Pressure Line wrote:nah, we are both just really pissy
Random WIP 2006-2011
Moderators: MR.D, Moderators
@Wolf:
Hey, nice tank there, it really captures the design of both the original and the DoW versions. Two thumbs up.
@Saktoth:
Hmm... that's coming along pretty well, but it feels like it needs more attention to contrast. If you're going to go the anime way, then I'd suggest stronger preshading. If you're going for some realism, then it's time to start adding specific wear and tear, and to also use some higher contrast levels, like inset bevels and the like, to break it up.
@PL:
If it's going to be a big building, with that high of a polycount, more attention should be spent on the textures, which feel like simple fills, without any attempt to develop greebles. Even if you greeble by grabbing details from other textures, it's a step up from a randomly-tiled texture, in terms of feel. It's not a bad model overall, but I think that it's being defeated by the skin.
The skin has to carry most of the story, PL. Most newbie modelers fall into the trap of using geometry when the skin should tell the story. With an object this simple, you should really take the occasion to spend time on the skin- I'd honestly suggest filling all areas in with solid color, then starting from there, using your paint software to put greebles on. It's the key thing you're not getting yet, and it's holding you back. Once you solve that problem, you're fine.
@Keithus:
Very nice WIP thus far. Needs detailing out, with a lot more liberal use of brown, to match the tones of the rest of the work.
@Smoth:
Arguing with modeling nubs about polycount, when we know that they will eventually improve once they've learned that the skin is the main thing, is fairly fruitless
Hey, nice tank there, it really captures the design of both the original and the DoW versions. Two thumbs up.
@Saktoth:
Hmm... that's coming along pretty well, but it feels like it needs more attention to contrast. If you're going to go the anime way, then I'd suggest stronger preshading. If you're going for some realism, then it's time to start adding specific wear and tear, and to also use some higher contrast levels, like inset bevels and the like, to break it up.
@PL:
If it's going to be a big building, with that high of a polycount, more attention should be spent on the textures, which feel like simple fills, without any attempt to develop greebles. Even if you greeble by grabbing details from other textures, it's a step up from a randomly-tiled texture, in terms of feel. It's not a bad model overall, but I think that it's being defeated by the skin.
The skin has to carry most of the story, PL. Most newbie modelers fall into the trap of using geometry when the skin should tell the story. With an object this simple, you should really take the occasion to spend time on the skin- I'd honestly suggest filling all areas in with solid color, then starting from there, using your paint software to put greebles on. It's the key thing you're not getting yet, and it's holding you back. Once you solve that problem, you're fine.
@Keithus:
Very nice WIP thus far. Needs detailing out, with a lot more liberal use of brown, to match the tones of the rest of the work.
@Smoth:
Arguing with modeling nubs about polycount, when we know that they will eventually improve once they've learned that the skin is the main thing, is fairly fruitless
-
LathanStanley
- Posts: 1429
- Joined: 20 Jun 2005, 05:16
If something glows like that pressureline its because its bright so sticking a darker colour in for contrast in the glowing bit is not a very good idea.
The yellow on there doesnt look bright, it looks dim and dingy.
More so its a colour that can be found in the MS Paint colour palette, a default colour, a huge no no. Theres no subtlety to it, no shade of yellow, just bright yellow, the sort you'd find in illuminous cheap yellow paint. Those sorts of colours can take very good artwork and cheapen them so they look like something made for a DOS game cinematic.
The yellow colour doesnt compliment the other texture very well either. I would suggest using a more blueish colour and making the storage part a lot brighter, so its mostly white in the mdidle parts with a tinge of blue/violet/indigo. I would then give it a hefty dose of glowmap and perhaps add thin curved bars going across the sides on the texture to break it up some more as detail.
The yellow on there doesnt look bright, it looks dim and dingy.
More so its a colour that can be found in the MS Paint colour palette, a default colour, a huge no no. Theres no subtlety to it, no shade of yellow, just bright yellow, the sort you'd find in illuminous cheap yellow paint. Those sorts of colours can take very good artwork and cheapen them so they look like something made for a DOS game cinematic.
