STC #20 - July 20 - July 27 - RTS Defensive Turret

[Bobbeh]

Well I thought I was going to be able to do this in 90 min. =[ The bake is halfway done and I've only got 40 min left.

[Bobbeh]

Ok so I went a liiiiittle over the time limit. This is my first competition so I get a 'get out of jail free' card right?

Workflow =

- Model some HP details for baking
- Bake
- Fiddle with UV's because Mental Ray sucks
- Bake
- Frantically texture because I'm running out of time already
- Bring mesh into unreal and throw some lights in
- Printscreen

The goods....

[skullv]

I started from metal base texture then added camouflage layer then dirt and rust ,due to lack of time i didn't given time on spec bcoz it could much better and then normal in PS.Time = 90 mins

[DrLenny]

Well first I gather some metal like textures and mix it with some hand painted metal. I wanted the bottom base to be different from turret area/top area. The bottom section was kind of accident as it wasn't what I plan but I like how it turn out. The top part I was a bit stump on how I wanted to look but its ok. Added some color to give a look of being in a rts. I then apply an AO map and tweak it a bit since it didn't come out looking nice. Then I made the specular and tweak it a bit.

[X-Convict]

Gekko: Thanks dude

Bobbeh: Looking good, close 7 minutes away from target time though.. I would have just stopped at 90 and shown what you had because it looks nice. I like the sandbag idea you put in, it gives it a better sense of scale and it makes me think that the turret as a whole is huge. You lose the bolt details though because I think the color and intensity is too similar to the rest of the texture, I would have brightened or darkened those type of details to let it stand out more in comparison to the rest of the model. There also seems to be a lot of contrast in your diffuse texture where parts go to black, which i guess is questionable but possibly acceptable in cases. I wouldn't let any big space go directly to black in your diffuse because the lighting should be playing that role, you won't be able to get nice shadows across areas that already go to black, but I can understand if lighting was already pre-determined and you painted that in to exaggerate it it's all good.

Just my thoughts, but overall, good job though

Dr Lenny: Nice texture work! I like your grime and base detail. The texture looks pretty bland other than that though, don't forget about the smaller details, bolts, screws, holes, indents, panels, seams, decorative elements, controls, scars, etc. What theme of game is it in? Who does it belong to? Why is it there? Is it functional? etc. If you're ever stuck on ideas just think about the objects placement in a game and its function, there's a lot of little things that can be added to really bring this piece alive. I like what you have I just feel like it could have been pushed a bit farther and could have been really badass. Hope some of that helps.

[Bobbeh]

X-Convict - I've never textured something this quickly before so I guess my brain doesn't know whats more important to do when I actually have a time limit lol. I was already over the time so I didn't get to go back and brighten up the bolts and tweak everything. Can't wait to try the next one though. As far as the blackness goes I tried to tone it down a little, when I'm looking at it in PS it doesn't look that dark. It's been doing that when I save .jpgs out of PS. They get super contrasty and anything close to black gets clamped down really bad =[. I dunno what the deal is, but I'm sure its also all of the things I failed to do as you mentioned. Its just also because of the thing with PS =b.

I live in Houston btw, I see you work for Terminal Reality. Whenever I finish my portfolio that will be one of the many places I apply to.

Anyway thanks for the good crit and the kind words.

-Bobby

[X-Convict]

Bobbeh - That is weird that it's doing that, it's a small thing though so no worries.

Yep, I work for TRI - We've got some exciting new stuff going on after Ghostbusters, so we'll definitely need some more artists. Let me know when you get your portfolio together

[laughing_bun]

ok heres my entry. all 512 maps

TEXTURES

I took about 30 mins creating a lame "high res" version. I basically just meshsmoothed the model and used a script to place bolts around the model. Then i rendered out a lighting map and a normal map from that.

I found a decent base texture then used some custom brushes to add more variation as needed. A good way to get variation is to paint some stuff darker or lighter then find another texture and use the "blend if" option to gather the texture in only specific areas. then i blocked in the stripes and used a grunge brush to eat away at the edges of the paint. i created a quick spec map then reduced the size from 1024 to 512 and sharpened it. And i made a quick second variation since every red team needs a blue team to fight.

[latinmessiah]

"...and used a script to place bolts around the model."

For which program? I use Maya and modeling bolts/rivets is one of the more tedious things to model, at least for me.

[Bobbeh]

LatinMessiah: There is a script for 3ds max called the 'placement tool' it allows you to pick a source object and a distribution object and pretty much 'paint' the distribution object on the mesh. Its gods gift to man for doing bolts and rivets. A little 'brush' comes up and you just point and click, I guess it uses the normal information from the mesh to determine how to orient the distribution object. It works pretty damn good.

P.S. I've seen your portfolio online before. gg.