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[WIP] District 9 inspired weapon

polycounter lvl 13
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Wesley polycounter lvl 13
Hey guys, I've been working and re-working this for a while now. Thought I'd drop it in here for some more views and crit.

Based on a concpet by JohnTheBomb at CGHub:
ref.jpg

firingRefSmall.JPG

High-poly:
highPoly19.jpg

highPoly20.jpg

highPoly21.jpg

Low-poly:

lowPoly08.JPG

lowPoly09.JPG

lowPoly10.JPG

lowPoly11.JPG

The low-poly is sitting at 11,000 tris and is split into 5 meshes, two for triggers, one for the part that moves down and then the last for some fiddly bits at the back.

I've been stuck as to what add as geo and what to leave to the normal map. I've added in some of the detail as geo on the side because it affects the silhouette, but I've also added the detail at the front as geo because I didn't think a normal would be able to capture all that very well.

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  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
    Looking at those high-poly images the edges are all fuzzy for me. Here's a render of an older version that better shows some of that detail.
    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21050664/district9Weapon/highPoly12.jpg

    I'll do a nice render of it when it's all finished and stuff.
  • Lucas Annunziata
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    Lucas Annunziata polycounter lvl 13
    I know it's not in the concept, but I feel that a gun this large that you have to throw over your shoulder would need some sort of padding, or at least a more ergonomic shape where you are bracing the gun.
  • Rick_D
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    Rick_D polycounter lvl 12
    darbeenbo wrote: »
    I know it's not in the concept, but I feel that a gun this large that you have to throw over your shoulder would need some sort of padding, or at least a more ergonomic shape where you are bracing the gun.

    the black shape at the rear is actually the padding, it's just not really portrayed in the model.
  • ES_139
    weren't the prawns hard shelled though? could explain lack of padding??
    (looks good by the way, apart from the shoulder area)
  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
    Oh shit, I can't believe I got this far without realising that or it being pointed out. I think I may add some padding there that isn't in the concept. Rather than re-jigging that whole part.

    Thanks!
  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
    Okay I've changed up the bottom part so it's a lot softer around the edges.

    highPoly22.jpg

    And I added a view finder.

    highPoly23.jpg

    highPoly24.jpg
  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
    Okay so I finally got round to unwrapping this. And I'm kind of concerned about how many islands I've ended up with:

    UVMap.jpg

    I honestly don't know where I can join things without having crazy distortion. Any pointers would be useful.
  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
    highPoly25.jpg

    highPoly26.jpg

    highPoly27.jpg

    highPoly28.jpg

    Still not completely happy with the normal map. I'm getting odd seems on some of the edges. Will continue to try and get a better bake.
  • dpaynter26
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    dpaynter26 polycounter lvl 11
    wow this is awesome dude can you post the normal map? i would love to see that, it looks like a great bake
  • SouthpawSid
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    SouthpawSid polycounter lvl 7
    model is fantastic, but the UV's need A LOT of work. Try and overlay as much as possible the UV islands that are identical.
  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
    Yeah I'll post the normals up. They do use the UVs that I posted before. I'm not happy with them but I can always just re-do that. I have tried to overlay as much as possible.

    Here's a couple of images that show what is actually being baked. Red is main UV space, all others are then overlaying.

    lowPolyUVUnique01.jpg

    lowPolyUVUnique02.jpg

    But yeah I definitely wanna look at the UVs again, especially how UVs have an affect on edges (I have odd edges like this). Any crit would be much appreciated.
  • barnesy
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    barnesy polycounter lvl 9
    Thats a awesome bake! I really can't wait to see the texturing progress, it will look sweeeeet!
  • LtChicken
    The messed up edges in the picture you linked are when you have two different smoothing groups that aren't on seperate UV islands.

    The one way I know to fix that if you want to use those smoothing groups is to just break them apart on the UV. Most people seem to prefer using as few smoothing groups as possible however since they increase the amount of vertices in your model and instead chamfer hard edges on your low poly model so instead of a 90 degree turn you have a couple of 45 degree turns. I've also seen people move the edge just a tiny bit so that it's an 85 degree turn instead of 90 degrees but that sometimes looks dodgy.