The yellow colour doesnt compliment the other texture very well either. I would suggest using a more blueish colour and making the storage part a lot brighter, so its mostly white in the mdidle parts with a tinge of blue/violet/indigo. I would then give it a hefty dose of glowmap and perhaps add thin curved bars going across the sides on the texture to break it up some more as detail.
Not going the anime way, but i am of the opinion that preshading is very important, especially for distance impact, otherwise the unit tends to look muddy. Still, it already has way more preshading than most of smoths models so im not that sure how i could amp it up much more.Hmm... that's coming along pretty well, but it feels like it needs more attention to contrast. If you're going to go the anime way, then I'd suggest stronger preshading. If you're going for some realism, then it's time to start adding specific wear and tear, and to also use some higher contrast levels, like inset bevels and the like, to break it up.
It also has way more preshading than the skins for your latest mod argh, though much less dirt and interest. Tips on how to get that look or something similar are appreciated, its very sexy. I am experienced in 2d, but i havent really done much texture work. So i really want some tips on the texturing.
The geometry, if anyone wants to critique that, 1136 tris:
Last edited by Saktoth on 30 Aug 2007, 22:10, edited 1 time in total.
-
SwiftSpear
- Classic Community Lead
- Posts: 7287
- Joined: 12 Aug 2005, 09:29
Whoever taught you about color dynamics lied. PL's color choices are ok... kindof... The problem is mostly that he's not really texturing, he's just applying textured colors in giant fields. There is very little attempt at any shading, material replication, lighting... it's just two color fields with splotches.AF wrote:More so its a colour that can be found in the MS Paint colour palette, a default colour, a huge no no. Theres no subtlety to it, no shade of yellow, just bright yellow, the sort you'd find in illuminous cheap yellow paint. Those sorts of colours can take very good artwork and cheapen them so they look like something made for a DOS game cinematic.
Trying to avoid "microsoft paint" colors is a REALLY REALLY bad idea. Mircosoft paint uses most of the primary colors, and primary colors are generally colors that are good to use to create dynamic and interesting imagery. I wouldn't paint a house in them... but they make really cool artwork elements when properly complimented.
-
LathanStanley
- Posts: 1429
- Joined: 20 Jun 2005, 05:16
@AF: His color choices would be fine, if he was skinning it so that it felt like a light. The problem therefore is how to make it feel like a lightsource, instead of just a yellow thing.
Now, if it's just supposed to be yellow paint... there's a problem. Yellow paint, IRL, generally turns brownish with staining (in fact, most things do, because what's staining things? Dirt, mostly.). Yellow also tends to bleach out, leaving it with dappled colors of yellow, yellow-white, and brown-yellows.
If it's a light, however, then it needs specific treatment, as a light source. There are two main ways to accomplish that (and Wolf's quickie is a good demonstration):
1. Use some yellow at the edges of the gray, metallic parts, using the airbrush, to convey the sense that some of the glowing yellow light is reflecting off of the metal. That's a very effective technique, and I use it constantly, when trying to convey light. It's not terribly hard- just examine your map and see where the yellow light should go. Then airbrush, using the slowest setting you can stand (I use a flow of 3%, myself) and a fairly wide brush, so that you don't end up with stippling.
2. The light itself needs to have form. Lights that are in containers have effects on the containers- what we're seeing the light come "through" in this case, since we don't yet have transparency to play with, not that it changes a lot. So, a suggestion of the source inside the form is appropriate. I'd use a lighter shade of yellow, close to white, and gently airbrush a shape on a new layer over one of the four faces (or all of them, if he mirrored well), and on the top as well. Then blend back inwards a bit with the pure yellow.
@Saktoth:
I think you're misunderstanding what we mean by "preshading" a bit. Basically, what I see you doing is creating definition of the facets, by making them lighter. That's cool, and it can bring some life to the model, but preshading isn't the same thing. Basically, preshading means that we're imagining light, coming down from above, and then creating, on the texture, the places that are in shadow. Go take a look at the Sniper Mandroid again. You will see, for example, that there's a faint but noticeable shadow underneath the "chin" on the "chest". I'm not using a raytracer- that's painted on
Preshading can help define your geometry a lot further than merely adding detail alone. It's kind've tricky at first, but well worth it. Generally speaking, for preshading, I either use a very dark version of the color I'm working with, or just plain black, and just as with light, I use a big brush and a very slow setting (if you keep your textures on a seperate layer, like I do, then you can use the Magic Wand to just work on one area at a time, so that you don't screw up the piece by accident).
