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High Poly Vehicle Concept

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jaxeller polycounter lvl 10
ThePanther-BlackEdition.jpg

My newest high poly project. The Warthog from halo is cool but I wanted something that could seat more and looked more badass. I also wanted to try to combine the H1 hummer with a Lamborghini Reventon, Dodge Truck, and of course the Warthog. What do you guys think?

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  • Cooljay
    This is quite neat. I would still add some roll cages on doors and interior though.
  • BenStrasser
    Really like that design. I will have to agree about the roll bars, somebody might fall out :)
  • Daniel Doerksen
    great job! for a military vehicle the 2piece alloy wheels bother me, i tihnk of pavement princess when i look at em. the tires are awesome though.

    the rockers are a bit of a let down overall.
  • Razgriz
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    Razgriz keyframe
    in addition to what the above posters mentioned, make sure that you present your high poly as... a high poly. You could definitely afford to bump up the smooth iterations on your cylindrical pieces, like wheels, lights, and bolts, and some of the pieces look like that aren't even being smoothed at all, like the bevel detail near on the front side.

    Is this an original concept that you designed in 3d, or did you have a 2d reference for it? I think the vehicle suffers from a few poor design choices, and honestly, I'm just not buying it as something that could exist, like Halos warthog. The model seems too random in its dispersion of detail. Also, if this is for games, your bevels could probably be a bit softer, or the detail isn't going to show up well on a normal map.

    Altogether, I think you have a good silhouette, and the model looks very cool. I would go back and rework the design, add a bit more, and tweak it here and there, and you could have a pretty neat portfolio piece. Lastly, the green is a bit much, I would either desaturate it a bit, or make some of the details a different color on the same material to break it up a bit.

    Looking forward to seeing improvements!
  • AlecMoody
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    AlecMoody ngon master
    It looks like you have some strange smoothing going on. Are you using sub-d?
  • jaxeller
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    jaxeller polycounter lvl 10
    All things considered this is actually pretty low poly for a high poly as it is only 393,000 polys. I don't have sub-d or mesh smooth on it only edge control and smoothing groups. I have to do it that way because my computer isn't powerful enough to do it any other way. I like the idea of roll cages and will add em and re-post when I have it done I will also address the wheels and change them up to be more utilitarian. If there is anything else I should change or add let me know.
  • mats effect
    Really liking the bull bars at the front, stick out and make the front a lot more interesting. Definitely has a bit of a Halo vibe about it (which is a good thing in my book).
  • jaxeller
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    jaxeller polycounter lvl 10
    ThePanther-BlackEdition.jpg

    So I made a few changes to The Panther. I added a roll cage and I also changed the wheels so that they looked more utilitarian. Let me know what you think.
  • waedoe
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    waedoe polycounter lvl 8
    hows the gun mounted upt there? i mean it looks like a regular humvee mount but kinda flimsy with that chain gun. close up shots?
  • Jesse Moody
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    Jesse Moody polycounter lvl 17
    Still for a hp vehicle I can count the edges in your tires because they are not round. Fix that cause honestly for a HP model it looks ridiculous when stuff like that gets overlooked.

    Same goes with the roof mounted and the front bumper mounted lights. They aren't round.
  • AlecMoody
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    AlecMoody ngon master
    How old is your computer? you should be able to work with sub-d on a pretty old machine comfortably as long as you keep things split up into layers and only toggle on sub divisions for a few things at a time.
  • jaxeller
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    jaxeller polycounter lvl 10
    ThePanther-BlackEdition2.jpg

    Made a few more changes. Smoothed the lights and the tires and I changed the mount for the gun because the old mount was a flimsy humvee mount that wouldn't have supported such a firearm.

    My computer is four years old.
    2.8 GHz Dual Core AMD
    8800 GTX Nvidia
    4 GB RAM

    So I can't make anything too high poly. Also I am only making this high poly enough to get a good normal map for a low poly game version that I am going to make.
  • imperator_dk
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    imperator_dk polycounter lvl 10
    Still for a hp vehicle I can count the edges in your tires because they are not round. Fix that cause honestly for a HP model it looks ridiculous when stuff like that gets overlooked.

