Home 3D Art Showcase & Critiques

Fire Hydrant

Hey guys over this past week I have decided to take a break from my dinosaur and try and make a full next gen game asset so that I could be ready when the time comes to make my dinosaur sculpt into a game asset.

This fire hydrant took me about a week to make from start to finish, but I still have to do some diffuse work.

The base mesh took me about 2 hours to make and then I took it into Zbrush for an hour to go the extra mile with the detail.

The software I used for this project was Blender for modeling, retopology, and uv mapping; Zbrush for the extra detailing; XNormal for baking out the normal and AO maps; and Marmoset for putting the render together.

The final polycount was somewhere around 2,800 polygons.

Here is the sculpt in Zbrush.

firehydrantsculpt.jpg

Here is the game asset rendered in Marmoset.

firehydrantrender.jpg

Replies

  • Mark Dygert
    Wow that's... umm a pretty good sculpt but the end material looks horrific. It's like ketchup that has been vacuum sealed. Any chance you can post the material sheets? I suspect your diffuse isn't doing enough and your spec is a bit wacky, it also looks like your normal map might be a bit too strong and distorted.
  • Dudeman95
    Wow that's... umm a pretty good sculpt but the end material looks horrific. It's like ketchup that has been vacuum sealed. Any chance you can post the material sheets? I suspect your diffuse isn't doing enough and your spec is a bit wacky, it also looks like your normal map might be a bit too strong and distorted.

    lol yeah I just started on the diffuse and I still need to do some work on it.
  • Shiniku
    Offline / Send Message
    Shiniku polycounter lvl 14
    Hmm. It's a good start but I wouldn't call this finished yet. The final game asset - well, it would be nice to see the textures, and the wireframe. But the diffuse definitely needs some serious love, and I'm not sure exactly what's going on with some of the coloring and specularity.

    The sculpt itself looks a bit sloppy to be honest. Some areas lack sharpness (like the oval-esque shapes that are dug in around it could use some tightening up, still seem a bit rough). Also, some of the damage doesn't seem too appropriate. For instance, all those -same brush-size cuts that are going int he same direction. Why?

    Anyway, I'm sure we could help more if we saw the textures.
  • Ghostscape
    Offline / Send Message
    Ghostscape polycounter lvl 13
    The 'finished' one looks like the lighting is wrong - looking at the cuts on the bottom 'rim' it looks like they're popping out instead of in. Either your normal map is fucked (channels flipped) or you're baking some odd lighting into your diffuse.
  • Dudeman95
    I just checked back and the normal map was not inverted. I was painting in the cracks of the diffuse to give the sense of paint being scratched off the surface. Like I said though I've only been working on the diffuse for 5 minutes.

    @Shiniku I am aware that the sculpt was a bit sloppy. I really just wanted to get done with sculpting and just focus on getting done to baking and uv mapping since I haven't worked in those areas much.

    Here is the normal map.

    firehydranttexturenorma.jpg
  • Ghostscape
    Offline / Send Message
    Ghostscape polycounter lvl 13
    Where is your lighting in both of these, because this is lighting inconsistently. It really feels like your normals are wonky. Does your low poly light well without a normal map, or is the smoothing all jacked?

    JIZQm.jpg
  • Dudeman95
    My low poly does light well so let me invert the green channel and see if that helps just for kicks.

    Edit: I just inverted my green channel and that doesn't seem to be the problem.

    I found out what the problem was. Marmoset was inverting my normals so I flipped my green channel in gimp and it appeared to do the trick.

    firehydrantnormalsinver.jpg
  • DrunkShaman
    Offline / Send Message
    DrunkShaman polycounter lvl 14
    Dudeman95 wrote: »
    Hey guys over this past week I have decided to take a break from my dinosaur and try and make a full next gen game asset so that I could be ready when the time comes to make my dinosaur sculpt into a game asset.

    This fire hydrant took me about a week to make from start to finish, but I still have to do some diffuse work.

    The base mesh took me about 2 hours to make and then I took it into Zbrush for an hour to go the extra mile with the detail.

    The software I used for this project was Blender for modeling, retopology, and uv mapping; Zbrush for the extra detailing; XNormal for baking out the normal and AO maps; and Marmoset for putting the render together.

    The final polycount was somewhere around 2,800 polygons.

    Here is the sculpt in Zbrush.

    firehydrantsculpt.jpg

    Here is the game asset rendered in Marmoset.

    firehydrantrender.jpg


    Apply some noise on it and you are set. If you are following the reference you will see that the paint on the fire hydrant have a bit of a noise, your material the first one was fine, but it needs to be a bit diminished so it wouldnt look like red crystal jar filled with ketchup.

    Assuming you are using Zbrush, so here it is. Apply noise to the existing material, you need not to put the skintone material but a matcap gray material would do just fine. That and/or matcap metal or matcap satin01 would also work. But the noise is essential. Do not apply cuts to the mesh until you have initially made the basic fire hydrant.

    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7401935/250px-Downtown_Charlottesville_fire_hydrant.jpg
  • P442
    Offline / Send Message
    P442 polycounter lvl 8
    It's like ketchup that has been vacuum sealed.

