Project Reality Forums

Yeah, oldie pic there Req. You made it for some next generation projects right?

Z, loving the T-Rex. What made you decide to do it?

Yeah, one of the SDK Crysis mods...

Here a PR one..

My models are fail

M1 Garand (sans trigger and trigger guard) with horrifying front aimer
http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/8735 ... 526wx2.jpg
http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/4663 ... 450ng1.jpg

Glock (first model without following a tutorial)
http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/255/ ... 928pv9.jpg
http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/2406 ... 816sd1.jpg

[quote=""'[R-MOD"]Dylan;579360']Yeah, oldie pic there Req. You made it for some next generation projects right?

Z, loving the T-Rex. What made you decide to do it?[/quote]

Well, its a rather long story but I'll try to cut it down.
As a child I loved dinosaurs and my parents said that I could name pretty much any dino they presented me for.
My main inspirations are Jurassic Park (1,2,3) and the King Kong remake. I own all 4 on dvd and I have studied the extra material to detail because I am facinated by these things - which will also be my future job I hope (I'm on a education where I can end up as everything ranging from a progammer to a game developer/designer, special effects (CG) guy, animation ect. you name it) I'm currently not sure what I love the most game design or movie related stuff, but I am sincerely loving both.

Well in lack of better words I felt kind of "empty" with all this modeling (for games) where I cant let the tris rip and let me do the best I could. So I decided on making my own little pet project where I could use pretty much all the techniques I have picked up along the way (a ½ years worth of modeling - my first model is posted here in this section). I wanted sort of a signature project, its a bit hard to explain, something that was done as I wanted it and I could use afterwards for something.

So I wanted to challange myself and I said: make something organic (which I have never done before this), make something you like and wont get tired of = T-rex - whats not to like
And resently I have become even more motivated due to several developments in my education. One of my teachers saw my progress and me and a buddy (who is making a stego saurus) are now preparing to make a animated battle which will be rendered in 3D - 3D - we have a panorama 3D cinema at my university.
During a demo of it we found ourselfs crouching because a branch was slowly moving towards us. Imagine a stegosaurus tail or a giant set of teeth comming at you at attack speed .

Another reason I am doing so much is because I am playing with the idea of starting my own little company that can be hired to do stuff after I've become better ofcause. So a nice project like this to show what I can do is a good selling argument.

The truth is that I have learned a lot sticking to this project, and I can only encourage people to challange them selves.

Sorry for all the talking -_-, it wasnt as short as I had hoped.

[quote="Leo""]My models are fail

M1 Garand (sans trigger and trigger guard) with horrifying front aimer
http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/8735 ... 526wx2.jpg
http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/4663 ... 450ng1.jpg

Glock (first model without following a tutorial)
http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/255/ ... 928pv9.jpg
http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/2406 ... 816sd1.jpg[/quote]

This is quite ok man practice makes perfect. I made some stuff I'm not that proud off. Just keep modeling at it will come - and remember to as for help!

Nice work Z, looking forward to the ingame goodness

Another fun one.. was actually just testing some materials:

[R-CON]Desertfox wrote:Or for Rhino
"Hold on, lads, it's my DesertFox callin'"

Heres a project I've been working on for a while.
Its supposed to be a Unreal Tournament 3 player character.

Head:
http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/7960 ... es2lf6.jpg

Body:

nothing less than pure awesome-ness

No, its cool you actually have reasons for doing it. You should show us the animation when your done, it sounds awesome.

What I really want to learn to improve on is my texturing, and I'm not sure whats holding me back. Im thinking its the way my UVs are, because all I do is make the model, and while attaching put the separate objects on different material maps, and then when I do the unwrapUVWs, I flatten by material IDs. When I do it I get some big pieces, some small pieces, and its so out of place.

Ill just show an example. Thanks Requiem for making me so self conscious about it.

UVS (Orig 1024-scaled 512)


I just dont feel satisfied with it, yet I dont know how to improve.

'[R-MOD wrote:Dylan;580160']No, its cool you actually have reasons for doing it. You should show us the animation when your done, it sounds awesome.

What I really want to learn to improve on is my texturing, and I'm not sure whats holding me back. Im thinking its the way my UVs are, because all I do is make the model, and while attaching put the separate objects on different material maps, and then when I do the unwrapUVWs, I flatten by material IDs. When I do it I get some big pieces, some small pieces, and its so out of place.

Ill just show an example. Thanks Requiem for making me so self conscious about it.

