Gears of War Smoke Grenade

dpaynter26

Hey All,
Gonna try to get over my fear of posting work lol, currently working on a Gears of War smoke grenade(it's called flash in the concept but we all know it's a smoke) here's a WIP of the high poly, gonna work on the cloth a bit more.





Concept:

TicoTaco

Are you planning on doing a low-poly with textures? I really like the high poly. Keep it up!

dpaynter26

Thanks! yep definitely gonna make a low poly and render it in marmoset, maybe udk and learn how to setup udk for showing off

dpaynter26

Anymore critiques anyone? I'll be updating a bit more probably tomorrow, im going to try to have this finished by sunday

fullofclovers

I would make it a bit more chunky overall. In the end nice beveled edges will read much better on your bakes.

jeramy79

@dpaynter26 what modeling program are you using?

dpaynter26

@fullofclovers Thanks but if i were to zoom in closer you'd see that the mesh has actually been smoothed with holding edges the same as what beveling them would do

@jeramy79 Maya

biofrost

Looking pretty spot on so far, keep it up! I am pretty curious how you went about modeling the cloth.

dpaynter26

Thanks Biofrost! it's actually just shaped cylinders without the top or bottom faces/polys with the top/bottom edges extruded inward to give it a look of thickness , i was going to extrude around a curve but just went with the cylinders, gonna take it into zbrush to sculpt it a bit and give it more of a cloth feel Im actually pretty glad i posted my work now the responses are really giving me more energy to want to finish this thing even faster

Ghostscape

Your edges are really tight to the point where I don't think your bake is going to hold up very well.

Keep in mind this is a small object on-screen, so micro-sharp edge bevels are going to bake to nothing and add nothing to the final result. You have some good edges on the 'paddle' on the swinging handle, but the bevels on the warhead, and the chain and straps are all going to give you a very poor bake.

Have you considered how you're going to handle the chains?

dpaynter26

Ghostscape, The only thing im worried about with "loosening" the edges is that when i apply the map to the low poly ill get that weird look because the low poly will have a sharp edge and if the edges arent a little sharp on the high poly then it's going to have that blackness you get when you apply a really rounded edge to a sharp edge. But i could round them a bit more so they arent as sharp. Thanks! As far as the chains i was just going to model them out, probably octagonal rings.

dpaynter26

Almost finished with the low poly, gonna put it up soon

dpaynter26

What do you guys think i should have as far as tri count for low poly? a friend and i were talking and he suggested under 1000 tris but i dont want to sacrifice supporting geo for the normal map, i wish i knew what the actual tri count was in the game, im gonna try to find out who made it and see if i can send them an email lol

Computron

It depends on the final target renderer, i'm assuming a static mesh in UDK, but you can usually do fine without supporting edge loops in you low poly by utilizing smoothing groups and UV padding along with exporting tangents and bitangents in your FBX. That will also depend on you baker and IIRC, in the case of 3ds Max, the shader that is used at export time.

With regards to the model, post much bigger pictures, I can hardly see any beveled edges or specular highlights that would be characteristic of a good high poly.

Hope your good at texturing, i'll be watching. :-)

dpaynter26

Thanks I hope the texture turns out nice as well

Here are bigger images

Snefer

Looks like an excellent start, but you need better renders for your highpoly, its too washed out right now, try to make the material a bit darker grey, and add some specularity, will help us to read the shapes of your highpoly models better! : )

dpaynter26

Alright Snefer, Thanks! I'll do that :P

dpaynter26

K so I've re-rendered and darkened the material added more spec and darkened the light so it isnt as washed out here ya go, I've also rendered a couple more shots closer up to see the geo better, once i got in closer i realized im definitely gonna loosen the edges, my holding edges are too close to the main edge loops so
Here ya go:









finishing up the low poly, uv'ing then texturing but before i go any further im going back to the high poly to fix the edges like everyones been saying

comments and critiques are welcome thanks everyone!

Snefer

I think the handle-part look perfectly fine, the chain could use some nice smoother edges on the links, and the top cylinder looks like its not smoothed yet : ) But other than that I think it looks great : ))

dpaynter26

Thank You So Much! It Feels Good To Hear That From Such An Amazing Artist As Yourself Ill Get Those Parts Fixed Up ASAP
I still go back and look at your sci-fi slum enviro all the time, I Love It! Btw the robot is looking great as well

dpaynter26

Hey Guys!
I loosened those edges and re rendered, it looks much better now Thanks for the tip!!
Just looking at this makes my day, for the first time in a very long time im REALLY ENJOYING MAKING ART!

dpaynter26

Oniram has pointed this out to me i knew it was there just wasnt sure how to fix the edge loops but after speaking with him ive figured it out will post when fixed more of mesh just want to make sure there arent anymore rough areas

megalmn2000

To fix that, one of the solution is to add more geometry to the cylinder. I got the same problem before. Or else, you can fake it by hand painting it in normal map in Photoshop. nDo2 can be helpful for that.

dpaynter26

Adding more geo actually just made it worse, i dont need to fake it, i actually just separated the faces from the cylinder and voila

Oniram

to sort of re-iterate on what i was talking about.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13680846/things.jpg

dpaynter26

Thanks Oniram!

