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First Post, Good Evening - Hard Surface etc.

Hi All,

My name is Chris and I thought this would be a good place to start my forum endeavors. I've enjoyed looking through all of your stuff for years but for whatever reason never made an account here or anywhere else. I knew some people that posted here years ago though, and I met Spark last year at the Dallas workshop we put on with conceptart.org.

My job has become mostly management over the years, so I'm going to try to spend more free time modeling and doing fun stuff, which is where posting here comes in.

Here are a couple things I've finished or been working on lately. I hope to contribute to the community in whatever way possible and would also appreciate crits of anything and everything I post. There are a couple more things on my blog at www.chrisemond3d.com but not much there yet.

Here's a low-res snowmobile I just textured for a mod I'm working on with some friends. It's 17,562 tris which could be a bit high but it'll be used for a viewmodel as well as LODs, so should be alright.
snowmobile_side_20100509.jpg
snowmobile_dash_20100509.jpg


This is a robot I started a while back based on a friend's concept (James Kei). It's still a ways off from being done and the materials are just placeholder for render tests, but I plan on finishing it up at some point soon.
soldier_quarter_03152010.jpg


And here's the high-res dropship from Killzone 2 from a couple years back. This was on a bit of a tight deadline so I had help from a couple co-workers finishing up the interior (which you can't see here) and some surface detail. I modeled the low-res in the game as well, but didn't texture it.
dropship_hr.jpg

Thanks for looking!

Replies

  • 3D-209
    This took a little while to get approved as it was my first post, so for good measure here's the first high-res gun I did. It was for Fallout 3, the in-game version didn't have a bullet belt as they decided to keep it simpler. It's from a few years ago but I have fond memories of learning a lot while working on it. The concept was provided by Bethesda.

    minigun_with_belt2.JPG
  • brandoom
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    brandoom polycounter lvl 13
    Welcome to Polycount :)

    Some nice work you got there. I am particularly fond of that chain gun.

    Enjoy your stay.
  • Mechadus
    Nice work man, that mech is bad-ass!
  • CJE
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    CJE polycounter lvl 13
    Welcome to polycount, we have the same last name, that means I like you. :poly122:

    Nice work. :thumbup:
  • ENODMI
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    ENODMI polycounter lvl 14
    Hello! Checked out your site, really amazing work, and your uv layouts are insanely nice too!
  • rasmus
    Nice scratchwork on the scooter, and welcome to PC
  • Progg
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    Progg polycounter lvl 11
    Hmm.. Yeah this stuff is ok, average at best...... lmao. Just kidding man your stuff is badass. Great highpoly work. You got the UV layouts down to an art.
  • 3D-209
    Thanks for the kind words guys!

    Mechadus & brandoom - Thank you both!

    CJE - That is crazy! It's a rare last name, at least here in the states. We even share the first two letters of our first names, kind of freaked me out when I clicked on your profile. We're probably like 5th cousins. Anyway, checked out your work too, great stuff. Later, cousin!

    ENODMI & Progg
    - Thanks guys! I'm glad you like the UVs. That's why I like this place, people seem to appreciate the little things.

    rasmus - Thanks for the warm welcome. I've always liked reading through threads here, looking forward to participating. :)
  • KateC
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    KateC polycounter lvl 7
    Wow, these are beautiful. Totally agree about the Fallout 3 gun. You make it look so easy.
  • chrisradsby
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    chrisradsby polycounter lvl 14
    That snowmobile is awesome, the other stuff is just as nice as well. You put in some really nice detail there, man I wish I could whoop out such detail, well I guess I can it's the time thing that's an issue!

    Good work and keep it up!
  • 3D-209
    Thank you both. I'll plan on starting a WIP thread or posting in the "what are you working on" thread with that Russian water plane I started on my blog. I'd like to finish that up next and it'd be good to get some crits along the way. The robot in my first post is incomplete too and I'm always open to being told what sucks on stuff that's already finished to save myself from making the same mistakes again.

    Will post more work as quickly as I can make it!
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 14
    Wow man, your highpoly bakes are so clean. I honestly could not in any way, tell that normalmapped snowscooter wasn't the highpoly. What do you bake with ?
    And you must also make the most efficient UV unwraps. ever.
    But then i read where you currently work and it makes sense :p
  • 3D-209
    Thanks man!

    I generally just bake normals with default transfer maps in Maya, though I may be re-casting the snowmobile in Turtle with more hard edges for a better result when I bring it into source. Sometimes I use Max, depending on the engine it's for, or if I can get away with it something like xNormal works fine. I model in Modo but only tried baking normals in it once and wasn't thrilled with the result, but it probably had something to do with me not knowing what I was doing and I'll mess with that again at some point.