As for adding interest, grime, and other little bits... well, you've greebled the model somewhat, but it needs more, to really get where it needs to go. It still feels very purple all over- it needs some panel lines, if nothing else. Panel lines, even on irregular surfaces, are easy. Just take whatever you're working on, use Magic Wand to select it, and make a copy of it. Then fill the lower version with a dark texture (NOT TRUE BLACK). Then just use the erasor on a very small scale to cut panel lines, and if you want to add more interest, apply a very small (2-3 pixels, tops) bevel, with a light amount of white / black, not the Photoshop defaults, which are generally-speaking too shiny.
Now, for adding dirt, rust, and other forms of wear... firstly, Pattern Stamp is your best friend. Get some big, tiling textures of rusty metals and dirt (they're available all over the Internet, but I use a lot of textures from Berneyboy, who made a fabulous collection of really good tiling stuff available for free, including some excellent metals).
Use the rust, dirt, etc., with Pattern Stamp to add dirt. This part, for me, is really easy, but if you're not used to detailing stuff, you need, really need, to go look at photographic references of real-world war equipment, and what modelers do.
For a flat-out EXCELLENT reference source on how to do weathering and staining correctly, go here, and study this man's work. He humbles me, frankly. Anybody who wants to know how to emulate wear should study his work, and I but make pale copies. It doesn't matter, that he's doing that with chalks and inks- the concepts are all the same.
Dirt and gunk is a factor of these things, on machinery, imho:
1. Dirt due to dirt being thrown onto the vehicle by its motion. This is a unique pattern of dirt, unique to the type of vehicle and the type of motion. Tanks, IRL, get very, very dirty- they fling clods everywhere, when they move at speed, and they get dirt anywhere the tracks can fling it- mainly on the sides, but also on the rear, and the front gets dirty from tanks in front of it.
A walker would have a very distinctively different set of dirt- mainly, big splashes going up the feet and lower legs. I usually take care to make the feet of mecha extra grungy as a result, although I like a patina of grunge everywhere, because it adds interest.
2. Dirt smeared by rapid motion. Aircraft have unique patterns of dirt, due to their higher speeds. Any areas that are dirty, usually due to either exhausts, gunfire, or lubricants, will show streaks that fade along the surface, perpendicular to the axis of travel.
3. Oil / Lubricant / Etc. This is grunge from a moving, lubricated part. It will generally show some signs of obeying gravity (taking gravity into account is always super-important, btw, it's one of the main things that will keep your grime coherent and instantly realistic to viewers), but it will also show signs of concentration around the part, and may show spotting, if it's prone to spit out droplets on occasion. Generally speaking, I suggest oil staining with airbrush and true black, a small brush and low speed, adding some random dots, and some stain lines following gravity or whatever imaginary geometry I've painted on (never, ever, just follow the MODEL, follow your greebles- they're just as "real" as everything else is).
4. Battle damage. I don't do a lot of this, because it can rapidly become very cheesy-looking. If every tank in your army looks like it just survived WWIII, then your game will look stupid, imo. But if you must do some, study reference shots- depending on the level of armor, battle damage looks very different. For example, with tanks... generally-speaking, either the damage is catastrophic, or it does no real damage at all. You could suggest machine-gun hits, or whatever, on a tank by Pattern-stamping metal over your "paint", then adding some dirt later on, so that it doesn't look odd, and blends gracefully into the paint. If you want craters, etc., there are lots of tutorials that teach about how to do them.
5. Exhaust systems and other sources of grime. Anything with an engine is going to produce exhaust of some sort, somewhere. Vents with dirty edges and bevels / interior shadow can tell people a lot about your design, and help convince them that they're not just looking at a fantasy. Again, take into account gravity, direction of motion, and in the case of exhaust, the fact that most of it goes UP, and therefore the staining should go up, too.
Also, while I'm ranting about random crap, here's a more practical example, showing a lot of this stuff:
Now, this isn't some sexy, giant robot, and in the stock pose, sans animations, etc., it probably looks pretty lame. However! It shows all of the technical techniques I just described, so here ya go.