    Same goes with the roof mounted and the front bumper mounted lights. They aren't round.

    If it's a game asset though anyone reviewing it in a portfolio piece would know it was left unsmoothed to get a proper bake, in that case it would just go to show that the artist knew how to get good bakes.
  • Jesse Moody
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    Jesse Moody polycounter lvl 17
    If it's a game asset though anyone reviewing it in a portfolio piece would know it was left unsmoothed to get a proper bake, in that case it would just go to show that the artist knew how to get good bakes.


    This literally makes no sense at all. Left unsmoothed to get a proper bake? What? Never have I ever heard of anyone not smoothing their high poly model to get a proper bake. That is the whole point of making the high poly in the first place. To give the appearance that there is more geometry and detail in the lower poly in game model than there actually is.

    Why on earth would you build a hp model and leave yourself hard edges unless hard edges is what you wanted in the design. Round things like tire rims are round.

    The tires look better now but previously they looked like crap. They weren't round. You could count the edges on them. Even for the low you should try to hide them better and not be able to count the edges on the tires.



    I don't know your work flow but if you cloned the tires I would delete all but one and then re-clone them as instances. Helps max and how it handles the geometry in memory. Same goes for anything else that is repeating.

    Added bonus of doing it this way is when you work on the master piece all the others automatically get updated.
  • sltrOlsson
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    sltrOlsson polycounter lvl 14
    jaxeller wrote: »
    My computer is four years old.
    2.8 GHz Dual Core AMD
    8800 GTX Nvidia
    4 GB RAM

    First of, i love the design you made. Really sci fi with out going over the top! The roll cage was a good add to the door and interior. But i think you actually need something more, somthing like this?

    Don't want to be an asshole. But have you even tried meshes higher then 1-2 millions? I had a very similar setup a while ago.

    It was an intel Q6600 2.4Ghz, 6Gb ram and a 800 GTX. Pretty much the same. And i managed scene as big as 5 million in viewport. You got some serious issues if you can't fit a million or two in there..

    As i said, it looks great. But you have some disturbingly hard edges and jagged curves on the car..

    Good luck! :D
  • jaxeller
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    jaxeller polycounter lvl 10
    sltrOlsson wrote: »
    First of, i love the design you made. Really sci fi with out going over the top! The roll cage was a good add to the door and interior. But i think you actually need something more, somthing like this?

    Don't want to be an asshole. But have you even tried meshes higher then 1-2 millions? I had a very similar setup a while ago.

    It was an intel Q6600 2.4Ghz, 6Gb ram and a 800 GTX. Pretty much the same. And i managed scene as big as 5 million in viewport. You got some serious issues if you can't fit a million or two in there..

    As i said, it looks great. But you have some disturbingly hard edges and jagged curves on the car..

    Good luck! :D

    Yes I have tried meshes around 1 to 2 million polys and Max would crash on me every 5 to 10 minutes and my computer would crash every half hour. The model wouldn't even open on the school computers it would crash before it could start. All in all a huge pain in the ass. When I get it up to the 700k to 800k polys it starts to have trouble rotating around the mesh and Max starts crashing occasionally so I don't like to go above that.

    I agree that the roll cage seems like it is missing something that it should have something more, but this wouldn't work. If that is covering the door how are they supposed to get into or out of the vehicle quickly. If I am going to cover the door like that then I might as well put armor plated doors on it and give the occupants some protection.

    Thank you for your input though. I appreciate the effort and positive feedback.
  • Sean VanGorder
    You may want to emphasize the front grill a bit more. Right now it looks like it wouldn't show up very well in the bake.
  • sltrOlsson
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    sltrOlsson polycounter lvl 14
    jaxeller wrote: »
    Yes I have tried meshes around 1 to 2 million polys and Max would crash on me every 5 to 10 minutes and my computer would crash every half hour. The model wouldn't even open on the school computers it would crash before it could start. All in all a huge pain in the ass. When I get it up to the 700k to 800k polys it starts to have trouble rotating around the mesh and Max starts crashing occasionally so I don't like to go above that.

