Learning current-gen workflow
polycounter lvl 8
Hi Polycount community!
I'm a multimedia student, interested mostly in 3d environment art. Currently I have pretty basic understanding of
the process. This is render from last year's school project. Modeling, rendering done in Cinema 4D, textures in Photoshop.
This year I'm intending to acquire knowledge of current-gen workflow. For modeling I'll be using Maya and Zbrush, texturing Substance Designer, Painter/Quixel and bringing the models to Unreal Engine 4/Marmoset.
So I'm starting with prop creation, and will be posting questions along my process. I'm quite new at this forum, so excuse me if the questions have been answerd multiple times, but the number of topics here is quite overwhelming, and I'm trying to catch up.
REFERENCES
MODELING
Currently I'm at low poly stage with modeling the shamshir. This is a render with smoth preview on. I know i have to improve my hardsurface modeling quite a lot.
So my current questions are:
1. Is it necessary to split model in parts like I did or is it preferable to combine meshes if possible. I'm asking this in regard to high poly, normal maps and AO baking later, which I haven't done before and don't quite understand yet.
2. Should I remove polygons that are not seen, like the inner part of cross guard? Or should I leave just enough geometry to hold the edge?
Any other comments would be appreciated.
I'm a multimedia student, interested mostly in 3d environment art. Currently I have pretty basic understanding of
the process. This is render from last year's school project. Modeling, rendering done in Cinema 4D, textures in Photoshop.
This year I'm intending to acquire knowledge of current-gen workflow. For modeling I'll be using Maya and Zbrush, texturing Substance Designer, Painter/Quixel and bringing the models to Unreal Engine 4/Marmoset.
So I'm starting with prop creation, and will be posting questions along my process. I'm quite new at this forum, so excuse me if the questions have been answerd multiple times, but the number of topics here is quite overwhelming, and I'm trying to catch up.
REFERENCES
MODELING
Currently I'm at low poly stage with modeling the shamshir. This is a render with smoth preview on. I know i have to improve my hardsurface modeling quite a lot.
So my current questions are:
1. Is it necessary to split model in parts like I did or is it preferable to combine meshes if possible. I'm asking this in regard to high poly, normal maps and AO baking later, which I haven't done before and don't quite understand yet.
2. Should I remove polygons that are not seen, like the inner part of cross guard? Or should I leave just enough geometry to hold the edge?
Any other comments would be appreciated.
Replies
1- if elements of the model are going to interfere with the bake(for instance the hilt and the blade) it's best to split them up.
2- you've answered your own question here:if the geo won't be seen then it's wasted(on the low-poly. High poly doesn't matter as its sole purpose is to provide a nice bake)
if the edges are needed to retain the required forms then keep them.
Also, I would advise perusing the stikies here, there is a wealth of useful info.
Thanks! Yes, I'll go through all the stickies here in technical talk and then continue with the sword.
Front and back high poly renders:
So I'm not sure about couple of things. I followed some tutorial where the guy mirrored geometry across axis, left UVs of both meshes overlaping, baked normal maps in XNormals and normals came out alright on both sides. But I also read that UVs shouldnt be overlaping during baking.
So I did the same the same as the guy from tutorial for marked geometry and UVs, but the result doesnt look ok to me. Here is UV layout and the back side of guard with mirrored geometry.
Result:
Even if I reverse normals it doesn't look right to me.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9kn6sD95ZWycVNsaG5ZazQxdTg/view?usp=sharing
Also, if you dont mind just link a zip of the models. il bake them on my side to see if i have issues.
I also tried moving mirrored UV shell out of the 0-1 UV square before baking as suggested here http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_Map_Modeling#Mirroring , but the result is the same.
So here are the low and high poly OBJs, i would appreciate if you tried on your side @STRANGER
Hopefully someone else can figure out whats going on.
http://polycount.com/discussion/107196/youre-making-me-hard-making-sense-of-hard-edges-uvs-normal-maps-and-vertex-counts/p1
errors:
1 - When you use mirrored or overlapped uvs, you need to offset the uvs.
2 - If you want the mirrored/overlapped uvs with one smoothing group, then the uv need to be split along the symmetry plane. Your setup can work only with hard edges
3 - One smoothing group can only work with 100% synced normals, but even then its not recommended, so your smoothing is also bad. If you want the one smoothing group, then add some chamfer to reduce the gradients.
4 - You didn't use edge padding - which is not the source of your issues, but its still a thing.
* Its not the fault of Maya, its the fault of how you did things. If you have proper setup, then any baker can give acceptable result.
Now I just hope someone else comes up with the solution for that mirrored normal, so I can finally move on
edit: didn't see your 2. reply when posting this
Instead of mirroring geometry, I duplicated it and rotated it around, and offset the duplicated UVs. I did everything the same just instead mirroring, I duplicated and rotated it.
In Maya
In Marmoset
@Obscura I will go through and also try to solve other errors you listed.
1SG bake
MultipleSG bake
I also deleted inner loop of faces as it woudn't be seen from any perspective. Renders in Maya look pretty identical from distance, from up close multiple smoothig groups setup is maybe looking a bit cleaner.
Added rar with OBJs and bakes if anyone would want to have a look.
Using SM-groups by UV-shells is generally a good idea for hard-surface meshes. Your normal bakes are looking way better now.
So basically, I should be paying attention that the bake doesn't have as much contrast (or gradient?) as in 1SG case (even though in this case render comes out fine)?
So I made UV layout for whole sword which looks like this.
I'm concerned about the blade though, as it will have lower texel density because its dimensions. Is it also ok to organise UVs like I did, and then crop the textures for example from 4096x4096 to 2048x4096?
Another weird problem that I'm having is normals on the grip. When I tried to bake normals for al the pieces at the same time in xNormals it gave me error about grip cage even though I didn't use it. So I baked normals for each piece one at the time and combined them in Photoshop. If I apply those combined normals to seperate grip piece of the sword it looks fine, but when I combine the pieces of the sword in one mesh normals of the grip are offset.
EDIT: About the offset normals, looks like I've been messing with UV's after exporting seperate grip piece and before combining all the pieces, my bad.
Normals now looking ok, new UV layout with better texel density distribution, ID map with minor errors (can those be fully avoided, or is manual cleaning in photoshop usually required?)
When you render out the maps at 2-1 it will retain perfect uvs.