In your reference its seems like the base flares out more than your model. Also are you going to insert a separate piece of geometry into the groove at the top? Other than those things I think you have a great start for this. I really like that handle piece where the cylinders come together all fanciful instead of just shoving 2 cylinders into each other.
Worked on the glass shape a bit, used curves for this one. I think there is a lot of benefits to working with curves initially, then converting to poly, especially for curved surfaces.
Yo, what's up guys. Here is some zbrush work on the pump, I hope to get some nice cavity bakes to help the texturing process. As always, feel free to crit anything. Thanks! (Updates have been slow, crazy busy)
Just my 2 cents, but I never bother doing fine detail like that in zbrush. Adding photo grime in the texture is super easy, and then you get the benefit of the photo color and can just generate a normal map from the photo detail. If you add any photo grime, it is pretty much just going to override that zbrush fine detail anyway, and you have to work at a super high subdivision in zbrush to get enough resolution, which is a pain in the ass.
TBH, there isn't a whole lot you can add to something like this in zbrush that is going to be worth all the time and effort it adds to the process. I don't work at a studio that use a photorealistic pipeline, but I don't think those guys use zbrush much unless it is really going to be worth it.
Using zbrush for that kind of detailing would only be allowed in personal work and only for educational purposes. In actual game projects this would be an unaceptable waste of time.
Predator - Thanks for the feedback! Your work is fucking sick!
C22dubar - Thanks!
Razorb - Love your work, thanks for feedback!
Update - Got some of the lo-poly work out of the way, and did a few test bakes. Lots of things to fix, but please point anything and everything out that you see - light me up!
Yo, Here is a preliminary bake of the pump handle. Lot's of learning. I should have final uv layout for entire pump sometime this weekend, and base maps. (i.e., normals, ao, cavity.)
What's up guys? Going to get this thread going again. I've been crazy busy finishing up my contract at 343 Industries on the BVT test team. Time to chase that artist dream again; it's been a wild road since graduating in 2011, but now it's time to get back to business. I'm starting on a street scene that will hopefully be heavily tiling texture based, and I'm also planning on finishing the pump... I found the concept art for the street scene on cghub a few months ago and thought it was awesome; I'll be sure to post credit to the artist once I find the post again on cghub! Without further ado, here is some initial blockout for that scene... As always, crit away!
Here is a Vertex Painting test. This is research for the current project. I plan to make most of the final tiling textures in Zbrush, and I want to use Vertex Painting where I can!
Yo, I just wanted to share my Google Research Doc for this project with everyone. It has what I hope will be helpful links for anyone interested in doing similar texturing projects using z-brush/udk. Also, comment access has been enabled, so please feel free to add any other links you might find relevant, and I'll add them to the sheet!! Enjoy! (Hoping to get an update in tonight)
Worked on tiles today. I learned using the multibrush workflow in zbrush which is handy because your texture is essentially a tool that you can go back in and edit. I.e., move individual tiles around etc. Next is either a grungy version of the tiles or the plywood!
Updating real quick before I go to bed. Started transferring some of the materials over to the actual scene in UDK. Hopefully tomorrow I can work on updating the Concrete Textures and vertex shader material. I also want to use a vertex shader for the tiles to get some grungier variations.
Blaisoid:
Thanks for the Crit! When I get home from work, I'll stare at some Concrete from CGtextures and give it another go! (Hoping to start modeling the back piece and rails tonight too.)
Small update; mainly worked on the concrete texture and material. The shader is set up so I can vertex paint between 3 different textures. Smooth > Cracks > Big Holes Erosion. Also imported a few other place holder things to try and block out the scene.
Wow, I really like the use of all three textures. Everything works pretty well with each other. One suggestion I have is for the image on the top left. In particular the crack that goes all the way down the floor. As this probably and could happen in real life, its a bit jarring with the post and the edge that leads to the center. Cracks are good for breaking those parallel lines, instead of going with them. ;D looks great though, cant wait to see more
chrisundrum:
Thanks for the great feedback!!! I will paint that crack differently; luckly that's an easy fix with vertex painting
Another small update, started working on the rail pieces around the stairs. (And a cgtextures face for fun XD)
What's up Polycount? Here is another update, worked on texturing the railing and backboard base. Going to try and get the signage started and glass that goes in the middle of the rails. The material is set up to only reflect a cubemap of the scene on the metal parts that show in the rail; a little hard to tell when not flying around in the scene XD.
Not a very productive evening. Just a top down shot of a new lighting idea. The lighting being thrown is from the emissive of the sign and the two accent lights. Still have a long way to go, but already feeling the itch to start other projects :*(
Tonight was try to figure out how to sculpt a garbage bag night. There will be like 20 of these in a big pile... for bottom of stairs. Crit is always more than welcome!
