[Model] Tigercat SAM (PR:F) [WIP]

[lucky.BOY]

Update with some new images, Im pretty close to finishing the lowpoly model, Just some bits and pieces missing, maybe do some more welding. Its about 7500 tris now, can I go any higher?

Here are some pics:












And here some with the highpoly visible, so you see how it fits














Any feedback is appreciated

[Rhino]

Looking awesome as usual!

As for tri count, 7.5k sounds good, but is that including all three missiles or just the one, or no missiles and how much per missile again? For LOD0 you can go a bit above that but ideally with only with details that can easily removed and won't be missed in LOD1 just to give high gfx users something a little extra

Firstly as Tim said before, I think its worth welding those bits to the feet to ensure they don't zfight. Will add a few extra tris but wont upset the smoothing etc.

For this bit here, dunno what to call it but think its part of the generator or something, I think it could be worth adding a central vertex to the middle to give it some more depth if needed and even thou the smoothing is going to be cleaned up by the normals, will help control the smoothing more and it can easily be removed in the lods without being missed either


Other than that I don't think there is anything that I can see that needs improving but can't tell fully how the UVs will work out. What might be an idea would be to do a really quick test bake to ensure its baking ok with just doing a quick automatic UV to the model and seeing how a bake with it turns out. TBH I've never done this before and its going to be full of errors with not much stitching or stitching where there shouldn't be but it should give you a good idea if you need to change the model anywhere to accommodate the HP model better but if you do need to, its much better finding out now with a quick test bake than later after you've spent hrs doing all your UVs just to find out you've got to change a significant part or parts of your model

Also are those little ducts behind the missile little exhaust vents? Haven't noticed them before but if they are we could have the missile flame shoot up out of them when a missile is fired which would be pretty cool

[lucky.BOY]

That tris count was without the rockets, right now with them and with (hopefully) all the welding done, it is at 8 318 tris.



Did all the stuff you pointed out, Ill see how a test bake goes. Yeah, those things on the back are exhaust vents

[Rhino]

Nice looks good. If the missiles are 230tris each still then I take the launcher costs 7,628 tris which sounds good for lod0

Will be interesting to see how the test bake comes out

[lucky.BOY]

Finally managed to do a test bake, that shit is harder than it sounds, especially if 3ds max decides to freeze on you more often than not :/ Anyway this shouldnt be the issue when Im baking for realz, as I only bake from so many highpoly objects, and max seems toh have issue with adding too many highpoly objects at once. Anywho, enough with the talking, lets see pictures:



Tigercat SAM 2 - Imgur

I think it is pretty good, only thing I dont like is on the plates it stands on, that detail that is on highpoly, but not on lowpoly, that wont bake properly, ill have a look into that, adding the detail to lowpoly or removing it from highpoly, or altering it so it bakes better. The issue is, with over 8k tris for just the launcher, can I afford adding more detail to it?

[Tim270]

hmm looks like your green channel needs flipping, or smoothing groups slits or cage is too small as there are lots of errors. Post a flat of the map too maybe?

[Rhino]

Nice work, looking good other than the obvious small errors that shouldn't pop up from a proper UV and bake etc

For the feet bakes, is the cage high enough above the high poly details to capture them on it? To me it looks like its just baking below the HP details?

Keep up the awesome work!

[lucky.BOY]

@Tim270, the errors are expected, its just a test bake, horribly uwrapped, and with horrible cage as well. The cage is certainly too close to the highpoly in some cases, but pushing it too far away would srew up the rest of the normals, so i had to choose something in the middle.

@Rhino, yeah, the bake is missing the highpoly there, but thats mostly because the low and highpoly dont really fit there, which this bake made me realize. See this pic:

[Tim270]

The footplate detail should bake down fine, you might get a bit of distortion on the footpeg things but it should work. If its aweful cage you are getting there then just explode that part imo. Duplicate your finished, game ready mesh with all the uvs overlayed. Then keep one for baking and dont be afraid to explode the shit out of it to beat errors.

