Monado Sword High-Poly WIP - Advice needed! (warning: lots of images)
Hi everyone - I wanted to improve my high poly modelling skills so I started working on a sword from the game Xenoblade Chronicles on Wii as I felt it has a good mix of sharp edges and curved surfaces (reference below).
Progress images:
As you can see, I feel I've pretty much finished with it's construction... but this is where I run into problems. I used edge-extrusion modeling techniques for most of this, which may have been a mistake, but during construction I found it a lot easier to make it this way, as with box-modeling methods I found it hard to get the mesh to transition nicely from rectangular shapes to cylindrical shapes.
However, now when I try to triple-edge loop it for smoothing, the loops are going in lots of random directions I don't want, and causing lots of smoothing/seam errors. I've tried to fix it, but every time I do I just end up creating a lot more tris (there are already several in the model that cause issues with looping as well). I would like to know if there was a better way of constructing this model, and if there's anything I can do to fix it - I'd like to use this to bake normals onto a low-poly version so I want it to be as crisp and smooth as possible.
Sorry for the long wall of text and lots of images.
Progress images:
As you can see, I feel I've pretty much finished with it's construction... but this is where I run into problems. I used edge-extrusion modeling techniques for most of this, which may have been a mistake, but during construction I found it a lot easier to make it this way, as with box-modeling methods I found it hard to get the mesh to transition nicely from rectangular shapes to cylindrical shapes.
However, now when I try to triple-edge loop it for smoothing, the loops are going in lots of random directions I don't want, and causing lots of smoothing/seam errors. I've tried to fix it, but every time I do I just end up creating a lot more tris (there are already several in the model that cause issues with looping as well). I would like to know if there was a better way of constructing this model, and if there's anything I can do to fix it - I'd like to use this to bake normals onto a low-poly version so I want it to be as crisp and smooth as possible.
Sorry for the long wall of text and lots of images.
Replies
Edit:
If it was me, I'd block out a new one by retopo-ing over what youve done so far. There are so many edgeloops there, many of which lack edge flow, that it would take alot longer to go in there and fix it.
I should mention that the model is split up into different sections, I should have made that clear in my original post. Here's an exploded version just to illustrate the seperate pieces.
-Your unsmoothed mesh has way too much detail. You can easily make round curves with a lot less geometry. Turbosmooth/meshsmooth will take care of that. Try to be a bit more minimalistic, it makes editing easier.
-Your edges are also way too tight, this won't bake well.
This might be useful http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/next-gen-weapon-creation-part-1-the-high-poly-model--cg-782
I still think many of the edges might be a bit too sharp, but rather than muck around with it when I'm not really sure, I've gone ahead with creating a lowpoly version I can bake onto, that way, I can fix anything that looks bad on the bake as it happens. Lowpoly is below:
Lowpoly & Highpoly side-by-side:
The lowpoly is currently sitting at 3914 tris. I'm not sure if this is still too high, but I would prefer to keep the edges crisp and smooth if possible, rather than risk it looking like a PS2-era model. If anyone has any suggestions for the model, please feel free to give some advice - I won't be able to work on this for a couple of days now, but when I can work on it again I'll get started on unwrapping it.
This image is probably the best one that demonstrates the issues I'm having. Some parts have baked perfectly (such as the patterns on the inside section of the blade, near the top of this screenshot) but other parts, such as around the cicular part in the middle of the sword are incredibly pixelly. Also, there are these weird black blotches on parts of the mesh, I've circled them below:
And finally, here is my normal map (baked out at 2048x2048 ):
The weird multi-coloured sections of the normal map can be ignored as it's being caused by overlapping geometry and you can never seen under those sections anyway. However, it shows the weird "holes" in the blade parts of the mesh and the pixellated bake on the circular part of the sword and some other areas.