Note the way that dirt is generally going down, to follow gravity, the stains defined with a few streaks around the moving parts, and the way that the stains from whatever those holes are on the wheels are all going OUT, where centrifugal force would naturally take them. In general, people... your greebles don't have to make a lick of sense, if you're not copying somebody else's design... but if your detailing doesn't take Nature into account, then it will just look random and like lame dabs of dirt.
And see the dark areas, where the corners of the pyramid are? That's preshading. I kept it subtle, and made it work with the dirt, but you can clearly see that I'm playing a trick with light there. And the undercarriage is also considerably darker than the top- again, preshading. It's actually going to be darker than it looks, in this UVMapper shot, once it's in-game, but you get the idea. Preshading is about providing as much information to the human eye about contrast as possible- our eyes actually see mainly by using contrasts to construct form, so always take advantage of that, and don't expect the Spring engine to pick up the slack for you. Many guys, they'll get stuff done to a certain point, stick it in a raytracer, and go, "it'll be fine". No, it won't... because while Spring's renderer is fairly accurate, physically, it's a direction-light, and it will not render subtleties of angle very well.
Here, you can see how I treated this light. It's not a powerful light, so there wasn't any real need to make it feel bright by "lighting" the interior of the hole. I was tempted anyhow, because I actually enjoy doing that part well, but... meh... nobody will ever see it, except here and maybe in a screenshot, it's a waste of time
Now... here... was a good time to do some light correctly:
This is the tail end of the AirFactory, and yes, that's all you get to see, for now However, as you can see, just like the LandFactory, I wanted to give a sense that you're looking at a powerful, sci-fi rocket engine, and at the angle it is at, you will see a sliver of this fairly often, in OTA view, so I felt that it would be appropriate to go ahead and give it a decent treatment. A purist, with nothing but free time and no deadline, would have put more effort into the engines, but as you can see, I just used a very simple repeating dot tile to represent whatever the engines do- in-game, you're probably never going to see that far up the engines, unless you're really, really bored (I was tempted to put a SmothBoob there, but refrained).
At any rate... adding interest is mainly a matter of three things:
1. Good design sensibility in general- using changes in hue and contrast to convey meaning.
2. Being aware of, and respectful of, the wonderful complexity of Nature, and seeking to emulate what happens naturally to machinery being used off-road in violent places.
3. Cheating as much as possible by using the Pattern Stamp and other tricks to save time! It's great, if you don't have anything else to do, to do something very, very slowly by hand. Cool, good for you. But, most of us want things done... y'know... today. So cheat wherever you can get away with it, and save time for the difficult areas where you really want to spend time. For example... unless you really suck at modeling, you can, pretty easily, make high-poly models of whatever super-ridiculously detailed mechanical greebles you want. Render 'em out in a non-perspective view... import into Photoshop... scale... use grime and airbrush to blend in... voila, a super-detailed greeble, but without painstaking, pixel-by-pixel work. I almost never bother to do that, but I've done it a couple of times before, and it's much, much easier to do that. If the exact dimensions matter, most 3D software allows you to import images as a background, so bring your first work with the uvmap, after you've filled all of the model areas, to serve as the guide... keeps things simple. Just cheat, people. Wherever you can. It allows you to spend more time on the important stuff, and if you do it right, it looks as cool as doing it the hard way.
Now, if it's just supposed to be yellow paint... there's a problem. Yellow paint, IRL, generally turns brownish with staining (in fact, most things do, because what's staining things? Dirt, mostly.). Yellow also tends to bleach out, leaving it with dappled colors of yellow, yellow-white, and brown-yellows.
If it's a light, however, then it needs specific treatment, as a light source. There are two main ways to accomplish that (and Wolf's quickie is a good demonstration):
1. Use some yellow at the edges of the gray, metallic parts, using the airbrush, to convey the sense that some of the glowing yellow light is reflecting off of the metal. That's a very effective technique, and I use it constantly, when trying to convey light. It's not terribly hard- just examine your map and see where the yellow light should go. Then airbrush, using the slowest setting you can stand (I use a flow of 3%, myself) and a fairly wide brush, so that you don't end up with stippling.
