A beginner's WIP thread
Hi everyone,
I've been watching this forum for quite some time, but I haven't posted until now.
I started modeling over a year ago, but I hardly finished anything, I was just learning and trying various modeling programs. Finally I decided to take a stab at game art, so here we go
This is a very simple highpoly model of an air vent of some kind, I didn't want to start with something complicated, so that I can quickly get the feel of the workflow. As I understand it goes like this: highpoly -> lowpoly -> uvs -> baking the normals -> texturing. Am I right? So the next step is the lowpoly model, which I'll post soon.
The model itself is done in blender 2.58, which I really like (I triex 3ds max and maya, but blender is my favorite so far). To all the beginners out there, I really recommend you give it a try (it's completely free). The welded seam is my first attempt at sculpting (also done in blender), I know it's far from realistic, but I wanted to give the model something interesting. The render is also done with blender's internal rendering system.
Comments and critiques are more than welcome.
I've been watching this forum for quite some time, but I haven't posted until now.
I started modeling over a year ago, but I hardly finished anything, I was just learning and trying various modeling programs. Finally I decided to take a stab at game art, so here we go
This is a very simple highpoly model of an air vent of some kind, I didn't want to start with something complicated, so that I can quickly get the feel of the workflow. As I understand it goes like this: highpoly -> lowpoly -> uvs -> baking the normals -> texturing. Am I right? So the next step is the lowpoly model, which I'll post soon.
The model itself is done in blender 2.58, which I really like (I triex 3ds max and maya, but blender is my favorite so far). To all the beginners out there, I really recommend you give it a try (it's completely free). The welded seam is my first attempt at sculpting (also done in blender), I know it's far from realistic, but I wanted to give the model something interesting. The render is also done with blender's internal rendering system.
Comments and critiques are more than welcome.
Replies
I'd say you probably only need a flat plane for the vents.
Typically a low poly item like this in a game would probably just have black painted in the cracks as you really can't see through them anyway. Just the normals would give it a good 3d look.
Plus the high poly slats have no more shape anyway so you won't be baking down any data there.
if you choose to leave them it would be a cleaner bake to just not include them on either model. Then just add them to the low poly later with the base normal color on the tex sheet where they are.
To be nitpicky it is actually 472 TRIS. Polys can be misleading as they can have 5,6,20... tris per poly.
So for accurate in game counts it's best to list the tris, not polys. (This model is all quads so it's easy to calculate tris)
@Baddcog: I'm aware that I shoud count the tris, not the polys, but blender displays polycount, not tri count, although there must be a way to get the tri count too.
(By the way, blender does not use n-gons, only tris and quads. It was a bit strange as I tried blender after 3ds max, but I know that I should only use quads when modeling for subdivision, so it's not a problem.)
EDIT -- I misunderstood you: I thought you meant a flat plane for each vent on the low poly model (they had even more geo). Now I get that you meant one plane for all the vents. I think I'll leave it like this, it doesn't take that many more polys.
I won't be able to post in the next two days, but after that, I'll continue working.
Good job so far...I like the welds..and your bake looks pretty nice.
Another thing is that there appears to be a bit of a messy bake error on one of your above shots, shown below. This is porbably being caused by the hard smoothing of the line I've highlighted partially in blue. If you used smoothing groups to smooth out that line (sounds crazy but try it) you might not get the error anymore and the normal map will correct the smoothness and give you your hard line back. It could also fail entirely and make things worse but give it a try.
@feanix: I believe that's just the welding mark, take a look at the highpoly model, it looks the same there too.
Here's a render with the new normal map:
And here's the diffuse, it's 1024*1024, but I'll resize it; as I know a 512*512 map is enough for a prop like this.
I agree with all the feedback you received above, I'm nitpicking here a bit but to get the most use out of textures I think going for a flat plane for the vents. Then having the unwrap of the circle just flattened out in a straight line, would allow you to make the most of that square UV space.
Keep the work coming.
I realised that my diffuse looked flat, so I'll try a different approach: instead of a metal texture, the vent will have a flat color (with a minimal grunge), I'll paint in the larger scratches along the edges and, as suggested, I'll indicate most of the scratches in the specular map.
Right now I'm just experimenting with the main colors, also I fixed the red stripe (It used to follow the edges, now it's round; it look better imho), and added a white one to break up the vents. Also, I removed the rust, because I didn't like it.
Here's the render (only diffuse and normal, I haven't done the specular yet)
As always, comments and critiques are welcome.
Note: I'll be on vacation for a week, so I won't be able to work. Just posting this so that you know that I haven't abandoned the project, it's just on hold. I'll be back with some updates in about a week.
Anyway, I toned down the scratches in the specular a bit, I think it looks better this way. I'm quite happy with it right now, I think I'll call it finished (unless you have any critiques). The next step will be bringing it into UDK I think.
(The render still uses 1024*1024 maps, but I'll scale them down to 512*512 for udk)
other than that, and the specular, i'd say it looks pretty good... might want to tone down the brightness of the bolts a bit and bump up the contrast slightly on the grunge.
it also looks very smooth... like the paint is scratched and whatnot, but the metal itself is relatively untouched, almost like they painted the thing to look scratched up.
Keep it up! Also, I'd start making some other props soon to go with this as some kind of set, and then maybe try building an environment with them. That way you'll see how this piece would work in an env situation.
@gilesruscoe: Thanks, I pushed up the specular as suggested.
@nfrrtycmplx: You are right about the stripe, I just added it to make the vent more interesting, not really thinking about it in an environment, where it's not supposed to be the main focus of the player. I might go ahead and start putting together an environment, then I'll definitely remove the stripe.
Here's the render with little tweaks in the texture, the biggest change is that I emphasized the gap between the vents (it might be an overkill, but I'll see how it looks in UDK).
(The left one is the newly exported mesh, the right one is the old)