Police Ballistic shield
Hey guys, iam new to this site and decided to join to get professional and Experienced help.. so feel free to Critique my work as much as you guys want 
as i need professional Help and guidance.
This model is 4500 tris which i suppose is too high for the simplicity of this model??..
Note that nothing has been baked and just a basic normal map has been placed on model and that it was turbosmoothed in Max,
I Apologize for not having a Wireframe render either as i used UDK to Render it.
I used 'Pro-Optimizer' in 3D max to Optimize it from 350,000 tris down to 4500 tris.
Thanks guys!:)
as i need professional Help and guidance.This model is 4500 tris which i suppose is too high for the simplicity of this model??..
Note that nothing has been baked and just a basic normal map has been placed on model and that it was turbosmoothed in Max,
I Apologize for not having a Wireframe render either as i used UDK to Render it.
I used 'Pro-Optimizer' in 3D max to Optimize it from 350,000 tris down to 4500 tris.
Thanks guys!:)
Replies
that aside, this model is way too high-poly, but I can't see where you're wasting all them tri's without a wireframe. generally, it isn't such a good idea to use pro-optimizer on hard surface objects IMO, as you'll get a better shape if you model it yourself, especially on an object as simple as this.
Your texturing could really use some work. It's really upscaled and way too bright. I don't believe a riot shield's made out of pure metal. look at this ref for example, it's more of a glossy paint material. I suggest you look up some tutorials for that.
good luck!
Hey there dude!, thanks a million for feedback!, I certainly Agree and with all of these critques its making me realize the little things more!
Hey dude!, yeah your prob right lol, Iam going to try get a proper sized texture, any tips on how i should go about texturing it without losing the Resoulation of the texturing being applied?
not exactly sure..
it has been mentioned before but a little work needs to be done on your texture map. understanding what to give what texture space is a very important task as the front of shield will be main thing you look at give it more texture space! this will decrease the fuzziness that you have on the front of the shield. also have a mess around with the textures don't just throw a image on top of it and call it done, use brushes to add details and clean up parts!
hopefully it helps! good luck and i'm looking forward to seeing more of your work
Thanks a million Denvir! appreciated
Iam hoping to get it posted tomarrow evening at most!:):poly121:
Try to find some reference of ballistic shields and looks what kind of dirt stains and damage they have. Look for the different materials in it;
the handles and frames are probably made of a different material then the shield itself. And change the background color for presentation purpose
right now it's kind of hard to see because of the blue on blue.
Hey dude, thanks for the advice
I totally agree with what you say, all really need worked on is the Textures,
but right now i have the model from 75,000 polys down to 63,000 polys...which is still insanely high for this kinda of model...thats your average polycount for a character hahaha so epic fail on me
As i see it,you took the wrong approach from the moment you started on this.
You'd be better off,both modelwise as practice wise,to start this over from scratch..
Youll be saving a lot of time,and more important,you'll learn the proper way of doing an asset like this.
Start off by gathering shitloads of reference,then start modeling your Low poly,(unless you want to do a retopo later.)A model like this should be modeled within the 500-1500 faces window.Once you've modeled the LowPoly within budget,UVmap it so it has a good utilization of texture space.
Then start working on your HighPoly,ie dupe the LP and either sculpt it or do SubD modeling on it to achieve the look you want.
After the highpoly is finished,bake out your NM/AO pass and start building up your texture from scratch,later on you can do a Spec/Gloss map.
Just my 2 cents,cause the approach your taking at the moment will never get as good as it should be imo.
I would definitely look at your unwrapping and texturing, the above UV is a mess in terms of creating a great diffuse, its broken and obviously custom packed in Max, which you should never use . Also if you are going to use Unreal to render your asset, make sure you are using the correct import workflow for your mesh, your textures and their properties to get the best result after compression, and ensuring that you have created a custom lightmap for your asset in a second UV channel inside of Max.
The web is full of resources, especially modelling, a good starting resource for anything Unreal is always UDN (http://udn.epicgames.com), followed by Eat3D, 3D Motive and then casting your net out to other tutorials.
I would follow @St. Sabaths workflow, adding in a cavity map for spec and diffuse to hold the edges in hard surface models and a custom uv for lightmaps in unreal.
thanks a million
I fully agree!
you were saying ** custom packed in Max, which you should never use**
what approach do you recommend ?
Well,UV mapping is an artform on its own.When you first start out its tedious,boring and difficult.But the more you do it the more fun it will be doing.Personally i get a kick out of creating good UV's.Meaning utilizing the UV space as best as you can.
Personally i use Mayas native UV Tools and Zbrush aswell as Unfold3d as a toolset for my UV's.last named is a peltmapping tool,wich is ideal if you want to keep full control of where you want your seams to be.
My advice is to try different approaches for thew UV map on this.This asset is pretty easy to map tbh.But youre not looking for speed at the moment,just the technique of creating good uvs takes practice..
My advice is dont use any 3rd party uv programs on this one,..practice using Mayas native toolset for the Uv's.Apply a good checker texture to your model to see if you have any stretching is a good tip.
Dont worry,youll be fine after doing it a couple of times
Awesome thanks man!!
My advice would be to rework the model, look at tutorials on creating high poly assets, reducing them down to low poly (without pro-optimiser) and baking out normal maps. You could easily get this shield down to 1 or 2 thousand polys. When there, think about what areas need the most detail while unwrapping (ie. the front), and dedicate the biggest part of the UV space to this. Learn how to arrange UVs, stitch edges etc, and you'll be able to save 100x times UV space and ultimately make the model look 100x better.
When texturing, because this is metal, I'd advise you to start with the specular map and get in the details you need there first. Then the rest will follow.
Hey Nathan!, thanks a million! for the Advice
I do find UV work alittle Scary to be honest, like when you said ** arrange UVs, stitch edges etc** what exactly is stitching edges etc...i mean i obviously dont have the full understanding of Uv work because i just pretty much selected the whole model in face mode and then go to UV_Unwrap and then highlight it all...convert to face and then flatten so its all easier to work with...
so i really dont know where iam going wrong??.. do i have to find textures that are 1024x1024 and above to make sure they dont stretch? and how do u create a specular map??
i know in max you can 'Render to Texture' and create your bakes and do all of your maps like spec map n normal map etc within it
would that be the best way to go about it??
iam just totally lost lol
Stitching is pretty basic. Say you have a cube... and you UV map the top first, then you select one of the sides and UV map that. You can then arrange those 2 sides and stitch the seam where the top joins to the side. Therefore, when you texture this, there is no discernible seam on the texture. It allows you to create UV maps which are easier to paint textures on.
If I were you I would give this amazing tutorial a watch: [ame="
There are 3 more of those. I know it's a weapon, but the workflow is great, the texturing especially is very very helpful and all in all it's a great tutorial! It may take 5 or 6 hours to watch them, and even longer to do them along with the videos (took me about 2/3 days), but it's worth it. Hope it helps.
Infact i might even just fallow this tutorial and create the weapon and do the UV work to learn
Seriously,that tutorial is very good and you will get a good grasp of the whole process.Like Nathan said,itll take a couple of days to do it,but whats a couple of days to learn stuff the right way,instead of pulling your hair out over stuff for weeks...
Looking forward to the results mate,keep at it,youll get there.
Atleast you have the right attitude ! :cool:
Thanks buddie
I appreciate all of your comments and iam happy to be getting comments from ya lovely bunch!! because its helping me get my ass outa my head and knuckle down lol
upwards and onwards
heres the shotgun iam working on
thats awesome!!!! thanks dude!!!