Making Elven Armor

[CGmonkey]

Awesome!!! You are so best Leigh! Nice tutorial! ;P
Remember I want that signed book on Siggraph next year! *grin*

[Equinoxx]

excellent tutorial poppy :thumbsup:

[Raul-Reznek]

The Queen of Poppy land Leigh has done it again! :D

My senciere congrats Leigh, it's great! :D

[steverage]

Beautiful stuff!! Now *I* shall become a texture Jedi master mwahahahaha

[Jhonus]

great stuff leigh, that is *magnificentnessly interesting

*new word # 2

[Erka2]

not bad...

[Mordan]

:buttrock: :airguitar :drool:

... is how I'd feel if I could do that.

[Mazer]

hum strange file names conventions....
"armour_f*****_up_01.lwo" :D

Is this something you use often? I would like a tut about naming conventions also:thumbsup:

[anieves]

man, I tell ya, I wish I had the patience that Leigh has unwrapping a UV texture template. This process shouldn't take so long to do, it interrupts the creative process IMO. I hope this becomes easier to do in the next LW version.

Looks good Leigh!

[stephen2002]

great tutorial :thumbsup:

[TheHellmaster]

Really cool! Thanks Leigh!! :buttrock:

TheHellmaster

[phoenix2k]

omg... wow :D...
thx :)... great tutorial !!! :thumbsup:

[Fitharn]

Woah you decided to put them up! Great stuff :bounce:

[rolhionjs]

I already told you, but yea ! that's a very cool tut ! :applause:

[urgaffel]

No workee :(

[red_oddity]

Looks great...but...Why didn't you use UV Spider Leigh? Seems like it could have been done in less than an hour or so...Or am i missing something here...
Still...the final result was damn well worth the trouble...

[Signal2Noise]

That's very good! I am humbled...

[samartin]

I looked for UV Spider on Flay and it don't exist there ?!?!?! Is this a WIP plugin or someat ???

The 1st time I seen LW Menu's chucked to the right o' the screen, very unique or is it freak ??? ;)

Looking forward to getting around to dealing with UV's at some point in the future... LW is sooo neglected by me at the mo'...

[Hexodam]

what can you do around the goddess except :bowdown:


;)

[Milho]

:buttrock:
[I would comment it but I am busy reading your tutorial over and over again]

[MayaV]

hi

thanx for tut... :) i am a max user but will give it shot

regards

Vivek

[Rabid pitbull]

Excellent tutorial. Great job Leigh! You are truly a inpiration.

:thumbsup:

[AJ]

"I used some photos as a base for this..."

&

"I also used a lot of photos as a base here, using pictures of many different kinds of rusts, in a number of different colours. Blending these all together, and spreading them around..."

What's this!

Could this be Leigh...? The same 'Anti-Photography' Leigh I remember from the Texturing forum those many months ago...? :eek:

Hooray!
:D :p ;)

[Hydra]

fantastic tutorial! awsome, and really really helpful *worship*

:bowdown:

[Maximillion]

Hey,
Nice tutorial, but you still need to work on your texturing. You've got a good grasp of layering together the different aspects of a texture, (bump, spec, color, etc...) but they seem a little... fabricated, and honestly, I dont' know what that armour is supposed to be made of.

You're working too much on the Micro and not enough on the Macro. It's great that parts of it look good when you're right in close, but it gets lost when you see it as a whole. There is also no interaction between the seperate pieces. It looks as if each piece was purposely aged and then worked into armour afterwards. No parts of it stand out from each other, and due to how noisy it is, lots of the small details get lost.

Your UV unwrapping seems clean, which is a great, but you could have got the same visual result with a third the texture space.

I appreciate that you're putting out tutorials, they are time consuming and take you away from your art, but people need to know what you've created are excellent tools for covering the texturing process, but not the final result.

It's on par with what students of mine were producing. So know that it's not BAD, but you've still got a ways to go.

Keep it up!

[Dreamwave]

I love you Leigh!
again extremely helpfull :bounce: :buttrock:

[Blackarts]

Maximilliion, I agree with a lot of what you pointed out.

