Wall-e Diorama

mikhga

Hello.

A little school assignment I've been working on, in which we were tasked to redo one of our old models, and make it "better". So I wanted to try and simply optimize the mesh (whilst not remodeling anything) and simply make it look more visually pleasing by "just" improving the texture.

So far the triangle-count of the Wall-e model alone is 6566, and the whole scene together is currently at 8758. The texture-maps are as follows:

Podium (not including the "lunch box" and rocks) - 2048 * Diffuse, Specular, Normal
"Lunch Box" - 512 * Diffuse, Specular, Normal
Rocks - 1024 * Diffuse, Specular, Normal
Wall-e Tracks - 512 * Diffuse, Specular, Normal
Wall-e Body - 2048 * Diffuse, Normal

I plan on doing the specular for the main body as soon as I'm done with the diffuse, which is when I've textured the hands and done some more polishing.

I would really appreciate your comments and opinions about this scene in general, but mostly about the textures, since I doing this as a texturing exercise.













Thanks in advance.

Ged

its looking cool, have you got the specular on him at all yet?

Axios

This looks really nice so far. The first thing that jumps out to me is how uniform the intensity on the dirt tracks is. It ends up looking a little more like a sticker and a little less like displaced dirt. I think softening some parts of it to break it up will help.

Un_Delincuente

The only thing that bugs me is his eyes being so dark. if you would have tried to make it a bit closer to the original, like making them white-ish and with a nice spec or cube map for the reflections on his eyes.

other than that great work.

mikhga

@Ged: The main body (everything but the tracks) hasn't got any specular yet. That's next up on my to-do list though.

I've increased the whiteness around the eyes a bit, maybe I should do it a bit more? I've also softened the tracks, and done some more general polish.

Crits more than welcome!

Snader

The eyes are awfully blocky. I suggest you cut a few extra loops and smooth the shapes out a bit.

Korrax

I like the presentation with the stand!

He looks pretty flat, so crank out a nice spec map!

And Yeah, his eyes seem pretty dark also seems kinda dark overall.

OniLolz

Great work!
I agree with Korrax. You should tweak the specular and the lights a little bit.

myles

As well as the eyes needing to be generally lighter you need to add the specular that sell the eyes as being eyes, you'll notice that the eye on Wall-E is actually round and has quite a lot of depth to it. Just adding the specular should help sell it a lot more though.
The unpainted metals should be a lot more blue and have a stronger specular/ reflection rather than rust add dust.
The painted metal has quite uniform rust, I suggest you add some clean patches.
The tracks are quite noisy and lack any depth.
I also suggest you take the screenshot from the front with the eye level around his chest - that'd be the wall-e that people are going to recognise.

mikhga

Thanks for all your comments!

Now I've added Specular to the body as well, though I've tried to keep it rather subtle. I am going to do some more tweaking on both the diffuse and the specular to get the eyes to pop a bit more, and on the scene composition in general. And I am going to try to smooth out the eyes a bit, because they are, as "Snader" said, rather blocky.

I have also done some tweaking on the tracks.

Please let me know what you think.

myles

Tracks look a lot better, maybe just add a few little scratches on them here and there. The entire thing still looks pretty brown at the moment though, It might be worth considering does a base that is a different colour, like moon surface or some sort of ice planet, it'd help make Wall-e pop a little more.
Btw, the WALL-E text seems quite small.

Ged

looking a little better but still no where near the vivid power of the originals specular colour or lighting, check this out http://www.zauberwuerfel.de/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/walle-photo-1.jpg --- his paint is a bright yellow with a strong flat yellow specular and the metal on his arms and back of his head are almost reflective and his eyes are totally reflective/refractive lenses. I know hes still a wip so heres a little paintover in case you want to know what Im trying to say.

Dill-n

Really nice work. I do agree with Ged about the spec, especially on the eyes. Right now with the eyes kind of muted they don't really draw my attention. Great work so far though, dirt and grim looks excellent.

jordan.kocon

Hey nice work!! I just finished a high poly of wall e like 3 nights ago, http://jordankocon.carbonmade.com/projects/4142997 this might help for some reference (dont mean to be an ass and post my own stuff on your thread.)

I think Ged's paint over is a good step. I can't tell, but does you Wall-e have thumbs? It doesn't look like it, also I think the black trim on the top of his body looks more like rubber than metal. Nice work overall though, he is lookin good!

mikhga

@Myles: Yeah, I agree they are a little too brownish now, I was trying to make them look like he had actually been driving around in the almost red sand, but I guess I kind of overdid it a bit.

And I am going to try out another color for the base and see about enlarging the logo a bit. Thanks for the tips!

@Ged: Awesome, thanks for the paint-over. I really see what you are trying to say, and I'm gonna try getting that signature reflection in his eyes, I guess it would be easier to accomplish with a glossmap?

@Dill-n: Thanks!

@jordan.kocon: Thanks. Saw that model a couple of days ago, awesome work! And yes, my Wall-e has some kind of thumbs, although they're not quite visible, and I really thought the trim on top was rubber, so I was actually trying to replicate that, but I'll try to fix that.

Thanks for the help everybody!

Ged

mikhga wrote: »

@Ged: Awesome, thanks for the paint-over. I really see what you are trying to say, and I'm gonna try getting that signature reflection in his eyes, I guess it would be easier to accomplish with a glossmap?

no problem, yeah gloss map is a good start, although it may not react the way you want until you add a little geometry to round out the lenses a little.