    I agree that the roll cage seems like it is missing something that it should have something more, but this wouldn't work. If that is covering the door how are they supposed to get into or out of the vehicle quickly. If I am going to cover the door like that then I might as well put armor plated doors on it and give the occupants some protection.

    Thank you for your input though. I appreciate the effort and positive feedback.

    Okey, yeah well. I work in Maya so i can't say anything about that. Sound really strange to me though.

    Doesn't all racer cars have that kinda net for protection, and is made so that you can rip it open quick and get out.

    As for the HP. You could split everyhing up into sections and make the higher subdivs for them. Bake them, and then compile it togheter in a new scene. Could work (:
  • imperator_dk
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    imperator_dk polycounter lvl 10
    This literally makes no sense at all. Left unsmoothed to get a proper bake? What? Never have I ever heard of anyone not smoothing their high poly model to get a proper bake. That is the whole point of making the high poly in the first place. To give the appearance that there is more geometry and detail in the lower poly in game model than there actually is.

    Not really, the roundness of the shape from a baking perspective is conveyed perfectly by the smoothing of the object, without pushing it into a shape that does not match your lowres. Your highres mesh need only be high poly enough to convey the shapes you ACTUALLY need to transfer, in this case the roundness of the wheel well need not be transferred it will be conveyed perfectly by the smoothing of the low poly irregardless.

    Smoothing it would only yield missed rays and wobbly normal maps.

    Example:

    Normalmapbakes.jpg
  • jeremiah_bigley
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    jeremiah_bigley polycounter lvl 12
    wow imperator_dk... That is something I never would have tried. Thanks for taking the time to show an example.
  • 16bit
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    16bit polycounter lvl 13
    Not really, the roundness of the shape from a baking perspective is conveyed perfectly by the smoothing of the object, without pushing it into a shape that does not match your lowres. Your highres mesh need only be high poly enough to convey the shapes you ACTUALLY need to transfer, in this case the roundness of the wheel well need not be transferred it will be conveyed perfectly by the smoothing of the low poly irregardless.

    Smoothing it would only yield missed rays and wobbly normal maps.

    Example:

    Normalmapbakes.jpg
    http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/normal_workflow_2.htm
  • dansher
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    dansher polycounter lvl 8
    i would try bulking up the front bumper, it looks a bit thin and flimsy at the moment like one good knock would wreck it. really nice model though :)
  • jaxeller
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    jaxeller polycounter lvl 10
    I want to thank imperator_dk for taking the time to explain what he meant about the smoothing of objects and how it translates into the normal map. I have been having that problem when I bake out my normal maps and now I know why. As for the bumper I will try to beef it up a little bit.
  • TDub
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    TDub polycounter lvl 13
    Looking pretty sweet! Keep it up.

    imperator_dk; you should not use that method. It will just greatly emphasize the edges and make it much more noticeably low poly from every angle.

    Generally people tend to get too close to the model after baking, but really take a step back and it looks fine. Much better than what your result would show. If that is not the case, then just add
    more edges to the cylinder.

    edit; jaxeller, I would highly recommend you not do it like that.



  • jaxeller
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    jaxeller polycounter lvl 10
    ThePanther-BlackEdition3.jpg

    Added a more robust rhino push bar and brush guard.
  • System
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    System admin
    Nice! I wouldn't mind running over someone in that :p
    Have you thought about maybe adding some barbed/razor wire for extra massochistic effect?!
  • SnaFuBAR
    take a look at rock crawlers. your huge bar would seriously impede the approach angle on terrain.
  • [HP]
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    [HP] polycounter lvl 13
    This is one sexy high poly
  • scotthomer
    [HP] wrote: »
    This is one sexy high poly

    +1

    I love that you've included a roll-cage in the interior, alot of people forget to include that, but its a must in any all-terrain vehicle!
  • jaxeller
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    jaxeller polycounter lvl 10
    First I would like to thank everyone for their feedback and compliments on my vehicle. I really appreciate it. I am now shifting gears (pun intended) to a low poly game version of my Panther vehicle and I plan to texture and import it into Unreal. The low poly in its current state is 5,735 polys and I am planning to put 2 1024x1024 diffuse, spec, and normal maps on it. I have yet to unwrap the UVs and add smoothing groups to the low poly, but will do that soon.

