@ BobtheGreatII, Meteorkid, Mio, toolpaddz, toolpaddz:
Thanks for the feedback guys!
Taking yall's votes into account, I ended up going with a variation of #4.
I think the high poly is pretty much finished, aside from the changes I'm sure I'll make while building the low, and loosening edges that don't bake well.
Alright, I've got a low poly and UVs, and did my first bake today. There are a ton of errors that I've still got to fix, and I think I've got some overlapping UVs hiding in the 0-1 space that need to be shifted, and I may need to add more edges to various spots in the low poly to remove distortion. But - progress!
I think I'm around 9k tris right now. I could probably shave off a bunch of tris from the underside of the middle portion of the scope that isn't really visible from 1st person, and I can probably find lots of other areas to cut down, too. I'm not sure how much lower I will take it, if any. I was originally just gonna shoot for <10k, but I don't know if this is reasonably common for a 1st person gun.
On the other hand, I might need to add more bevels to the plates on the top of the body of the gun that seem really sharp-edged from 1st person.
Here's the first bake, low poly wires, and my UV layout with a dimmed-out AO overlaid on it.
Looks awesome! I really liked the projection scope tho, it wouldn't work in reality for a sniper, but it was unique. Either way its your project and its come along great. :thumbup:
@ hamzaaa: Thanks! Yep, parts of it anyway. Most pieces are mirrored except where they are prominent from the first person view.
@ perkins: Thanks man! Yeah, I liked the idea of the projection scope, but it just didn't fit with this type of gun, and it didn't seem to read very well. I'll save that one for the next sci fi gun I do, I guess
@ DirkJan: Thanks! Yeah, I always seem to pack UVs tighter than I mean to... I have gone through and spaced them out a little bit more, but nothing too drastic.
I've been fixing normal map issues today and I've eliminated most of my egregious errors, but I'm getting these seams along my mirrored edges. Unless I'm misunderstanding things, I shouldn't get visible seams along these edges where the mesh is not broken if I'm using a cage to bake, right?
I get the same results on a test mesh using the same baking process. But, when I import the rifle into UDK, the seams are gone... so... uh... I guess it's not a problem? Is it just a Max viewport issue? I've always read that Max uses different tangent bases for baking and viewport, but I can't remember ever running into this issue before.
@ hamzaa Yep, all welded and collapsed. Thanks for the suggestions!
But, I think I realized the problem. A lot of the mesh and UVs are mirrored, but some of the mesh verts seem to have been nudged asymmetrically since I collapsed the Symmetry modifier - I guess I must have accidentally touched them while UVing and didn't notice. So this means that the 2 sides are very slightly different geometry-wise, but they are sharing the same chunks of the normal map; I think this is what was causing the seam. I tested on a single piece of the gun by deleting one half and re-Symmetrying it; this removed the normal map seam. I'll do the same for the rest of the model and rebake. I think this was my issue but we'll see what happens!
I also find that 3ds Max will show seams in a normal when nothing else does. Usually I can ignore it as long as it looks fine in whatever I'm putting it in. You might also try disabling (or enabling... can't remember) Gamma/LUT Correction.
@BobtheGreatII: Yeah, that was the case for me also with the seam not being visible in UDK. Although, I did grab the dDo beta yesterday and loaded the OBJ in that previewer, and the seam was visible. Weird. Tried the Gamma/LUT thing too but it didn't make a difference in this case. But anyway, it seems to just have been an issue of my mirrored geometry not being perfectly mirrored, and I got it all fixed. Thanks for your help!
The normal map is now 95% good to go (I'll probably do another bake or two before the end to iron out a few minor things) so I've started with color block-ins. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to go with all dark metal or get some color in there, but I'm thinking I might eventually want this gun to be in a scene with some desert/rocky terrain so I'm leaning towards making some of the body panels out of this light brown rubberized stuff. everything else is either metal or black rubber (like the end of the stock). Oh, and the light colored band on top of the scope is a fiber optic gatherer, so it will be clear-ish plastic. Feedback welcome!
This may sound harsh but I am only saying it because I love the look of the rifle and I think you have done an amazing job and what I am going to say is probably to late but, the end of the rifle looks like a horses hoof and it just ruins it for me. The rest looks awesome, its one of the best I have seen on this site but the hoof barrel just kills it for me.
The middle section of the gun looks awesome but it seems the ends barrel and butt lack the final exercution. In the concepts you had the barrel going through the hoof which I think looked great, but yeah sadly from me, it just doesnt finish right.
Apologies if it sounds harsh, but I just think what you have as a concept and what you have done looks killer so far, I cant help but say "keep working on it and you'll have what I think is a master piece of a weapon".
