Home 3D Art Showcase & Critiques

Ork Trukk for UT3 (image heavy?)

1
Hey guys, I'm making an ork trukk to go into UT3. This is my first real go at modelling a vehicle and really hard surface modelling in general. I'm currently reaching the end of my high detail mesh, due to the nature of ork design there's limited symmetrical detail so it's really keeping me busy at the moment. So main parts left on the high poly are the overhead bars/cage to go on the back, some engine additions, and then the extra bits I'm doing in zbrush like rope bindings and possibly some metal damage depending on my time. The design a mix of standard GW ork trukk components with my own interpretation of the overall layout, like a bit of a conversion project but in 3d. I'm getting this to work as a vehicle factory within unreal so it's been limited somewhat with that in mind, I want it to ultimately function in the same way WH40k or Gorkamorka (for the hardcore) use it so I need it to "seat" around 8-10 orks (ut3 krall for the time being). I can already see the agony theres going to be to get that to work but luckily I'm not there yet.

TLDR - Ork trukk WAAAGH

Apologies for image count

wip1.jpg

wip2.jpg

wip3.jpg

wip4.jpg

wip5.jpg

front.jpg

top.jpg

side.jpg


Note that the blower scoop looks like arse, it's just a base mesh really but I decided to spruce it up a bit with a squig skin to make it look a bit more menacing, need to do the teeth still.
squigwip.jpg


Wires, not really been worrying about optimisation as much as maybe I should but just making sure it's going to be fine for normal mapping, quite a mix of a cut in details and floating details, lot's of bolts :whyme:. Oh and the seat is low poly, it was an early normal map test, didn't really have the final tri count planned by then so I going to be doing a more optimised mesh for it later, originally I planning on a 5-6k tri vehicle basing it off the hellbender in ut3, but with the silhouette the way it is I'm thinking 10k, I'd appreciate insight on that though, depending on how much reinforcing I do in the low poly to maintain smooth normals.
wires.jpg


Just a jot down of all the bits to do which should hopefully lead to an upcoming update, and I think I might have some queries regarding the low poly workflow to keep it efficient and maximise the normals quality, as I say, I've little experience with hard surface projects so any tips would be very useful.
stuff.jpg

scale.jpg



Appreciate any C&C, cheers.

Replies

  • Ihazard
    Looks very nice so far, I'd say don't go too overboard on the bolts though. I like the idea of the squig skin, would give a nice bit of variation in the colours which I think is nice. Keep up the good work :)
  • Progg
    Offline / Send Message
    Progg polycounter lvl 11
    Awesome! I agree with the squig idea breaking up the inorganic,rigid nature so far. But we'll have to see how it fits with the piece to decide completely :)
  • TheWinterLord
    Offline / Send Message
    TheWinterLord polycounter lvl 17
    Nice, now give it a wreckin ball! :)
  • biggest_kid
    Is this the high poly version of the model? If so how many tris is it at now? And how many tris are you planning to make the low poly version?

    Love your work, would be extremely interested in inviting you to join our WH40k mod team for UT3 if you're interested?
  • skylebones
    Offline / Send Message
    skylebones polycounter lvl 10
    I love it man, this looks great.
  • BradMyers82
    Offline / Send Message
    BradMyers82 interpolator
    biggest_kid: yes it is high poly, and no offense, but who cares how many poly's it is. As long as his computer can handel it and bake good normals off it, the poly count of the high poly is irrelevant. Just saying... :)

    ManxViking: Great job man! I would totally be tempted to take this into Zbrush and sculpt some damage. Doesn't look overly busy to me! Nice work!
  • ManxViking
    Cheers guys, as far as tri count, its high poly, but hey guess I need to keep it in mind, hard surface bits are on 2 iterations of ts and currently around 4 mil, it gets a bit laggy, so dialing it down most of the time until I'm ready for baking. Low poly is looking to be around 10k tri's at the moment, but it really depends on how I'm approaching the normals, don't want to have nasty sg seams on the edges, and also unwrap, theres a big mix of smaller details and large flat surfaces.
  • Ghostscape
    Offline / Send Message
    Ghostscape polycounter lvl 13
    In Max I've found that tri-count doesn't affect bakes nearly as much as # of objects does.