    I checked your blog, awesome stuff! And a few posts down you have a picture of the Russian water plane I'm modeling now, that thing is so crazy! I haven't been able to work on it as much as I'd like though, so it might take me forever :(
  • DrunkShaman
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    DrunkShaman polycounter lvl 14
    Amazing work 3D-209;

    Welcome to the Polycount. :)
  • Enderstaley
    Big fan of your work. Looks really amazing. Welcome to the Polycount. See you around the forums!
  • Pedro Amorim
    Man.. this snowmobile looks so fucking cool!
    I just want to make it myself as a tribute to you :D
    Congrats!
  • bluekangaroo
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    bluekangaroo polycounter lvl 13
    welcome welcome. I like that mini gun, and the snowmobile is pretty tight too
  • doeseph
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    doeseph polycounter lvl 7
    Welcome to Polycount 3D-209!

    You have some great work, I especially like the drop-ship (I never got a chance to play KZ2 sadly, so I've never seen it before now), it looks really cool. Keep posting your stuff when you get a chance!
  • P442
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    P442 polycounter lvl 8
    Wuuuuut! Welcome
  • Wahlgren
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    Wahlgren polycounter lvl 17
    The gun is sweet, to bad they decided against the belt. I love those things. It´s always more fun to see the ammo go into the gun than out of it ;P
  • Darkmaster
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    Darkmaster polycounter lvl 11
    The chain gun is my favorite piece here. Have you rigged the mech?
  • BradMyers82
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    BradMyers82 interpolator
    That snow mobile is so freaking nice man. I love the scratches you painted on there. There is the perfect amount of wear and tear (all of which makes sense) on it, which I rarely see. Great job man!
  • Thegodzero
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    Thegodzero polycounter lvl 18
    Great work! Your models and textures are well thought out and not over done.
  • 3D-209
    Thank you all!

    Notorious P.I.G - I agree, I like seeing bullets move externally. I think it was probably just a poly count/bone limit issue, or they may have just liked the design better without the bullets. I don't actually remember.

    Darkmaster - The mech is actually only about 70% done, I think. I haven't worked on it much in a while, but there are lots of things I need to add and a few adjustments to be made to what is there. I hope to finish it up not too long from now though, and then a friend at work will probably rig it.

    BradMyers82 - Thanks man! I couldn't find any reference of a snowmobile that messed up/old, but in the setting of the mod it's supposed to have been used for haphazardly and not taken care of in a long time, so hopefully it works for that.

    I checked out your German Shepherd, love it! I grew up with them and am considering getting another soon. I just discovered that there are white long-haired ones. They look like fluffy polar bears when they're puppies, it's insane.

    4516908040.jpg

    Thegodzero Thanks! Noticed you're at Monolith. You need to do me a favor and push them hard for another No One Lives Forever game! Haha.
  • kodde
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    kodde polycounter lvl 18
    Welcome to polycount.
    That snow scooter is really nice. Good job.
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 14
    3D-209 wrote: »
    Thanks man!

    I generally just bake normals with default transfer maps in Maya, though I may be re-casting the snowmobile in Turtle with more hard edges for a better result when I bring it into source. Sometimes I use Max, depending on the engine it's for, or if I can get away with it something like xNormal works fine. I model in Modo but only tried baking normals in it once and wasn't thrilled with the result, but it probably had something to do with me not knowing what I was doing and I'll mess with that again at some point.

    I checked your blog, awesome stuff! And a few posts down you have a picture of the Russian water plane I'm modeling now, that thing is so crazy! I haven't been able to work on it as much as I'd like though, so it might take me forever :(

    Interesting about the baking. Do you spend a lot of time tweaking the cage? I get my bakes to look about 80% as good as yours only after hours of tweaking.

    And thanks man, I also immediately saw the ekranoplan you were modeling, that thing is so badass. Please keep us updated on that!
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Hey Chris, nice to see you here :)

    That snowmobile looks great! The other highpolys are pretty cool too :)
  • 3D-209
    Thanks kodde!

    Xoliul - Time tweaking the cage really depends. If possible I try not to mess with it at all. I just break the model up so nothing's touching and try to group things that will cast well together. For special cases where there's a bolt sticking out or the end of a cylinder has something strange on it I might mess with the cage or cast it by itself, but otherwise I just try to find an agreeable search distance. I'm actually working with a friend on some ideas to make the whole set-up process much less painful though, and maybe he'll release the scripts here if we get it done.

    MoP - Fancy seeing you here! The internet makes the world a small place. And thanks for the compliments, your work ain't too shabby either ;)
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