@ Nerf Bat Ninja: Thanks dude! Yes I am looking forward to working on the materials. Finally out of the Lost Woods of Lowpoly/UV/baking... mostly...
@ l.croxton: No worries man, the whole reason I'm posting is to get harsh feedback, so thank you! But next time tell me if it sucks before I do the whole UV layout . I'm open to removing the hoof (as it will henceforth be called, forever) even if it might mean some re-UVing (groooooaaaaan) but it'd be cool if I could collect feedback from more people. If a lot of people hate it I can remove it; I'm pretty ambivalent about it so the only thing really keeping it there is my desire to move forward and not have to redo the UVs etc. Which admittedly... is formidable
So it would be awesome to get feedback from more folks about this, what do yall think, hoof or no hoof? Here's a shot without the hoof for comparison.
Hmm I think the FPS perspective looks better without the hoof because it kind fell out, but in a third person perspective I like it more with the hoof.. I don't know, but this is personal preference and there is no right or wrong
Without the hoof the front part of the gun imo would have to be changed as well. I like the look of the hoof myself but i am interested to see what it would look like with a barrel as well. Cant wait to see it with proper materials as well, if its a desert weapon i want to see its being used in that kind of environment.
@ Nerf Bat Ninja: Thanks dude! Yes I am looking forward to working on the materials. Finally out of the Lost Woods of Lowpoly/UV/baking... mostly...
@ l.croxton: No worries man, the whole reason I'm posting is to get harsh feedback, so thank you! But next time tell me if it sucks before I do the whole UV layout . I'm open to removing the hoof (as it will henceforth be called, forever) even if it might mean some re-UVing (groooooaaaaan) but it'd be cool if I could collect feedback from more people. If a lot of people hate it I can remove it; I'm pretty ambivalent about it so the only thing really keeping it there is my desire to move forward and not have to redo the UVs etc. Which admittedly... is formidable
So it would be awesome to get feedback from more folks about this, what do yall think, hoof or no hoof? Here's a shot without the hoof for comparison.
Haha I am so sorry, I only came across this once you had already done it. Also sorry for the "hoof" comment, its just what it looked like in shape not meant in any sort of malicous way . So for me the hoof was fine, but it the fact it was the ending piece, for me personally looked like it was missing something. So maybe throwing in something like concept 1 or 2, it has the barrel which I think pulls the whole end together nicely. As I said before, everything looks great, especially the scope which I think really looks sweet.
@roosterMAP: Thanks! Yes, I agree... however, despite working on the textures, I have not yet created the gloss map. But, it will be there in the next post!
@BobtheGreatII, mr_ace, hamzaaa, Meteorkid: Thanks for the feedback guys! Yall have definitely helped me decide which direction to go with the hoof.
@l.croxton: Ha, no worries man, any kind of feedback is valid anytime! As for the barrel, yeah, I originally was planning to add that, but someone earlier in the thread pointed out that the purpose of a gun barrel is to direct the explosive forces that drive the bullet. Therefore, a railgun probably wouldn't have a barrel since it fires via magnetic propulsion. This certainly didn't occur to me at first, but I think it makes sense so that's why I removed the barrel.
I ended up deciding to keep the hoof. Since the feedback I got was all over the board (some people liked it, some people didn't) and I definitely agree with Meteorkid that I would have to totally rework the end of the barrel without the hoof, I decided that it would be better to move forward with the hoof rather than go back to the drawing board with the end of the gun (literally, haha). I hope you don't feel like I'm ignoring your feedback or anything, I definitely took it into account, but in the end I had to make an executive decision and went with the option that would result in me finishing this sucker more quickly. I hope you'll stick around and continue to give me more crits!
I've been working on textures (diffuse, spec, and normal, no gloss yet... but I will make it soon) and here's where I'm at so far. Any feedback is more than welcome!
this looks facking incredible! I love it!
Just wanted to ask again how you got the seam down the middle sorted out? I am just also baking my model and a big chunk is mirrored down the middle and it throws a pretty ugly seem in 3pointshader! Thanks!
@hamzaaa: Thanks! Well, my issues were due (at least partially) to the fact that I had accidentally messed up the symmetry of my mesh in a non-obvious way, so making sure that the mirrored sections were actually perfectly symmetrical helped. BUT, after messing around with a test mesh some more today, I ran into what I assume BobtheGreatII was talking about a few posts back, where he mentioned disabling Gamma/LUT correction. I got seams if I baked with Gamma/LUT on and they went away when I baked with it off. I think that this was probably also causing some of my seams before but I didn't realize it, because turning Gamma/LUT off didn't immediately fix any seams since I was still using normal maps baked with Gamma/LUT turned on. Anyway, definitely try baking with Gamma/LUT turned off.