    This looks pretty awesome, 10k tris seems more than fine to me for a vehicle of that design, I'd say you can probably go higher if you feel the need to do so.
  • divi
    Offline / Send Message
    divi polycounter lvl 12
    you could turn down the iterations in the turbosmooths and up the render iterations. makes it easier to navigate without having to raise and lower the iterations every time you wanna render something because you just love how it looks :D

    edit: almost forgot the praise! looks great! <3 squigs.
  • MattBradley
    Your squig looks like a Boglin (if anyone remembers them)!
  • ManxViking
    I had a Boglin, ha, good times. Also good point point on the render/viewport iterations, although I'm a sucker for viewport grabs, curses.
  • ManxViking
    High poly is finished (although still to be tweaked I can imagine). Main change is the framework at the back, this was planned from the start, I think the main issue was that I plan to have about 8 or so orks in the back, and so naturally some would be positioned in the middle of the platform and theres no way they'd stand straight if the vehicle was bombing round at 60 on rough terrain. So it serves as a support for the passengers (I intend for some to use the framework as a seat or ledge in it's own right, if I ever manage to get custom seat animations in).

    The squig is in, I had to compromise a little with the size as it impedes the gun sight when its too big, I may heighten the gun to remedy this if anyone thinks that would work.

    For the frame I find it looks a little primitive, I don't know if it just needs a roughed up texture to remedy it, I've tried to put some extra bits on like bindings and I've decided to give the Unreal cloth physics a chance and put some loose rags and stuff on, to break up the silhouette (although a full load of orks would do just as well I imagine :thumbup:). The drape at the back will be a 2 sided plane plane with alpha, so I've just sculpted with the intention of robbing the normal bake, why it looks a little awkward.

    Had to dial down the turbosmooth on some of the bits like the wheels to take the screenshot without killing my comp from the zbrush doodads, in case they look to have issues. After I've done low poly I'll cut it up into chunks for baking so I can max out the high poly meshes.

    wip6.jpg

    wip7.jpg
  • divi
    Offline / Send Message
    divi polycounter lvl 12
    the cage needs some weldmarks and maybe wrap a chain or two around some of it
  • felipefrango
    Offline / Send Message
    felipefrango polycounter lvl 9
    I agree with divi on this. What did you use to make the cage though, splines? Also, are these viewport grabs from 3Dsmax?
  • roosterMAP
    Offline / Send Message
    roosterMAP polycounter lvl 14
    I LOVE IT! I just wish it wasnt rendered using such a dark material.
  • ManxViking
    Aye it's just viewport grabs with default lighting at the moment, the cage started as splines but it's just a 4 sided mesh with turbosmooth on it, I'll chuck it into zbrush today and do some weld seams, and bash it up a little bit. I like that idea of wrapped chain, originally I had thought of it but was thinking of having it free hanging which would be a bit of pain for rigging, completely overlooked having it coiled around the bars though, I'll get on that. I'll find a nicer way to render it for the finished high poly.
  • whats_true
    Offline / Send Message
    whats_true polycounter lvl 15
    Can we get a lighter shader? Why dark color with dark background :\
  • felipefrango
    Offline / Send Message
    felipefrango polycounter lvl 9
    ManxViking wrote: »
    Aye it's just viewport grabs with default lighting at the moment, the cage started as splines but it's just a 4 sided mesh with turbosmooth on it, I'll chuck it into zbrush today and do some weld seams, and bash it up a little bit. I like that idea of wrapped chain, originally I had thought of it but was thinking of having it free hanging which would be a bit of pain for rigging, completely overlooked having it coiled around the bars though, I'll get on that. I'll find a nicer way to render it for the finished high poly.