Leigh here's a quck crit...

I think there is way too much uniformity in the rust...it looks like the entire suit of armor got dipped in rust, rather than naturally eroded over time. I would think the rust would build up around the edges of the armor and sort of eat away from the outside. At first glance the rust looks a lot like leather as well, and doesnt really read that well as rusty metal. The sholder pads are particulary bad. I think breaking up the specularity a bit more would help there. more shiny/scratchy metal bits peeking through the rust would go a long way in selling the look of the armor. Another thing you may want to try is adding some dirt buildup in and around the creases of your model. you have that sort of happening in certain areas, but not enough to really make the peices stand out from eachother. I would like to see lots more grime, especially on parts of the armor not directly exposed to the elements. Basically I am trying to say that you need to respect you geometry first, and base most of your texturing around your geo, and not just creating generic "rusty metal" maps. A lot of your texture decisions don't make a lot of sense....Check out the break on the right side of the armor, where it is split in two. The texture is continous over this area, which is is just plain wrong. Add some dirt, notches, or anyhting to relfect the fact that the armor has actually been broken, and it will look a lot better. Give it some history, and make it look like this elf has been around for 1000's of years and been through some epic battles. Anyways, I think this is a good start, but could really use some tightening up, and bit more "art".

Just my 2 cents.

[Maximillion]

Very good points Blackarts.
Just reminded me of something I used to tell people.
Texturing an object is telling a story. You should be able to look at it and conciously or unconciously see the history behind it, all the little things that happened along the way to make it what it is.
I don't get any of that from the armour, and adding that in will give your work WAY more depth.

[CGmonkey]

Blackarts: This isn't the place to crit the picture, this is the place to critize the tutorial in itself. So post your little crit over to her thread instead! :]

And again, I really like it though.. I'm no pro so I may be misstaken, but it looks authentic in some kinda way and in another it not. :]

[leigh]

Thanks for all the comments/crits - most appreciated! :D

Blackarts - all the things you have mentioned were things I did actually consider :) While I was making it, I first did the intricate placement of rust in logical areas and such, but eventually I covered the majority of it in rust since it is supposed to be a few thousand years old... In fact, this probably isn't even rusty enough, considering that. That is why the metal is also dulled - I did a number of tests with very strong speccy metal showing through in parts, but it always looked a bit crap... :shrug:
So in this particular instance I decided to just go for an all-out rusty mess :D
Although I certainly do agree that there are parts that could be greatly improved ;) I still have a way to go on other parts of the character, so I will be making some changes to the armour at some point in the near future :)
Thanks for the crit!

Maximillion - thanks also to you for your crit. Yeah, I had a lot of problems conveying the actual substance of the armour - the funny thing is, that when I initially started texturing it, I made it leather, and then decided to rather go for metal. Weirdly enough, I could never seem to get rid of that slight leathery look :surprised However, in terms of the entire thing not retaining individual details, as I said above, I was intentionally going for a kinda messy look. The actual maps I used were pretty big, and I was satisfied with the details that I had included. However, I agree that I certainly do have a ways to go - indeed, don't we all? ;)
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts!

[Nath]

Great tutorial!

[strick9]

Cool Tutorial.

Cant wait to check out the book! :thumbsup:

[Maximillion]

CGMonkey,
This IS the place to critique the picture. The end result IS what the tutorial is teaching! You don't go to a chef who barely knows how to cook to become a culinary artist. (I'm not commenting on Leigh's skills there, just making a point)
The tutorial itself is good, it takes you step by step through the process in a coherent way. She's offering up invaluable knowedge there.
We're just saying that the end result doesn't blow us away, and that if you're going to teach people how to do CG, you should be ready for people to critique your stuff.
Intellegently listening to the critiques is very important for anyone wanting to use the tutorials as well.

[heavybones]

Great work on the tutorial Leigh !!

[Maximillion]

Leigh,
Thanks for taking my critiques with a grain of salt! I don't mean to be mean, but if everyone just says your great, it's hard to get better!:thumbsup:
Keep up the work.