@Meteorkid: Thank you! Here are the diffuse and spec sheets, I'm uploading them at 2048 just so I don't go totally overboard with image size in this thread but the ones in the previous screenshots are 4096, which is the res I worked at.
I'm actually kind of debating whether to use 4096 or 2048 for the images I eventually will make for my portfolio. I know 4096 is too big for game res, but I think I've seen some other people with portfolio images of guns that have textures that look bigger than 2048 (although, maybe they're just more wizardly than me and their textures look better). Hmm. I probably should have made the texture 4096x2048... next time I guess!
Still have to put some finishing touches on this (pending any other feedback) - gotta make a gloss map, and maybe give the clip material a little more love. I should have all that done and posted up soon.
Alright, I believe I am finished! Unless anyone spots any really egregious mistakes. Thanks for all the feedback everybody!
Probably not too much of a noticeable difference in these shots since I really just added a gloss map plus some minor texture tweaks, but I figured I should make an official "Finished!" post in this thread
This is looking very good, but I wouldn't call this done quite yet. I think there is still some work left to be done on the textures. The concept, the design, the model, are fantastic, and I really enjoyed seeing this be developed, but right now the textures to me are making an otherwise amazing piece look a little bland.
I like that you are keeping the aging/ware/tare minimal which makes sense to keep a high profile weapon such as that maintained, but you still need to liven it up a little bit more. You need to work on the gloss map a bit more because right now it does not feel like it has good material definition, in most renders it seems more like a plastic toy gun. Even though I can see it in the gloss map you have on your site, it still feels like all of the values of each surface type are too close together.
As for the diffuse map right now it feels as if its just too clean, even though there are some nice details in some spots, the over all feeling is a bit too plain and a bit disappointing. You need to add a bit more ware and tare on the green bits especially since they would likely take the most beating. As far as the specular map you need to add a bit more colour saturation to tint different surface types a bit more, metal should have a more cooler colour tone in the specular, and painted parts can have more saturation and even a hue shift to warmer tones to give a bit more contrast with the cool metal.
I've done a quick paint over, its a bit messy as I didn't use my tablet, and I definitely overdid some things that I wanted to point out such as the faded paint on the green bits. But the point is that you can still keep it subtle by keeping the levels of the paint and underlying metal similar, and having more contrast in the specular to make the underlying metal shine through. You can also add a bit of a brushed metal texture in the spec to give it the feel of the parts being milled with automated machinery.
Sorry its a bit messy but I hope it helps, this is an incredible piece and it just needs a little more love.
Whoa, wasn't expecting anything else in this thread, I'm glad I happened to check my subscriptions today
@ DirkJan, shotgun: Thanks guys!
@ ambershee: Haha, now that you mention it, I wonder why that didn't occur to me. If all goes according to plan this will eventually be part of a larger scene, and I will definitely throw some greentooths (greenteeth?) into that.
@Havoc89: Dude, THANK YOU for the awesome feedback & paintover. I will definitely try to incorporate your advice.
I may be able to get more out of my gloss map by monkeying around with the shader. My glossmap takes up pretty much the whole spectrum of the histogram, but there might not be enough contrast between the major materials, especially rubber vs plastic vs metal.
I did intentionally tone down the wear because I was afraid of going totally overboard with it... but I guess I went too far! I can probably get a fair amount more detail by upping the opacity of some layers that are at like 5% right now...
The "green" areas (I think this is the main "plates" on the gun body, right?) are intended to be a plastic/rubber material, injection-molded I suppose, sort of like this:
But I gave it a little more textured surface to make it more interesting. So the color isn't really paint, it's just the color of the material. That being said, I could probably lighten the scratches a bit, or have dirt collecting in them or something. Or maybe this material be a thin layer over a metal substructure, and the metal shows when the plastic gets scratched off. I'll mess around with this material and post results soon!
Okay, here's my attempt to add some more interest to the textures taking Havoc89's advice into account. I decided to change the tan material to a black polymer with tan paint on top, instead of rubber. Also I scaled the textures down from 4096 to 2048 because my PC was chugging and taking like 5 minutes to save the PSDs... anyway 4096 was stupid big to begin with.
Looking good like the new version chopped paint, and some scratches, they really made model more interesting, great work bud
And yeah 2048 x 2048 is more than enough for this type of weapon.
Replies
As for the scope design, I like #2 the most.
Keep up the great work!
Thanks for the feedback guys!
