WIP - Armory Prop from Natural Selection 2
polycounter lvl 5
Hey everyone this is my first post on polycount and I wanted to share my progress with you guys. I noticed on my portfolio that I don’t have any props or sci-fi style assets, so I wanted to address that. I came across a really cool concept from Natural Selection 2 and wanted to give this one a shot.
(Concept is the property of Unknown Worlds Entertainment)
I finished up blocking out the prop and as you can tell most of the asset is going to be modular. My thought process was to use as much modular pieces so I have more room in the UV space for more pixel density.
I’m about done with the high poly, but I want to work on the wiring and electronics since it’s still pretty rough. Please feel free to give me any critique or feedback. I know my progress is fairly early, but I should have my high poly model posted soon.
I am getting pretty close to finishing up the high poly, but there are still areas that need to be filled and polished. The road block I have is what to place inside the armory. In the concept I can get some information about what should be there but nothing clear cut. A friend of mine recommended looking at turbine engines, but if anyone else has any other suggestions for reference please let me know. Critques and feedback is welcome since I’m really trying to nail this prop.
(Concept is the property of Unknown Worlds Entertainment)
I finished up blocking out the prop and as you can tell most of the asset is going to be modular. My thought process was to use as much modular pieces so I have more room in the UV space for more pixel density.
I’m about done with the high poly, but I want to work on the wiring and electronics since it’s still pretty rough. Please feel free to give me any critique or feedback. I know my progress is fairly early, but I should have my high poly model posted soon.
I am getting pretty close to finishing up the high poly, but there are still areas that need to be filled and polished. The road block I have is what to place inside the armory. In the concept I can get some information about what should be there but nothing clear cut. A friend of mine recommended looking at turbine engines, but if anyone else has any other suggestions for reference please let me know. Critques and feedback is welcome since I’m really trying to nail this prop.
Replies
if you do not want to use turbines, and instead have a rough messy inside. I would say that you could use some wires and or something like that to break up the inside more to give the eye something interesting and asymmetrical. Because the piece is very symmetrical as it is, and as you have got the liberty to play with the inside, you could go for something more asymmetrical. Otherwise something like turbines and vents would be a great idea.
I feel pretty comfortable with the high poly and will go forward with optimizing and unwrapping the weapons station. I will try to get that done by the weekend and feel free to give any feedback.
Well after baking the normals I found that other areas were lacking pixel density, so I symmetry some objects to address those areas. I repacked and gave more pixel density to more of the important objects. Second times the charm!.... I hope.
The following images were rendered in UDK.
Here is a screen shot of my material I made for the prop.
These are a quick renders in 3DS Max of the wireframe, AO/Cavity/Normal, texture of the prop.
@Gary Matycich - Thanks
@Toolpaddz - Yeah I just noticed that when Raul addressed it. I am going to go over the high poly model and soften the edges to get a better highlight.
@Ijsketch - Thanks!!!
I adjusted the lighting and post processing effects, fixed my high poly for smother edges, re-baked normals and texture polish. I am going to call this finish unless there is an issue. Also, i'm going to be working on the gun hologram and shader for this bad boy and possibly post a video of the end results.
Here are my updated textures.
There are some unnecessary polys in the low that I might take out such as the circular lights in the front. But with the Ps4 coming down the pipe this will be no problem.
I agree with the above posts that your support loops in the high poly are a bit too close together, which gives sharper edges and less bevel.(raul mentioned your chamfers as well) After looking at your bake, it looks like you made the changes to the green box, but it's it's hard to see on your metal bits, especially the arms that open up.
Other than that, your scratches on the green box look low res because of the brush you used. Your brush is very blurry around the scratch, and the scratches need to be a bit sharper. They also look very uniform and could use some variation like the concept. Adding some dirt around your scratches would also help push this more.
Add the scratches to your normal map with Ndo or crazy bump. This needs to be subtle. The large scratches need to be added, and they will pop more.
Here are some screen grabs of my updated materials
I feel like you really need to work on the material definition on this.
+lack of contrast in the spec.
Maybe you have a reason for this, but I would personally suggest to also use a gloss map, you have quite a lot of different materials on this thing, so it would benefit from it.
Be carefull with just slapping on a photo/texture on something and calling it metal, this part is just to noisy.
I personally would just step this down to a base colour again in the diffuse and spec, get the base values right, maybe with super sublte overlays, and then add whatever you want on top of it.
Problem here mostly is spec values again, it honestly reads to me as grey paint next to green paint.
Really try to push those values away from eachother, and make the scratches actually read like metal.
Also, maybe a bit more personal, I find that wear to be to "hairy", maybe go back in, with a lower opacity, and a smaller brush and clean them up a bit, and also try to make the wear more uneven.
somewhat better, but it just looks to "painted", the edgewear is on all the edges and fairly even, I also don't really see what the darker parts are (leftover paint?).
The big scratches could probably be replaced by getting a nice photo of some directions scratches/wear, and using that as a mask, to get rid of that "I just drew a couple of lines"
Mostly what has been said above, don't really know what material it is.
The tubes, from seeing those in real life, these would be a almost chrome, here they are almost plastic.
And on a sidenote, I felt like the colours where a bit all over the place, the concept seems to stick more to
-Green with orange details/lights
-Metals
-Blue glowy stuff
While in your version you have green with orange (and your orange is a bit to dark to my taste) with red lights, yellow lights, it seems a bit all over the place.
I'm probably gonna start repeating there, but again, the pipe doesn't read as metal, the black wear in the bend is just to painted.
The pipe next to it, same thing, it's just a black thing, I don't really see what it is made off.