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petrol pump

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ChrisG polycounter lvl 14
Hi all first thread here but lurked around for ages.
This is what I have been working on, would like some advice on the texture before I finish. I havent started the hose really nor the base.
Also painting normals is a royal pain in the arse but im getting there..slowly, the rust is going to be the hardest thing.
17.jpg
tris, 776

c+c greatly appreciated
Chris

p.s. the first two screen shots are taken with a shader from doyle (game-artists forum) and the third default max

Replies

  • mLichy
    So you have a normal map on that? It doesn't seem like there is one. If you are using one, make your highpoly alot more intesting or at least he corners rounder so it transfers to the low poly. Could you show your textures and also wireframe?
  • ChrisG
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    ChrisG polycounter lvl 14
    Sorry for delay in posting, the normals are there but at the moment its only the writing and the nuts and bolts, as I am stupidly hand painting normals.

    I started this project a while back with really not much knowledge of normals, I figured it wouldnt need a high poly and I could just hand paint it dum I know. I want to get it finished so I can move on I hate leaving things half done.

    here are up close shots of the normals working
    18.jpg
    overview.jpg

    chris
  • oobersli
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    oobersli polycounter lvl 17
    bah, u don't need a high poly for this. since this thing doesn't have many extreme shapes or angles, hand painting the normals is fine.

    First off, you need to make sure ya fix the seam on the back. Also, your normal has the "petrol" popping out so you prolly want to work a bit of it in your diffuse *shadows* just a bit to help it look more believable.
  • ChrisG
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    ChrisG polycounter lvl 14
    oobersil: Thanks forgot about blending the stamped out petrol sign into the actual map and ekk! seam! haha will touch that up

    many thanks
    chris
  • EarthQuake
    oobersli wrote: »
    bah, u don't need a high poly for this. since this thing doesn't have many extreme shapes or angles, hand painting the normals is fine.

    Definately do not agree with this, while a highpoly restricted to the shapes this lowpoly has would be a little less than ideal, it would still be a good amount better than this currently. And even better would be a real highres mesh created first, with great shapes and features, and a lowres that matches up with it. For example the hose/nozzle could be done WAY better with a nice highres object there.
  • Jesse Moody
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    Jesse Moody polycounter lvl 17
    Yeah totally gotta agree with EQ on this one. A nice high res mesh to start with would have added a lot of detail to this in the end. Nice panel seams, bolts, better handle, etc.
  • EarthQuake
    I see a lot of comments on here saying "that dosent need normals, its too simple etc etc" and really i think thats pretty bad advice for a couple of reasons.

    1. Its generally just not true, people seem to underestimate what even the simplest highpoly base for a model can add, just the simple, proper geometric shapes, that will add a good deal of depth to your mesh and i find it easier, faster and better quality to do than hand painting bumps.

    2. A lot of the time this advice is given to people just starting out, and in reality not only will making a highres help their asset, it will provide them with very valuable experience. A simple prop like this is just about the *perfect* place to start learning how to do highres stuff, its simple and there isnt much room to get overwhelmed and make mistakes.

    3. People seem to have the misconception that modeling a highres mesh takes forever, no matter how complicated or simple a mesh is, in reality someone with a small amount of experience should be able to create a highres mesh from a prop like this in half a day or less, and from that half a day you save yourself a lot of work trying to create details in photoshop, from the normals map you get to the great shadows you'll get with an ambocc map that is easily rendered. Now you could spend the same amount of time trying to paint all of this in photoshop, but you wont get the same quality, and if you do it will likely take a lot longer to do it that way....

    So what i'm really trying to say is this, do highpoly models as often as you posibly can! The goal is to get to the point where you're comfortable enough with your modeling skills that you dont even have to think about which will take you longer or provide better quality.
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    You're both wrong. Black & white bump maps or bust.
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    well there is two ways of doing this
    either as EQ and others have said by making a high res mesh

    or

    you could save aload of uv space by using repeated sections of texture to increase the texel desity (double i think) but keep the same memory costs, but this woulnt work with high-low poly normals.

    for example the main section of the uv map only needs a front and side not the whole round.
  • ChrisG
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    ChrisG polycounter lvl 14
    wow thanks guys to all your comments, EQ thanks ever so much for your message, when I started this my aim was to create a model in the kind of workflow used today but because I had no experience with high-low poly stuff I thought it was goign to be alot harder than it actully was and so shyed away from it btu I am going to leave this peice and call it done ( will be making it into a scene eventually)
    thanks once again guys

    Shepeiro: I see what you are getting at about repeating part of the sections but I always thought that kind of thing is more commonly done in low poyl stuff and not in more modern methods?
    I guess everything that can save unneeded memory useage is a plus!

    chris
  • ChrisG
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    ChrisG polycounter lvl 14
    as advised I have re-done this model, going for a different style (1930's) and a high poly version this time. I would like to thank StJoris for finding the refs for me, you did a grand job cheers!


    2-1.jpg
    chris
  • EarthQuake
    Yeah there you go, thats looking much better already.
  • Jesse Moody
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    Jesse Moody polycounter lvl 17
    hells yeah... 100x better
  • oobersli
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    oobersli polycounter lvl 17
    see I agree with going high poly on the new version you have. This has much more interesting tid bits. much better mesh to present more interesting detail.

    I usually agree with eq, guess i came off wrong earlier. I just didn't see enough unique tidbits and whatnot to make doing a high poly time effecient. ya the nozzle could have been high poly, but thats all that i could see that would really benefit. But if this is all for learning experience and whatnot, ya then go for high poly. Just seems alot of people learning go high poly just cuzz its the "thing to do" without mixing painting and high poly normal methods.