Taking yall's votes into account, I ended up going with a variation of #4.
I think the high poly is pretty much finished, aside from the changes I'm sure I'll make while building the low, and loosening edges that don't bake well.
I think I'm around 9k tris right now. I could probably shave off a bunch of tris from the underside of the middle portion of the scope that isn't really visible from 1st person, and I can probably find lots of other areas to cut down, too. I'm not sure how much lower I will take it, if any. I was originally just gonna shoot for <10k, but I don't know if this is reasonably common for a 1st person gun.
On the other hand, I might need to add more bevels to the plates on the top of the body of the gun that seem really sharp-edged from 1st person.
Here's the first bake, low poly wires, and my UV layout with a dimmed-out AO overlaid on it.
Feedback is appreciated!
@ perkins: Thanks man! Yeah, I liked the idea of the projection scope, but it just didn't fit with this type of gun, and it didn't seem to read very well. I'll save that one for the next sci fi gun I do, I guess
@ DirkJan: Thanks! Yeah, I always seem to pack UVs tighter than I mean to... I have gone through and spaced them out a little bit more, but nothing too drastic.
I've been fixing normal map issues today and I've eliminated most of my egregious errors, but I'm getting these seams along my mirrored edges. Unless I'm misunderstanding things, I shouldn't get visible seams along these edges where the mesh is not broken if I'm using a cage to bake, right?
I get the same results on a test mesh using the same baking process. But, when I import the rifle into UDK, the seams are gone... so... uh... I guess it's not a problem? Is it just a Max viewport issue? I've always read that Max uses different tangent bases for baking and viewport, but I can't remember ever running into this issue before.
I feel like I'm missing something simple here.
RIFLE IN MAX:
TEST MESH IN MAX:
RIFLE IN UDK:
But, I think I realized the problem. A lot of the mesh and UVs are mirrored, but some of the mesh verts seem to have been nudged asymmetrically since I collapsed the Symmetry modifier - I guess I must have accidentally touched them while UVing and didn't notice. So this means that the 2 sides are very slightly different geometry-wise, but they are sharing the same chunks of the normal map; I think this is what was causing the seam. I tested on a single piece of the gun by deleting one half and re-Symmetrying it; this removed the normal map seam. I'll do the same for the rest of the model and rebake. I think this was my issue but we'll see what happens!
EDIT: Yup, this fixed the seams.
The normal map is now 95% good to go (I'll probably do another bake or two before the end to iron out a few minor things) so I've started with color block-ins. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to go with all dark metal or get some color in there, but I'm thinking I might eventually want this gun to be in a scene with some desert/rocky terrain so I'm leaning towards making some of the body panels out of this light brown rubberized stuff. everything else is either metal or black rubber (like the end of the stock). Oh, and the light colored band on top of the scope is a fiber optic gatherer, so it will be clear-ish plastic. Feedback welcome!
The middle section of the gun looks awesome but it seems the ends barrel and butt lack the final exercution. In the concepts you had the barrel going through the hoof which I think looked great, but yeah sadly from me, it just doesnt finish right.
Apologies if it sounds harsh, but I just think what you have as a concept and what you have done looks killer so far, I cant help but say "keep working on it and you'll have what I think is a master piece of a weapon".
@ l.croxton: No worries man, the whole reason I'm posting is to get harsh feedback, so thank you! But next time tell me if it sucks before I do the whole UV layout
So it would be awesome to get feedback from more folks about this, what do yall think, hoof or no hoof? Here's a shot without the hoof for comparison.
That scope is SO sexy.
Haha I am so sorry, I only came across this once you had already done it. Also sorry for the "hoof" comment, its just what it looked like in shape not meant in any sort of malicous way
@BobtheGreatII, mr_ace, hamzaaa, Meteorkid: Thanks for the feedback guys! Yall have definitely helped me decide which direction to go with the hoof.
@l.croxton: Ha, no worries man, any kind of feedback is valid anytime! As for the barrel, yeah, I originally was planning to add that, but someone earlier in the thread pointed out that the purpose of a gun barrel is to direct the explosive forces that drive the bullet. Therefore, a railgun probably wouldn't have a barrel since it fires via magnetic propulsion. This certainly didn't occur to me at first, but I think it makes sense so that's why I removed the barrel.
I ended up deciding to keep the hoof. Since the feedback I got was all over the board (some people liked it, some people didn't) and I definitely agree with Meteorkid that I would have to totally rework the end of the barrel without the hoof, I decided that it would be better to move forward with the hoof rather than go back to the drawing board with the end of the gun (literally, haha). I hope you don't feel like I'm ignoring your feedback or anything, I definitely took it into account, but in the end I had to make an executive decision and went with the option that would result in me finishing this sucker more quickly. I hope you'll stick around and continue to give me more crits!