    LOL, I totally see it.
  • Dudeman95
    Yes I did use a cage to retopo over the high poly. Here is the low poly wireframe.

    lowpolyhydrantwireframe.jpg
  • n88tr
    you should take a look at what racer445 did with his
    really nice

    I like all your dents though, it adds a lot of character to it
  • igi
    Offline / Send Message
    igi polycounter lvl 12
    hello..Recently I made a hydrant too.Hope this helps you.
    2ep7qxs.jpg

    I think Zbrush is NOT the best option for making this kind of object.I'd model the whole object in 3Dsmax or revelant then import to the Zbrush for just small dents and scratches(optional).Your zbrush work is overdone,shapes are deformed too much.In some areas It gives the clay feeling instead of metal.My opinion you should scrap this because your low poly ended up really messy.Maybe you can try to model low-poly from scratch in a modeling app by importing the hi-poly mesh.
  • Dudeman95
    lol I did the high poly in blender and then I did the detailing in zbrush. I built the low poly out of zbrush and the low poly was built in blender as well.
  • Dudeman95
    Blender -> Basemesh. Duplicate when done
    Blender -> High poly
    Zbrush -> Dents if necessary. Don't use Zbrush if you don't have to.
    Blender -> Use the basemesh to help you build a low poly mesh over a mid level model for baking. Do not do this in Zbrush.
    Photoshop -> Texture, or add the scratches that you didn't need Zbrush for. Using normal maps as a base goes a long way in helping you build good diffuse as well as spec.

    That's pretty much what I did.
  • Dudeman95
    Here is the high poly base.

    firehydranthighpoly.jpg
  • ZacD
    Offline / Send Message
    ZacD ngon master
    I don't think its possible to dent or scratch a fire hydrant through normal wear and tear,

    v9ok9.jpg

    The only thing you could possibly want to sculpt is flaking paint, but you are probably better off doing that with just doing that with crazy bump or something.
  • Rick_D
    Offline / Send Message
    Rick_D polycounter lvl 12
    Dudeman95 wrote: »
    Yes I did use a cage to retopo over the high poly. Here is the low poly wireframe.

    lowpolyhydrantwireframe.jpg

    what the fuck. it's melting.

    firstly, your sculpt is very organic and feels like you went overboard with high frequency details and just scraped away at every possible edge. check references for how these objects take damage. overall the scuplt isn't that bad but it definately suffers from "just one more scratch!" syndrome.

    the uv layout is messy, massive waste and non-straight angles everywhere means doing any kind of clean texturing is going to be difficult, you'll have jaggy pixels all over the place. as an example, imagine adding some text to the main body and think about how tough it'd be to get it looking straight.

    the low poly, 2800 triangles for an object that's going to be TINY ingame is obscene.
    your low poly also is very blobby and doesn't feel at all like a hard surface real-world object.
    also look at where you are spending triangles. i see edge loops in places that are completely unneccesary, yet for the largest cylinder you have cheapened out and not given enough edges to keep the LP looking like the HP.

    give it another shot, it's a good start and you have the potential to make a nice piece. it's just overall it looks like you rushed it and didn't think about a few things.
  • Dudeman95
    Rick_D wrote: »
    what the fuck. it's melting.

    firstly, your sculpt is very organic and feels like you went overboard with high frequency details and just scraped away at every possible edge. check references for how these objects take damage. overall the scuplt isn't that bad but it definately suffers from "just one more scratch!" syndrome.

    the uv layout is messy, massive waste and non-straight angles everywhere means doing any kind of clean texturing is going to be difficult, you'll have jaggy pixels all over the place. as an example, imagine adding some text to the main body and think about how tough it'd be to get it looking straight.

    the low poly, 2800 triangles for an object that's going to be TINY ingame is obscene.
    your low poly also is very blobby and doesn't feel at all like a hard surface real-world object.
    also look at where you are spending triangles. i see edge loops in places that are completely unneccesary, yet for the largest cylinder you have cheapened out and not given enough edges to keep the LP looking like the HP.

    give it another shot, it's a good start and you have the potential to make a nice piece. it's just overall it looks like you rushed it and didn't think about a few things.

    Yes I honestly did rush it just so I could get to baking and uv mapping. I apologize for that and I'm more of an organic artist so that may have came through in my sculpt somewhat.
  • feanix
    Offline / Send Message
    feanix polycounter lvl 7
    Hey, no need to apologize. It's not like you committed a crime! D:

    I find with hard surface models it's easier to create your low poly from scratch. You just can't get the same symmetry from doing a by-hand retopo. You're in luck since this object is basically a lot of beveled cylinders.

    It doesn't all need to be one mesh either! You could have the cylindrical parts that stick out as separate meshes. The advantage of that is that you could actually bake them separately which make relieve some headaches when you bake.

    Also, remember to chamfer your 90 degree edges otherwise you will have no end of normal issues.

    Finally, be careful of your triangle density. You have lots of edge loops here and they're not all that necessary.
  • marner
    I recently did the fire hydrant too, maybe looking at my model will help somehow...
    820519e48b.jpg
  • nordahl154
    Offline / Send Message
    nordahl154 polycounter lvl 9
    Sculpt and high poly are great! But do you even have a specular map? xD
    And yeah, edges on a fire hydrant should be very minimally dented/damaged/worn. The reason why you don't need to go overboard with the sculpting and the high frequency details is that your diffuse should take care of those normals. At the most you should only need to sculpt dents/scratches in ZBrush.
  • akoredenitan
    Nice Job. Just did something similar but not good with creating my own textures yet.
Sign In or Register to comment.