    ThePanther-BlackEdition4.jpg
  • EarthQuake
    Not really, the roundness of the shape from a baking perspective is conveyed perfectly by the smoothing of the object, without pushing it into a shape that does not match your lowres. Your highres mesh need only be high poly enough to convey the shapes you ACTUALLY need to transfer, in this case the roundness of the wheel well need not be transferred it will be conveyed perfectly by the smoothing of the low poly irregardless.

    Smoothing it would only yield missed rays and wobbly normal maps.

    Example:

    Normalmapbakes.jpg

    As has been noted in other threads (IE: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=81154) its better to understand the problem in the first place, than to do silly hacks like this. This "solves" the issue at the expense of making it look like a crappy lowpoly cylinder, certainly if our highpoly and lowpoly look exactly the same noone would ever have any issues with bakes! =P
  • EarthQuake
    Alright, to put the matter to rest once and for all, here are a few more tests, in a realsitic(and very similar to this) situation.

    A. High res modeled with details that "match" the roundness of the low(without treads)
    B. High res modeled with details that "match" the roundness of the low(with treads)
    C. High res modeled to look good(without treads)
    D. High res modeled to look good(with treads)

    I've included the without tread versions because the outer shape gets the same result with treads, as the roundness comes from the treads themselves.
    wheeltest01.jpg

    wires:
    wheeltest03.jpg

    bakes:
    wheeltest03.jpg
    wheeltest04.jpg
    wheeltest05.jpg
    wheeltest06.jpg

    So, i'de like someone to explain to me how this "not smoothing" method makes anything better, in these examples every aspect of that method looks worse, and only helps to accentuate the jaggedness of the low res model. Even at accute angles where there should be a big advantage, this method seems to look worse.

    So, my conclusion here, is this method is of such limited use that is a huge waste of time to even bother doing. In addition to looking worse, modeling like this is a pain in the ass, and more destructive than keeping a nice clean sub-d mesh, which is easier to edit.
  • jaxeller
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    jaxeller polycounter lvl 10
    So here is the low poly version of my vehicle with AO and Normal map slapped on it. I have also included the texture maps and UV layout for those who want to see it.

    ThePanther-BlackEdition5.jpg

    Panther_UV-01.jpg

    Panther_UV-02.jpg

    Panther_AO-01.jpg

    Panther_AO-02.jpg

    Panther_NM-01.jpg

    Panther_NM-02.jpg
  • AlecMoody
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    AlecMoody ngon master
    Your UVs are way over packed. You should add padding and then rebake everything. For a 1024 I try and use 6-8 pixels of padding but the amount needed varies based on the contrast between shells.

    Adding the padding shouldn't take too long but rebaking is going to suck.


    If you decide not to add padding/rebake don't show the UVs in your portfolio. It will probably only cause minimal issues for your view port grabs so nobody will know.
  • ErichWK
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    ErichWK polycounter lvl 12
    Yes. Your UV layout in a way is "too good". You can get some issues in engine! But aside from all that the back came out killer. I'd recommend just trying to add some padding if you want to show your UV layout in a portfolio.
  • Matroskin
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    Matroskin polycounter lvl 11
    mn, mistaken post :( sry
  • sltrOlsson
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    sltrOlsson polycounter lvl 14
    Wow, yeah. To packed UV map and that normal bake look horrible, sry but it really does. You gotta look over you bake settings man..
  • jaxeller
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    jaxeller polycounter lvl 10
    I now have the vehicle textured and rendered in Max and Unreal.

    ThePanther-BlackEdition6.jpg

    ThePanther-BlackEdition7.jpg
  • Mask_Salesman
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    Mask_Salesman polycounter lvl 13
    Seriously tasty high, those dark renders are killing all your good work tho.
  • sltrOlsson
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    sltrOlsson polycounter lvl 14
    Your textures reads very bad. Your material definition is poor. And the color scheme is pretty boring, though that's my personal opinion.