I've been working on textures (diffuse, spec, and normal, no gloss yet... but I will make it soon) and here's where I'm at so far. Any feedback is more than welcome!
this looks facking incredible! I love it!
Just wanted to ask again how you got the seam down the middle sorted out? I am just also baking my model and a big chunk is mirrored down the middle and it throws a pretty ugly seem in 3pointshader! Thanks!
the texture looks great i like the wear of it. you can tell it is used but it doesn't look extreme.
nice job
@BobtheGreatII, santtiagohoyos: Thanks guys!
@Meteorkid: Thank you! Here are the diffuse and spec sheets, I'm uploading them at 2048 just so I don't go totally overboard with image size in this thread but the ones in the previous screenshots are 4096, which is the res I worked at.
I'm actually kind of debating whether to use 4096 or 2048 for the images I eventually will make for my portfolio. I know 4096 is too big for game res, but I think I've seen some other people with portfolio images of guns that have textures that look bigger than 2048 (although, maybe they're just more wizardly than me and their textures look better). Hmm. I probably should have made the texture 4096x2048... next time I guess!
Still have to put some finishing touches on this (pending any other feedback) - gotta make a gloss map, and maybe give the clip material a little more love. I should have all that done and posted up soon.
Probably not too much of a noticeable difference in these shots since I really just added a gloss map plus some minor texture tweaks, but I figured I should make an official "Finished!" post in this thread
Love the design, this really looks awesome.
I like that you are keeping the aging/ware/tare minimal which makes sense to keep a high profile weapon such as that maintained, but you still need to liven it up a little bit more. You need to work on the gloss map a bit more because right now it does not feel like it has good material definition, in most renders it seems more like a plastic toy gun. Even though I can see it in the gloss map you have on your site, it still feels like all of the values of each surface type are too close together.
As for the diffuse map right now it feels as if its just too clean, even though there are some nice details in some spots, the over all feeling is a bit too plain and a bit disappointing. You need to add a bit more ware and tare on the green bits especially since they would likely take the most beating. As far as the specular map you need to add a bit more colour saturation to tint different surface types a bit more, metal should have a more cooler colour tone in the specular, and painted parts can have more saturation and even a hue shift to warmer tones to give a bit more contrast with the cool metal.
I've done a quick paint over, its a bit messy as I didn't use my tablet, and I definitely overdid some things that I wanted to point out such as the faded paint on the green bits. But the point is that you can still keep it subtle by keeping the levels of the paint and underlying metal similar, and having more contrast in the specular to make the underlying metal shine through. You can also add a bit of a brushed metal texture in the spec to give it the feel of the parts being milled with automated machinery.
Sorry its a bit messy but I hope it helps, this is an incredible piece and it just needs a little more love.
@ DirkJan, shotgun: Thanks guys!
@ ambershee: Haha, now that you mention it, I wonder why that didn't occur to me. If all goes according to plan this will eventually be part of a larger scene, and I will definitely throw some greentooths (greenteeth?) into that.
@Havoc89: Dude, THANK YOU for the awesome feedback & paintover. I will definitely try to incorporate your advice.
I may be able to get more out of my gloss map by monkeying around with the shader. My glossmap takes up pretty much the whole spectrum of the histogram, but there might not be enough contrast between the major materials, especially rubber vs plastic vs metal.
I did intentionally tone down the wear because I was afraid of going totally overboard with it... but I guess I went too far! I can probably get a fair amount more detail by upping the opacity of some layers that are at like 5% right now...
The "green" areas (I think this is the main "plates" on the gun body, right?) are intended to be a plastic/rubber material, injection-molded I suppose, sort of like this:
But I gave it a little more textured surface to make it more interesting. So the color isn't really paint, it's just the color of the material. That being said, I could probably lighten the scratches a bit, or have dirt collecting in them or something. Or maybe this material be a thin layer over a metal substructure, and the metal shows when the plastic gets scratched off. I'll mess around with this material and post results soon!
hope to see havocks paintover crits applied in the next version
Okay, here's my attempt to add some more interest to the textures taking Havoc89's advice into account. I decided to change the tan material to a black polymer with tan paint on top, instead of rubber. Also I scaled the textures down from 4096 to 2048 because my PC was chugging and taking like 5 minutes to save the PSDs... anyway 4096 was stupid big to begin with.
Feedback/crits appreciated!
And yeah 2048 x 2048 is more than enough for this type of weapon.