UVS (Orig 1024-scaled 512)


I just dont feel satisfied with it, yet I dont know how to improve.

I think I know what you mean about you not feeling quite satisfied. Requiem's stuff looks very life like and very crisp and clear, but somehow your grenade seems kind of blured (and I think that is why you arent feeling that satisfied).

I am far from a master when it comes to textures, but I can try to give some advice anyway

- requiems stuff looks awesome because there actually is 'texture' over a surface most people would probably make one color. requiem has scratched the hell out of it which ends up giving some variations to a otherwise flat surface.

- about it being "blured" I turn to requiem again, he posted this in another thread which I have used since he posted it: Posting "Work In Progress" (3ds max) - Game Artist Forums look at the render method where it becomes sharper.
Also lights have a very signifigant effect on the render of a model.

Last thing I would recommend is to maybe darken the overall texture and/or adjusting the contrast levels so if there are any differences in shading and marks they would stand out more.

I am told that the alpha layer of a texture controls the shinyness of a object, maybe a VERY slight shine would help.

The model is nice btw, and so is the bumpmapping of the metal!

And about the animation: I'll post something when I like it. But its hard to get 100% right cause I have 40K verts that have to be assigned to 43 bones inside the mesh.
I am working on a dynamic muscle and internal bone system for it. There are products on the marked that can do this, but the plugin has a pricetag similar to 3ds max itself.

You're on the right track bud, for me the biggest jump in my texture quality is when i fully embraced specular & normal maps. Here's something for you to help explain



My diffuse/color is not awesome by any means, actually, none of the maps are awesome by themselves, you need to use all 3 in synergy. Keep at it!

Edit: Also translates ingame.. the spec/bump give it more weight due to the higher feeling of metal:

requiem wrote:You're on the right track bud, for me the biggest jump in my texture quality is when i fully embraced specular & normal maps. Here's something for you to help explain

My diffuse/color is not awesome by any means, actually, none of the maps are awesome by themselves, you need to use all 3 in synergy. Keep at it!

cool, I think I'll do the MP5A4 a bit more scratched inspired by your posts here. After all hamas is using it and I wouldnt bet on it being in prime condition.

EDIT:

btw what do you use to create the metal bumps? salt n' pepper noise? or a extreme contrast of the diffuse?

I do not really know anything about specular or normal maps, so I guess that is my problem. I appreciate the feedback.

[R-MOD]Dylan wrote:I do not really know anything about specular or normal maps, so I guess that is my problem. I appreciate the feedback.

I dont know that much about it either, but I have some video tuts on the subject that I will have to find. I can maybe try explaining it after watching them again, but if someone thats used to working with it could explain it, that would be great.

All of this talk made me wanna show Rexy with bump mapping applied:



still very much WIP, but most of the muscles and bones I wanted to show have been made, but they are very subtle so they dont steal attention. I still need to spend a LOT of time on the feet which I have kept forgetting about, they will be hard to make look good.

EDIT:

I could need some advice. currently I'm tileing a piece of scaled reptile skin I love, but I dont want this all over the mesh, but mostly. I.e. the inner mouth, flesh between jaws, under belly, nails and claws, eye sockets I want to do seperate stuff for, any ideas of how I could do this "easily"?

Forgot what I used, probably noise with the levels adjusted.

Need to learn the maps Dylan, they're very easy to use and too powerful to go without See the Zippo below... the holes or dips next to the holes aren't modeled, this is all normal & spec maps:

you sure do make quality models and textures requiem. What did you do before you started PR?

Right before? Won the America's Army EU Invitationals with my badass team Nothing really, had textured a little here and there. I really haven't done much art stuff, what it really comes down too is forcing yourself into the dauting areas, and after a day or two they really seem alright

Thanks for the kind comments

Edit: In the spirit of this thread... my first model (had to texture it ofcourse ):



Tex map for my friends

Damn, thats some first model mine was this bullet I made from a spline and then lattice and mesh smooth. Took a tut on materials and viola, there was my first model

Well first real/completed model, I did a bunch of stupid chess pieces with the same technique as your describe above, oh the 1337 1a77ice...

requiem wrote:Well first real/completed model, I did a bunch of stupid chess pieces with the same technique as your describe above, oh the 1337 1a77ice...

hehe, I havent really used lattice since that model. After I saw some modeling tutorials I discovered polygon modeling and, well, here I am...
This was my 2nd model that I, eager as I was, thought could be used by the insurgents.