[WIP] FMK-1 & FMK-3 Mines (PR:F)

[3===SPECTER===3]

Looking good

Although what fixed those errors for you was that you got rid of those supporting edges, even if it was becuse you stopped trying to weld those cylinders together. But yeah, as long as it looks good, dont fix it

Looking at the FMK-3, I think you ought to up the iterations on turbosmooth to 3, I can see individual polys in there.

Yes it took me a while to understand what you meant in your previous post ops: but now I understand the effect that turbo smooth has on flat faces with more edges in them

and yea after playing around with it more last night 3 iterations works best

@rhino, should the rope extrude from the model? (be welded up?) or can I make it as a separate object and then just move it so that the ends of it are inside the model (basically not have to weld it)

[lucky.BOY]

Explaining Turbosmooth for 3Ds MAX - YouTube <- this might help you understand turbosmooth better. I should have posted it sooner, I understand my previous posts may be worded rather badly.

As for the rope, I dont think you need that on the highpoly, You can get some nice edge highlights for the handle if you include it in the highpoly, but normals for the rope will be done by texture artist easily (i assume).

[Rhino]

The rope should be a separate element/object on both the low and high poly models, not welded. For starters no chance of it zfighting since its right angles to the surface its under and the nearest somewhat adjacent face is quite far away to zfight with, with also your going to save no UV space by welding it, and having it a separate element/object that clips into the main mine a little means that it can be animated a little by rotating it at the base if the animator feels he can make that work, as well as making it easy to remove if it needs to be removed later if it looks dumb in the animations.

[3===SPECTER===3]

As for the rope, I dont think you need that on the highpoly, You can get some nice edge highlights for the handle if you include it in the highpoly, but normals for the rope will be done by texture artist easily (i assume).

Hopefully, I plan on doing the UVs and textures myself so I can see this model through from start to finish

And yea I could do the normals for the rope in photoshop by hand but doing them through a model usually comes out cleaner.

[On the other hand, I'm assuming this will have a low texture resolution so it probably won't matter too much if they're not perfect.] Which kind of brings me to this question...

Here I've modeled a high poly rope in 3DsMax:

I feel like baking this would probably give me very good normals and even an AO to use on the rope in the low poly.

I made it in a separate scene tho. The amount of ploys on this rope combined with the amount of polys on the turbo-smoothed high poly model would be too much for 3DsMax to handle in one scene. (I assume ) It'd be something like 200,000 polys altogether.

That's why I'm wondering if it's possible to get normals off of this rope (which is an arbitrary length) and somehow tile them in photoshop and use them for the normals on the low poly FMK models? Or is there even a UV trick I could use to bake something in a separate scene onto the UV's of something in another scene?

Essentially I'd like to use these normals/AO for the low poly rope. So is it worth it to find some way of using them? Or should I just not even bother and do the rope normals in photoshop?

[lucky.BOY]

I have a scene that can have about 17 milion tris (you dont need to hove Turbosmooth turned on on everything, you know, you can turn it off on parts you dont work with). And 3ds max can perform some stuttering from time to time with so many tris, but it will manage, im sure So 200,000, even if in polys, should be managable.

Nice job on that rope, looks really good You can just bake normals off it, save it as a texture somewhere and then apply it to the models normal texture in PS. Or if you want to, i think you could add this to the highpoly scene and then bake it with rest of the model, right onto the lowpoly's UV sheet.

But yeah, wrap this into a cylinder and do your normal and AO bakes, and you will have a nice texture that can you can use anywhere, i suppose.

[CTRifle]

That seems like alot of work for just a rope.. it isnt that hard to make normals for it in PS, especially if the rope is small then you wont even see those details or barely. I would say just make them in PS.

If you need help making them gimme a shout, or texturing if/when you get there

[Rabbit]

Could zbrush work for the rope?

[3===SPECTER===3]

Alright so I gave that rope a try on the actual model:


It looks really good
The only problem is that it's about a million tris when turbo smoothed (not an exaggeration :shock and that's mostly because of the rope

Even not turbo smoothed the rope is always high poly so it's hundreds of thousands of tris.
My fps drops VERY low when I'm just moving the view around the object. If I hide everything else it works ok so maybe that's what I'll do for the time being. (Maybe there are some optimizations I can tweak in 3dsmax settings to make the computer do less work)

In the long run I don't think this will all be worth it other than a learning experience. I'll probably be better off doing the normal in PS since it's gonna be so low resolution anyway. But for a render to show off the model, this works very well.

Edit: to clarify I'm not turbo smoothing the rope at all

[Rhino]

Looks good but your rope shape needs work, its connection points possibly need to be further out a bit from each other and the tube handle is much longer, with a much smaller diameter, and it dinnertimes the rope shape quite a bit.



Other than that looking pretty good although I think you still need some more control edges / chamfers on the corners of the box bit, as the turbo smoothing is make the flat sides more curved than they should be still which lucky pointed out before and while its improved from before, its still very much there.

Also the FMK-3 looks much bigger than it should be to the FMK-1, might want to work on your proportions a bit.

[Doc.Pock]

i would suggest you restart the big mine using this nondestructive workflow utilising support edges, since they are easier to adjust than bevels

[lucky.BOY]

I would just use the rope in the straight form you have above to get normals and AO off it, through baking them into a texture, you can then easily make that texture seamless since it is repeating itself, and use it on any rope you will want.