2. The light itself needs to have form. Lights that are in containers have effects on the containers- what we're seeing the light come "through" in this case, since we don't yet have transparency to play with, not that it changes a lot. So, a suggestion of the source inside the form is appropriate. I'd use a lighter shade of yellow, close to white, and gently airbrush a shape on a new layer over one of the four faces (or all of them, if he mirrored well), and on the top as well. Then blend back inwards a bit with the pure yellow.
@Saktoth:
I think you're misunderstanding what we mean by "preshading" a bit. Basically, what I see you doing is creating definition of the facets, by making them lighter. That's cool, and it can bring some life to the model, but preshading isn't the same thing. Basically, preshading means that we're imagining light, coming down from above, and then creating, on the texture, the places that are in shadow. Go take a look at the Sniper Mandroid again. You will see, for example, that there's a faint but noticeable shadow underneath the "chin" on the "chest". I'm not using a raytracer- that's painted on
Preshading can help define your geometry a lot further than merely adding detail alone. It's kind've tricky at first, but well worth it. Generally speaking, for preshading, I either use a very dark version of the color I'm working with, or just plain black, and just as with light, I use a big brush and a very slow setting (if you keep your textures on a seperate layer, like I do, then you can use the Magic Wand to just work on one area at a time, so that you don't screw up the piece by accident).
As for adding interest, grime, and other little bits... well, you've greebled the model somewhat, but it needs more, to really get where it needs to go. It still feels very purple all over- it needs some panel lines, if nothing else. Panel lines, even on irregular surfaces, are easy. Just take whatever you're working on, use Magic Wand to select it, and make a copy of it. Then fill the lower version with a dark texture (NOT TRUE BLACK). Then just use the erasor on a very small scale to cut panel lines, and if you want to add more interest, apply a very small (2-3 pixels, tops) bevel, with a light amount of white / black, not the Photoshop defaults, which are generally-speaking too shiny.
Now, for adding dirt, rust, and other forms of wear... firstly, Pattern Stamp is your best friend. Get some big, tiling textures of rusty metals and dirt (they're available all over the Internet, but I use a lot of textures from Berneyboy, who made a fabulous collection of really good tiling stuff available for free, including some excellent metals).
Use the rust, dirt, etc., with Pattern Stamp to add dirt. This part, for me, is really easy, but if you're not used to detailing stuff, you need, really need, to go look at photographic references of real-world war equipment, and what modelers do.
For a flat-out EXCELLENT reference source on how to do weathering and staining correctly, go here, and study this man's work. He humbles me, frankly. Anybody who wants to know how to emulate wear should study his work, and I but make pale copies. It doesn't matter, that he's doing that with chalks and inks- the concepts are all the same.
Dirt and gunk is a factor of these things, on machinery, imho:
1. Dirt due to dirt being thrown onto the vehicle by its motion. This is a unique pattern of dirt, unique to the type of vehicle and the type of motion. Tanks, IRL, get very, very dirty- they fling clods everywhere, when they move at speed, and they get dirt anywhere the tracks can fling it- mainly on the sides, but also on the rear, and the front gets dirty from tanks in front of it.
A walker would have a very distinctively different set of dirt- mainly, big splashes going up the feet and lower legs. I usually take care to make the feet of mecha extra grungy as a result, although I like a patina of grunge everywhere, because it adds interest.
2. Dirt smeared by rapid motion. Aircraft have unique patterns of dirt, due to their higher speeds. Any areas that are dirty, usually due to either exhausts, gunfire, or lubricants, will show streaks that fade along the surface, perpendicular to the axis of travel.
3. Oil / Lubricant / Etc. This is grunge from a moving, lubricated part. It will generally show some signs of obeying gravity (taking gravity into account is always super-important, btw, it's one of the main things that will keep your grime coherent and instantly realistic to viewers), but it will also show signs of concentration around the part, and may show spotting, if it's prone to spit out droplets on occasion. Generally speaking, I suggest oil staining with airbrush and true black, a small brush and low speed, adding some random dots, and some stain lines following gravity or whatever imaginary geometry I've painted on (never, ever, just follow the MODEL, follow your greebles- they're just as "real" as everything else is).
