Badger MK2 critique thread
So, i am not really sure where to start at this and honestly, I have never posted my work here because honestly, you are all dedicated artists of such high caliber that I always felt kinda like I would waste your time asking for opinions.
Either way, I was working on an RTS for some time and I may take these assets and use them in another game. Not really all that relevant. The important part is that i have this whole shader setup that establishes color etc. So doing a view of the model in the editor might not look that great. Also the model file is like 50+ different pieces for all the different configurations.
So here goes, this is the badger MK2, a roughly 40 foot tall mech with a variable configuration(weapons addon armor etc) I am not really sure if I am missing much and honestly the texture is a huge atlas which is why I am not posting it. The normal map is more or less hand painted because I don't know how to do a normalmap bake.
my tool of choice is wings 3d and I don't really know the poly count beyond it was somewhere between 1.5-2k and the range per unit was not that big a deal. However, despite my many revisions I always felt it missed something. Because of the resolution area available and detail level consitency, I could not really go and increase the texture detail in order to raise the level of detail with scratches that would look appropriately small enough for a 40foot tall mech.
Eitherway, this is my first post here and I am not really sure what to expect.
So what do you guys think?
(click image for larger)
Either way, I was working on an RTS for some time and I may take these assets and use them in another game. Not really all that relevant. The important part is that i have this whole shader setup that establishes color etc. So doing a view of the model in the editor might not look that great. Also the model file is like 50+ different pieces for all the different configurations.
So here goes, this is the badger MK2, a roughly 40 foot tall mech with a variable configuration(weapons addon armor etc) I am not really sure if I am missing much and honestly the texture is a huge atlas which is why I am not posting it. The normal map is more or less hand painted because I don't know how to do a normalmap bake.
my tool of choice is wings 3d and I don't really know the poly count beyond it was somewhere between 1.5-2k and the range per unit was not that big a deal. However, despite my many revisions I always felt it missed something. Because of the resolution area available and detail level consitency, I could not really go and increase the texture detail in order to raise the level of detail with scratches that would look appropriately small enough for a 40foot tall mech.
Eitherway, this is my first post here and I am not really sure what to expect.
So what do you guys think?
(click image for larger)
Replies
hand painting your normal map sounds like a bitch, I would check out xnormal if I where you.
I would maybe ad a spec/reflection texture to tha thing to really make that metal pop. and also ad some dirt and scratches. those are my 2 cents if you feel something is missing.
Any recommended tutorials for this program, the whole normal baking thing is new to me.
+1 for customization.
I'm too biased for serious critique.
(Suggestion, advice or idea from a "non-high caliber artist" mind you):
The simplicity from the mechas seen from far away in the first image looks cool, I dig it. Imagine glow on the green light, those guns bursting lead and metal or rays through the pipes, pieces flying by and more!
How about substracting detail from the floor actually? More flat colors, big splatters more on the stylized side so it gets closer to what is catched from those robots far away?
It depends of course of what you actually want to achieve (going for realistic I guess? In that case xNormal (or anything that bakes for that matter), PBR rendering and all of that will probably be the way to go, I'll let the guru's chime in if that's the case
Looks like vfx will give a lot of mileage on this.
Don't know exactly how are your shaders or paremeters being handled (don't even know what 3D Wings is), but if you can manage to put some 'fog' on the mechs it will help to the size and weight, specially at the feet. Several tons of metal stomping on desert sand is bound to lift something.
(Basically a 'median filter' on the ground texture did that for the floor).
I also like the glowing backpack thing you added, another excellent suggestion!
For the 'median' filter, I would do it would be on the texture itself, inside photoshop.
What game engine are you using/panning to use by the way?
The 'flares' for example would probably be easier inside there (just additive/screen front facing planes and rectangles, cheap and dirty and effective).
Curious how this will pan out.
Cheers.
Right now, it took 3 of my online friends helping me and around 2 years or so of on and off work with the shader code to get this far. So the next step has been for some time, trying to get the maps to look better. Frankly I was so annoyed I decided to take about a month break from really doing anything with the engine. Mostly I have been playing in unity so I can play with normal animation tools etc.
You can see my WIP thread here if you are curious about that stuff.
