snowmobile - help wanted

[Mindful One]

I didn't realize how the poll would be formatted, so just disregard. I basically want input into what I have going so far.

thanks,
Steve :shrug:

[broli4000]

Well it looks to me that your modeling is solid. But your lighting is basic and your texturing of the details like the headlights and just the paint is way too basic. Try to make the paint have a look of clearcoat on it and the lights may need to be redone as they just look like a photoshop texture thrown onto some polys.

Keep it up though man, it looks good as it is now, but what do i know :)

matt

[psychojohno]

yes change the lights on the front. It doesnt appear like you have a normal or specular map, i would suggest making one. The texture is fine other than the lights if the kind of style you are going for is the project gotham of snowmobile games, shiny clean etc, if not dirty it up maybe add some snow to it!

[Mindful One]

I did spend more time modeling than anything else. I need to get better textures and normal/bump maps. Problem I am having is that I don't know if it is better to generate maps based on high res geometry or if I should go to Zbrush and finish it there.

I also wasn't sure how to pull off a lighted headlight in a game type model. I am trying to keep polys below 8000. Is 8000 polys too high of a count? Plus the track has a ton of detail and I am not sure how to handle that without again adding more polys.

Any tips in those areas would be a huge help.

Thanks,
Steve

[k3yfram3]

Hey Steve!
I think it looks great.
Perhaps some bigger/thicker handles (handlebars) would be in order?
Put a little meat on them sticks!

[misterboogie]

8000 is way too high for a model this size in my opinion. I've worked on huge normal mapped tanks that were the size of a house for the PS3 that are in the 5-6K poly count.

First off is your treads. You don't need to model the teeth on the tread. Most games support UV offset for treads. Here's a trick..make the lowpoly treads thicker, thick enough so that you can normal map the highres tread teeth onto the sides of them.

Your tread support wheels don't need to have anything in the middle. You've got connection hubs modeled in the middle. These can be normal mapped. They're so small and low to the ground that you'll never notice. The mechanical tread assembly can be optimized quite a bit. I see lots of quads that could be merged into tri's.

The last thing are your springs. This is just personal preference. If you get into the 5-6K region I might keep them. Why not just normal map the entire spring assembly onto a cylinder? You would save a ton of poly's. I would optimze these last.

These are just some suggestions that I hope will help. I really like how this model is shaping up. A Snowmobile racing game would be kick butt!!

[Mindful One]

I have outlined in the images the areas that could be fixed/reduced. I just want to make sure my ideas would work before I change it.



Your tread support wheels don't need to have anything in the middle. You've got connection hubs modeled in the middle. These can be normal mapped. They're so small and low to the ground that you'll never notice. The mechanical tread assembly can be optimized quite a bit. I see lots of quads that could be merged into tri's.



I understand the main objective. The only part I don't see is merging some of it to tris?

On the images below I have circled the areas mentioned.

Fix 01: I assume I can make the whole tread mechanical assembly one block, and use the higher res model I have now to make the normal map for it.

Fix 02 and Fix 03: if I do the fix mentioned in Fix 01, then I can get rid of these details. I did not realize I could use normal maps for the cylinders I have connecting the 2 sides of the assembly.

Reduce: the third image shows an area where I know I can delete extra edges. They are only in place now for creation of a smooth proxy model in maya. I was going to delete them after I baked out normal and ambient occlusion maps.


http://www.juriscorp.com/cgtalk/wire02fix01.jpg

http://www.juriscorp.com/cgtalk/wire02fix02.jpg


http://www.juriscorp.com/cgtalk/wire04fix01.jpg

Below I have the smooth proxy versions I want to use to bake out normal maps. If anyone can see any problems with doing so I would like to know.

http://www.juriscorp.com/cgtalk/smooth_proxy01.jpg

http://www.juriscorp.com/cgtalk/smooth_proxy02.jpg
http://www.juriscorp.com/cgtalk/smooth_proxy03.jpg
http://www.juriscorp.com/cgtalk/smooth_proxy04.jpg
http://www.juriscorp.com/cgtalk/smooth_proxy06.jpg

Thanks so much for these tips, this is a huge help.

Steve :buttrock:

[misterboogie]

You're getting the right idea now. Your workflow isn't too different than what we normally do here at work.

Here's how we do it.
1. Concept Art
2. Model low poly
3. Optimize low poly and uv map
4. Model high poly
5. zbrush or mudbox highpoly items that need it
6. bake maps. Ambient and Normal
7 apply normal and ambient to see how everything is looking. Redo parts that look crap. Clean up rendering errors in the normal and ambient occlusion map in photoshop.
8. Optimze low poly again. Take another look at your low poly. I can usually find a couple of places I can merge some verts after leaving it and coming back.
9. Paint color map with ambient occlusion map as an overlay. For some reason alot of people don't bake ambient occlusion? It's amazing how much better your model looks with this in your color map. It makes the normals really pop.
10. Get texture maps and model ready for game import. That means remapping the color channels of the normal map for use with dx9 and saving as a .dds file. We also create a specular map and dump that into the alpha channel of our normal map. Of course this all depends on your game engine requirements.

Your low poly for the front of the sled could be much lower. The key is the profile. Try to keep the details in the profile. Eliminate anything that doesn't add to this.

Beveled edges. You don't need a 3 edge bevel, use the minimum 2 edges for a bevel and don't go crazy with these. Only use these on bigger pieces of geom. For pipes you're going to see that are small use 5 sided cylinders. On ones that you won't see alot use 4 or 3 edges. Think about where the players eye will be most of the time.

Remember what I said about the treads? There isn't an update on these yet. I would get these normal mapped first. Why? They're a good way to test your normal map bake settings and get into the groove.

After you thicken up your low poly treads, lay out the uv's. When you look at these in your uv editor they should look like a verticle rectangle. Scale the uv's for the tread until the edges touch the left and right borders of your 0-1 uv space in your editor. Your uv's should look like a verticle rectangle. Duplicate the tread and hide a copy of it.

You only need to uv map the long section on the bottom of your tread, the part touching the ground. Scale the uv's in this section up to fit 0-1 in your uv editor. Delete the polys of the tread that aren't in the uv editor. Take that section and start building the high poly section around it. Remember that it will tile so make sure that your high poly ends will match up when it tiles.

Okay man! Rock on!

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