Russian WW2 SU122 tank
Hey,
my first thread ever on this beautiful site. After i got a bit tired with modeling all those milion cars over the years i started to do this tank last week. We talked a bit with Waaarg, user on this for, and he recommended me to use it for some good feedbacks.
My plan with this project is to create SU122 for games with recent specs. First highpoly, then lowpoly, map lowpoly and texture it. I would say for lowpoly tris count should be fine to remain under 10k triangles and for the texture i am thinking about 2048x2048 one.
As i am pretty new to anything else than doing cars i would be happy to see what you think about this, kick my ass when i will go in wrong dirrection.
Cheers.
my first thread ever on this beautiful site. After i got a bit tired with modeling all those milion cars over the years i started to do this tank last week. We talked a bit with Waaarg, user on this for, and he recommended me to use it for some good feedbacks.
My plan with this project is to create SU122 for games with recent specs. First highpoly, then lowpoly, map lowpoly and texture it. I would say for lowpoly tris count should be fine to remain under 10k triangles and for the texture i am thinking about 2048x2048 one.
As i am pretty new to anything else than doing cars i would be happy to see what you think about this, kick my ass when i will go in wrong dirrection.
Cheers.
Replies
Also not sure if you have ever seen this site but its great for everything military on reference images. No SU-122 sadly but tons of the SU-100 which is a very similar tank pretty much the same hull but with different armaments.
http://www.primeportal.net/the_battlefield_armor.htm
I'm sure you'll do fine at this, but one thing might be worth keeping in mind: it helps to simplify and change things away from realism a bit, to improve the looks or decrease the amount of work it takes to get it all UV'd and baked.
Mainly:
-making edges softer, especially the main corners or the hull will look nicer if you don't make them as sharp as real life, they'll catch more spec that way. Same for the small nuts and details: make them softer and more sloped, so they bake better. That way you won't have to use obscene texture sizes to get it to show up.
-Make details stick out less, so you have to model a less complex lowpoly. If you keep details flatter and more flush to the surface, it's easier to leave it up to the normalmap.
Xoliul: All you said makes sense. I went as you suggested across main parts and adjusted smoothing of corners to make them look less sharp. And for the rest of the modelling process i kept in mind what you said. Thank you.
Anyway here is another update on this. On high modelling pass i am at the end with all parts modelled. It was pretty good with polygon count after i started to model wheels and straps. Then it jumped from 1 to 2.7 and 4 milions with just turbosmooth interactions on 2 value.
Tomorrow i will start slowly with lowpoly modelling. May i ask what kind of mesh is better to represent straps. Single standalone pieces or just one mesh divided? I would say even if i will go with standalone meshes i can stay under 10k for whole tank.
With "straps" I presume you mean the tracks?
Tricount is one thing there, it's good that you can stay under it, but that doesn't happen a lot. Your main issue here is rigging/movement. I presume you're making this as if it's a driveable vehicle (a static one would require less than 10k tri's). That means the tracks need to move. If you'd model all the link as separate objects, you would need a bone per link: I estimate about 70-80 links per side, so about 150-160 bones for just the tracks. Add to that the regular bones for the tank, and you could have something like 180 bones for the whole. That's just way too complex and heavy, which is why any game I know has always done tank tracks with a tiling texture. The advantage is you can even have vertical shake in the tracks with minimal effort, and it's much, much easier to create than fully modeled tracks links.
thanks for comments. While i had everything in mind what said Xoliul about tracks i desided to have one mesh for whole tracks and i divided the mesh to every 4 tiles. So on texture i can then scale them a bit and have better texture resolution and details.
Lowpoly done. 8740 tris
thanks for comments. I have followed what Xoliul suggested in the other thread. It linked me onto another side with Ferdinand Painting. Tried exactly the same. So far with just few basic colors. To make it more interesting i have in plan to make wheels yellowish looking.
Ambiguous Package... wow thank you :cheers:
EDIT: BTW, how many tris? I'm new to SubD (Maya User) and I was wondering do you have to convert it to poly for Texturing?
What were you're thoughts for camouflage options. The Russians ran some pretty odd camouflage in my opinion but it got the job done.
Yeah its awesome, happy accident when I found that site a few years back. So I try to share it when threads like this popup. I haven't found a better site for military reference than it.
You did a great job optimizing the model!
I am working on similar project that Xoliul linked to above.
Regarding the camo - Soviet camo was primarily of plain green colors, sometimes with white wash for winter seasons. I have read that many times tanks even went straight into battle after production without any paint at all (i think this could be an interesting texture, but I was afraid that I couldnt pull it off).
Often captured tanks were used by the Germans, which did not have as many issues with paint. And that made me attempt to make one version for the captured tank, because of a more interesting camo design. http://beute.narod.ru/Beutepanzer/su/color/SU-spg/su-t34based.htm
Something you may consider doing as well.
Good luck!
Xoliul: right, i will need to work more about the big contrast. I plan to do it more with yellowish looking wheels and tracks.
Pikey: Thanks for your post. I checked the forum maybe for one or two days. They my thread moved to 5 page and i did not think that there will be new post. So i just continued. Now i wanted to post an update and i see your post with camo. That will be the first thing to add when i return to it.
more progress here
Here is a pic showing what i had in eye and brain while i was texturing. That was my main inspiration for basic color variations.
http://www.3dmotive.com/training/photoshop/hard-surface-vehicle-texturing/?follow=true
look at the histogram of your texture and your viewport grabs. You've probably got the entire graph crammed in the darker area, meaning there is barely any contrast. You have to make sure you spread the graph out nicely so there's a decent balance between hi, mid and lo!
King Mango: You are right about the thin white looking scratches about hard edges. It old handpainting with simple brush. This is the method that i only know for doing this. I tried to have very bright metal on top of everything and then paint, but it was just too blury.
Samfisher84: hey, this is much better pic of colors. Looks more interesting to look on.
roosterMAP: thanks. Just checking that tutorial. Seems to be useful.
Xoliul: You are right about the histogram. I checked only my screengrab in photoshop and everything is placed on 1/3 on left.
So my next step will be to return back to large scale variation and bring more life to model.
And the brown stuff on the main structure looks good, I'd use that a bit more. Also some softer, faded rust leaks would contrast well with the green.
after a while here is an update. I was trying to give it more color variation and painted a livery on top of it. I guess it is a bit better now.
Boys and girls, i hope there is one hehe, here is another progress pictures of my tank. Went all around it again with more color variations, added a lot of dirt, dust, scratches, smoke etc. Then i created specular, gloss and super light normal map for some fine details. May i call it as finished? In my eyes it seems to be.
Alot experienced guy at my office suggested me to put more dust on the tank. Push it more to be closer to reality. Then i added a small blood spot and few impacts from heavy bullets in front.
It should be better now.
Maybe one idea: just add some smooth smoke around the exhaust, like the splasher in the last picture.
But perhaps im being nit picky