Mr Gelmir makes a dreadnought

mr gelmir

Heya Polycounters

I've embarked on a quest to finish a dreadnought for my 3D course. It is supposed to be a show of my skills I've learned this semester. It will be normal mapped and have a diffuse, specular and gloss map. I will particularily pay attention to the texture, as that has been the major letdown of my latest models. (cfr. my boltgun thread)

My goal is to use lot's of shared UV space for things like cables, toes, pistons and other odds and ends, perhaps even some decorations if I find the time.

What is done already:
- base of the body
- base of the close-combat arm

What will be done next:
- Unwrap of the body
- Highpoly of the body
- normalbake

here's a image of my current work in progress, before I tore it apart for unwrapping.


Comments, criticism, advice, thoughts and questions will be greatly appreciated.

mr gelmir

ErichWK

Concept?

mr gelmir

Oh, I'm sorry, totally forgot about that. It is a wahammer 40k dreadnought. A walker-tank that can carry a wide array of weaponry. Here is one of the pictures I use for reference.


It is also available as a miniature for a board game called 'warhammer 40k'. I own one of these miniatures and also use it as reference.

cptSwing

Depending on how much detail you plan on adding in the high pol model, i'd unwrap at a later stage - you might need to go back and change the appearance of your low to accomodate, and hence 'endanger' your uv map. Also, it looks like there are quite a couple of areas you could optimize in order to bring down tri count (or save tris in some areas in order to uprez other more important parts if you've hit your tri-target) ..

either way, i'm a sucker for 40k, so will be watching ;-)

konstruct

ErichWK wrote: »

Concept?

OH c`mon!! :P

mr gelmir

Okay, I'm back
What I have done up untill now is baking the dread and adding some minor details in the normalmap. Here's the lowpoly body as it stands.

and here one without the wires to show you the normalmap

This is only the nomalmap and a rudimentary ao (will do a better one once I start on the texture)


Currently I'm working on the close-combat arm. no image of that atm, because it is exploded for unwrapping and baking purposes.

all comments and or criticism are/is welcome

jeremiah_bigley

Cool so far. Seems you are a tad all over the place. Generally a work flow goes...

High
Low
Unwrap
Cast
Texture



So you are doing lowpoly? Never saw the high.

mr gelmir

Yeah, I'm kindof all over the place, I have a chaotic mind. I was trying something different here, starting with the lowpoly, but keep it as much quad as possible, then make a copy of that, optimise one and make the other my highpoly, then bake. I picked up that approach from someone I know, and it seemed fun to try. It also gives you your lowpoly model fairly soon, so for rigging and stuff like that, this could be interesting later on. (rigging the lowpoly before you have your normals baked for example, or working at the rig and highpoly at the same time... I like variation xD)
It might seem I'm abit all over the place because I'm treating the arms as a seperate project xD

You never saw the highpoly, because it wasn't that great and only used for baking ofcourse. I only used it for general shape and plan to do some extra work in photoshop.

thanks for your thoughts!

mr gelmir

I've just started texturing this thing. As textures were my weak point on my previous model, I'm determined to spend more time on it and to learn, so I'm open to suggestion. I'm going for a weathered metal with chipped paint for the main body. I've followed this tutorial a bit.
This is what I've come up with in one evening of relaxed work:

Only looking at the body ATM, the legs are only a diffuse. Looking at it now, I will probably darken the metal on the body some more and make the overlay on the paint a bit more subtle or add larger chunks of color variation. What are your thoughts, polycounters? Especially on wear and tear and the scratched paint.

thanks for reading this!

Razgriz

For rigging purposes, you can make a blockout mesh in ten minutes that contains joint locations and rough shapes, and pass that off the the rigger while you run through the high poly. What you are doing won't fly in a production environment, it will just confuse everyone as to what is actually going on with the model, with you 35% through each stage in the asset. I would encourage you to learn to do your next asset as Jeremiah indicated. Being able to stay focused and finish a part of the workflow, completely, is necessary to being able to survive in any type of studio environment.

mr gelmir

Okay, guess I'll do that next time. At least I tried so I can learn from my mistakes =D
Thanks for that.

Baddcog

mmm doughnought... oh shoot...

Well, looks pretty good for not being a doughnought.

TheGoozah

Razgriz, I'm a student to so what you are pointing out there is an interesting thing.
The reason why mr gelmir and also myself tried this approach is that when you make your model, for game purpose, you don't know if you'll have to model everything in high poly. For example, why spend precious time on modeling a small part in high poly, if you are not sure the player will really see/have a good eye on it.
It is an approach several people recommended, and I'm not sure if it is the best, but it is an interesting topic. Why would you prefer to make the high poly first and then make the low poly out of it? If def not criticizing you guys because you prob have way more experience then me, but I want to hear the do and donts abouts this way of working.
Cheers!

JFeezey

Being a student myself i can relate to the workflow shown. It looks like the normal has been created through crazybump/nDo like i see alot of people doing. I also think for the purpose of learning everything should be highpoly, not only will the model look better but more experience making high polys means your gonna get quicker at it. Also look at the gears thread and everything they do seems to be high polyed first.

Something to remember is most people who see this work will be from industry or be aspiring game artists who will notice the little things.

mr gelmir

only part of the normals are created trough nDo, basic shapes are baked from highpoly. I know it's better to do highpoly most of the time, but I had to try =p

anyways, I'm still workign on the texture, and showing you guys the arms in all their untextured glory. I know it's a bit light in some places, still working on the reflection via a cubemap.


Feedback is welcome!

mr gelmir

Well, I'm going to call it done. I know there are things that might change, but time's up and another exam awaits! I might alter some odds and ends during my break after the exams.

and because I'm going to sleep now, I'm too lazy to post my pics properly, so here's a photodump xD goodnight, and thanks for all the feedback you gave me! pics taken using either the xoliulshader or UDK (in a level I made for another exam xD)








oh, comments are still welcome =D

Wyldcard

Not that I am an expert in anyway but the wear&tear seems too uniform, it's only happening at the corners. This is a giant mech, housing the corpse of a dead space-marine that has been fighting a war for several centuries. Bullet dmg / Ork axe dmg / chain-swords / plasma dmg, anything that would make it look like its been in the wars.

PS
I was drunk at the time of writing so all appolagies for spellings / offense.