    If you straight up ignore the artifacts you get by not using smoothing groups or chamfering edges than those nasty looking artifacts will show up on your normal map.
  • KyleJensen
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    KyleJensen polycounter lvl 12
    That bake turned out great! :D
  • percydaman
    Agreed the bake looks pretty good minus the comment from LtChicken. It really is essential that you have separate islands for different smoothing groups. It will remove those lil dark edges showing up.
  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
    @LtChickenOkay This confused me quite a bit because a lot of the edges where I was having these problems were actually split in the UVs. After mucking about for a bit I got some better results.

    This is what I was having when I baked and reset the cage and didn't use any kind of push or tweaking it (my low-poly covers the high-poly).

    lowPolyEdges.JPG

    This is what I got when I reset the cage and used push by just 0.1. (Ignore the crazy stuff behind the main edges)

    lowPolyEdges03.JPG
  • Perfectblue
    You have way to many UV islands. Merge parts in the LP everywhere you can, leave parts separate that need to be animated or removed.

    When you merge your LP together you are:
    1. Making it a pleasure to texture
    2. Optimizing UV space & better texture density
    3. Less seams

    Check out my first HP to LP work I did several months back, lots of good relevant information here from Perna and EQ
    http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=83091
  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
    Cheers for the link, that looks like an awesome read. I'll be re-unwrapping this soon.
  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
    Okay well I made more changes to both the high and low-poly, and totally re-unwrapped it to have fewer islands. Things started to break up a bit too much to make sure I could get those edges to bake nicely, but I think I'll still be alright texturing.

    lowPoly12.jpg

    lowPoly12Wire.jpg

    lowPoly13.jpg

    lowPoly13Wire.jpg

    lowPoly14.jpg

    lowPoly14Wire.jpg
  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
    Okay so it's been a while. Started texturing this the other day. I'm a bit of a noob at texturing so would appreciate some crit at this early stage.

    So I've been trying to get some material definitions down first. These textures at the moment don't really have that well thought out scratches/used areas or build up of dirt. But I'm just trying to get the materials looking right at the moment... I know those things have an impact on how materials look. But... hey let's just look at my textures!

    textureFeedback01.jpg

    textureFeedback02.jpg

    textureFeedback03.jpg

    Diffuse
    textureFeedbackDiffuse.jpg

    Spec
    textureFeedbackSpec.jpg

    Gloss
    textureFeedbackGloss.jpg

    So I'm trying to get a soft plastic for the main part, that grey blocky thing. The detail on those is meant to be a bare metal. The part at the top is meant to be a sort of gunmetal/steely type thing. The white thing at the back is meant to be the same as the gunmetal but with paint. And then some of that paint has been scratched off. Obviously there'd be some colour variation near the scratches, and generally on the paint, but for now...

    Anywho, here's how I've actually set-up the materials for the gun, but I'm a little worried it's a bit hard to read:

    textureFeedback04.jpg

    Crit would be muuuuch appreciated.

    Thanks!
  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
    Didn't make as much progress today as I'd have liked. Took it back a small step by trying to ignore a lot of the localised scratches/details. If I'm not going to spend the correct time and attention to them then they're just making it messy.

    Will obviously go through those stages once I've set-up all these. I've tried to plan ahead by having the bare metal present in the diffuse, spec and gloss that also matches the gun metal. So then I'll just be able to peel off what I want and it should match.

