Stormy's 2D/3D Sketch Book

[Stormy]

Hi fokes,

I haven't posted to much work for a wile and i really want to do so more often in the close future. I thought to keep me motivated I would post all of my work and what i'm doing in a "sketch book" thread. This is something i have seen work well on on other forums and I feel its a good way for me to keep track of C+C and my own progress as I try my best to chug work out.

I'm hopfly going to start doing a little drawing again as well so ill chuck those images in as well.

So first off, this is some thing i posted in the "what are you working on?" thread a few weeks back but I have been working on it again over the past few days and am starting to feel it is finished. C+C is welcomed as I want this bad boy looking as good as possible for my portfolio.

The images are a little big so i'll resize if they are a little ott.




Texture size 1024x1024

[bensart]

The first thing that strikes me as off when looking at this is the decision to unwrap such a piece and give a lot of it its own texture space. There isn't a lot of unique detailing in the texture to suggest a complete unwrap was necessary. This is compounded by the fact that this is only a small section of what I assume to be a larger city wall. Personally I think tiling textures would suit this type of work better.

The scale of the texture looks a little off. This can be seen in the second render to the left. The vertical planks should (imo) all be similar in size and shape to that seen on the tower piece. By unwrapping it ang giving a large majority of it its own texture space you have also sacrificed texture definition. In a lot of places the texture is looking blurred. This may be resolved by sharpening the diffuse. If you want to keep a unique unwrap you need to have more justification for it. Scuff up the corners of walls, add damage, both man implemented (attacks on the building) and natural causes (areas of damp, weeds, etc).

Your going to need to do some work around those arrow slits to make them look more 3D. Im sure you can texture simulated ledges on the diffuse. Covering it with a black slit just looks a bit odd.

One last thing I would like to mention for now is the fact that your rope doesnt look 3D. More work is needed to help it project out from the wood. Highlights on the upper surface and shadows underneath the rope would help this. You may also wish to add scuff marks on the wood where the rope has been wearing it down. Hope this helps.

[BloodRobot]

I agree with everything bensart said. He has given you several good ideas to make your project better. I would also add that the first thing that struck me was the scaling. The door is waaaaayyy to small for the surrounding wood pieces. I would strongly recommend that you scale down those wood pieces. A good idea is to have a "scaley" model of a human figure in your scene when creating models like this. I really like the texture map though, it has nice detail. I think you can get away with a little more geometry as if this was in a game the player would be close up to this fortress, and added geometry would really help. Look forward to seeing the final model!!!!!

[Stormy]

I have gone through and had a little fiddle with the scale on some of the areas where there where problems and its looking better now

I have just finished the skin for my Glock Tutorials and I thought i would throw it up here.

There are a few renders here, I need to upload one more tutorial and after that they should be free for download!

[BloodRobot]

Very Nice. The texture looks great. Could you post a wireframe and the poly count please. Its hard to give a real crit when the damn thing looks so good but I cant see how you made it! (Thats supposed to be a compliment.) Anyhow good work.

[Pankake]

Although it is nice, I have some critique .

It seems like you were torn with the options of painting diffuse lighting or not with the texture :P - some areas have very strong highlighting, while others are left up to the engine or with minimal highlights and shades, pick one!

The grain on the frame doesn't look too hot, a bit noise-like, a cool thing to do is make a bump map for it, nice and small and tight and render that to the texture, so it seems more realistic and cool .

The frame has metal-like scratching, looks quite odd. As far as I know (I could be wrong but I don't think I am) the Glock frame is made of polymer, so scratched areas should be little parts without the 'grain' of the surface of the Glock - bad explenation, I hope you get what I mean.

The sides of the frame seem to have quite a hard edge running around it, a chamfer or bevel would have helped here but too late for that D:, I guess maybe fight with the smoothing a bit more?

That's it from me, looking forward to the tutorial .

[Stormy]

I totaly agree pan, I have never really textured any plastic like that before, i gave it one quick go and then made a start on the tut. I knew there was something wrong with it and it dosnt quite look right but you have hit the nail on the head.

I reckon i can reduce the scratches and damage real easy on the body as well as it is on its own seperate layer. I'll give it a go to see how it comes out.

[Stormy]

Need to make a few adjustments and things and then going to get on with this compiling tut

The animation has been recorded but not compiled.

[NeoShroomish]

It could just be me but it looks like you've got unwelded verts on the hands, and inverted normals on the gun. Just import the gun smd in to max and then export it again, that will fix the normals.

[Stormy]

I think the problems on the hands are just down to some dodgy smoothing groups which i'm going to try and sort out now. This is really just a test compile if anything, just to see all the problems. The animations are not working to well for some reason but to say the test has showed me the problems and now its time to fix them before i make the final tutorial.