    The textures feels very blurry and no detail is really shown. Your scratches is pretty random to. Go back and search for some nice damaged/weathered/painted metal and mimic that.

    Your specular dos very little for you atm. You should also add a gloss map.

    Your normal map seams to a 512. UDK does that if you put the normalmap to DX5 compression for example. You should use uncompressedNormalmap for it instead.

    I wonder, did you fix your bakes and UVs?
  • ariofighter
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    ariofighter polycounter lvl 13
    This is what would be created if Lambo and Hummer had a baby. Its a great concept and design that currently isn't being done justice by the texture work. Especially with a good AO and Normal map like you have, there is such a good place to work from. I do agree with sltrOlsson though, as far as texturing points go.
  • jaxeller
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    jaxeller polycounter lvl 10
    I will go back and work on my material definition and I might change the color scheme. As far as the unreal render is concerned I have no idea what is going on. Whenever I put something into Unreal and apply 1024x1024 texture maps to it it always looks blurry and the normal map barely shows up and what does show up is soft. I've fixed this in the past by applying 2048x2048 texture maps to some of my stuff, but that seems excessive. Anyone got any ideas? I am using Unreal Editor 3.

    I cleaned up the bakes, but I didn't change the layout of the UVs. I had a few industry pros take a look at the layout and they said it looked great.
  • roosterMAP
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    roosterMAP polycounter lvl 12
    WAY WAY WAY too dark!
  • Razgriz
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    Razgriz keyframe
    As packed as your UV template is, 1024 is still kind of small for a next-gen vehicle. The resulting texel density reads, appropriately, like a model made for UT2004. Given that you spent so much time on the the model, you really want to nail the textures. Be safe: work at 2048, and downsize if you need/want to later. I think that could be a big part of why you're getting soft/blurry textures.

    Secondly, you could always trying bumping up the intensity of your normal maps in UDK. Duplicate the normal in the material editor, and combine its R and G channels into the original normal again, and see if that has a noticeable visual effect. You could do a similar thing in photoshop, overlay the normal onto itself without its blue channel, and see if that helps at all.
  • sltrOlsson
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    sltrOlsson polycounter lvl 14
    The textures getting blury depends on what compression you use and what texturegroup you put them in. This thread explains how to get around it.
  • jaxeller
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    jaxeller polycounter lvl 10
    materials2.jpg

    Worked on my material definition a bit. Might not use all of these materials but definitely most of them. Also I looked into the compression settings for my textures in Unreal and changed them. I got much better looking results. A big thanks to everyone who helped. I will post a new render of the vehicle when I have the base textures put on it.
  • jaxeller
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    jaxeller polycounter lvl 10
    Diffuse-01.jpg

    Reworked the textures as suggested. Currently I only have two 2048x2048 diffuse textures on it just to give you guys an idea of where I am taking this. I plan on reducing the texture size to two 1024x1024 textures before I import it into Unreal. I still need to go in and add scratches where appropriate and add a little grunge here and there as well as a spec and normal map. Let me know what you think.
  • jeremiah_bigley
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    jeremiah_bigley polycounter lvl 12
    :/ I think I was liking it more before...
  • RexM
    Hmm... what happened to the specular highlights? It looks so flat now... the old texture looked better than this to be honest.

    I think you should go up to 10,000 triangles for the low poly. The tires are too noticeably low-poly as well, they need more polygons to appear more rounded, and then you could bevel the edges so the normal reads more accurately.

    Make a texture more like the old ones at 2048x2048, but brighten them and work on them to add more material definition for all the surface variety.

    Are you working from reference pictures to make your textures? If you aren't, you should.

    Start thinking about how to detail your texture in relation to how the environment will affect it. Dings and scratches on the metal bumper, dirt on the tires and wheel wells, scratches where brush might be scratching the vehicle... and accentuate all those scratches on the specular map. Since the scratches would scratch away paint and the top layer of the metal, revealing the shiny metal underneath.
  • elitewolverine
    I prefer the flat greys, greens, blacks etc.

    After all this is a 'war machine', look at tanks, they are not exactly 'shiny' and the paints are very dull and have little to no specular.

    So in imo, flat is better, shiny ware machines are just for pretty
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