Apache Attack Helicopter

[JeepRubi]

For the past while, I've been tinkering along on a high poly Apache model. A short time ago, I finally finished the model. I have been making good progress with the low poly, and have just recently started to bake normals.


I thought I'd post where I'm at, and update as I progress through the baking process, and then on to texturing.

Ok, so on to the renders,

High poly:


Low Poly:


As you can see from the screenshots, the low poly is about 16.5k.

Unwrap:



The target resolution is 4096x2048, but I'm rendering all my normals, and painting my maps at double size, so 8192x4096.

[rednaz]

Looks nice , good luck with texturing!

[Polygoblin]

That rotor detail looks SWEET! The high poly could use some paneling, but you are probably going to do that in post right? Is this for the Eat3D contest? It should be! Keep up the good work

[digitalpaintbucket]

Hey Jeeprubi,

The model is looking really good and I think there is allot o strong stuff . Do you think by chance you could post your reference so we could look at it a bit further, and also you may want to use a little bit more space on your uv layout. I see that you could utilize allot more space. I also noticed that your low does have some N-sided faces on it, but that could be fixed by triangulating, or quadrangulating it. Other than that, its looking great and I cant wait to see it textured.

oh and what are you using to create the normal maps?

My Sketch Book

http://www.game-artist.net/forums/sk...portfolio.html

[J25]

Hey looks really good, just wondering what you did first low poly or high poly and also one quick question, whats wrong with having n gons? im new to modelling and looking to pursue it further so thats why im clueless

[digitalpaintbucket]

I have found for deformations in animation with N-sided faces, or 5 sided or more can cause problems with the mesh. Quads, or Tris are the best. Unless you are modeling to smooth then you can use N-Gons because once you smooth the mesh it gets converted to quads anyways.

[Havoc89]

N gons are more of a pain in the ass when it comes to animating organic surfaces like skin. But for a non-organic object like this apache, its completely acceptable.

[JeepRubi]

Yea, panels/rivets are going to be done post bake. I started out modeling them in, and quickly realized that it wasn't worth the time it was taking. I wasn't aware of that contest, wish I had known about it earlier, heh.

I didn't use a single source for references, I have a collection of about 150 pics I collected from all over the internet. I'm sure I could have packed the UV a little better, but I'm amazed I did as well as I have. Not something I'm really worrying about.

The only real n gons are flat surfaces with a single smoothing group, so it's really a non-issue.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm almost done baking the normals, so I'll post a pic when I get there!

[JeepRubi]

Ok, so here we go, normal map baked from the high poly, and a little bit of ambient occlusion extracted as well. Still have to add in panels/rivets to the normal.

[TheChan]

That baked out really nice.