Keystone 8mm K:26 Camera
polycounter lvl 5
Hey guys I wanted to share a new project with you that I have been working on lately. I found this cool vintage camera on ebay and decided to make a projects out of it! My friend Raul has been helping me polish my modeling/texturing skills during this process. So far I finished up the high/low poly and got my base materials looking right for the Keystone camera. I tried to upload a turn table I made in Marmoset to show off those materials, but my internet is crappy. As always, feedback is welcome 
Replies
Seth - yeah the textures are in no way close to being done. I just wanted to make sure the materials looked correct before going any further with them.
Another update!!! I played around with the spec and gloss map to get a good foundation. The diffuse is still rough, but its getting there!
also, if that edge is all wobbly in your normal map, there is a trick to just smooth it out *if you don't know, i'm sure someone can dig up an example.
i think you'd do well to make more elements actually attached in the highpoly. there are areas where large parts clip through each other and clearly don't have a smooth transition, as they would irl being a single piece. if i'm wrong and those areas are seperate irl, maybe more of a lip in the HP would sell that better.
the same goes for the lowpoly, but even moreso. it would be wise to fuse more of it into as close to a single mesh as possible. you'll have less UV waste and a much easier time baking (less exploding, easier to make the cage).
the material on the main body of the camera is looking odd. i assume it's a hard plastic, and you may have a little too much of it in your diffuse. hard to say without a ref but in general most of that info will come through in the spec and gloss.
I say get this textured and move on to the next prop!
Amsterdam Hilton Hotel - Yeah I should have posted the reference image of the camera before I started showing off my work. Those pieces are separate from each other, so that is why the high/low are the same.
As for the low poly being fused I always found that method increased my tri count tremendously. Basically I thought about where seams will be when making the low poly, since seams will be there regardless if it was a continues mesh or not.
As for the spec I am still trying to flush that out correctly, but I do agree with your opinion on the rough plastic parts.
Thank you again for the feedback!
praetor187 - Do you mean that the spec values are too high on the camera? I made a rough spec map, so it is no where near done.
raul - will do!!!!
Here is the reference images I was using when making this prop. Sorry again for not posting this sooner.
I decided to turn off the other maps and just concentrate of the diffuse for now, since the other materials were distracting me. I started to add some ageing to the camera and change it up from the reference.
i won't harp on this any more though, it's just a suggestion. keep up the good work
i really recommend against this. d,s,g, and n work in harmony... converting one to all the others at the end usually results in a less dynamic material. a good method is to nail material definition with all maps at once, using flat colors in each - and only then build up detail.
Yep, 100% this.
You have some fairly basic errors here, like having the chrome bits bright in the diffuse (chrome is bright because it is very reflective, not because it has a bright diffuse color).
Study your material refs and work on all maps at once until you block in the material read of each surface type with your diffuse, specular, gloss, and normals, before moving on to any sort of detailing.
I do have the the spec and gloss with flat colors with the effects I want. I find that working with the diffuse only helps me notice flaws that I might not have caught if I had the spec and gloss on. My friends have told me stories of their spec/gloss maps being cut to save memory for the game, so I try to make the diffuse as awesome as possible.
I look forward to more of your feedback on my prop!!
racer445 - I guess your referring to Amsterdam Hilton Hotel lol.
Meteora - Thank you!!! I addressed the lenses already as shown in the most recent screenshots. Ill make better angles next time so they are noticeable.
I went for a more aging and worn out look than the reference. Probably went that route since I have been playing Last of Us and State of Decay lol!
As requested from Earthquake and Amsterdam Hilton Hotel I went back and started over my textures to do the method they proposed earlier on the thread. At first it was a little weird for me, but I started to get and understood why you would want to work with all maps in once. Thanks again for that advice guys! If anyone is interested in seeing that method broken down here is a link to EarthQuake's tutorial http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/materials.
Still would love some feedback, so later on I can improve it.