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First Year University Work

polycounter lvl 10
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RashedAlmetrami polycounter lvl 10
I am now at the end of my my first of university. We were assigned to model a highpoly tank which we baked it's details onto a low-poly tank. I now am creating a report and need industry/professional feedback. What do you guys think?

High-Poly

SvQVmvT.jpg
Ah6aH2v.jpg

Maps

DVXzud7.jpg
r3oIuAb.jpg
XWEYty0.jpg

Low-Poly

LwEdvrI.jpg

Current issues I have found is that I havnt scaled my UV's appropriatly to their size on the tank, resulting in pixelling dirt and scratch on the tank.

Thanks!!

Replies

  • Croftyness
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    Croftyness polycounter lvl 11
    First of all congratulations on finishing your project. You've done some nice hard surface modelling.
    Some things that you could improve on for next time.
    Diffuse: I know it's hard to add extra detail onto a tanks diffuse. But you could have investigated adding some camouflage to make it less blocky.
    dL6gE.jpg
    Normal: Your normal maps look fairly clean. When projecting circular objects onto lower geometry you can get "wavey" lines in the normals. It's worth fixing these in photoshop with transform and blur tools.
    Specular: The specular seems underused. Riddling it with scratches and dents would make the tank look more realistic when flickering in the light.
    For example with the 413 sticker/paint. Instead having it at 0 specularity, you could have done the opposite. However have black scratches from aging. This could have been coupled with your diffuse. Also there's no use putting your diffuse (including scratches) onto your specualr. With tanks it's either shiny or it's not so try bump the contrast.
    Rendering: Try avoid rendering onto black backgrounds. At the moment we can't see the tracks. Also check you've added your maps correctly.
    Investigate the picture, It doesn't seem you have your AO or any shading.
    My advise would be to go back and implement the things I said. Not only would it improve your grade. But will give evidence of you applying feedback to your work. Also giving you something to write about in your report.
  • RashedAlmetrami
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    RashedAlmetrami polycounter lvl 10
    Hi Crofyness, Thanks for your detailed feedback, The hand in for everything is Friday, which should give me enough time to sort these issues out in time for a re-render.

    In regards to my specular, could you elaborate a bit? What do you mean by there is no use putting my diffuse onto the specular?

    Do you suggest i play with the Levels and add in additional black scratches?

    I have placed my AO on top of my diffuse within photoshop, should I darken the AO a bit?
  • RashedAlmetrami
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    RashedAlmetrami polycounter lvl 10
    Update

    I have now added in white-grey scratches onto my diffuse, aswell as putting them into my specular and changed their colour values to black. Furthermore I have changed the colour numbers on the side to White.

    How is it looking?

    nUCY4T4.jpg
  • RashedAlmetrami
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    RashedAlmetrami polycounter lvl 10
    Update,

    Applied specular to my material in 3ds max and re-rendered.

    QuqnJDy.jpg

    Edit - adjusted the Specular.

    tzCjhCN.jpg
  • Croftyness
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    Croftyness polycounter lvl 11
    Basically secular scratches work both ways. If you have a painted metal that's been scratched, the subsurface would show. For example if you've ever scratched your bike, the metal layer beneath is exposed.

    Or if metal has a polished or gloss finish. Imperfections in metals would not shine as much.

    Tip. Specular maps and seams can be your no1 enemy. Don't have different values of specularity on each side of the seam as it will show.
    This includes scratches. Keep scratches away from your seams, take advantage of where you have stitched your geometry and place edge scratches there.

    Tip. download xoliul viewport shader and and move an omni light around.


    Scratched_Metal__by_PavStock.jpg
  • Farfarer
    Croftyness wrote: »
    Normal: Your normal maps look fairly clean. When projecting circular objects onto lower geometry you can get "wavey" lines in the normals. It's worth fixing these in photoshop with transform and blur tools.
    I wouldn't recommend that.

    You should be fixing these in your 3D app by using a projection cage for your baking.

    I'd strongly discourage doing stuff like that in Photoshop 'cause it becomes inconsistent. If you need to shuffle your UVs around, you don't want to re-bake it, then have go through and nudge it all back into place. It's a lot of work, it alters the normals and it's not consistently repeatable.

    With a cage, you can edit your UVs as much as you like and be guaranteed a clean bake each time.
  • RashedAlmetrami
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    RashedAlmetrami polycounter lvl 10
    Yeh True, I havn't really touched my Normal maps As I think they are ok as they are. It's mainly this dam specular that get's me. I'm now using the xolioul shader and it works nicely. Will clean up the black scratches around my seams next.
  • Farfarer
    It's a good idea to combine specular maps with gloss maps (sometimes called roughness or specular exponent). Gloss maps define how sharp the specular highlight is - faking how glossy a surface is.