    Just my 2cents... our economy is shit here.... so its prolly not worth ne thing :)
  • ChrisG
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    ChrisG polycounter lvl 14
    haha, oobersil thanks for your imput I honestly value everyones opinion and I like to try every (well most) methods of modeling, pfht two cents is two cents! well about penny for me if exchange rate is near the same last time I checked, hell a penny is a penny!

    thanks for the comments guys, will be back with an update tommorrow

    chris
  • ChrisG
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    ChrisG polycounter lvl 14
    3-1.jpg
    update, not much but have spent time doing the smoothing groups

    chris.
    p.s. in the middle picture some of it looks slightly off as in not aligned (the indent on the right), but it is just the angle of the shot
  • ChrisG
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    ChrisG polycounter lvl 14
    update time! 4-2.jpg
    pretty mcuh finsihed body,
    hose1.jpg
    wip on the hose, had to use a more recent ref as I couldnt find any good enough old ones

    c+c always wanted

    chris
  • Archanex
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    Archanex polycounter lvl 18
    hey this is looking way better man, on a side note, is this some kind of assignment at some school? I feel like I see a lot of people modeling/texturing gas pumps?
  • ChrisG
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    ChrisG polycounter lvl 14
    nope :), I do my modeling for fun hopefully soon I may have a portfolio but my work isnt good enough yet. I figure as I go to uni next year I should show that i already model so they like me more (maybe I will give them cookies aswell, or muffins?)

    I will have the pump finished by next week and then I can march onto the low poly!
    chris
  • EarthQuake
    4-2.jpg

    Be careful with the size of these small details here, you have to try and keep in mind the size of the texture you'll be using on the final asset here, and if its only 512x512 or so i dont think these little hinge details will really come out at all. A good way to figure this out is by just looking looking at your model, at about 512 pixels tall in the viewport, and anything that you cant make out the details on(if things get real aliased and you have to zoom in too see them, etc) they are too small.
  • IronHawk
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    IronHawk polycounter lvl 10
    looking good man waaay better.

    EQ Thanks for the tip on sorting out details in sub d like that.
  • ChrisG
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    ChrisG polycounter lvl 14
    Hey thanks EQ for the rule of thumb, I was plannning for this to be a protflio peice so I thought the textures could be slightly higher than norm? was going to do 1024x1024
    finsihed on to low poly?
    5-2.jpg
  • Wilex
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    Wilex polycounter lvl 16
    Your high poly looks pretty solid. I would say it’s time to move on to your low poly. Just make sure you maintain your silhouette.

    I was also wondering what "uni" is I see people mention going there a lot. Is this a specific school or is it just a general term for college?
  • carlo_c
    Hi poly looks good, miles better than your original piece. Not much to say other than keep going!

    Wilex, uni is just a short term for university. University is comparable to college at America so yeah pretty much a general term.
  • ChrisG
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    ChrisG polycounter lvl 14
    Wilex,sorry for any confusion!, carlo_c is right, cheers for all the support guys

    Arctura000, you pump is really good man loving the colours, and yer weirdly similar! just one thing, the hose, did you use floating mesh or did you model it all into one? because Im thinking of changing mine as it is a newer kind of hose and Im not sure is it fits in with the era of the pump.
    And I see what you mean about the hoopy thing, will model that up!

    thanks once again
    chris
  • Wilex
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    Wilex polycounter lvl 16
    I'm pretty sure you can get away with floating the hose most game engines don't seem to have a problem with geometry that is floating and not welded all together. It would be kind of odd to have to make the cuts just so the hose could be attached.

    lol i thought "uni" was some school that had a specialized major in 3D art not just a general term for University.
  • Thegodzero
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    Thegodzero polycounter lvl 18
    good rule of thumb for a hipoly is render it at the size you would see it in game normaly and if you cant see the details then they are too small to be rendered well on the normal map.

    As is you have a number of overly small bits on your hipoly that could be scaled up for readability's sake.
  • ChrisG
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    ChrisG polycounter lvl 14
    fin-4.jpg
    pretty much done high poly,
    Archtura, hope you dont mind I kinda took inspiration from your hose for mine :D
    Godzero, thanks for the advice I have scaled up some of the small bits, I will play around with the scale if it comes out dodgey

    chris

    *note*: I have just noticed the cable is abit sqaure in places, so I will go in and fix that up
  • Joao Sapiro
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    Joao Sapiro sublime tool
    you could tweak it a bit in mudbox, and right now alot of those small details will get lost in the normal :(
  • ChrisG
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    ChrisG polycounter lvl 14
    well if I had mudbox I would use it :) but I will see how the normal turns out as it is

    thanks
    chris
  • ChrisG
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    ChrisG polycounter lvl 14
    been ages since I have posted but my normal maps have gone all pete tong,
    oddthings.jpg

    it looks like my normal map has dulplicated in itself, can anyone help? its was all fine in some test baking I was doing
  • ChrisG
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    ChrisG polycounter lvl 14
    can anyone help? I have worked on this for a while and dont really want to stop now because Im stuck, I have tried redoing all the normal map setup in render to texture but still get the same result
  • Armanguy
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    Armanguy polycounter lvl 17
    try reseting the xform. i had a similar problem awhile back and that seemed to help.
  • Ged
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    Ged interpolator
    I had a similar problem to this recently, just scale both your models up (like 10 x bigger) maybe even resize them outside of xnormal then try again, that fixed my problems.
  • oobersli
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    oobersli polycounter lvl 17
    try applying a fresh unused material to both the high poly and low. I dunno why but it helps when I use maxs projection
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