war krieger fireBall WIP
ok peeps, this is on german sculptor by the name of krieger, you have seen lotsa of his props in movies like in bladeRunner and hellboy, i am modeling and texturing a mech suit based off of one of his sculpts, and the only thing i changed is the arms
been away from polycount for more than enough, time to get back into it!
been away from polycount for more than enough, time to get back into it!
Replies
currently began texturing now, i will continue on it tonight
and there we go, i am already in the texturing stage like i said, i got the color pallette picked out, since i like the design so much, i might do two variations of it, one with urban camo suit, and the other stealthy with dark grays and blacks. anyways, go ahead and crit, deeply appreciated
oh, and the render with the uvw template? i changed that, i seperated the layout into two 1k by 1k maps to have better control with that
Either way, great to see Ma.K get some lovin, and nice wips so far. I guess since you're at texture already there's not much to say until we see more wips, but there do appear to be a few diffuse seams to work out, and the rockets on the back look like they have a normal seam running through the middle. Just some stuff to look into.
thanks, oh and about the seams? yeh, i realized that, i think im going to go do another pass of more hiPoly detailing in zBrush, and then reBake it once again along with AO to fix all those little seams, that was supposed to be dent marks, but it did not work out
It looks like you are using your low poly to create your high poly by just adding turbo smooth and well thats not really the best way to do it at all. You will have way too many wasted polys / tris in your "game" mesh then you really need and thats what this is looking like to me.
I'm also guessing I am looking at a shot with the normal map applied to the game mesh and a lot of the detail looks blurry, washed out or warped.
I also see a lot of areas where you could have used intersecting geo instead of extruding and creating some bad mesh flow that doesn't smooth very well and thus will create a huge problem / head ache in mudbox or zbrush or even with turbo smooth applied.
As for creating some details with mudbox / zbrush I would say I would focus on getting a solid high poly in max first since this is easily a model that can be done in max without ever opening one of those programs.
This is a cool piece to do and can be a bad ass high poly model but from what I see you still have a bit of work before you should move on to the textures.
This is one of those things that probably looks awesome in concept, but until it has some more texture or something I honestly have a hard time figuring out what is going on. It's a lot of weird shapes and seemingly un-animatable parts.
I too am sort of confused by your renders as far as what is what.
The geometry around the armpit could have been floating. You will get some odd smoothing / lighting issues trying to extrude that sort of geometry out of a smooth surface.
You have a LOT of cylinder shapes with excessive iterations. The canisters on his side, all the crap on his back...etc.
You are showing a strong ability to model something, and keeping it with concept, but if you are going to take it all the way it has to be done right all the way through...keep it up!
thanks jesse very much, and you too don
good thing i didnt get too crazy with the textures, im on it
i will email you guys some renders once i get into it more, and jesse, sorry man for mouthing off at ya
Sometimes you just gotta get in there and model the high poly shit. Programs like Zbrush and Mudbox just make it easier. Stuff like the bolts and rivets, wiring etc. If you are going to use turbosmooth, you should consider bringing your chamfer sizes down a bit so that the curves are a little sharper, but still maintain a bit of that beveled edge.
Look at some of the guys who do guns and stuff and you will see what I mean. Right now you dont have many sharp edges, and that would help break it up so it doesn't look so blobby.
here is some stuff i did to help another ai / polycounter with on his Kriss gun.
You can see my wire frames on how I control how tight / loose edges are. Using the connect tool is also your friend as chamfering will create triangles and those will be a huge headache when you smooth anything.
I would just try a simple test first to get used to how it works. You will get the hang of it and then tackle this beast.
is this OK?
oh yeah, and i will post more renders soon enough i am done rendering
which will be tonight
Polygon numbers = irrelevant.
The video card on your computer, your PS3, and your XBox 360 draw triangles. Triangles.
There is no right answer to your question, and the "how many is too many" has been addressed a thousand times on these forums.
Is this thing even able to be animated? Or is it just a static piece you want to make for yourself? If it is supposed to be animated, is it cut properly for animation? What sort of stuff on the body is going to react to the animation? (The flaps, the wires, the guns, etc....this all has to be cut in accordance with animation as well.)
You don't have any character stuff on your portfolio, so I would suggest you do something that is done properly and done well before you even worry about how many triangles it has. If it looks cool, you have a great normal map, and it's actually rigged / posed - you win.
P.S. Please don't post images larger than 1,000 x 1,000 next time around....if you really wanna do larger images, give us a link
PhotoBucket
Again I don't know if this is a high poly model or the low poly. I'm gonna guess its the low by the obvious mesh errors and weird smoothing.
The boosters for example look really soft and not metal or hard. Plus the seams don't line up and your uvs are shifted.
Huge seam going down the center of the model in the back. Really stands out.
Can we see your high poly model?
Don't do any fancy colored lighting or any of that.
Just drop him down on a large plane so he looks grounded. Drop in a skylight and set to light tracer, catmul rom, etc, etc.
There is a lot of stuff on this that really could be bad ass but right now it just looks blah....
yeh i see em jesse, im fixing them bad seams up
also, what do u think of the camo, looks ok? or looks horrible?
wireFrame
texture 1K x 1K only the body though
I like the brighter light setup, but don't forget some sort of fill light so we can see the underside of stuff.