[Blackarts]

CgMonkey:

I wasn't aware of any other thread regarding this armor.

my crit was meant to point out certian flaws in the tutorial, design, and execution....all of which add up to the the final picture...and hopfefully provide Liegh with some tips on how to improve her art.

I also think comments which actually address the art being created are more valuable than yet another "you rock!" post, which are completely useless - except for stroking the ego. Leigh didn't seem to mind my feedback in this thread and neither should you.

DM

[leigh]

Absolutely, Blackarts - I always welcome criticism enthusiastically :D In fact, if I didn't want any, I wouldn't post anything on the internet in the first place ;)

Oh and the thread that CgMonkey was referring to was my challenge thread, where I originally posted the actual character :)

Maximillion - there is nothing "mean" about posting crits, so don't worry :) I couldn't agree more that the only way we learn is through rectifying our mistakes, which we certainly cannot always see ourselves :)
And especially since you are a teacher, your input is very appreciated.

[Finkster]

Thanks for sharing your technique Leigh:applause: .
But I have a few comments and questions. As someone who is pretty new to Lightwave (which you use, right?) and UV mapping in particular, I'd be interested to learn more about your technique for flattening out the UV map. You kind of go from the overlapping UV to a flat one in one step, but as a total starter in this particular area, I'd really like to know what you did in the 6 hours inbetween. Is it simply a matter of dragging points or groups of points around until you get even spacing and no overlapping? That sounds easy enough, but are there any tricks? And what if you have a really high density mesh - that could get messy. This is a problem the tutorials I have found on this subject suffer from; either the "here's one I made earlier" syndrome, or overly simplistic - UV mapping a cube:thumbsdow . The LW manual doesn't shed too much light on the intricacies of this area either.
If you, or anyone here could shed some light on the subject or just point me in the right direction I'd be mighty appreciative. I guess I could always go out and spend a load of money on one of those big fat learnin books, but I suppose I'm a cheap bastard.

Cheers:beer:

Ciaran Moloney

[leigh]

Originally posted by Finkster
Lightwave (which you use, right?)

Yup :)

Is it simply a matter of dragging points or groups of points around until you get even spacing and no overlapping?

Yeah, pretty much, and it really is as simple as that too - the only factor is that it takes quite a long time :p

That sounds easy enough, but are there any tricks?

Not really, I think the most important thing I ever learned when editing UVs is to UNWELD THE POINTS FIRST!
Apart from that, it's just mostly a matter of patience, and carefully moving about of points.

And what if you have a really high density mesh - that could get messy.

Absolutely. The heavier the mesh, the more painful the editing. However, since it is common modelling practise to be as prudent with poly count as possible, even when making hi-res models, one hopes that one will not encounter these too often, and when we do, we just grin and bear it.

I must admit, that in the past when I have been given models with insane polycounts (such as older LW models, that had to be frozen), I've actually used scripts/plugs to decrease the poly count somewhat, to make the UV mapping easier. Of course, you have to draw the line somewhere, since you don't want to sacrifice model quality in the process.

So I guess it's a matter of praying that you don't have to texture models with ridiculously heavy meshes all too often...

This is a problem the tutorials I have found on this subject suffer from; either the "here's one I made earlier" syndrome, or overly simplistic - UV mapping a cube

Yeah that is true... :sad:
However, I think that writing a tut that covers EVERY single step of the process, including the ENTIRE editing process would be soooooo long, that I am not sure anyone would ever do that.

The LW manual doesn't shed too much light on the intricacies of this area either.

That I do kinda disagree with to a certain extent. I learnt all my stuff from the manual originally :)

Then again, the manual isn't really the easiest thing to read - perhaps I have built up a tolerance for manuals, since I love reading them.

And since the manual isn't really always suitable for beginners, I guess I can understand why someone new to the app could find it a little confusing or unsatisfying.

I guess I could always go out and spend a load of money on one of those big fat learnin books, but I suppose I'm a cheap bastard.