    Nice! I asked this cause I've got doubts regarding 3dsmax <-> ZBrush workflow. Do you model base meshes in max, then sculpt in ZBrush then take them back into max? If so, how do you do it, do you decimate the mesh or just import the ridiculously high poly mesh straight into max?
  • PredatorGSR
    Offline / Send Message
    PredatorGSR polycounter lvl 14
    Dude, you are insane! Why on earth did you extrude the bolts out of the mesh? It is much faster, and will give much better and consistent results to just create a single bolt, and duplicate it around wherever you want bolts. Keep bolts and small details like that as a separate mesh. It will also help a lot for when you bake, and for when you sculpt damage into the high poly so you don't have to subdivide the bolts a ton of times and it will keep your polycounts for the sculpt manageable.

    This is going to be a really expensive low poly, but thats just because it is a very expensive and detailed model. When you bake this mesh, you are going to want to use a combination of geometry normals and surface normals in the bake settings. The geometry normals will make your edges rounded but make your details distorted, and using surface normals will make your details look great but will create seams on the rounded edges, so you'll probably want to use both methods and combine in photoshop.

    FYI, I recently did an Ork style flakk cannon that went through this whole process that turned out pretty well, so if you have any questions or issues let me know.
    http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=69082&highlight=flakk
  • felipefrango
    Offline / Send Message
    felipefrango polycounter lvl 9
    How do you switch between surface and geometry normals? Never heard of this before. :(
  • ManxViking
    @Predator - Hey, no worries man, the bolts are floating geometry, mostly duplicated at element level. (they're only extruded on the wheels because I was worried about the curvature of the tires, although in hindsight could have just done the same with them). The model itself is about 50 or so different objects, and a lot of them have lots of floating elements such as bolts. As far as the geometry and surface normals are concerned, I think I know what you mean, and that's the area I'm looking for advice as I'm not 100% on the terms you're using, I just know there will be a compromise on the low poly for keeping smoothing groups continious on visible edges so the normals are seamless. Your flakk cannon is sick btw, very helpful reference. Also with the bolts thing, are you meaning bake one bolt and then photoshoop them around the texture later with overlay or whatever, that's something I could manage without too much heart ache, I understand the benefits it would have.

    To clear things up, the smaller bolts which are dotted around the entire mesh are there only for normal detail and not geometry, apart from that most pieces of the mesh are unique in some form so it will to be costly on the maps.

    I used this dark grey as it looks a bit like the games workshop plastic, will render this properly, and brighter next update, I remember that my old monitor used to be a lot darker so I can imagine it looks like arse atm.

    @felipe - I'm bringing the zbrush stuff back into max, but only really for checking its alright and positioned correctly, honestly I'm not really going excessive on subdivs in zbrush, I know my maps are going to limited due to the complexity of the design so its never going to carry over all the detail. Also I don't know about anyone else but I find that sometimes using an obj exported directly from zbrush often coughs up a fit with xnormal; which incidentally is what I'm planning on using to bake, might need to do some projection cages for certain parts, so I often export it again from max. Decimating if its excessively big.
  • Tom Ellis
    Love that checkerplate, looking forward to seeing this one progress!
  • ManxViking
    Just noticed that I've used a fifth of my monthly domain bandwidth in a day, so I'm hosting on imageshack for now, I'll keep checking if they're up. Hope you prefer the renders this time. So basically, I've bashed up the cage a little bit in zbrush, made it look less plasticy, hoping to achieve a beaten metal look to it once I've got a nice specular on it. I intend the cage itself to be symetrical to save on texture space, it'll be awkward enough as it is to fit onto the unwrap avoiding excessive seams. I like how the chain came out, cheers divi, I intend to approach this with one low poly chain which will be baked & textured (maybe a couple variants) clone and then realign them with the high poly, I may add the low poly chain links to other parts of model later, I should have a nice bag of baked gubbinz I can throw around to get extra detail later if I need.

    highpoly1.jpg

    highpoly2.jpg

    highpoly3.jpg
  • Danglebob
    Offline / Send Message
    Danglebob polycounter lvl 15
    oh man. you dont understand how happy this has made me. :D

    looks just like the mini.
  • PredatorGSR
    Offline / Send Message
    PredatorGSR polycounter lvl 14
    How do you switch between surface and geometry normals? Never heard of this before. :(

    It is in the advanced settings in the transfer maps tools in Maya. I don't know if Max has a similar setting. If you're using Maya, it makes a huge difference in the bake, and it's something I stumbled on by accident.