I still think it might be worth beefing up some of the edges a bit too, but thats for later. Keep us updated

[Rhino]

Ye I see two possible solutions to that.

1. Bake the top face of the foot separately from the rest and lift its cage really high up above the HP bits, without scaling it up.

2. Razing up the low poly foot to be above the high poly details so it bakes under its top face rather than above it

EDIT: damn ninjas!

[Rhino]

Thought I would texture and export Lucky's Tigercat Missile for him

Refs:
http://i.imgur.com/7WIZaOy.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/zihfHx0.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/47r62b1.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/g3JQ34X.jpg

[lucky.BOY]

Nice!

[lucky.BOY]

Hi, just finished the UVW Unwrap of the model, here are some pictures of the model with checker texture applied and of the UVW space. Next comes packing

Tigeracat Unwrap - Imgur

[Rhino]

Looks good, just gotta pack it now

BTW, when I do my packing in full scale UVs, I add a square plane to the main object and then scale that up to make the borders of the UV box, and then freeze its UV and pack everything into it, then if you need to make the borders bigger or smaller etc unfreeze it and move it. Much better than trying to eyeball it and saves on later stretching or repacking when you come to scale it down. Also just make the square a rectangle if your doing a non-square UV and pack into that, and when your 100% done UVing just scale it down and delete the plane

[lucky.BOY]

Thanks for the tip!

[lucky.BOY]

Here is the packing, tell me what you guys think about it.





(Red is overlapped to save space)

[Rhino]

cool but while I can see this is by no means an easy thing to pack, the packing could be better. My main concern is with what has been packed next to what, which just by looking at the UV itself, I can't see why you have chosen to place some bits which don't fit so well next to each other but on top of that the spacing is not very even with a lot of things pretty close together and lastly you've obviously got that load of unused space in the top right but also unused space all over the map between objects.

BTW is that the underside of the frame UV I can see there which is just as large as the top side of the frame, both in the bottom left of the UV? If so then I would really make the underside UV much smaller than the top since no player is going to be able to be able to get in a good potion to have a good look under it ever, unless that's what they are trying to do. Same goes for other hidden parts but really the underside of the frame is the only real thing on this object iirc.

TBH if this was my UV, I would be tempted to start again from scratch, which I often do btw when my first few packs doesn't work out, sometimes takes me like three attempts to get the basic format right. Save this one as a backup naturally to possibly come back to if you can't find a better one but I would advise with just starting from scratch on the pack, keeping the UVs the same (other than possibly downscaling some hidden parts but that comes later in the pack) and just pack together all the major large components (clumping underside ones etc you plan to scale down into an area outside the main UV on their own, ready to be put into a gap later) and once you've got all the main components in then just start filling the holes with the slightly smaller components, working your way down to the smallest

[Rhino]

BTW Lucky I hope I haven't demotivated you from that last post and if you like I could take a look at starting off the packing for you if you send over the full sized unpacked UVs over (might as well also send over the full sized version of your current pack encase I can't find a better pack setup and best just to fix that one up) and you can't see a better way or don't have the time/energy to redo it I understand

[lucky.BOY]

Well to be frank you did demotivate me, but you just said what I kinda already knew, just didnt realize fully, if you understand. I will try and redo the pack, no need to worry, I just took a bit of a break from it (and played the new Tomb Raider, which isnt bad at all, just too much killing for a adventure game i think). Im going to try again right now, actually

[Psyko]

Its a little off topic but,
A great mapping tool is UVLayout v2 Pro
A lot of industry pros are using it.

Even if you have completed the asset already It might be a cool little adventure to try out UVLayout, i havnt used it properly as modeling isnt my area but I have it on good authority that major games companies and VFX houses have been using it, due to the ability to bring the asset into the program, slice it up into segments and have the sliced parts sitting on an organized shelf for wrapping. it also stretches the verts very quickly.


Looks cool Lucky!