Looking for critique on my first UVW Unwrapped model
Hello everyone, I'm new to this forum. Sorry for the long post, I just wanted to tell my story after so much difficulties and headaches. I definitely know a LOT more about modelling now, though. You don't have to read anything but the last paragraph.
I'm pretty new to 3D Modelling and I wanted to model a gun. I tried modelling one but ran into some problems, after asking some people at /r/3dsmax for some help, they informed me that the gun I was modelling was really messy and that I should take a look at some basic hard surface modelling tutorials. I took their advice and after watching the tutorials they linked me, I realized how disgusting my gun was. This was the gun I was modelling. It was before they told me that you should aim to have quads or tris. I swear some polys of that model had to have at least 20 sides.
Either way, after I finally finished watching the tutorials (it was Grant Warwick's Hard Surface Modelling Essentials and one named Beginner's guide to 3ds max Modelling) I wanted to find a good one on modelling a gun, specifically, so I could learn some techniques before I did it myself. Luckily I found one, it was this one: 3ds Max Tutorial - Colt .45 (Part 1) - YouTube . I had to search a lot to find a good tutorial on UVW Unwrapping a gun. After searching a lot, I didn't really find any so I just used a generic UVW Unwrapping tutorial which was this one http://waylon-art.com/uvw_tutorial/uvwtut_07.html . I ran into some problems but you guys helped me and I finally successfully unwrapped my gun!
Then came texturing... I didn't think I'd have any problems after unwrapping my gun but I couldn't find any good metal textures. I looked up tutorials on texturing but they weren't any good. After so much problems with modelling, rigging, unwrapping and texturing, I decided to just f-it and simply used one color and threw some lines in for my texture.
Now, I'm FINALLY done. I think I'm ready to make my first gun, but first, I want to get some feedback on my UVW Unwrapping and maybe some flaws with the gun I made from the tutorial or tips. I don't want to practice bad techniques so I want to be sure.
Here is my gun: http://imgur.com/a/oMRR5#3 and here is my uvw unwrap: http://i.imgur.com/hdGzW0f.png?1?5694 .
Edit: Here's what my Textured UVW Unwrap looks like in case it matters: http://imgur.com/8s2nxe6 . Thank you.
I'm pretty new to 3D Modelling and I wanted to model a gun. I tried modelling one but ran into some problems, after asking some people at /r/3dsmax for some help, they informed me that the gun I was modelling was really messy and that I should take a look at some basic hard surface modelling tutorials. I took their advice and after watching the tutorials they linked me, I realized how disgusting my gun was. This was the gun I was modelling. It was before they told me that you should aim to have quads or tris. I swear some polys of that model had to have at least 20 sides.
Either way, after I finally finished watching the tutorials (it was Grant Warwick's Hard Surface Modelling Essentials and one named Beginner's guide to 3ds max Modelling) I wanted to find a good one on modelling a gun, specifically, so I could learn some techniques before I did it myself. Luckily I found one, it was this one: 3ds Max Tutorial - Colt .45 (Part 1) - YouTube . I had to search a lot to find a good tutorial on UVW Unwrapping a gun. After searching a lot, I didn't really find any so I just used a generic UVW Unwrapping tutorial which was this one http://waylon-art.com/uvw_tutorial/uvwtut_07.html . I ran into some problems but you guys helped me and I finally successfully unwrapped my gun!
Then came texturing... I didn't think I'd have any problems after unwrapping my gun but I couldn't find any good metal textures. I looked up tutorials on texturing but they weren't any good. After so much problems with modelling, rigging, unwrapping and texturing, I decided to just f-it and simply used one color and threw some lines in for my texture.
Now, I'm FINALLY done. I think I'm ready to make my first gun, but first, I want to get some feedback on my UVW Unwrapping and maybe some flaws with the gun I made from the tutorial or tips. I don't want to practice bad techniques so I want to be sure.
Here is my gun: http://imgur.com/a/oMRR5#3 and here is my uvw unwrap: http://i.imgur.com/hdGzW0f.png?1?5694 .
Edit: Here's what my Textured UVW Unwrap looks like in case it matters: http://imgur.com/8s2nxe6 . Thank you.
Replies
First, well done pushing through the issues you allude to and getting further than you have before. However, you still have a long way to go, because what you've got right now is pretty crap. But that's okay - first things are always crappy.
What I think you should do now is familiarise yourself with the current workflow for props. In general this consists of:
- Making a high-poly model
- Making a low-poly model
- Unwrapping the low-poly model
- baking information (Normal, Ambient Occlusion) from the high poly to the low
- Texturing the low-poly
To get an idea of what this involves I'd suggest looking at Millenia's shotgun tutorial, it's excellent and covers all the above in a concise and easy to understand way. Joe Harford's Tracking Knife tutorial is another good one.Follow through with one of those and see how you go. There are lots of steps in making a prop and it's easy to get stuck up on one; these tutorials and forums are here to help with that. If you keep at it you'll soon be looking back on this thread wondering what the hell you were thinking - it's a common process.
