My Retirement Home - 3d enviro WIP

toby · Nov 2009

Hello polycounters--

Noob looking for feedback on this environmental project. I'm obviously still learning texture... any suggestions on realistic grass and ground cover?

http://www.tobyhilden.com/trailer-textured.jpg

http://www.tobyhilden.com/trailer-wireframe.jpg

adam · Nov 2009

Let's see some of your textures including their alphas

Ark · Nov 2009

Are you rendering some some kind of global ambiance? It's washing everything out!

Modeling looks good, but as i say your textures look very bland, maybe because theres this grey overlay all over the place.

toby · Nov 2009

yeah.. i was noticing the grayishness, i probably need to remove the hardware fog and add a brighter background color

toby · Nov 2009

removed hardware shading

http://www.tobyhilden.com/trailer-textured.jpg

http://www.tobyhilden.com/trailer-wireframe.jpg

added texture maps...
http://www.tobyhilden.com/trailer-texturemaster.jpg

Ark · Nov 2009

Textures are quite poor, don't just use photographs as textures instead use them in overlays with a base texture.

Try to get more colour and texture varience into the textures. Get rid of any baked in light/shadow information from the textures.

I see theres no normal or spec maps being used here, these are vital to creating believable assets these days.

Rhinokey · Nov 2009

Ark wrote: »

Textures are quite poor, don't just use photographs as textures instead use them in overlays with a base texture.

Try to get more colour and texture varience into the textures. Get rid of any baked in light/shadow information from the textures.

I see theres no normal or spec maps being used here, these are vital to creating believable assets these days.

bull pucky its completelypossible and awesome to create great art without normal or spec these days.

my advice work on poly distribution you have tons of polys in small objects, the barrels, propane tanks, and satalite dish, and the trailer is a bloogy low poly block, cinder blocks also have far to many edges that do nothing for the shape. do you have a ref image for that trailer, usualy theres a trailer hitch on the front where the propane tanks are.
your textures could use more love, a little more painting in to give them some life. also the grass texture is pretty much terrible now, and it does not help that its on a perfectly flat plane, whos lawn is that flat! the texture does not look liks blades of grass, but splotches. more like that old ugly green carpet padding.

i think paying more atention to details, and atempting to add some life in your textures will help you

Ark · Nov 2009

Rhinokey wrote: »

bull pucky its completelypossible and awesome to create great art without normal or spec these days.

my advice work on poly distribution you have tons of polys in small objects, the barrels, propane tanks, and satalite dish, and the trailer is a bloogy low poly block, cinder blocks also have far to many edges that do nothing for the shape. do you have a ref image for that trailer, usualy theres a trailer hitch on the front where the propane tanks are.
your textures could use more love, a little more painting in to give them some life. also the grass texture is pretty much terrible now, and it does not help that its on a perfectly flat plane, whos lawn is that flat! the texture does not look liks blades of grass, but splotches. more like that old ugly green carpet padding.

i think paying more atention to details, and atempting to add some life in your textures will help you

Well if thats the direction he's aiming for then go ahead and don't use any normals/spec maps.

If's theres a reason for not using them, then i don't know unless your after some stylized look?

toby · Nov 2009

thanks for the feedback!

@ Ark I haven used normal or spec maps yet, are the possible in maya7?

@Rhinokey-- thanks for the feedback, will work on my ground/grass-- good point about the poly distribution.

Ark · Dec 2009

toby wrote: »

thanks for the feedback!

@ Ark I haven used normal or spec maps yet, are the possible in maya7?

Can't remember what version they came in at.
Try inspecting a bump2d node and see if 'Tangentspace' is listed under the 'bump type'.

Joopson · Dec 2009

You could always use normal maps in maya, but before a certain version it was a bit complicated.

ralusek · Dec 2009

normal map and spec won't save this, the diffuse will imo. there is nothing too complicated that isn't getting justice. i mean you could drop the polycount, you could drop it even more and maybe take advantage of a normal map. regardless, fixing diffuse is what is going to make or break this. if you're going to do a normal or a spec, for this particular scene, i'd take the spec.

i also like that this is an imaginary retirement home. i clicked here expecting to find an awesome tree house or something like i would imagine my own retirement..but it's a trailer x_x.

high hopes i guess

dejawolf · Dec 2009

ralusek wrote: »

normal map and spec won't save this, the diffuse will imo. there is nothing too complicated that isn't getting justice. i mean you could drop the polycount, you could drop it even more and maybe take advantage of a normal map. regardless, fixing diffuse is what is going to make or break this. if you're going to do a normal or a spec, for this particular scene, i'd take the spec.

i also like that this is an imaginary retirement home. i clicked here expecting to find an awesome tree house or something like i would imagine my own retirement..but it's a trailer x_x.

high hopes i guess

what he said. i'm a little tired of this normal and spec map hype. if your diffuse sucks, your whole texture sucks, period.

toby · Dec 2009

http://www.tobyhilden.com/3d/hi_trailer.jpg

i've update the texture map, i used crazybump and made my first normal map--
and after mucking around with the transparent grass planes- opted to remove them....
still working on it.

Rhinokey · Dec 2009

as mentioned several times just throwing a normal on somehting will not make it good, houses like this are made of metal and are smooth, why would you have a bumpy concrete like normal on it? i vote you spend more time on just the diffues before you wory about normals at all.

and despite what some kids thing, art does not have to have normals on it to make it good. if you "want" to do normals, then by all means do it, but make sure that they actualy do the job inteneded, and the job is not "make things lumpy"

keep at it tho i rember the hassle i had when i was learning..

Daaark · Dec 2009

Some thoughts.

The ground plane makes it looks unfinished. Make a round model base with the grass on it, so the scene looks like some kind of object, and not a perfectly square patch of land floating in the blue void.

The normal maps you used look horrible. The trailer reads like marshmallow, and the ground looks like someone painted a grass image on cement. Drop them or generate proper ones. The normal map is supposed to preserve the shape of a higher detailed object for the lighting calculations, not add random lumps to hard objects.
Try to have a more even polygon distribution. Why does the male character have less definition then the tanks on the front of the trailer, and the cans?

Work on the lighting a bit so you don't have ultra bright spots next to almost completely black shadows. It looks weird. Especially where the cans are. Since you are just doing a static render with this, why not a 3 point set up? Never fails.

and despite what some kids thing, art does not have to have normals on it to make it good. if you "want" to do normals, then by all means do it, but make sure that they actualy do the job inteneded, and the job is not "make things lumpy"

Normal and spec maps are recommended to get nice looking objects in most scenes. The reasons are covered here.

I like the scene though. I have been back to this thread a few times to watch the progress.

My Retirement Home - 3d enviro WIP

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