    Regarding bolts, what I mean is that if you take a piece into zbrush or mudbox, you don't need to import the bolts in with it. The bolts can get really dense really quick when you are subdividing to get the necessary detail for sculpting scratches and stuff like that if it is a part of the mesh.

    Yea the bolts on the wheels and how the smoothing looked on the rest of the pieces threw me off, glad you didn't go crazy. Definitely bake any bolts you can into the map, I didn't mean use photoshop for that. Since you've got the modeled detail, you may as well use it.

    One of the things that I ran into was that I sculpted beat up edges and scratches onto all the corners, but by the time everything was laid out on a 2k map, a lot of that detail got lost because of the texel density. I think you are going to have similar issues if you try to keep a realistic texture size like 2k because you have a lot of unique pieces. You might want to start thinking about tradoffs at this point. Unique maps are awesome, but they also limit how much you can optimize the uv layout. I prefer not to do mirroring much because it tends to result in bad edges and it quickly becomes noticeable and really limits how much flexibility you have in the texturing phase, but trying to reuse as many modular pieces as possible to conserve texture space that way.

    To give you an example, you can use the same wheel for all 6 wheels, and it wouldn't really hurt the look much and save a ton of texture space. After making the flakk cannon, I became very aware of trying to maximize modular pieces wherever possible. Other thing is you can make like 3 different oddly shaped metal plating pieces, and rotate and place them all over the model, instead of the many unique pieces you have. Stuff like that is really important if you intend to get it all on a 2k, which is probably going to be painful, but realistically thats the kind of budget I think you'd be given.
  • Ghostscape
    Offline / Send Message
    Ghostscape polycounter lvl 13
    IIRC "surface" versus "geometry" normals is basically baking with the surface normals or baking with a cage.

    Basically, if you bake with raycast distance you'll get issues around your edges, but you won't get that "camera distortion" look on your interior details, it bakes like this:

    Normal_Map?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=Normalmap_raycasting_1.jpg

    "geometry" or baking with a cage, will give you something like this:
    Normal_Map?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=Normalmap_raycasting_2.jpg

    This is required to get that "soft hard edges" look with smoothing groups, but since the projection direction isn't directly off the surface normal it makes interior details like bolts or whatever skew and only look good when you're viewing them at certain angles.
  • PredatorGSR
    Offline / Send Message
    PredatorGSR polycounter lvl 14
    Nice info, that makes it all make sense.
  • ManxViking
    Unfortunately I don't use Maya, is there a work around using max and xnormal? I can make the cages specifically for certain parts if there isn't a quick button for it.
  • divi
    Offline / Send Message
    divi polycounter lvl 12
    i think you'd have to do one bake with stuff on a single smoothing group and another bake with different SGs where you have edges. i dont think doing one bake with and one without cage will do the trick.
    just try it with a properly set up cage and if there are areas that really have a lot of warping you could do a second bake with an adjusted cage so it projects straight onto those parts and then fiddle the stuff together in photoshop.
  • ManxViking
    I'll do a test bake of the gun today, I'll try out some different methods, see what I can get.
  • Ghostscape
    Offline / Send Message
    Ghostscape polycounter lvl 13
    divi wrote: »
    i think you'd have to do one bake with stuff on a single smoothing group and another bake with different SGs where you have edges. i dont think doing one bake with and one without cage will do the trick.
    just try it with a properly set up cage and if there are areas that really have a lot of warping you could do a second bake with an adjusted cage so it projects straight onto those parts and then fiddle the stuff together in photoshop.

    How is a single smoothing group going to help him?
  • divi
    Offline / Send Message
    divi polycounter lvl 12
    its not. not sure what i was thinking when i wrote that. doing one bake with cage for the edges and another one without cage for the flat surfaces should do the trick
  • MoP
    Offline / Send Message
    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    hehe, this is a super cool model :)
  • r_fletch_r
    Offline / Send Message
    r_fletch_r polycounter lvl 9

    Regarding bolts, what I mean is that if you take a piece into zbrush or mudbox, you don't need to import the bolts in with it. The bolts can get really dense really quick when you are subdividing to get the necessary detail for sculpting scratches and stuff like that if it is a part of the mesh.