Is the gun crap too, though? It's the result of following a tutorial step by step, are you saying the techniques the person used in the tutorial are bad and that I shouldn't make my own gun like that?
And thank you for the workflow information, I never knew that the workflow for making models was generally like that. I did come across Millenia's shotgun tutorial, but that was when I was looking for tutorials on how to unwrap guns.
I'm actually making an fps game, which is why I wanted to make my own gun. I guess I can sift through more tutorials before I finally make it.
Solid improvement in very short time.
The topology, that is the distribution of geometry, on your gun is not bad.
If I'm not mistaken you still have some unnecessary looks that you could tie together to reduce geometry or that are causing you to have n-gons (polys with more than 4 sides).
Now your UV is not as clean
When you UV it's not just about choosing a method and then you're done.
You can start off by doing a cylindrical or planar projection and that will get you maybe 50% of the way. After that you have to either cut or stitch parts together to get that UV shell looking like you want it.
Also, there is a lot of dead space between your UV shells that is just a waste when it comes to texturing.
When baking from high poly to low poly, your baking software will correct for seams by 'bleeding' the pixels out of the shell. Usually ot will be 2-4 pixels so you need 8-12 pixels distance between shells
Practice and study will get you there and you have shown you're not shy of either.
Best of luck!
As said above, that gun looks pretty clean except in a few areas that would need reworking. The unwrap is not good at all as you have way too much dead/unused space in the grid. To get better at HP modeling I suggest a pair of brothers named Chris and Ben Tate. They both have great tuts on cgtuts+ for HP models. They are the best online tut makers I have ever followed personally. Start there I think.
I'm pretty sure its been said before but you have a ton of space not being used in the UVs, which basically kills how much details you can bring into your maps.
Don't be afraid to scale up certain pieces to fill more space, especially on the sides that will be most visible to the player and the ones that you want to carry the most interest.
I'm not sure if you did it while you were unwrapping but I find its very helpful while unwrapping the UVs to throw on a checkerboard pattern material on the model. This way you can see how your seams are affecting the model as you work, and usually the whole goal being to get the checkers to look as square as possible on the model to prevent distortion when you start working on the textures. (Of course this changes a bit with more organic models)
It also looks like you're modeling the whole gun as one mesh. It would actually be a lot easier for you and save on needless edgeloops if you broke the gun down into smaller parts that made sense and relate to how the piece is constructed in real life. IE the barrel, handle, trigger, etc..
The added advantages of course being that later on down the road if you decide you want to change a specific piece of the gun, you won't have to worry about messing up the whole model.
One last thought is on deciding how much of your model is going to be symmetrical when it comes time for the texture. Of course guns IRL are different on either side but for something like this you could save time and texture space by mirroring your UVs and overlapping on top of each other, which basically doubles how high a resolution you can work with. You'll have to be extra careful though with your seams once you start dealing with specular/gloss/normal maps, as they will amplify any seams in the UVs.
Keep it up! My first uv'd models were the humble yet ever needed barrels and crates
Thank you very very much for your response! I think I will follow your advice and get better at modelling before I attempt to do the process that presumably makes the low poly look like the high poly, then I'll come back to this thread and follow Bek's advice
Many thanks for the tips! I'm going try out those methods. The tutorial I followed did tell me to use a checker diffuse, but I thought the goal was to make all the checkers look the same.
I have a question though, does my Unwrap have to be intuitive? Is it good practice to make it so you're able to identify each part in the Unwrap editor? Also, I made my gun in separate parts (Slide, ammo metal circle things etc. were each one object), I just attached all of them together because I thought it would make the UVW Unwrapping process easier. Are you saying I should leave them unattached and apply a separate UVW Unwrapping modifier to each of them?
Yes, when you model the pieces seperately you can unwrap them as such. Each time you unwrap a section, just place off to the side of the 0-1 space. When you are done unwrapping all the pieces, then you can select all of them and apply an unwrap mod to all of them at once. Voila, all the pieces will still be where you placed them outside the grid. Then you just have to tuck them all in nicely with very little dead space.
As you move up in resolution for your maps, you'll need more padding in between UV islands to compensate for bleeding. This is covered pretty extensively in a lot of places, but I don't know the exact specs off-hand.
In regards to actual games props being brought into a game engine, I believe that a model has to be one mesh. What I mean is that all the pieces have to be attached on the element sub-object level of the model, but not necessarily all welded together water tight.
On real models, however, there are often areas where you want higher density (like control panels or labels) and areas where you don't need as much (say, the back of a machine up against a wall).