Update: Low poly mesh: Done. (7204 tris)
UV layout: Done.
Basic Rig and vertex painting: Done.

This has got to be the most inefficient UV map I've ever laid out for anything EVER. But I'm this normal mapping thing is new to me, and I figure fewer seams and evenly distributed UV space is a better way to go then optimal use of the texture space, especially since I'm using a 2048x2048 AND a 1024 1024 texture space. [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img] Utterly rediculous... When I started working on games, 512x512 was big and luxurious... This texture space is 20x bigger then my beginning days... Utterly boggles the mind, especially when you consider I'm doing multiple texture passes on this instead of trying to fake everything with a well painted color map.

I've included the UV maps of the body and head, just in case anybody has some brilliant comments about what I'm doing, and how I could be doing better in regard to normal mapping...

Now... The grand experiment... The high rez model... Lessee how this goes.

Oh yes, and totally stoked that we get a 2 week extension... Makes it a lot easier to breathe and possibly pull this sumbitch off.

wow, that looks great. really freakin me out too.. deep sea creatures just make me all creeped out and stuff.. *shudder....

since you have 200 odd polies left you should give it some sort of tongue [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] especially if you plan on leaving the mouth open like that

wow, that turned out great. loving the head.

i agree with snemmy... give him a tongue!

Experimenting with the high poly version... I did one that made this one look real low poly, didn't quite turn out the way I liked though, and I'm not sure how high I can go on the detail before it becomes irrelevant. I'm sure a lot of the detail I was putting on it was smaller then a pixel on a 2048x2048 map.

Cool - looking good LtEthe...the high poly version is looking really freaky - it resembles one of those weird fish you get in the deep sea where no light penetrates - like some mad angler fish or prehistoric creature.

heheh - I said penetrate. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Normal maps pain in my ass... All kinds of little problems are cropping up. It's becoming obvious that this is not an established technology, the pipeline is still in infancy... I love banging my head against this stuff, but the deadline is looking scary.

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Surely you can use the UV space more efficiently than this without adding seams or stretching.

Yes, but I'd have to split things up, and I know both Z brush and Maya tend to give me bad seams where the UV border is split, best way I've been able to find is fudge paint it in Pshop to fix it. But considering it's a normal map, and I'm still shakey at best on this tech, I doubt my abilities to paint a normal map fix having never done it before.

Anywho, if you've got insight into the Normal mapping/Maya/Zbrush pipeline that can alieviate some of my fears and allow me to do a better UV layout, I'm all ears, I've been asking questions everywhere.

Im not so sure he ment for you to cut up the UV's as much as he ment "use" the available space... you could easily scale up some of those UV pieces thus inturn giving your end pieces(ones you scale up) a higher resolution and higher quality. Its all about scaling your section up and arranging them like tetris until you either cannot scale anymore due to overlaping or they would go off map. Its good to keep as many pieces around the same size so the final textures dont look like they were made up of diffrent size textures. Theres also the simple fact that maybe your saving the unused space for parts that are either not modeled or mapped yet, in which case just ignore both our comments [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

nice model, it reminds me of a conga eel that has mated with a dragon and this is the fruits of their passion [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

One thing you might wanna try is putting the head uvs on the main uv map- I know this means that the texel density is gonna be a lot lower than it is now, but it should make the whole texture look more consistent and you are using up all available space [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

GL with the contest [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

You may be right on that one... Especially since I think I can probably maintain the UV's relative size that it is currently even with pushing the UVs all into one map.

Thanks for the input Chris.

do u need to worry about normal mapping in zbrush , surly u just get your high poly model u did there , get you uvwed low poly you made in maya ??? and run it through atis normal mapper ... get the finnished map and epply it , display using the veiwer from ati if nothing else ... im sure this wont be too bad , i really cant wait to see that head with all the details on ...

Hey chunkey , im in Leeds too [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] u work for a games dev team here?

Thermidor: yeah, Rockstar Leeds, formerly Mobius Entertainment [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] thus the sig [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

ehh , maybee i could arrange to come see you guys some time ... would be nice to see wot im getting myself into ... after all , its wot i want to do .... sorry for the off topic

Normal maps, tangental and world space. First pass on the normal maps, it estimated 2 days to generate the normal map. I decided that wasn't worth it for a mere 2048x2048 map, where a lot of my detail is lost already. So this is the second pass with a lot of detail dropped. Interesting stuff, this competition has been very educational. Normal maps no longer the intimidating darkness that it once was, so for that, this contest has been a bonny success already for me.

Took Snemmy's and Sectaurs advice and added a tongue. Re UVed the dude so it all fit on one 2048. Good suggestions on both parts. Thanks for your input.

"Oh he's all bulgy like a moose!"

Looking good man.

love the veins great stuff

Those UVs look so much better [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] awesome work mate [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

One thing I have just noticed and gave me a giggle is, with the veins on the neck, the creature does look rather phallic like... :P

keep the goodness coming [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Normal maps applied in Maya. They don't work if I throw lights in the scene. Go figure, probably something simple, but it's not important to me at this point, so I'll skip it and go straight for the texturing.

This pics really show how critical the UV map is, how critical, and really illustrate how ugly UV resolution disparity within the mesh is.

Wiser heads, feel free to comment/crit.

I'm starting on texturing, suddenly hit a little mental wall. I've done game textures so long, that separating everything into separate maps is actually a mental challenge for me now. So used to painting/baking shadows and highlights, bump and spec all onto one color map, that this feels real weird.

Textures. I'm looking for input to push it... Not sure what to think of it right now. Any advice on the spec? I think that's the best way right now to bring out the extra detail of the normal map, but I dunno.