Prop Thread

Chandler

I haven't posted anything on the site for a while (I've been lurking though) and I wanted to start up a new thread to keep myself honest. My goal for now is to create a decent prop every two weeks. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

First up, we got a weapon rack.

Concept (Not mine, done for the movie Beowulf)-



Model-





Wires-



Maps (2048 Diff, Normal, Spec)-







Thanks for looking!

Selaznog

Every two weeks? Push yourself! Do a decent prop a week (if you have time)

On this prop, I notice a lot of areas where you could have just used a tiling texture for the planks of wood. Also the spear heads could have all used the same texture space.

It could also use some more wear and tear near the bottom. Maybe some mud splashes?

Chandler

I was originally going to try for every week, but I wanted to play it safe since this one took me a little longer than expected. One of the things I want to get out of this is a faster workflow, though, so maybe soon!

I totally agree about the repeating textures, I probably could have made this thing in half the texture space if I had been smart about it. Though to do that I would have had to break up my UVs into a few smaller maps, right? In my experience there's no good way to tile part of a texture, unless you want to add unnecessary geometry and overlay the faces.

Dirtiness near the bottom is something I didn't even think about, good call. I'll spend some time tonight and make that happen.

Thanks!

Lucas Annunziata

Your normal map seems to be only comprised of really fine detail. How did you go about making it? Your materials are looking very off as well. The blades look like stone, the handles look like chrome, and the wood is looking glossy.

Selaznog

Well you could have multiple diffuse maps. Imagine you're doing a small town; the tiling wood texture could be used on this as well as sheds, buildings etc.

Here's an example of what I mean:


You could have it so all your wide panels use the bottom piece while all your thin panels use the top piece. It wouldn't be too obvious that its tiling either because you would never see both sides or both back and front at the same time. And if you have a plank beside it, you could just flip it around or make a new material and apply a colour overlay. It's better to have more smaller textures rather than one massive one, within reason.

Also I noticed that you used ambient occlusion on your diffuse. You could make a layered shader and layout all your uvs for just ambient occlusion. Since AO is generally blurry anyways, you could get away with a really tiny black and white texture set to multiply in your layered material.

Chandler

darbeeno- I agree, if I were to spend some time going back over this, I would redo the normals completely. It was done quick and dirty, the only thing that was actually sculpted was the dragon heads, the rest is my diffuse map nDo filtered in photoshop.

As you can see in the spec map, the blades are about the same value as the handles, so maybe it's partly the way I have them lit? And good point about the wood, it is too glossy, especially since the blades indicate the weapons have seen a lot of use.

Chandler

Selaznog- Yeah, I see what you mean. I should get into the habit of tiling more, I'll try it out with the next one. And yeah, I did some editing of the AO map for this prop, since the wood planks opposite each other do use the same part of the texture, just reversed. I'll keep that in mind.

Chandler

Prop 2 and I'm already late. Promise I had a good reason!

Concept is, again, not mine. It's by J.R. Pickthall and I flipped it for better comparison.



Model-







Wires- (2,874 tris)



Maps (1024 Diff, Normal, Spec)-







Also, I want to get into the habit of posting my last prop with changes according to the critique I got. Because with Chandler, your feedback matters™. So here's the weapon rack with shinier metal and less glossy wood, and a bit of dirt near the bottom. Thanks go out to Selaznog and darbeenbo!



Any critique on the gun will be greatly appreciated and I'll try my best to address it for my next post. As always, thanks for looking!

neilberard

Sup Adam, nice gun! I'm digging the diffuse, however, is there a reason for not baking from a hipoly model? Although the concept is super stylized and sharp, I think this model would benifit from having tight bevels along the grip and other areas. Another nitpick would be that for your polycount, the trigger, and the "barrel grip" feels super lowpoly. I would definitely get more polys and round out those areas.

Donavonyoung

Your spec maps aren't very good. They are really just desaturated versions of your diffuse. Its ok for testing but you really need to break down every material involved and give it love. Just because it made of metal doesn't mean the whole thing has to have a dull spec. It could be different kinds of metal that have different types of specularity. You really need to take that into account. Spec maps are too often left bu the wayside but the can do so much for your textures.

Chandler

Thanks guys!

Neil- I was originally planning to bake from a high poly on this one, but something came up and I kind of ran out of time (Not a very good reason, I know). I really should get more high poly practice though, and I know models always look a lot better baked as opposed to photoshop filters, so I'm really going to try to do that for my next one. Maybe I could simulate bevels with painted lighting for a quick fix to this model? You're totally right about the lowpoly areas- I'll try and optimize in areas where I don't need as many polys and round out the silhouette a bit more where needed.

Donavonyoung- My process for spec maps is basically what you described, haha. I was never taught how to make them properly, (for example I didn't fully understand until recently that the color of the spec map has a big impact on how metallic/dull an object looks) though lately I have been trying to improve. I tried to lighten it up in areas with a lot of light like the top barrel-cover thingy, but you're right, I didn't really differentiate at all between the different types of metal, so it looks too uniform. I'll work on that. Also, the concept has a much more chrome-type feel than my model, I was thinking about using cube maps/reflection masks for parts of the model, but I don't really have much experience with those and I ran out of time to experiment. I'll try my best to make the specular more interesting. Thanks!

Chandler

Hey guys, sorry, I've been on vacation and haven't posted anything in waaaaaaaaaaaay too long.

This time I'm using this concept by Arnaud Valette-



Model-







Zbrush Model-



Wires (4,724 tris)-



Maps (2048 diff/spec/norm main texture, 512 diff(shown)/spec/norm/alpha leaves)









I know the UV layout has a lot of empty space, but I couldn't see a way around it if I wanted to keep the trunk as one piece. Also, I'm not exactly happy with the leaves right now, and I'm hoping someone can give me some insight on a better way to go about them. Right now they're a bunch of flat planes placed around a central sphere, and even with alpha and normal detail they still don't look too convincing. I wanted to go for a more contrasty light source like in the original concept to help the normals pop, but the leaves look awful when I do. Any suggestions are appreciated along with any other critique you may have. Also, I do plan to post the updated sci-fi gun with changes according to the comments I got about it, hopefully sometime in the next few weeks. Thanks for looking!

Chandler

Moving along at a snail's pace here, thanks mostly to constant OT at work. But I press on. Finished updating the gun based on feedback- the thing I heard most was that I should have made a proper highpoly for my normals instead of cheating it all with filters like I did, so that was the first order of business.



You can see I added a few extra doodads on there to make it a little more interesting. After that, I did another pass on the diffuse and spec maps, and added some geometry in certain areas. The final result-







And the new maps-







Critiques welcome, otherwise I'm fairly certain this is done. Now, about that tree...

Chandler

'Sup, polycounters? It's been a little while, but here I am with something new. The table is 5,416 tris and has 1024 d/n/s maps, that's not counting the props whose specs are listed in the images. Realtime shots are from Marmoset Toolbag.
































Trying to decide what to do next, I think I may revisit that environment I never finished for that Brawl contest those many years ago. As always, any critique or input is appreciated.