4. Battle damage. I don't do a lot of this, because it can rapidly become very cheesy-looking. If every tank in your army looks like it just survived WWIII, then your game will look stupid, imo. But if you must do some, study reference shots- depending on the level of armor, battle damage looks very different. For example, with tanks... generally-speaking, either the damage is catastrophic, or it does no real damage at all. You could suggest machine-gun hits, or whatever, on a tank by Pattern-stamping metal over your "paint", then adding some dirt later on, so that it doesn't look odd, and blends gracefully into the paint. If you want craters, etc., there are lots of tutorials that teach about how to do them.
5. Exhaust systems and other sources of grime. Anything with an engine is going to produce exhaust of some sort, somewhere. Vents with dirty edges and bevels / interior shadow can tell people a lot about your design, and help convince them that they're not just looking at a fantasy. Again, take into account gravity, direction of motion, and in the case of exhaust, the fact that most of it goes UP, and therefore the staining should go up, too.
Also, while I'm ranting about random crap, here's a more practical example, showing a lot of this stuff:
Now, this isn't some sexy, giant robot, and in the stock pose, sans animations, etc., it probably looks pretty lame. However! It shows all of the technical techniques I just described, so here ya go.
Note the way that dirt is generally going down, to follow gravity, the stains defined with a few streaks around the moving parts, and the way that the stains from whatever those holes are on the wheels are all going OUT, where centrifugal force would naturally take them. In general, people... your greebles don't have to make a lick of sense, if you're not copying somebody else's design... but if your detailing doesn't take Nature into account, then it will just look random and like lame dabs of dirt.
And see the dark areas, where the corners of the pyramid are? That's preshading. I kept it subtle, and made it work with the dirt, but you can clearly see that I'm playing a trick with light there. And the undercarriage is also considerably darker than the top- again, preshading. It's actually going to be darker than it looks, in this UVMapper shot, once it's in-game, but you get the idea. Preshading is about providing as much information to the human eye about contrast as possible- our eyes actually see mainly by using contrasts to construct form, so always take advantage of that, and don't expect the Spring engine to pick up the slack for you. Many guys, they'll get stuff done to a certain point, stick it in a raytracer, and go, "it'll be fine". No, it won't... because while Spring's renderer is fairly accurate, physically, it's a direction-light, and it will not render subtleties of angle very well.
Here, you can see how I treated this light. It's not a powerful light, so there wasn't any real need to make it feel bright by "lighting" the interior of the hole. I was tempted anyhow, because I actually enjoy doing that part well, but... meh... nobody will ever see it, except here and maybe in a screenshot, it's a waste of time
Now... here... was a good time to do some light correctly:
This is the tail end of the AirFactory, and yes, that's all you get to see, for now
However, as you can see, just like the LandFactory, I wanted to give a sense that you're looking at a powerful, sci-fi rocket engine, and at the angle it is at, you will see a sliver of this fairly often, in OTA view, so I felt that it would be appropriate to go ahead and give it a decent treatment. A purist, with nothing but free time and no deadline, would have put more effort into the engines, but as you can see, I just used a very simple repeating dot tile to represent whatever the engines do- in-game, you're probably never going to see that far up the engines, unless you're really, really bored (I was tempted to put a SmothBoob there, but refrained).At any rate... adding interest is mainly a matter of three things:
1. Good design sensibility in general- using changes in hue and contrast to convey meaning.
2. Being aware of, and respectful of, the wonderful complexity of Nature, and seeking to emulate what happens naturally to machinery being used off-road in violent places.
3. Cheating as much as possible by using the Pattern Stamp and other tricks to save time! It's great, if you don't have anything else to do, to do something very, very slowly by hand. Cool, good for you. But, most of us want things done... y'know... today. So cheat wherever you can get away with it, and save time for the difficult areas where you really want to spend time. For example... unless you really suck at modeling, you can, pretty easily, make high-poly models of whatever super-ridiculously detailed mechanical greebles you want. Render 'em out in a non-perspective view... import into Photoshop... scale... use grime and airbrush to blend in... voila, a super-detailed greeble, but without painstaking, pixel-by-pixel work. I almost never bother to do that, but I've done it a couple of times before, and it's much, much easier to do that. If the exact dimensions matter, most 3D software allows you to import images as a background, so bring your first work with the uvmap, after you've filled all of the model areas, to serve as the guide... keeps things simple. Just cheat, people. Wherever you can. It allows you to spend more time on the important stuff, and if you do it right, it looks as cool as doing it the hard way.