Save your cash for later this year, when my book on texturing for Lightwave comes out ;) hehehe

[ASCIISkull]

This tutorial is great, Leigh, but there's one thing that might be easier for people who aren't so used to UV dragging.
When making armor like this, where all of the peices have the same basic design(up until adding the holes and such), you can UV map the first piece before copying and moving it into position. When all the pieces are done, you can select each strip in turn and move it's flat UV map away from the others before adding battle damage and buckles and whatever nurnies... You can't use this for most objects, but I'd have thought that for an object like this it would speed things up a lot...

I liked the depth of the textures- the metal certainly look eaten away. I don't really like the pose of the wraith, but that's really out of the scope of the tutorial^_^
Awesome texturing all the way...

[leigh]

Originally posted by ASCIISkull
When making armor like this, where all of the peices have the same basic design(up until adding the holes and such), you can UV map the first piece before copying and moving it into position.

Heheheh yeah I know... that only occured to me after I finished it LOL! :scream:

I guess next time I will plan ahead a little better ;)

Thanks for the input! :D

[Naz]

Heheheh yeah I know... that only occured to me after I finished it LOL!

in this case (or generally when uv mapping) a good way is to use endomorphs.
create a new endomorph, on that endomorph-map place the plate models on top of each other.
once all equal parts are overlapping (should be a breeze) you can start splitting the object up (the vertices unwelded) and apply the uv map. adjust the uv map where needed, weld again and delete the endomorph map (if you dont need it anymore).

[leigh]

Thanks Naz - that is another excellent way of handling UV maps :thumbsup:

[Finkster]

Thanks for the quick reply! You've made things clearer already.

Originally posted by Leigh


I must admit, that in the past when I have been given models with insane polycounts (such as older LW models, that had to be frozen), I've actually used scripts/plugs to decrease the poly count somewhat, to make the UV mapping easier. Of course, you have to draw the line somewhere, since you don't want to sacrifice model quality in the process.

Yep, thats's pretty much the problem I'm having. I'm trying to finish a project started in Animation Master. The only way I could get a clean import of my character's model was to use a very dense mesh. The MakeUvs command sreads the mesh out pretty well, appart from a little compession and overlapping of the ears and lips. Perhaps seperate UV maps for these areas, with a bit of texture blending could sort it out? I guess I'll just have to get my hands dirty.

From what you have told me, the process of flattening out a mesh for UV mapping is closer to that in Animation Master than I had thought. Especially if working on lower poly subD models. Hopefully the transition should be easier than expected.

Originally posted by Leigh
Save your cash for later this year, when my book on texturing for Lightwave comes out ;) hehehe

I'll keep an eye out.
Thanks.

Ciaran Moloney

[Riddlaz]

Originally posted by Finkster
This is a problem the tutorials I have found on this subject suffer from; either the "here's one I made earlier" syndrome

Finkster, well the unwrapping process often times can be a very looong process and explaining it step by step would be as time consuming as writing a modeling tutorial, I would bet that if Leigh would have written every step she would have taken more than 15 hours instead of 6 on the unwrapping process and besides there are already an abundant number of tutorials on the unwrapping process maybe you should check out the threads here on cgtalk and search for one that is called “UV Mapping Tutorial links” :beer: you will find some good links about uv mapping there. Its kind of a waist having to write a step by step section in the tutorial about unwrapping when the tutorial is dedicated to texture painting, yet again there are already an abundant amount of uv editing tutorials so explaining the how too’s of uv editing is not necessary. I just felt I needed to explain this since I wrote a texturing tutorial that falls in to your little “here’s the one I made earlier” category when it came to uv mapping, nothing personal :).

Leigh, I think what you didn’t include was what the metal was missing witch are regular reflections and better placed diffusion other than just 75% diffuse. Just for a test what you could do is use your current spec as your reflection level map and use a blurry version of the environment as the reflection map, play with the IOR and I think that and a more carefully made diffuse map would make a big difference on making the surface look more “metallic”.

Laters,
Riddlaz C.

[leigh]

Interesting idea, Riddlaz! I will try that out for sure :)
:thumbsup:

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