GP's Art Dump

GabrielP

Good day fellow poly counters! So, Ive decided its about time for me to start on some work for a portfolio, but before that I need to spend some time perfecting my skills. Of course, there's no better way to do that then to make models daily "or every other day depending on what work allows" and posting them here for all of PC to tear to shreds with there relentless critical fangs of love.
So here is the first model, kind of a warm up of sorts, the alarm clock that destroys everything that is good in the morning.


Now here is my first question for you good people, why is this hard line happening?

At first I thought it was because of my normal map but I faded both of the connecting edges on the map to the same color, but that had no noticeable effect.

Snader

Make sure that all smoothing group splits are the same in the baking lowpoly and in-game lowpoly. Make sure these smoothing group splits are also the same as UV-unwrap islands.

Fading the normal map only worsened things, I'm afraid.

GabrielP

Well the lowpoly has just one sold smooth group that covers the whole model, but in the UVS those edges are broken from one another. Is this just a UV unwrapping flaw, or is there a way I can fix it without redoing my unwrap?

Grumpntug

Could be a number of things. Smoothing groups for one but you went over that. Could also have some un-welded verts causing it.

Could be that you didn't have smoothing groups set correctly when you baked (at least that's an issue that pops up in xnormal some times)

Would be helpful to see the full textures instead of the sectioned one in the corner.

GabrielP

Alright so Ive already been unfaithful to my frequent model posting promise! But alas, I have started on something worth showing everyone. I found this image from Bio-shock and decided I would give it a shot.


I have a couple questions on how one would go about modeling this for a game, the first one being, would this all be one model or broken up into something like 2 or 3 models and in turn 3 different texture maps. From there Im curious what size texture maps/map would be used for something like this?

Anyways, Ive got a small segment modeled out and baked right here. Ill defiantly be modeling and backing this in pieces so as to save my poor little computer from its certain crash-tastic demise.


Probably wont be starting on the diffuse map until I've got the whole thing put together. Anyways, that's all for now!

whats_true

For the ingame model, this is broken down into 3 maps. One for the building, one for the rocket structure, and one for the balloons that they are blowing into. Total, you could probably do this with 3 models and 3 texture maps (unless you can cram those balloons into the rocket structure that is!) . The sizes could be 2048s, with maybe the balloon being 1024.

GabrielP

Thank you so much whats_true, very helpful!

EDIT:
Just realized that you actually on the team, sorry for butchering your wonderful work sir!

Matroskin

Such a building would be better to do with modules.

This could end up being 2-3 modules for facade parts, 2-3 for the roof parts, 2-3 for the "bottom metal wall" part (the section uder white wall).
The "jet engine" parts would be probably 1 module which could represent a quarter and being copied 4 times in a circle.

As for the textures, it would be efficient to make sets of tiled textures, which u will need more than 3 for this one.

EDIT: that is if considering u r getting close to it, and not seen only in background.

Matroskin

Note: just my version of it, I see it seems to be done kinda differently