One more thing, those details around the bottom of the FMK-3 should go inwards judging from the ref , not outwards. Now before you tell me you cant go inwards with a floating geometry, yes you can, because when you bake that onto a flat surface, the renderer is looking from above, and you can use this "trick".

I could make it a little deeper, to make sure those sides register on the normal map, but here you go.




And one last thing, if you are making geometry that will only get baked from above (i.e. lowpoly will be flat below it), you want to make any faces that would be verical on the highpoly with incline, like I have there. 45 degrees work best I heard.

[Rhino]

I would just use the rope in the straight form you have above to get normals and AO off it, through baking them into a texture, you can then easily make that texture seamless since it is repeating itself, and use it on any rope you will want.

Making a new seamless texture for just the rope isn't a good idea, and you can't tile a texture on a bundle mesh in BF2, you would only be able to repeat it though overlapping UVs and cutting up the geom.

Personally what I would recommend is that yes you bake the texture in straight form but onto the corner of the same sheet as the FMK mines, and then when you make your low poly rope you just make it as a spline, but the important bit is you check the "Generate mapping cords" and "Real-world map size" then even with a messed up rope that's all over the place (my example isn't so all over the place mind you) it will still keep some good UVs you can easily UV to the corner you did your baking of your rope texture on in straight form



But ye, even if you decide to try and bake the rope in wavy form, I would still advise you to do make the low poly rope as a spline and have it automatically generate the UVs, as even thou they will need a little cleaning up, it gives a very good base to work off

[3===SPECTER===3]

One more thing, those details around the bottom of the FMK-3 should go inwards judging from the ref , not outwards.

This is the ref I've been using:

Taking a guess I'd say those holes in the bottom of the FMK-3 are for bolts to go into when the mine is not inert, so I modeled them with bolts.

Little update, I fixed the proportions of the FMK-3 to the FMK-1. I think it's much better now. I've also fixed the highlights a bit to make the flatter surfaces flatter (hopefully the screens show it off well)




As for the rope it's just modeled on there right now to get an idea of how big it should be. (the proportions between it and the handle and mines) I haven't deformed it much because like you said it'd be easier to UV/bake it when its straight. I'll work on the deformations with the spline when I do the low poly like Rhino showed

I won't be around for a few days due to real life but until then let me know what you think of the proportions and if I should get to work on the low poly.

and again thanks for the feedback

EDIT: looking at it now the rope is probably too fat I'll change that

[Rhino]

Looking good, other than the rope tweaks the only real thing I've spotted is that the corners are more chamfers than rounded corners?


Other than that its looking good

[lucky.BOY]

Looking good to me

Yeah, you are probably right about those bolts. Can we get a close-up of one of them, please?

Btw what i meant with getting a seamless texture for the rope, i meant that it would be then really easy to put it in photoshop over part of the tetxure sheet that will be used by UVs of the rope, and you could even tile it (in Ps), as its repeating itself anyway.
Why? Seems to me as a faster workflow than playing around with a highpoly rope and trying to deform it so it fits low correctly.

I didnt mean saving it as a separate .dds file and UV only the rope to that, no.

[Rhino]

Btw what i meant with getting a seamless texture for the rope, i meant that it would be then really easy to put it in photoshop over part of the tetxure sheet that will be used by UVs of the rope, and you could even tile it (in Ps), as its repeating itself anyway.
Why? Seems to me as a faster workflow than playing around with a highpoly rope and trying to deform it so it fits low correctly.

I didnt mean saving it as a separate .dds file and UV only the rope to that, no.

Ah ye I see what you mean, but you might as well just use an existing texture to do that like this one
Various0539

[3===SPECTER===3]

Just updated the first post with some eye candy I was messing around with before I left

I'll be back working on this soon guys

[lucky.BOY]

Hm, seeing the render right next to the ref picture, it looks like the fmk 1 is a bit too tall?

[3===SPECTER===3]

Hm, seeing the render right next to the ref picture, it looks like the fmk 1 is a bit too tall?

Yea I noticed that too, I went ahead and fixed it

I'm back and I decided it was time to start on the low poly model
After a day's work:
FMK-3



FMK-1






So far the FMK-3=144 tris
rope=336 tris
handle=64 tris
FMK-1 Base=890 tris
FMK-1 Top=360 tris
Detonator=128 tris

This adds up to a total of 2,078 tris for everything

Idk much but this seems pretty within reason for these 2 weapons for the BF2 engine? Maybe a little high? But that's what I'm asking you guys. do you see any places where I can lose detail? add detail? things that could be optimized or done better? (I'm sure there's a lot)

Another thing, there are no smoothing groups on this right now as I'm having trouble putting them on. For example; I keep getting some strange shading errors between places like the top and sides of the FMK-3 (having them on different smoothing groups or 3 separate smoothing groups and merging the 2 in between) maybe I need to add more edges and round it off a little better? (because the smoothing groups are struggling to average that hard angle at the top of the FMK-3?)

Just wondering if you guys had any tips and tricks I could use with smoothing groups. and anything else you guys could give me some crits on, rope shape etc...

ALSO: should I weld that inset onto the FMK-1 base where the detonator goes in for the low poly?... probably

[Doc.Pock]

Why did you make all those little bumps on the sideof the fmk1?they will lookg good normalmapped so dont bother. And in thet bevel on top of fmk3, get rid of the inside vertex, it adds 2 tris. Except if you need it for rotaition and whatnot