Hey Matt! Great to see a fellow Ringlinger out in the field. Really cool stuff and good use of vertex painting.
I would love to see those white lights given more detail however, perhaps some sort of better framing or grating?
@Ignacio_G
Thanks for the great feedback! The plan is to have a cracked glass mat on the lights similar to the one in the concept. It's awesome you're going to Ringling! Be sure to make use of the endless supply of Gnmonon & Eat3D vids in the Library!!!
Here is shot one, started working on the bottom piece of pillar. Everything will be modular with the idea of creating multiple assets with pieces, i.e., create 4 pillar variations with the same pieces. Here is today's work:
Worked on the top piece for the pillar. I was painfully reminded why it's always a good idea to save with all subtools at lowest subdivision lvl I also started some initial tests on getting woodgrain with noise maker.
diggin it! are you breaking up the edges of all those bricks 1 by 1? or using a few and duplicating/rotating them? i could imagine (and know firsthand) that it gets to be a pain taking brushes to corners to make wear on stone. anything you're doing to expedite that process?
@Onriam
your tileable textures tutorial is awesome! I sculpted most of these 1 by 1 to try and get a good feel for a technique i can use consistently in the future. I did try to go in a delete some of the similar bricks in zbrush, via polygrouping, spliting, then deleting subtool, but that process was pretty ineffective because i was working with a high sub-d lvl. (in hindsight, i should of polygrouped the bricks i already scuplted, then just worked with the other bricks at lowest sub-d that i was trying to delete.) the next wall I do, i'm going to leave gaps in the base mesh, then dupe and rotate similar bricks with transpose to speed up the process!
Did some preliminary bakes, finished the base sculpt for this piece. Also tested some of the modular components in Maya. Behind the wood squares will be broken concrete and thick plaster which will be a tiling texture, with vertex painting between the two. I also want everything to be vertex paintable so I can layer on moss, grime, etc.
amazing dude. yeah some vert painting on this will definitely bring it a long way. do you plan on putting in some parallax or tessellation? that would definitely help it pop.
@Oniram
Thanks man! I need to definitely get up to speed with parallax and tessellation. I've used both briefly, but I'll definitely do some more research and try to get that implemented.
Worked on baking some proper maps for the wall and testing the results in UDK. Next is to build out some modular pieces, and start making textures and more assets.
*Started texturing diffuse & bringing modular pieces into udk!
Made some bricks. It was really challenging trying to precisely offset by 256 in zbrush... I realized I could go-z the lowest subdivision over to maya and offset there, then go-z back and it fortunately updated the mesh location in zbrush. Also played around with tessellation. I'm not sure if I was getting shitty results because of the height map I generated, or if trying to use tessellation with tiling texture is a bad idea... Any advice on that would be really helpful!
in the first image youve got there.. on the bottom right. is that just a screengrab from zbrush with the matcap? did you bake it out to your texture?
id say tessellation on a brick floor may be overdoing it.. since bricks dont have too much of a popping out feature.. at least those ones. i think parallax would work just as well for that. ideally if you had older rounded beat up bricks or cobblestone that had varying heights then it may be a bit better looking with tessellation, but here its pretty much the ground plane being pushed directly up and down so all over the place you're getting this wavy effect.
here's a photo comparison.
essentially what you have.. go for parallax because its a lot of recesses
and what would be good/ideal for tessellation because there's a significant silhouette change (the example is a bit extreme in the case of the environment you're working on but just to make a point)
@oniram
Wow, thanks for the awesome advice and reference - that gives me a much better idea how to approach textures when it comes to tessellation & parallax!!!
Yeah it was just a screenshot showing the bricks in Zbrush. I didn't bake the matcap to texture for this; extracted all of the maps in XNormal - however, I know that Zbrush will now export polypaint information with the hi-poly and you can bake that to a color map within in XNormal. I'll have to try this technique at some point soon.
Started playing around with some modular ideas using the pieces I made so far. I also started to think about giving this environment more contextual significance, and how I could make it a more fully realized space capable of supporting game mechanics. I thought it would be cool to implement wooden aqueducts because of their modular nature. I.e., long running wooden structures which could easily be a couple of pieces that connect together.
Last night I came across some amazing photographs of the waterwheels in Hama, which are incredible visually and functionally. This gave me an idea for a game mechanic that involves activating a series of waterwheels to solve a puzzle. Something like: 1. Player encounters a locked door (Of course) 2. Repair Waterwheels, 3. Water starts flowing through aqueducts, which causes something to unlock the door, 4. Door Opens... (Might be fun to visualize this with Kismet) Anyways, more to come throughout the week!