    Anyway!

    textureFeedback05.jpg

    textureFeedback06.jpg

    textureFeedbackDiffuse02.jpg

    textureFeedbackSpec02.jpg

    textureFeedbackGloss02.jpg
  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
    Progress so far.

    textureFeedback07.jpg

    textureFeedback08.jpg

    textureFeedbackDiffuse03.jpg

    textureFeedbackSpec03.jpg

    textureFeedbackGloss03.jpg

    Glad I decided to try and get all the materials down before spending time localising things. Makes it easier for me to visualise stuff. Also I'm able to tell where things are off better (which there are a few things).
  • Computron
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    Computron polycounter lvl 7
    IDK, the gun looks a little blocky when you baked all the details down into the normal map. The greyer materials at the center of the gun look more like slate than metal.
  • NothingHappens
    @Computron : The fact that the gun looks blocky is normal, I think. There is a gun similar to that one in District 9 (except it's more like a rifle than a rocket launcher) and it's also blocky. As this model is inspired of this gun, so I guess it is also shaped in a blocky style to fit with the original.
  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
    textureFeedback09.jpg

    textureFeedback10.jpg

    textureFeedbackDiffuse04.jpg

    textureFeedbackSpec04.jpg

    textureFeedbackGloss04.jpg

    Busy day, not as much progress as I wanted.
  • Pedro Amorim
    the second map is the specular?
    If so, don't forget to overlay the AO in there as well :)
  • Computron
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    Computron polycounter lvl 7
    again, a lot of the metal looks like stone, you need to have some more vivid specular. Material definition is what it's all about. And I wasn't talking about the big parts of the gun being blocky, but the fact that not of the small stuff was modeling in, but rather normal mapped. You could try extruding a few of those little knobs and greeble to make it more interesting.
  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
    Cheers for the feedback guys!

    Just to address the issue of some stuff being modelled in, I did at one point have a lot of that detail modelled in. This low-poly has been remade about three times, each time to make it easier to texture and get a better normal result.

    You can see how my first version on the second page of this thread.

    And the second version on the first post of this thread.

    I think some of the "blockiness" may be less obvious once I have the material definitions down and am able to start messing up the surface more and have better variation.

    Also when you say a lot metal looks like stone, which metal do you mean? I agree with some of the metal looking slate-ish, but I'm not sure which parts you may be talking about.

    And when you say make a more vivid specular, do you mean just brighter, or a brighter with more contrast?

    Thanks for the feedback again dude, really want to get better at texturing before I move onto an environment.
  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
    textureFeedback11.jpg

    textureFeedback12.jpg

    Gonna start adding localised detail now.
  • Wesley
  • Wesley
  • JamesWarren
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    JamesWarren polycounter lvl 5
    This is looking really cool man. That little bit of dirt made the model look a lot more interesting.

    I think that some of the metal parts would read a lot more like metal if you added some shiny scratches into them. Especially this area:

    textureFeedback14.jpg
  • Stromberg90
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    Stromberg90 polycounter lvl 11
    JamesWarren: I am pretty sure that part is supposed to be rubber as a padding for the shoulder.
  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
    Yeah that's meant to be a sort of soft-touch rubber material. Is that not coming across?
  • Stromberg90
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    Stromberg90 polycounter lvl 11
    It does sort of, but the main reason I knew was because I read it on the page before.
    I can't really give you any particular tips on rubber texturing, go on Google and cgtextures and search for some rubber reference and try and replicate the texture and the colors, I think you can do it :)
  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
    Cheers for the feedback. Unfortunately I'm away for the next couple of days so this won't be touched for a little while. When I get back to it I think I'll also start to move the gun a little further away from the concept; placing dirt in places I think are more suitable. Right now it's sort of just collected in the middle... also need to add scratches to the gun.
  • JamesWarren
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    JamesWarren polycounter lvl 5
    Oh my bad, I just assumed it was supposed to be metal. Here is a tutorial where Racer445 textured a sword. I think the handle of the sword has sort of the rubbery look you may be going for:

    http://www.nextgenhardsurface.com/index.php?pageid=racer445
  • HornyRhino
    sweet! the colors kinda remind me of the teloport gun from portal 2 :P but seriouse nice work :D keep it up!
  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
    Decided to come back to this and finish it up. Took a step back and removed the dirt, was badly placed anyway. Working on material definitions a bit more. Will make a scratch and dirt pass tomorrow.

    Feedback is appreciated!

    textureFeedback16.jpg

    textureFeedback17.jpg

    Also decided to cut out some of those unneeded polys near the guard.

    textureFeedback18.jpg
  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
    Gonna call this done I guess.

    textureFeedback23.jpg
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