Review needed!

eVian

Hey everyone!

For one of my assignments i had to model a high poly tank and then make it a low poly and import it to UDK. Ive done all. Now the last bit is to get some reviews from you!

As its my first year in uni im not super good, but i did my best. Any review is appreciated.

I've included all the images in the links bellow.

Thanks a lot guys!

SHEPEIRO

you have shading errors in your normal map. technical forum has alot of info on this

your diffuse is too dark and muddy

and your specular has too high an exponent and looks like plastic

Tidus

What's the polycount? Looks too low poly. Try increasing the poly count and the texture size. And you definitely have to mess with the specular map. The specular is the most important thing when trying to simulate a metallic material.

I would leave that as a base colour, and would go crazy adding and tweaking photographs.

Check these tutorials:
http://www.game-artist.net/forums/spotlight-articles/9178-tutorial-texturing-metal-crate.html
http://www.game-artist.net/forums/spotlight-articles/42-tutorial-hard-surface-texture-painting.html

Try also decreasing the specular power; it looks wet as it is right now. This is also affecting the visibility of the normal map. In the pics I can barely see any detail pumping out.

AtlusZMH

Yeah, show us the flat textures and wireframes so we can see what it looks like.

Stromberg90

Your images are HUGE!


Second everything that is said here, mainly work on getting the model and normal map to work together, wonder if it was baked from a highpoly or image generated normal map?
I think everything is to brown and muddy at the moment, needs more work in the textures.
Not all bad though, there are many good parts and even getting the model done is a good achievement

Bombshell

someone has already said what I was going to mention but I'll highlight it for enthusiasm

SHEPEIRO wrote: »

you have shading errors in your normal map. technical forum has alot of info on this

your diffuse is too dark and muddy

and your specular has too high an exponent and looks like plastic

Normally a specular too high would send me raging, but the diffuse is so dark and... well worded "muddy", that I can't even tell where there is light.

In a pretty game colours are prioritised like this:
Artist - Hue & Saturation
Engine - shadow & highlight (and by extension the depth between the 2)
So your Diffuse needs to be either mid-tone (for select engine designs) or fully lit (barring specular, for near all engines).

Little tip I picked up when playing with texturing, make a texture for a perfect brand new out of the factory model (in this case a brand spanking new tank) Then do the ware in layers from bad to worse (EG rusting - bunker busting)

In any case your diffuse should not vary a huge amount in shade, most of that work is your engine and by extension your normals.

eVian

Right, thanks for all the review guys. You've been a big help, explaining to me how I could improve on my errors.

Heres a little bit more detais on the tank as you asked.

The low poly tank consists of:
Polys: 7,288
Tries: 18,892

The normal map was projected from the high poly tank, but because some of the elements were kind of too low poly they didnt project correctly. Therefore, the normal map isnt as good. However, I managed to fix it slightly using the xNormals, which is wrong i know But i didnt had any choises.

The high poly tank looks like this




Low poly wireframe renders




Textures



The original normal map


Normal map with xNormals and diffuse on it to sort out few projection issues.

Snader

Your problem is that you're making individual tank tracks. Not only do these suck polygons so you've got dick-all to spend on the entire rest of the tank, but it won't work with animations either because there would have to be... 75 or so bones. That's faaaar to expensive.

Making the tracks as a simple animated plane will save you tonnes of tris, bones, which you can then spend on the actual tank.

michaelmilette

^wow that is a huge map! It looks like you haven't been overlapping any of your uvs or using the symmetry modifier for any of your objects. by picking out some parts of your model that can utilize the same uv texture space it will really really help you increase texture quality by allowing more room to upscale your pieces.

and ass you know already you have a bunch of errors in your normal map pop that map into photo shop and paint some of those out

sorry I don't have a link to some instructions if anyone else knows of a great link for uvw overlap unwrapping could you post it

Saiainoshi

Put some highlights on those edges!