Pure blacks = bad.
It's going to be a lot easier selling whatever material / paint job you are going for if you can narrow down the base shader stuff first. Make that metal look like metal. Make the rust, damage, dirt, etc. look like its supposed to, THEN worry about doing decal / paintover work.
Even if this beast was just plain generic metal and your shader actually looked correct and damaged, it would look pretty badass. Rust and mud and bulletholes...all that sorta stuff is gonna need normal and spec info if it is going to look right.
Just focus on some flat colors for now and work on the shader. Spec / normal is a lot more than the last 5 minutes of your texturing with a halfass filter / desaturate and calling it a day.
P.S. No overlaying in your UV's?
umm, no i am not overlaying anything on the UVs
and as for the spec and all that, yeh, im controlling it i did a couple of test renders with all of that, i generated them using crazyBump, here is a couple of posts for the look of it, again this only a rough, u will be able to see that i also normal mapped the decals & the camo spots, (i know that is a no no because it makes it look like it is carved in there with the bod
but anyways, here, checkit out
here is the reference
top view wireframe hiPOLY
smooth back view hiPOLY
2nd one
3rd one
While there are good "parts" of the high poly I would say that model isn't really great to make a normal map from. Your high poly looks soft and mushy and has some sharp edges and some soft. It doesn't seem consistent.
It really needs a lot of work before I would move on to the low poly.
BUT then again thats just my opinion.
and yeah, looking at the hiPoly, i have to agree, cause there are some parts that don't pop out as much as i wanted them to like you said, i will have to go back and basically reDo the hiPoly again. at this point though i have to move on, GDC is right around the corner. i fly out this tuesday!
Just float / isolate whatever it is you want to improve and then project that into a new normal map, then go into Photoshop and use an Overlay and put it over your old normal map.
Crazybump might be a good start for your spec maps, but if it is a pure black and white or grays you are going to need to adjust it.
Can you post your spec / normal flats?
hah, when i was working during the hiPoly part, i knew i was doing something wrong, inever worked on something this big tha t much attention, anyways, here ya goO
spec level
Also that spec map isn't going to help this at all. It's just a shade of black and gray. Really not good at all sir.
I would say start back on the high poly and show us that and get that to a really nice level and then do the low poly.
souunds good
For the VERY basic 2 second spec map, just desaturate your color, play with the levels and adjust the whites up a little higher and your darks a little lower. This isn't really an accurate spec map, but its the fastest and easiest and will look a lot better than what you have now.
Right now you have so much gray and black that you won't really get ANY sort of specularity, and you should be seeing a LOT of it on corners, edges, etc. Do a few scratch layers on your spec as well instead of the color map and those will pop out a bit too.
There are LOTS of tutorials on achieving accurate colors for your specularity, and as I said earlier it's usually a LOT more than just slapping something down, but if you want something quick and easy just to see where it's going - try that.
Also of note, if you are baking your AO into your color, you also should bake it into your spec, and then don't use a skylight for rendering...use a normal 3-point light. Skylights kill spec / normal maps if that's the only lighting solution you are using.
if i see you guys there, awesome! drinkin on!
if not, then o well, i will post the finished version of as soon as i can, right now i need some sleep, im tiiired, but jesse, i do want restart on the hipoly again, and this time, do it piece by piece like you guys said, and the first way i shoulda done it
but o well, live and learn right, so now i will see you guys maybe online again, or whenever i come back
peace!
PS oh yeah, thanks don for the insight, freakin awesome, i did it, i will post the updated spec ass soon as i can, as for now, i am running out of time, and i need to get some sleep, my flight is at 7 in the morning
ok there we go, this is what i took to gdc with my portfolio
i got ripped apart on it more or less. just like you guys have been tellling me all along
really glad with the crits i been receiving, because its all been dead on the same with what i been hearing from both sides
so, right now i am debating i f i will either go back and rework the hiPoly piece by pice on this moofo, or just move on to something else
what do u guys think?
Need to see your spec, color maps, high res, etc. with whatever changes you have made to get you here. It's hard for us to figure out where the issues specifically are.
I can tell you some problems though, but you probably already heard it at GDC from people.
At the absolute base of the problem is that we have absolutely no idea what this guy is made of other than "brown". The metal simply does not look like metal. It looks like you tried to hand paint it and started by slapping down a bunch of colors and gave your specular an afterthought when you were done.
Your texture resolution is relatively dodgy, especially around the legs. This is something you will start realizing when you don't overlay UV's. If it looks a little stretched after your max render, it's gonna REALLY looked stretched on a 50" 1080p resolution screen.
This concept is really far fetched and unless you are familiar with it, the first thing you want to do is start ripping on the complete mess that it is. None of the weapons or accessories make much sense at all, and apparently you actually walk AND land ON the thrusters.
I could go on, but I think it's all been said. I would consider this "lesson learned" and move on to something more simplistic. Get a few things that you can bust out quickly and done WELL instead of something as challenging as this beast.
im confident i will kill the next project