[1st WIP] Stalker APC
First time posting WIP here. This is one of my portfolio projects I have been working on. Resurected it recently since I lost my job and need some good portfolio peaces to show. I havent dont any tanks/APC's so I would LOVE some feedback/critique!
Basically this is a "near future" Russian APC design I came up with. Everything is self explanitory except the modular armor system. The armor plates can be quickly swapped out depending on the need. The ones your looking at are light urbin plates for easy airial transport.
My biggest concern right now is detail. Without details it looks small, and there are a lot of big open flat spaces on the plates that just lack detail. Any suggestions? Im also working on the suspention system for the back tire right now. Its currently free floating.
One big thing I do need help with is inverted faces after mirror. Back in Max 2009 and earlier, I NEVER had problems with using the mirror command. In 2012, everything I mirror now has inverted faces when rendering. You can see on my renders there are a few bolts and objects (tires and headlights) on the left side that have inverted faces. This was AFTER a massive cleanup that took FOREVER since I can only see the inversion ON RENDER!!!! Is there anything that can help me with this? What should I use instead of mirror? Its driving me crazy!
Now, for the eye candy.
Basically this is a "near future" Russian APC design I came up with. Everything is self explanitory except the modular armor system. The armor plates can be quickly swapped out depending on the need. The ones your looking at are light urbin plates for easy airial transport.
My biggest concern right now is detail. Without details it looks small, and there are a lot of big open flat spaces on the plates that just lack detail. Any suggestions? Im also working on the suspention system for the back tire right now. Its currently free floating.
One big thing I do need help with is inverted faces after mirror. Back in Max 2009 and earlier, I NEVER had problems with using the mirror command. In 2012, everything I mirror now has inverted faces when rendering. You can see on my renders there are a few bolts and objects (tires and headlights) on the left side that have inverted faces. This was AFTER a massive cleanup that took FOREVER since I can only see the inversion ON RENDER!!!! Is there anything that can help me with this? What should I use instead of mirror? Its driving me crazy!
Now, for the eye candy.
Replies
Only thing that I would definitely ad more model-detail on is the backplate/door. I would suggest looking up the doors in submarines, those have the basic shape yours has and look really sturdy and cool.
To see the flipped faces in the viewport, apply a Reset XForm to all your objects and it'll show you the flipped faces in the viewport as well, once you collapse.
Keep the suggestions rolling please!
Here is the finished HP model of the Stalker APC.
Here is the normal map test. This is just a screenshot of the Max viewport using the standard DX shader.
The HP model (on the RIGHT) is over 6.7 million tri's, and the LP model (on the LEFT) is a little heavy at 50,000 tri's. Thats not instancing each set of wheels though. The texture is spread over 2 2K maps. Is that a little heavy in todays modern game engines like Unreal and Crytek?
I plan on rendering a GI bake tonight. Im having some problems with Vray's Ambiant Occlusion right now. When I render to texture with AO enabled, it factors in the low polygon model into the shadows for the high poly object, even though I have every thing turned OFF on the low poly object. Even Vray dirt is effected by the low poly objects when I try a texture bake/dirt map using Vray dirt. Normally it should hide the low poly object when doing a projection render to texture? Its very fustrating and is currently one of my stumbling blocks.
This is one of the first projects for me to this scale, so its good to iron out these kinks when you can.
I would LOVE to get some feedback from everyone here and hopefully someone knows a solution to my vray and AO problem? One can only hope.
As for the AO, Vray solutions are just a lot better. Also Vray has a spacific dirt shader that is a lot more flexable then the standard AO shader. It allows me to define a shape for the AO, so I put a noise map into the dirt, and it gives the dirt a lot more personality. I will post an example later. I think its one of the most powerful tools in Vray but totally overlooked.
Yes you almost definitely should make it (mostly) symmetrical. 2048x4096 is a ridiculous amount of texture space, even compressed you're probably using about 6mb per maptype. The PS3, for example, has only 256mb for the GPU for EVERYTHING LOADED AT ONCE.
Granted it's a portfolio piece so you can certainly feel free to relax standards but uniquely unwrapping this entire thing seems like a huge waste and not something that would ever happen in a production environment.
Anything over 20k triangles for something like this is probably overkill. Even dumping 1k into each wheel, 12k for something almost entirely devoid of curves is a bit sketchy.
It's easy to cut tris from your suspension, and I bet if you posted wires we'd see that every round pipe on this is 12 sided with an edgeloop every 5degrees on the curves. Turn on wireframe mode and view the model at the desired distance - if you run into areas that become total wire-soup where you can't differentiate them at all, you can safely cut from those areas.
I wanted to show something I have been using for years. Vray Dirt shader has been amazing and its super versitile! I use it in a mix and put a clean texture in with a dirty, and boom, instant dirt!
Here is an example.
I can post a tutorial if anyone is interested. The biggest problem right now is render to texture does not like it. Like I said, the AO and dirt map is using the low poly model in its lighting and messing everything up.