whatever you're using, and push/pull the geometry so that the model fits the texture a bit better; recessing cracks, enhancing bulges etc.
Another trick, for making your models look more passable up-close, is to tile a detail normal over it. https://sites.google.com/site/lessonsdarrenmckinsey/2-1-detail-normal-maps
Keep up the awesome work! I'm totally gonna go model some rocks now...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianlayzellphotographs/5030972146/sizes/l/in/photostream/
And you should be able to bring the polycount down to at least 2000 tris on that.
Guy123: I just sculpt a very rough shape of the rock I want with the clay-buildup and move brush, and then I retopo on top of the high-poly my low-poly. It's very simple really; I don't sculpt the details, the textures add the details.
Paunescu.Daniel: Here a close up shot:
and the unwarp of one of the asset:
I tried to make some more geometry to fit the texture before but the thing is I want each asset to be generic, so I can swap textures between each other to add more variety like so:
and the wireframe version:
Maybe I should try to make some rocks more edgy to make them more appealing. I'll start to reduce the poly count and try a detail normal mapas for now and see how it goes.