Sixtk

Really cool stuff man. Progress your making is really good. Get it textured and you'll be all set to go. You should do some of the other ones or do an environment.

dpaynter26

thanks!
@sixtk gonna get this one finished, then the incendiary and then do a pimp escape pod, havent had much time to work on it the past two days though, gonna get some good work done tonight will update soon!

dpaynter26

Hey All! just wanted to let you know that I def haven't forgotten about this and I'm definitely going to finish this and make it look so beast but right now the current project I'm working on has to take priority Dont worry I havent given up on this super awesome nade

dpaynter26

Hey Guys! LOOK I FINISHED IT!! Here's a comped shot after rendering out images from marmoset and here is the quick texture comp too ONTO AN FULL ENVIRO!!! YAYYYYY lol

nick2730

I think it needs more wear, ther eis very little scratches or anything to make it look like it has been carried around. Kinda lacks that extra depth feel otherwise i think it looks great for fresh off the assembly line

gilesruscoe

This has potential to be pretty nice. Your normals seam fine to me, but you need to work on the diffuse and spec.
Right now it's all very monotone and flat looking. It needs more contrast, more colour variation and grime it up a bit. Your spec needs to have some brighter patches in order to help sell the metal materials.

I did a paint over of where i think you should go with this asset:


Handle:
Make the cloth seem more used and stained, all i did here was take a grunge texture, tint it orange and overlay it onto the existing handle, something simple like that with a more careful approach would make the strapping a lot more appealing.

For the metal chain i just went through and painted some edge highlights, painting a bright white on the edge of things in your spec can really help them pop and sell the material.

You could also put some dirt into the cavity area's to help offset the worn away exposed areas.

For the paint, outer parts might be stratched up and the paint worn away to reveal base paint layers and shiny metal. You should pay attention to what areas would be newer, shiny metal and what places would be duller on your spec map.
Check out this tutorial on texturing hard surface props:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=46&t=373024

So to recap:
Diffuse - more grime, more variation
Spec - more contrast, edge hightlights.

Good luck!

Ghostscape

gilesruscoe wrote: »

This has potential to be pretty nice. Your normals seam fine to me, but you need to work on the diffuse and spec.
Right now it's all very monotone and flat looking. It needs more contrast, more colour variation and grime it up a bit. Your spec needs to have some brighter patches in order to help sell the metal materials.

I did a paint over of where i think you should go with this asset:


Handle:
Make the cloth seem more used and stained, all i did here was take a grunge texture, tint it orange and overlay it onto the existing handle, something simple like that with a more careful approach would make the strapping a lot more appealing.

For the metal chain i just went through and painted some edge highlights, painting a bright white on the edge of things in your spec can really help them pop and sell the material.

You could also put some dirt into the cavity area's to help offset the worn away exposed areas.

For the paint, outer parts might be stratched up and the paint worn away to reveal base paint layers and shiny metal. You should pay attention to what areas would be newer, shiny metal and what places would be duller on your spec map.
Check out this tutorial on texturing hard surface props:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=46&t=373024

So to recap:
Diffuse - more grime, more variation
Spec - more contrast, edge hightlights.

Good luck!

I agree with all of this except scratching up and adding heavy wear to an explosive device, because that always looks wrong. Cranking the color/saturation and adding some dirt and unevenness is OK, but big scratches taking off paint looks weird.

Snefer

gilesruscoe has some great points. Also its a gears of war grenade so scratches is not wrong ^^ I'd make the grenade part a bit darker aswell, to bring out the oily metal feel aswell, and maybe desaturate that part aswell. Its coming along nicely, a few more rounds of polish! : ))

dpaynter26

Wow guys thanks a lot!! i really like the suggestions you've given me I'll definitely get to work on it after easter dinner i wasnt positive what else to do with the diffuse but giles you really made it look good THANKS!! @ghost I'll try both your suggestion and giles suggestions and see where it goes
@snefer thanks a lot for the motivation!! your art is always inspiring so hearing something like that from you makes me even more excited to get this thing in the bag! THANKS EVERYONE!! Anymore suggestions please keep em coming!! HAPPY EASTER ALL!!!

dpaynter26

Hey Guys! I did exactly what you said! Here it is!:)



THANKS EVERYONE! Anymore suggestions are welcome!

dpaynter26

Also another quick texture comp!

gilesruscoe

Nice to see you went back and implemented the crits, it looks a lot better.
The grip is still very bright and it's throwing the whole piece off, i suggest darkening it down more.

There's still something not quite right with the chain, i see you've added lots of highlights in the spec, but it's not showing. What are you rendering with and with what settings? It might be worth doing a more direct lighting setup to show off the spec a bit more.

Are you going to add the glowing parts too?


Keep it up!

dpaynter26

Yeah i think i will add the glowing parts that would be cool! I'm using marmoset and adding an extra light from the default lighting i think i do need to add another light and have it bouncing off the chain for the spec, i'll tone down the cloth wrap and i'll work on the emissive thanks!
i was actually following this reference closer than the one you posted but they both help