Added some terrain. (Currently using one of the default unreal sand materials while I remake mine.) Also made a simple tree using speed tree, and started messing around with the paint for the static mesh assets.)
Replies
bassmatt00 - thanks for pointing out the panel flaring out, definitely missed that one.
TBH, there isn't a whole lot you can add to something like this in zbrush that is going to be worth all the time and effort it adds to the process. I don't work at a studio that use a photorealistic pipeline, but I don't think those guys use zbrush much unless it is really going to be worth it.
Using zbrush for that kind of detailing would only be allowed in personal work and only for educational purposes. In actual game projects this would be an unaceptable waste of time.
C22dubar - Thanks!
Razorb - Love your work, thanks for feedback!
Update - Got some of the lo-poly work out of the way, and did a few test bakes. Lots of things to fix, but please point anything and everything out that you see - light me up!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_fMq5C9qpL2Q6gtPAyA2A-foelk9a8ccSSUWJwBhNfw/edit
Thanks for the Crit! When I get home from work, I'll stare at some Concrete from CGtextures and give it another go! (Hoping to start modeling the back piece and rails tonight too.)
Thanks for the great feedback!!! I will paint that crack differently; luckly that's an easy fix with vertex painting
Another small update, started working on the rail pieces around the stairs. (And a cgtextures face for fun XD)
I would love to see those white lights given more detail however, perhaps some sort of better framing or grating?
Thanks for the great feedback! The plan is to have a cracked glass mat on the lights similar to the one in the concept. It's awesome you're going to Ringling! Be sure to make use of the endless supply of Gnmonon & Eat3D vids in the Library!!!
Here is the awesome concept/inspiration by redhong from cghub:
http://cghub.com/images/view/269699/
Here is shot one, started working on the bottom piece of pillar. Everything will be modular with the idea of creating multiple assets with pieces, i.e., create 4 pillar variations with the same pieces. Here is today's work:
your tileable textures tutorial is awesome! I sculpted most of these 1 by 1 to try and get a good feel for a technique i can use consistently in the future. I did try to go in a delete some of the similar bricks in zbrush, via polygrouping, spliting, then deleting subtool, but that process was pretty ineffective because i was working with a high sub-d lvl. (in hindsight, i should of polygrouped the bricks i already scuplted, then just worked with the other bricks at lowest sub-d that i was trying to delete.) the next wall I do, i'm going to leave gaps in the base mesh, then dupe and rotate similar bricks with transpose to speed up the process!
Thanks man! I need to definitely get up to speed with parallax and tessellation. I've used both briefly, but I'll definitely do some more research and try to get that implemented.
Worked on baking some proper maps for the wall and testing the results in UDK. Next is to build out some modular pieces, and start making textures and more assets.
*Started texturing diffuse & bringing modular pieces into udk!
id say tessellation on a brick floor may be overdoing it.. since bricks dont have too much of a popping out feature.. at least those ones. i think parallax would work just as well for that. ideally if you had older rounded beat up bricks or cobblestone that had varying heights then it may be a bit better looking with tessellation, but here its pretty much the ground plane being pushed directly up and down so all over the place you're getting this wavy effect.
here's a photo comparison.
essentially what you have.. go for parallax because its a lot of recesses
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Old_San_Juan's_Blue_Brick_Roads_I.jpg
and what would be good/ideal for tessellation because there's a significant silhouette change (the example is a bit extreme in the case of the environment you're working on but just to make a point)
http://www.biblewalks.com/Photos51/BethSaida40.jpg
Wow, thanks for the awesome advice and reference - that gives me a much better idea how to approach textures when it comes to tessellation & parallax!!!
Yeah it was just a screenshot showing the bricks in Zbrush. I didn't bake the matcap to texture for this; extracted all of the maps in XNormal - however, I know that Zbrush will now export polypaint information with the hi-poly and you can bake that to a color map within in XNormal. I'll have to try this technique at some point soon.
[ame="
Last night I came across some amazing photographs of the waterwheels in Hama, which are incredible visually and functionally. This gave me an idea for a game mechanic that involves activating a series of waterwheels to solve a puzzle. Something like: 1. Player encounters a locked door (Of course) 2. Repair Waterwheels, 3. Water starts flowing through aqueducts, which causes something to unlock the door, 4. Door Opens... (Might be fun to visualize this with Kismet) Anyways, more to come throughout the week!
Ref:
http://crockerchina.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/sam_0646.jpg