The map texture in that picture is built out of several components but the issue is the detail texture I chose for the splat map. I need to smooth it out like your image so I should be able to adjust the sand. We have a fog shader which I can add a low level fog to the entire map but the over all world tint may be a bit tricker(but not undoable) so I will have to give it a try
Just not right now, I figure I have around 18 more days before I can play with spring(been there for like 8 years now). Because I want to distance myself from it long enough to take another look with a fresh mind.
Nice work on the customisation by the way! You've given me an idea to play around with in Unity on my RTS.
Also take a quick look at DDO and NDO etc. May speed up your texture workflow.
http://quixel.se/dev/ddo
My involvement with videogames began with the XNA days, had to do serious graphics programming, gameplay, content loading, etc. Implementing 'shadow mapping' (a thing from the 80's and that as artists we take for granted), for example, was serious pain. Months of work. Bloom and other post processing effects (what you would probably need for glowing panels). Months of work, sweating, frustration and many many instances of rage : p. All because of a lack of understanding what's underneath all of this in my case.
One thing though, if you manage to nail this down, experience gain is un-measurable.
Bear in mind that, the 'suggestions' are just that, suggestions. Are you planning releasing this game some time in the future? Because it probably doesn't need all of this... unless you use it for 'health' feedback, like flickering lights when low in health and pouring smoke, or red cockpit lights for enemies, or when ammo goes out, a warning orange light on the weapons...
Probably by trying to 'simplify' I actually complicated it. For example, if you check the shadows on that image, they are actually just 'shapes', not even soft-bordered nor follows the robot shape perfectly (as in to avoid shadow using mapping), it merges better with the hard-shapes look of the robots. But it might be too much work to get it done.
Quick run-through ideas (maybe you and team could find it useful):
Supposing the programmers are not gonna be able to implement any type of post processing effects (although, if the shadows are indeed shadow maps, then all the basic functionality needed is probably already there).
- 'Flares': if there are particles or any type of transparent/alpha effects in the game, then this is basically done. Permanently front-facing rectangles, additive or screen blending mode shader, probably no depth-test (or depth testing but with a depth-bias, so that the rectangle doesn't visually collide with the robot).
Behavior: A flare vector direction (the robot's cockpit facing direction) and the current camera view direction can be used to fade out and scale down when the cockpit is not looking towards the camera (dot products math fun).
- 'Circle glows': exactly the same as the flares, just another texture.
- 'Glowing panels': this is definitely more easily implemented via post-processing, but there is a solution, Doom3 did it, almost only programming side too -> http://simonschreibt.de/gat/doom-3-volumetric-glow/. Quite an interesting thing to read-about at least.
Agreeing with MattyWS:
- Awesome customization potential, you are using a mask rgba texture to have 4 separate colorizable customizations?
- Going towards the current authoring tools might help you in the long run, although if you have the pipeline figured out, starting with let's say 3dsmax might prove cumbersome specially at the beginning, getting use to the tool, z-up axis if wings3d is y-up, exporting format, materials, etc etc etc. It will help you in the long run I believe though. Or for the next game : )
Cheers and good luck!
I still like wings because it does some really sweet dissolve work allowing me to quickly model things out. It is powerful and has it's place. Keep in mind spring doesn't use rigging, it is just hierarchical objects so we can easily do wings just fine.
I am using blender right now to do rigging and animation for a unity project but it is a new area for me and I am not exactly moving quickly. I may go over to blender someday but right now the time I would lose getting used to blender's work flow would really slow me down. So I am half hoping that by getting used to it doing animation I might really "get" the interface and can get used to blender. 3ds max is too expensive and I don't have a peg leg or eyepatch.
I really like the suggestions and honestly think they can do well. I have an overheat mechanic I was working on so having the backpack glow would be helpful. I am not really sure what change i am going to start with. Today I am back from my break for that spring stuff and I am working on some toolset stuff for a friend. I think I will probably look at the maps first.
The rest of it all depends on how I feel. After I update this tool I am probably going to work part time on spring and full time on unity. The spring stuff has really come along and now I only have visual polishing and the ability system to tweak. I had a MUCH older much more mature project I am going to use as a gameplay/balance base for this one. So really outside of the newer stuff(which isn't that bad) I could probably buckle down and get something playable out in a week or so. Just that right now unity has so much more for me to learn(animation has always been a weak spot for me).
As far as a team, I am it. Spring is an open source place so we all help each other here and there. There are a few projects with actual teams but I always have kept it just me. There was 1 person I felt like working with but he had real life gobble him up.