I have a few ideas of what *might* be causing it - either something is wrong with my settings, or like you guys have suggested, it's because the corners are too sharp. I'm guessing it's the latter but I'm interested to know so I can avoid it on future projects. Also I'm not sure what's causing the holes so I'd like some answers there. I'm away from my PC for a few days, so I'll resume work as soon as I can and post more images if I can, including images from Max of the exploded models and the cage.
Also: I'd love some crit on my unwrap as it's always been one of my weakest areas.
"Holes" in the normal map usually occur when the high poly is sticking out outside of your cage when baking.
For the pixelating in UDK, which compression settings are you using? UDK is pretty harsh on the compressing and if I don't remember wrong there is one setting that's prety much "normal map uncompressed" which (ofc) greatly increases the quality.
There was some UV packing discussion just recently in this thread: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2046874#post2046874
And remember to account for edge padding.
Firstly, here's the new normal map:
Here's how it appears in UDK:
Here's the main issue I'm getting: along the symmetry line I'm getting a massive seam along the symmetry line on the normal map. I've tried several ways of getting rid of the seam, from rebaking with different settings, reimporting the normal map with the correct compression settings (thanks to Kimon for reminding me about that, it was on default compression, I've switched it to NormalMap compression now) and reimporting the mesh as a skeletal mesh. So far, nothing's worked. I've tried deleting the symmetry line on the mesh to reduce it's tricount as well (currently sitting at 4,294 tris) but when I remove that line is messes up large chunks of the unwrap, causing even MORE issues.
Image of the symmetry line:
I'm also getting this happening on the inside of the circle. It was originally causing an error that made every tri have different shading, but when I changed the smoothing groups on the mesh, the error changed to all these little lines instead:
Finally, different sections of the model seem to be shaded differently which is.... just weird. Never seen it before. You can probably see it in the screenshots I've posted but here's a higher contrast example:
There's also some distortion in the normal map on the handle so I'll try and fix that now.
Anyone got any ideas? I'm so absolutely stumped and I'm so close to the end of this project I can taste it!
-Don't use mental ray, but scanline
-Max sometimes likes to bake funky colours when there's a more "fancy" material on it, or a material with opacity, so apply a standard material to your high&low
-If that doesn't solve it, export your low/high as .obj and reimport.
For your xnormal error, apply a "Turn to poly" modifier to your lowpoly, set the max edges to 3 (wich you should do anyway, cages/projection modifier tends to work more nicely with triangles).
and on the .fbx/.obj export make sure it's getting triangulated (to be double safe).
Also, up the padding setting in max to 32 instead of the standard 2 wich you seem to have(or whatever is the highest again), or use something like the xnormal dilation filter before exporting to a game engine.
The seam is greatly reduced too, I don't think I'll be able to get rid of it entirely but at least it's way less noticeable now and only shows up under really harsh lighting angles.
Thanks for the help! I'll move onto texturing now.
Move the parts away fro meach other, then bake and if its fine, then move them back together so you do not get problems with overlapping stuff
Also did you use a cage, and was it big enough ? the black spots look like a too small cage that cut off things.
With the normal map edits, I was kind of stupid and collapsed the turbosmooth layers... really wasn't thinking that day haha. I could've gone back to an earlier iteration but would've had to re-construct some stuff but this project was taking way too long. I will most definitely keep the feedback I've got from here in relation to normal maps in mind on future projects, and I am very grateful for all your help! I definitely agree that some of the areas (mainly the sections the light flows through) are really harsh on the bake, so I'll try to exaggerate anything like this that comes up in future projects.
Shrike, I didn't bake everything in one piece and I did use a projection cage, don't worry
So anyway, I went ahead and textured it and put it into UDK. I'd love some more crit on things I could improve before I consider it fully "finished", but if you have crit for stuff I should keep in mind for my next project, fire away!
The following images are all rendered in UDK:
I'm not sure if the emissive is too blown out, but it was the only way I could figure out how to get that glow/bloom effect.
Yuo have still shading problem on blade and handle, try to fix smooth groups or hard/soft edges, depends on SW you use or fix FXB export setting when you export it to UDK. Normal map in your post number 20, is still bad.