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Crate - Env. Prop

Taking a break from the mill, getting a bit lost in the details, need to step back and pick it up later. So I'm working on this crate in the meantime. It's 1228 tris, it sounds like too much for a crate but perhaps I'm wrong.
highpoly
cqs1178361727y.jpg
gamemesh
rgh1178361758d.jpg

Anywhere I could improve before I start uving and baking?

Replies

  • Steve Schulze
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    Steve Schulze polycounter lvl 18
    Indeed, that is rather high poly. You could easily texture on the splits between the boards, the braces on the lid and the washers and base at the very least.
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    The highpoly looks good, but the low-poly version has way too many triangles.
    You DEFINITELY don't need that bevel around the top of the bolts in the lid. You probably don't even need the bolts modelled - I'd just normal map that all.
    Those tiny pipes on the sides should be 4-sided instead of 6-sided.
    You don't need the recessed holes modelled into the feet of the base either, the normalmap should be doing all that sort of stuff for you.
    I reckon you could probably make this look good with under 300 triangles and a good normal map.
    The crates in our game are no more than 80 triangles usually smile.gif

    Just remember if you were gonna use a lot of these in a level, the polygon count would add up very rapidly.
    You could have 4 crates at 300 tris instead of 1 crate at 1200 tris. This sort of thing is always worth bearing in mind when modelling something intended for use in a game.
  • StJoris
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    Allright thanks a lot guys, I'm just getting used to normal mapping, so I don't know yet what I should and shouldn't normal map. I'm going to rework it, ugh yeah the bevel on the bolt is really stupid now that I think of it... Thanks for the pointers
  • Steve Schulze
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    Steve Schulze polycounter lvl 18
    Oh, sorry, the low poly image didn't appear for me for some reason so you can disregard what I said.
  • StJoris
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    I reworked the mesh to below 800 tris now without losing any detail I think. Here are the results of my normal map baking and AO-pass set to multiply over a temp. texture using blendmodes. The AO-pass needs some more cleaning up I see now, but still C&C very welcome!

    bwy1178454425w.jpg
    cqs1178454436u.jpg
  • StJoris
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    Textured:)
    arx1178473015m.jpg
    C&C Highly welcome on the texture job, I really suck at that...
    Any recommended way on improving that?
  • cholden
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    cholden polycounter lvl 18
    I reckon it looks alright. I mean, it's a crate, and it looks like a crate, you win. The metal could be more worn, scratched and sharp, and the bolt/nut/washers all appear to be bent one direction in the normal.

    It's a little heavy on the detail though. This is fine for upclose, but if you want to make this piece more impressive, create LODs down to a cube.
  • StJoris
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    I tweaked the normal map and AO-pass a bit to make it pop more.

    I'll be sure to make some LODs yeah, good idea. bfi1178485006b.jpg
  • moose
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    moose polycount sponsor
    could comment more on the textures with flats of the diffuse/normal/spec :P

    from first glance, it looks ok, but a little too blown out in spots, almost like its a crate made of bleached washed-up beach wood.
  • StJoris
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    Yeah off course, here are the flats. I think you are right about the blown out spots, the lighting is also a tad too bright which makes it worse.
    bwy1178562162x.jpg
    viu1178562191e.jpg
    bwy1178562213u.jpg
    bfi1178562227l.jpg
  • fmnoor
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    fmnoor polycounter lvl 17
    I think you could have overlapped your UVs a lot more - for a crate, I don't think many people will notice that each side looks the same.
  • StJoris
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    Every side looks the same, only the top and bottom are unique because they have a different structure.
  • Ryno
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    Ryno polycounter lvl 18
    Exactly. So why duplicate the texture elements and lose resolution? Overlap the UVs for the diffuse/spec/normal and you'll nearly tripple your resolution.
  • moose
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    moose polycount sponsor
    i agree with *some* mirroring, but not too much. You'd still want to have a decal on one side of the box (potentially), but not have it on all 4 sides (even then you could use seperate uv channels).

    The one thing i noticed in the renders, and as it shows on the normal flats, is that there is very little depth/normal detail for the wood beams themselves, where they meet one another. You're losing a lot of potential depth there, even if it is supposed to be air tight. The edges could use a little more depth to be a little more convincing. Your blue channel is almost completely white, which is not helping your cause much either.

    This is most likely caused by overlaying nvidia-filtered layers, untouched (while blue). Something to try when adding detail to your normal maps:

    - take your detail bump layer, and open the Levels dialog in PS
    - switch to Blue Channel in the dropdown
    - set white output to 127, hit ok
    - change layer to Overlay

    When you're complete with your normal, merge visible layers into a new one, and run the Nvidia filter one more time, with the "normalize" setting checked. That should hopefully pull your colors back to reality and ensure the normal map doesn't break on you.

    You can also go into your blue channel and adjust the darks of the levels to boost the "pop" of the details. However, make sure never to take it all the way to 0 black.

    It also looks like when you processed your normal map, the metal details were still on top of the wood, burning their shapes into the wood itself. You may want to consider seperating pieces to avoid that, and get clean processes of your sections.

    Is that last image your specular? You may want to use the Diffuse as a starting point for your spec, and alter its colors to reach the desired specular level of the surfaces, so the detail in your Diffuse, Specular, and Normal are all using one another to look good, rather than hoping it all works in the end.

    //edit: image of what im talkin about

    surfacebumpnormalmaps.jpg

    You can achieve the same effect by using multiple Smart Layers in PS, which produces cleaner and MUCH more accurate results, but this way is quick, easy, and does the trick smile.gif
  • StJoris
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    Wow thanks a lot for that, you were right, I had it to overlay and it nuked my blue. At some point I did do the levels to 127 thing, but then I thought, this doesn't look right, forgot that I also had to normalize it. It looks a lot better now smile.gif
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