Aston Martin DB9
polycounter lvl 16
so, i figure it's time to diversify my folio a bit. im planning to do a few new pieces but for starters this seems like a good test of my abilities, never made a car to current gen standards before.
the plan is to aim for the Gran Turismo 5 polybudget ballpark, around 200,000 tris or so total for the enire thing and less than 2048x texture space spread over a few unique and tiling textures for the interior, badges and whatnot. that's how i understand they spend their budget anyway, if anyone else knows different lemme know. i might make a little bit of under the hood detail too if i can spare the tris when the time rolls around.
heres where im at so far, not much to crit yet but gotta start the thread somewhere!
the plan is to aim for the Gran Turismo 5 polybudget ballpark, around 200,000 tris or so total for the enire thing and less than 2048x texture space spread over a few unique and tiling textures for the interior, badges and whatnot. that's how i understand they spend their budget anyway, if anyone else knows different lemme know. i might make a little bit of under the hood detail too if i can spare the tris when the time rolls around.
heres where im at so far, not much to crit yet but gotta start the thread somewhere!
Replies
xoliul's shader was made for this stuff
right now im wondering how best to do the rear lights, it's a shame i don't have GT5 prologue to check their model out. im also wondering if cutting in the body lines and the holes in the bodywork might be easier once i collapse down the turbosmooth to poly, it'd help edge flow a lot especially in the front bumper area.
ironhawk - im using some prints but they were drawn from photos i think, i used em to block out the shape but its mostly just eyeball work
and the wires. so much edge turning, urrrghhhhh
racer - basically just the same way i handled the exterior but like, inside out. lots and lots of referencing. it's the hardest bit for sure.
and a shot with the brakes/most of the visible interior in place
very nice to see you handle both characters and inorganics really well. A great asset
man that shader sure sexi-ma-fies everything x10
I've been working a lot today on this interior, i wanna get it done before it wears me out. I'm pretty much there now really, there's just a few things left like the speedo area and speakers etc. There are also areas that aren't completely accurate and need some retouching. hopefully all this geo i've gone through the trouble to make will support tiling textures well without the need for unique normalmapping. crits are welcomed
so far the whole thing wheels and all is weighing in at around 170k tris, so i've got 30k to play with for maybe some engine detail, im not sure. there's still quite a few pieces left to cap up around the back so i might use most of em there, time will tell. im sure i can optimise quite a few tris out if i wanted, the brakes calipers especially are perhaps overly polygenerous.
With time permitting i should hopefully be able to get most of the UV's done tomorrow and get texturing this beast. I did a test of a tiling normal with a unique diffuse of just solid colour+AO for the leather and it really allows for super crisp normal detail no matter how close you get, but the solid colour is kinda lacking. It turned me on to the idea of using vertex shading for the 'AO' though, considering how vertex dense everything is. I'm gonna look further into that as i get into texturing.
The entire engine area is scary complex so i saved it for last, and i'm 18k away from my budget now too so it's gonna be tight. I'm overdue for another optimisation/vert tweaking pass though, the wheels will definitely get a lot cut.
but it needs some AA )
zxcman - yeah need to hit up some viewport dof for screengrabs next time, should AA everything nicely too.
napkin - sure. the tricount is sitting at 178,000 right now. hopefully after my next optimisation pass is done and the engine is made is should still be hovering around the same number. Here's some wires for ya. there's a lot that could still be optimised out, especially in the interior and the wheels.
gcmp - the spoke there will be a chamfered edge, anywhere where there'd normally be a smoothing group seam i've gone with a chamfer instead. you're quite right about em looking too round though, there is a supporting loop in the middle of that flat bit to aid the reflections, i'll double that up and push it out to the edges when i next work on the wheels so it's flatter and sharper.
What kind of shader are you using on this guy?
Keep up the good work! Looking foward to seeing the engine.
I admire your patience for creating this sort of tricount by hand. I get distracted and bored too fast when doing this uber hi detail stuff. And big props for the interior, I never liked doing those myself.
gsokol - Afaik gt5 is supposed to use 200k models, but i think that's for in-race. For the showroom versions i'm betting the polycount is higher, it certainly looks it. I heard forza 3 is supposed to use 300k+ tri models too though judging by their new e3 demo the off track showroom cars must use even more, they look totally mindblowing. The shader im using is xoliul's max viewport shader
Xoliul - Thanks dude! It does take a painfully long time to work like this and yeah, i'm definitely finding it easy to get bored. The best and fastest way i've found to do this kind of work is to build things with turbosmooth and just collapse it to poly and delete loops/rings where they are unnecessary. If the mesh is all quads its a lot easier than manually creating the shape with so many small polys, vert tweaking on that kind of scale gets old really quick. The biggest problems arise when i realise i fucked up bigtime and need to change a lot all at once, FFD3x is my new favourite modifier.
thanks blitz!
alec - I could probably get away with chopping some loops from the front end but im reluctant to optimise that area as it's a big focal draw in the front view, i'll cut a few loops and see how it looks. I'd never actually heard of cg-cars forum before so that'll be interesting to check out. Their gameart section looks pretty dead though.
Quick update, i've been and checked out a real car to see how these crazy hinges work and i think i've got it pegged. My knowledge of rigging is severely limited so its just a few lookat controllers and an small amount of manual keyframing, but it gets the job done
Now i understand that i'll need to do the same for the hood and make all that craziness under there. I think i'll do more optimising first though, give myself more room to breathe.
Ericv - Yeah this is all the 'low' poly model. I did use turbosmooth to help me generate the base shape for a lot of objects though.
Pixelmasher - thanks dude
Skillmister - The materials are constantly being tweaked and evolving but i'll post em up once i'm satisfied with the results. Its all just tweaking of the various spinners on xoliul's shader, the shader is doing all the hard work.
premium - thanks!
I started the engine compartment last night and im carrying on with it today. It's not done quite yet but it's getting there. I'll definitely have to take out some of the tris though, right now its pushing me uncomfortably close to the 200k celing and i like to have at least 10-15k to play with.
Post isnt complete without pics so here's a photoshopped one for fun
:poly142:
your professional ethic inspires so much,
deep respect. thanks for making my day with this car!
Forza scans their car models :P
Great work!
zxcman - Yeah the car itself is realtime from max but i did some colour correction post work in photoshop, i also added a touch of noise and a vignette for fun. There's a telltale giveaway that it's a viewport grab that i only just noticed actually, pretty bad. Anyone else spotted it
conte - don't be crazy man! you got mad skills way above my level
pilang - yeah i'm planning to do an enviro for it but i'm not sure yet what direction to take. It's a toss up between either a some kind of high tech looking archvis or a quintessentially english country road or something like that.
Kitteh - do they? that's cheating
EricV - Just manual searching with google im afraid, but its not so bad if you just go looking for specific bits as and when they are needed.
DiscoStu, AlexanderL - thanks dudes!
Right now i'm working on the tire texture, attempting to sort out material defenition and tailoring the textures for xoliul's shader. The threading on the wheels is a bit ugly and only temporary to help set up the tiling. Playing with dust on there as well to see how well it works, crits welcome!
I also finished up the petrol cap, although it's pretty uneccessary for it to open like that and the polys could be used elsewhere. I'll probably end up deleting the inside but it was fun to make.
Materials still need lots of tweaking, i wanna brighten up the whole thing a bit too.