Competition #14 - samfergy

[samfergy]

stag beetle

update coming soon

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2...370_8423_1.jpg

[samfergy]

heres an update, now i gotta make it stand out from the other million stag beetles. the horns are gona be chrome blades by the way.

[requiem2d]

Nice start, think you're using a lot of extra tri's on the joints, bottom loop of the back of the body, top of the head and the part of the leg closest to the body. Optimizing will get you some extra tri's for the military feel.

[samfergy]

hello all

thanks for those comments, really helpful

Ive made some changes and added some fangs



now im a total newbie to this whole modelling/ texturing game. So i have a couple of questions.

do i unwrap my model, then export the unwrapped model image into photoshop to paint the texture?

How do you go about painting a texture, just use references?

I dont have zbrush so will have to use Nvidia normal mapping, will this be ok?

any answers to any of those questions would be much appreciated

thanks all

[Kinrove]

Yes, you unwrap your model with your prefered 3D application.
Then you open your uvs (1024x1024 here for this comp) in an application such as The Gimp or photoshop.

About painting a texture, either I use references either I use fully photoshop, I mean I paint and try to get the effect I want with filters, layers mode and etc...
I'll experiment a lot I think as usual...

About the normal map, I don't know what application you are using but, to get your normal map, you can build a high poly model of your insect and then bake the details to your low poly.

Blender, 3DSMAX, Maya, Xnormals are able to do that, so as you wish
Otherwise, you can get your normal map from your 2D map painted earlier, but in this case

It's better to transform your diffuse as a "heightmap" then generate your normal from it with Nvidia plugin or even Crazybump which isn't free anymore, it's what I read .

Hope I helped you and that's more clear for you

[samfergy]

thanks for that, much appreciated

so im trying to unwrap my mesh

here is an image,



as you can see the body is unwrapped fine with a planar projection, but im unsure of how to do the legs. They need to be flattened, do they?? So far I have just been selecting clusters and giving them different subprojections, but this doesnt seem to work for the legs.

as you can see they are just spread out. I guess I should overlay them so i only have to paint the texture once.

im using xsi by the way, im sorry if my problem is not well explained, its late and im tired.

any further help would be much appreciated

thanks again

[samfergy]

any ideas??

My main problem is how to texture the legs??

[doylle]

Hello,

I don't know the xsi unwrap tools, but i'd try to stay away from plannar mapping for organic stuff. Like the body, it'll look fine in the center of your uv cluster, but near the edges you'll have terrible stretching. If you were using max i'd suggest you use pelt mapping, or just flatten map every face, and then stitch them manually, I'm don't know how xsi's equivalents are named, but i'm sure they're inthere somewhere .

The legs you could try with cilindrical mapping if you're in a hurry, but again, if you want to do it propperly then imo nothing beats pelt or manual stitching

Hope this will help

[mmhnemo]

I'd say grab a leg, unwrap it using box projection and weld the the resulting UVs back together to get a seamless UV set. If nescessary unwrap the leg part for part - not the whole thing at once.

Uving has some unwrap-automatisms depending on the software used but in the end I tend to grab most of the vertices and finetune manually... better results but more work. Big PLUS - that works in every software ^^

[samfergy]

yeh i will try laying it all out and building it up bit by bit. Thanks for the advice.


this may be a tough question seing as no one seems to be using xsi, but do I have to layout each leg individually or is there a way to do them simultaneously.

thanks again