I used some 'facet definition', mostly as highlights (though i was slightly indiscriminate about it and didnt respect lightsources verymuch). I thought it looked better on the legs, which are more angular than the top portion (Though the absence on it on the top portion does create some disparity).
However, there is also significant preshading- the bottoms of all the rounded objects, especially the shoulders, and the inside of most objects (Inside of the arms, armpits where the arms cast shadow, etc) are shaded. I am using a seperate layer on overlay for this, painting in black and white, with another layer for the 'highlights' and facet definition, at a higher opacity.
But anyway, thanks for all that, thats interesting. It deffo needs more greebles (Which is really what Pressureline needs, too- areas of detail that are in the texture rather than the geometry). The technique i used for the plating is a layer with a photshop bevel effect, and then just drawing in the outlines of areas i want to put plates on. Its quick and dirty and im not sure its the best technique.
The concept sketch has a fair few more greebles to add.
However, there is also significant preshading- the bottoms of all the rounded objects, especially the shoulders, and the inside of most objects (Inside of the arms, armpits where the arms cast shadow, etc) are shaded. I am using a seperate layer on overlay for this, painting in black and white, with another layer for the 'highlights' and facet definition, at a higher opacity.
But anyway, thanks for all that, thats interesting. It deffo needs more greebles (Which is really what Pressureline needs, too- areas of detail that are in the texture rather than the geometry). The technique i used for the plating is a layer with a photshop bevel effect, and then just drawing in the outlines of areas i want to put plates on. Its quick and dirty and im not sure its the best technique.
The concept sketch has a fair few more greebles to add.
-
Pressure Line
- Posts: 2283
- Joined: 21 May 2007, 02:09
New users have a habit of using the default MS paint colours in blocks, asa result users start to associate it with poor graphics. Indeed any good designer knows that you can use those colours to great effect when used correctly, however its not always the best idea to use them as is.
Outside the PC monitor this tends not to apply in any shape or form, as its a computer specific thing.
Outside the PC monitor this tends not to apply in any shape or form, as its a computer specific thing.
the model is awesome.Saktoth wrote:
Spherebot. Critique encouraged.
the texture needs a lot of work. before doing anything, make sure your smoothing groups are set up right. any hard angles should be split up, whereas the smooth spherical parts should be smooth. use the auto smoothing groups tool and just tweak the value until you get your smooth surfaces smooth and your sharp curves split up.
the texture itself is very flat - there's hardly any contrast to it at all. there's lots of flat colors and gradients...it needs some noise and some little details to break up the big flat solid color surfaces. i also dislike pastel colors on my death robots, but tats just imho. i know that having lighting or specular mapping will help it a whole lot, but really it should look good unlit. that's how you know your texture is awesome when it looks good even being fully lit. when you're done, be sure to throw a specular map on it to show off your smoothing groups, and it'll look sexy.
oh also you should make the texture a bit higher resolution, so do uv unwrap again for higher reso as long as you're doin smoothing groups
Im actually using like an absurdly large texture, its just that the shot is from upspring, which pixelates it badly. Ill size it down when im done but i like to work with a lot of room. So those crazy, spotty, pixelated pixely pixels- thats not what it looks like. This is what it looks like:oh also you should make the texture a bit higher resolution, so do uv unwrap again for higher reso as long as you're doin smoothing groups Cool
Animated using smoths goufb script. Yeah i know the arm goes through the shoulder, the flare shoots the wrong direction, hand looks crap etc. As you can see though, its a stupidly high res texture.
Ill look into the smoothing groups thing. Thanks for all the feedback.
Did that, though in wings not in upspring, though i assume thats all good because its only for texture use.Don't forget about cloning legs and arms.
-
Pressure Line
- Posts: 2283
- Joined: 21 May 2007, 02:09
-
Pressure Line
- Posts: 2283
- Joined: 21 May 2007, 02:09
-
SwiftSpear
- Classic Community Lead
- Posts: 7287
- Joined: 12 Aug 2005, 09:29