First complete prop
polycounter lvl 8
Hello everybody!
I just finished the high poly version of your typical hydrant, this one is based on one of the multiple kind of hydrants you can find in Spain.
The mesh has been done in 3ds max and I want to create the low poly version and the textures for both high poly and low poly version.
I am kind of lost on how to proceed from now on, but I will begin making the low version.
This is a screenshot from the viewport:
Hope to get your help and any critics are more than welcome.
Thanks in advance!
I just finished the high poly version of your typical hydrant, this one is based on one of the multiple kind of hydrants you can find in Spain.
The mesh has been done in 3ds max and I want to create the low poly version and the textures for both high poly and low poly version.
I am kind of lost on how to proceed from now on, but I will begin making the low version.
This is a screenshot from the viewport:
Hope to get your help and any critics are more than welcome.
Thanks in advance!
Replies
For the whole model except the upper case: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chacobo_flickr/133571037/
The upper case that is next to the model: http://www.vialimite.com/img/big/boca.jpg
I noticed that some of ur proportions are a little off.
The reference looks thicker (main hydrant part) Ex: the clamps that hold onto where the hoses connect are bigger. and the plates on the bottom with the 4 bolts holding it together are thicker.
Also the main hydrant part looks like it had some roundness to it. and looks shorter / stubby compared to urs that looks more tall & skinny.
Thanks Korrax for the tips. I will fix the thickness of the bottom plates and the clamps. The main issue I have with the body is that I don't find a proper way to emulate that roundness that appears in the pic with messing the shape, it begins to appear shadows.
I will correct the parts you said and see from there if I can do something with that roundness.
That is what I would do next.
Looks good, and I agree, that fire hydrant is kinda different looking compared to the ones I see here in the US.
Keep it up!
I have been working a bit with the mesh and I got two versions right now.
In both of them I fixed the thickness of the base and changed a bit the clamps. Shortened a bit the body too.
First version is without the roundness in the body:
Second one is with a bit of roundness like in the picture:
At this point I am thinking if to leave it without the roundness or go ahead with the bit of roundness I did. I am not sure if I will find issues when doing the lowpoly and textures.
What do you think so far? Any more improvement or anything?
I made the cylinders of 8 sides and using smoothing groups.
I have doubts on how to proceed in some parts. I still didn't create the part of the body that goes to the 3 caps. Should I join the caps and this new parts to the body? or create a different object for the parts that are going out of the body?
The chain I guess should be done as an string of cubes and after apply alpha in the texture?
Is the topology good? or should I add more geometry?
The bolts should be added as part of the texture or can they be added as objects?
I know these are a lot of question, but I am quite lost with low poly and your help would be great.
Thanks in advance!
I think you may want to use a 10 sided cylinder maybe even a 12. Its very jagged with 8.
The chain could even be planes all strung together, with an alpha applied. The cubes would cause and issue as you would be able to see inside of it if you were to use an alpha on it.
Bolts could be either really, depends how prominent you want them to be.
Hope this helps,
Keep going
Oh also could you post up the images without the wireframe too?
I will try to do the low poly with 10 and 12 and see how it looks.
10 sides version:
12 sides version:
Obviously the 12 sides looks better, but I am not sure if with 10 is already enough.
How does it look? anything needs to be redone or adjusted?
I still don't know if the parts of the body that are sticking out to the caps should be part of the main body or just part of the caps (separated from the main body).
I made a 16 sides version and made the parts of the body that go to the caps, so everything is part of a single mesh.
You can see the problem I got...
Any tips or tutorial where I can see/learn how to make the geometry of something like this in low poly?
I have been trying connecting the vertex leaving quads and tris, and still get this awful shadows..
Besides, when making the new parts, I got some new vertexes next to the normal ones of the cylinder, what should I do in this case?
Any help is much appreciated
As far as tutorials, none i can think of. Just post your stuff here. im sure someone will help.
Thanks Raul. I will get back to the 12 sides model.
If I make one cylinder through the main one, how would be done later to make it look like has a smooth fusion and not a 90°? Can this be easily done with textures?
So, here are my thoughts. I doodled on your rendering in photoshop; hope you don't mind
1) Small plug: move the end of the "3 o'clock" vertex back so it lands evenly on the line. This will allow you to ditch many of the "triangular" edges to get even less polys. This will remove some of the curving problems. In addition, ditch some of the edge loops on the plug itself to shave off an extra 16 faces.
2) Main plug: I left one of the twin edges on, but then removed the other one. On the low-poly version, no one will ever see these so they should be removed.
- LW3
I am doing both versions, the 16 sides with the caps and everything joined with the body and the 12 sides version with separated objects fro the caps.
So far these are the results.
Right now I am doing the chain with planes, is this the right way to do something like the chain?
After the chain is done I will get going with the clamps.
Doing the low poly is resulting more challenging than I thought, and I still didn't begin with the baking or textures...
I did the unwrapping of most part of the low poly. One question I have, should I attach all the pieces together and do the unwrapping of all at the same time, or is it fine to have the parts separated and unwrap each part?
I am doing the clamps now too, I guess with such a basic shape will be fine to get something like in the high poly no?
Now one thing I saw is that one of the caps from the high poly differs a bit in distance with the low poly, will this difference give me trouble? Should I completely match the high poly with the low poly?
In this pic of the high and low poly together, you can see in the base that the low poly sticking out from the high poly (cause of the round corners). Does the low poly have to be slightly bigger than the high poly or equal in size?
I have been messing with the normals map, after lot of trouble I got them but they are pretty shitty. Some parts are wavy, other don't get properly read.
I am using the 3point lite shader for the final version with normals.
After reading and reading about normals, I began to redo my low poly.
I focused in the clamps and the main body that were the parts giving more trouble.
Clamps I redid completely, to be as close as possible to the high poly ones. Normals improved, but I got some black spots I have to check again.
Both clamps and main body I left in 1 smoothing group.
In the main body I changed a bit the base. chamfering the corners and chamfering the borders in the upper part. I think I will get a more consistent result and hope to solve the waving.
These are the results, from left to right: old low poly, new low poly, high poly.
This is the new upper part.
For the base should I add some support edges get this effect that you see in the high poly of the next picture?
The baked version looks a bit too weak.
I will appreciate any help, or if I am going in the right direction.
Which is the best way to do the normals? Deforming the object or making every part separated?
Deforming seems to give better results, but I had to manually break and position a circle to stretch it to the rest of the cylinder. I didnt find a more easy way than doing it manually...