    So dark means it has a very broad highlight and white means it's a very sharp and focused highlight. The shades of grey will blend between those extremes.

    Combined with specular you can define a really nice range of materials.
  • RashedAlmetrami
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    RashedAlmetrami polycounter lvl 10
    Thanks for the fast reply Farfarer.

    After messing about with the specular this is what I have got so far.
    2Gjfy.jpg

    And this is the Specular Map

    2Gjjy.jpg

    Aah I think I know what you are speaking off, Should I edit my specular map to create the gloss maps? and if so, How?

    Thanks again everyone for all the feedback.
  • Farfarer
    Nah, gloss can be pretty flat, kept to broad strokes most of the time - the specular tends to carry the detail and the gloss helps sell it. Unless you want to get properly into it, but fine details in gloss will tend to get a bit overpowered by the specular map anyway.

    The paintwork would be pretty matt, so a dark/mid grey. Then get the scratches that have gone through to the base metal and up their specular value with a brighter gloss to help them shine.

    You can see in the picture Croftyness posted, the scratches are really brightly shiny (high spec) because it's cut through to unoxidised metal, but they're not very glossy because they have a rough surface where it's been scratched (low gloss). Which is why they're so much brighter than the rest of the metal.
  • RashedAlmetrami
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    RashedAlmetrami polycounter lvl 10
    Do I place the black scratches over the Specular Level, or the specular?
  • RashedAlmetrami
  • ghaztehschmexeh
    You should bake an AO map. That'd bring it up a whole level.
  • Lloydyy89
    Pretty good for first-year work, in comparison to the complete crap I made for mine. :)
  • MattSmith
    looks poo rashed ... ahaha maybe im just jealous thats tons better than mine
  • RashedAlmetrami
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    RashedAlmetrami polycounter lvl 10
    Thanks guys! Here are the final images for hand-in.
    iucIsry.jpg
    rVfUsfG.jpg
    wsS77GW.jpg
    6lZdkeT.png
    jjAvHLX.png
    Z9iqiDx.jpg
    daWJo34.jpg
    UHgsRd6.jpg
    eoxtr8S.jpg
    kAAIcLU.jpg
    XqCMEP9.jpg
    Fclmwto.jpg
  • RashedAlmetrami
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    RashedAlmetrami polycounter lvl 10
    Any final critiques would be awesome!!
  • spahr
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    spahr polycounter lvl 8
    One big mistakes I made, and many students make, black shadows....no no. Get some colour in there ;)
  • RashedAlmetrami
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    RashedAlmetrami polycounter lvl 10
    Would that be the ambient occlusion map?
  • Tobbo
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    Tobbo polycounter lvl 11
    It looks like you have a nice high poly model. Are you not baking your high poly onto your low poly model? I can tell the low poly has a normal map applied, but it looks like it's just taking a normal map from the diffuse texture?

    That surface detail is killing the low poly as well. I would be really careful about adding normal map information onto metal. It makes it look like stone instead of metal. It's okay to have some details, etc. but just let it be accomplished in the diffuse and specular maps and not in the normal map. Unless it's a huge dent or something.

    I think your diffuse textures are scaled way too much and is causing the entire texture to have a low resolution.
  • DWalker
    If you want to apply a texture to the normal map for visual interest, I'd suggest zimmerit, the paste Germans used to protect their tanks from magnetic mines. Note that it was applied only to the vertical surfaces, however.
    800px-Zimmerit_Tiger_II_1_Bovington.jpg
  • slosh
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    slosh hero character
    I think the model is fine. I agree the bumpy noise in the normal map is too much. Reduce that. My biggest crit would be the spec. I don't see any highlights popping. The entire tank seems to have the same specularity thus creating no areas of interest. It could be your lighting isn't catching areas nicely as well. Hard to tell. Anyways good luck with finishing! Looks like ur almost done!
  • RashedAlmetrami
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    RashedAlmetrami polycounter lvl 10
    Thanks for the feedback guys! I baked a normal and an ambient occlusion map from my highpoly.

    My specular needs work... definitely, could you highlight any areas that need to pop-out?

    I agree that the normal maps makes the metal look stony, I shall reduce it down.
  • LRoy
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    LRoy polycounter lvl 10
    Modeling is really nice. Textures are killing it.

    Check out this link on spec maps.

    http://www.manufato.com/?p=902
  • RashedAlmetrami
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    RashedAlmetrami polycounter lvl 10
    Will check this out now, thanks LRoy.
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