    Just merge all the bolts into a seperate object and dont subdivide them. dont know about Zbrush but this isnt a problem in mudbox

    I found a nice way of doing indentation maps the other day for rivets that might work for you. if you bake an AO Map with your bolts in place, put it through a output curve.
    and increase the near black to light grey it will create an indentation in the surface where the rivit is surrounded by a small lip the same shape as the rivet. multiply that over a grunge map or noise and it can look really cool
  • Willburforce
    when is this game coming out?!!! Somebody make the game. Outstanding work..
  • ManxViking
    Wasn't around yesterday much, so I got working on figuring out the normals through the night. Not much physical progress to show, but I've really cleared my head about how I'm going to approach the next few stages so I'm quite encouraged at the moment. I started yesterday with little knowledge or experience of hard surface normal mapping, particularly with hard edge low poly (organics are so much simpler). As I've been using xnormal, I've acquainted myself with .sbm files which I didn't even know about before hand, I was having real issues with .objs for my early attempts trying virtually every combination of smoothing, vertex normals, and uv groups I could imagine. Just kept getting the smoothing errors and edge seams. Finally found the right combination of seperate UVs and projection cages to get the right results. I've got larger vert counts in engine and some awkward cut ups of the UVs but it's the cleanest compromise at the moment.

    I've been testing on the gun model, it's not the most interesting bit of the model but it was an awkward enough shape to test on. It's 467 triangles so I'm not sure currently what that quotas the rest of the model to be, I think it may be on target for 12k or maybe less. Vert count for this was 257 in max, but with the smoothing groups I had to set up as part of the baking which coincide with the UV groups (http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?p=1104797 renderhjs ftw), it's 464 verts in engine, I don't know if that is particularly bad but I'm assuming it'll be ok. Texture for this is a corner of a 1024 map, I'm considering this with scale to a 2048 map for the entire vehicle, although it's subject to change, I wouldn't let this get any smaller so I plan to afford more texture space for detail.

    So these are shots from unreal, normals + ao.

    gunnormalsaounreal.jpg
  • felipefrango
    Offline / Send Message
    felipefrango polycounter lvl 9
    That looks good! Could you share the UV layout, or maybe post a screengrab of the model with a UVW Unwrap modifier so we can see the seams on the model. I know jack about baking mechanical models and it'd be very good reference. :thumbup:
  • PredatorGSR
    Offline / Send Message
    PredatorGSR polycounter lvl 14
    Yea hard edged stuff like this requires a lot of cuts on the uv map, basically everywhere you have a hard edge, which is pretty much everything around 90 degrees. It results in a lot of uv shells, but thats just the way it is if you want a good bake.

    Looking good, can't wait to see it when you are done.
  • ManxViking
    Thanks guys, and that is reassuring Pred, I've tried to avoid breaking up the UVs where it's less visible on the mesh and areas where there is a bit more geometry to hold the normals. At the moment using the cage on cylindrical objects I'm having to compromise with the ray angles, if I try to correct the buckling of the edges too much then the hard edge becomes more evident as a result, I probably get to mess with this a bit more with the exhausts etc so hopefully I'll find an even solution. At the moment the gun as it is here is using 1/16th of the final map space. Quite happy so far, getting a bit more used to the baking so should pick up pace and hopefully improve some more as well. Other than some simple triangulation issues on the game mesh, no major problems so far.

    gunuv.jpg

    trukknormals.jpg

    trukkocclusion.jpg
  • ManxViking
    Coming along slowly and surely. Worked out the mysterious offset seam error with symmetry and normal maps and the little annoyance of unreal mipmap issues with 2048 maps. At the moment just being really conservative with the unwrap, baking each section as I go so I can keep checking it, so it's a bit slow at the moment but won't have to spend the time baking after and having to wade through the entire mesh and unwrap to spread out the bits and make the cages etc.

    It's using about a 3rd of the 2048 map at the moment, and I think it's probably going to run over texture wise so I'm thinking of having a 1024 additional map which I can put some of the different bits like the squig and the cloth drapes etc that way I can split up the material effects in unreal.

    Hoping to have the low poly done and baked in a couple more days.

    unrealwip.jpg
  • ManxViking
    Still trukking on this, still unwrapping and normal mapping, taking ages, but it's on it's way. Currently the texture maps are 2 x 2048 and a 1024 for team colours, these are fully used, because the vehicle is so open plan and all the frame work etc is external there's just so much more surface area to cover. Anyway, I'm doing the cloth drape at the back which I plan to have cloth rigged, I plan to have it as a subdivided plane, now I'll need to have this double sided, so my question is (to the UT3 savvies) should I manually double side it in max using shell or whatever, or have it on one of the 2048 maps and pay dearly double siding the material in engine, or do an extra 512 map or something and have that double sided, I'll need the map to have masked blend mode as well, although one of the 2048 maps has that for an opacity map already. Which is another question I guess, how much more expensive is masked blend mode to opaque, I'm only using it for a small part on the exhaust stack, I might be able to put in on a map with the cloth.

    trukkwip.jpg
  • felipefrango
    Offline / Send Message
    felipefrango polycounter lvl 9
    It's coming along very nicely, congratulations! Now, I can't really answer those questions cause I've never messed with Unreal but, at least from my experience here at work, double sided materials seem to be more expensive then just doubling the polys you need beforehand. Of course, even if it's true I doubt the hit in performance would be noticeable since it's one asset on your screen, but it'd be good to know and take into consideration.

    Same goes for alpha blend I guess since it has to draw the same surface multiple times, we were told by the shaders guy here to avoid it as much as we can. Of course, we're aiming for the game to run with lower PC requirements so maybe it doesn't apply to this situation.

    Either way I'm not 100% sure of any of this, I'm also waiting for an expert opinion so I can solidify (or not) my statements. haha
  • ManxViking
    Finished all of the normals and ao, I've been working on the UT3 side of things currently, getting the vehicle set up and the materials etc. Haven't had the time yet to sit down with the texture yet so that's next on the agenda. Too much UT heartache to spread out in this post, but it's reasonably functional at the moment. Apologies for the low res video, playing it from the editor so it's a bit temperamental, combined with the amazing camtasia cropping functionality. One other point, the physics on the cloth behaves badly when the video recorder starts, but works smoother in normal play, it's a proof of concept more than anything else.

    Please c&c so far, been staring at uc scripts too long and could do with some outside observation. :poly122: Cheers.

    [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slirdpDsDFs[/ame]
  • PredatorGSR
    Offline / Send Message
    PredatorGSR polycounter lvl 14
    Holy crap, you actually got it as a working shooting animated vehicle. I am awestruck!
  • Ged
    Offline / Send Message
    Ged interpolator
    wow that is some sweet work well done! so you can get like 6 people on there?
  • ManxViking
    Theres a driver, gunner, and 8 passengers, using the 1-0 number keys. Only wall I've hit is using custom animations for multiple passengers, UT code only registers driver as a state, which in it's case is actually anybody who enters the vehicle. I'm not a scripter, I'd need to write in new code in order to define specific seat IDs as new states. As my work around for the moment I'm running a general stand animation (being the only one that I can set) and having the gunner and passengers use that, so I've just made the driver seat hidden for the moment. I may have a go at using skeletal mesh attachments at a later as a final compromise.
  • mkandersson
    Offline / Send Message
    mkandersson polycounter lvl 7
    Sweet that you got it working ingame. Me like
  • almighty_gir
    Offline / Send Message
    almighty_gir ngon master
    i feel like modeling an Ork...

    god damn you -_-
  • divi
    Offline / Send Message
    divi polycounter lvl 12
    that turned out very awesome. you should do a gorka-morka mod!
  • doeseph
    Offline / Send Message
    doeseph polycounter lvl 7
    Haha that's great. It's fast yet looks like its gonna break down any second, just like every Ork vehicle should be.
1
Sign In or Register to comment.