High to Low Res baking - Brick Wall and Treasure Chest WIP

[iLegacy]

Hey David,

here my advice:

I like you treasure! It looks classic and you did added some nice detail.

Barnacles
I think you could add more variety to the barnacles by using lets say 3 different models of it. All of your barnacles looks like the others - thats not good. Create more different shapes and you will get a more detailed structure. Maybe you can try to find a other form of under water vegetaion. A good reference should be the movie "Finding Nemo" or "Pirates of the carribian".

Metal
Add more dirt and more specular to it. For the dirt you can add more rust like in this pictures:

http://www.pixel-photo.de/photos/rost.jpg
http://www.smash-repair.com.au/images/rust-repairs.jpg

I think you tried to make you metal looking old by giving it damaged areas but 1. why the upper layer of the metal looks like gray/new/undamaged metal and the layer down there is colored orange? It should be that way: The upper layer is darker from dirt of years of under water and the areas down there are a bit more new because the water/wind whatever was not having so much time to kill the structure. I hope you understand what i try to say.

Define the edges of the metal via a specular map so that the are shiny. That gives you Metal the metal-look.

Dirt
I think the treasure is standing for example in a small 2x2 meters island with only one palm :) So the ground should be a bit wet. But if thats happened, the wood would suck the water in it. You can add a layer to you texture, set the blend mode to "multiply" and paint a dark black/red/brown tone with a opacity by 10% and paint the wetness on the lower part of the chest. That gives you more realism and more variety to the wood.

The Wall
The wall looks nice but i think it would be greater if you rotate some stones a bit. This time it looks a bit too...perfect. I cant believe that a bricklayer can make such a perfect wall ;) Imperfection makes the perfection so give your wall a more natural look by kick the perfection out of it.

And you can give your cement more detail. Create a cement geometry with a lot of intersetions and add a displacement modifier to it. As displacemant map use "speckle". That gives you a more structured cement.

p.s. can you post your wireframes of low/highpoly geometry? Thanks!

[urgaffel]

You have some stretching going on on the side of the wood pieces on the front of the chest, you might want to fix that. Having some sort of lowpoly geometry for the barnacles might be a good idea. If you group the barnacles together in clumps, you could just make a slightly lumpy surface that approximates the shape of the clump. Or you can create a few really lowpoly barnacles and sprinkle them. I would probably do this if it was to be a "hero" piece, otherwise I'd use the other method. It depends on how close the player will see it I guess.

[iLegacy]

Yeah, thats what i would write: a possibilty is to mix the 2d barnacles with the 3d's. Put some 3d barnacles - a viewer will confused because sometimes it looks 3d, sometimes 2d and if you place the stuff good, the viewer will believe all barnacles are 3d :) Psycho!

[mikebart]

hey sursley, its looking nice, but I think it could do with some more painting on the final texture maps, could you post them up?
You can also get some interesing effects by using the 'RGB multiply' material to multiply maps onto each other and 'RGB tint', for making slight colour variations. How did you go about placing the barnicles, did you use a scatter tool or something?

[Sursely]

Thank you guys so much for responding. Let me tell you, I have posted on other sites at other times and have either not recieved any response or it was just garbage, so thanks. :)

iLegacy: Thanks for the crit of my metal material. I was just kind of winging it and I totally understand what you're saying. I'll take your advice to improve it. I have a spec map on the metal and green parts, but I dont think my render showed it too well, and it didn't bake well at all for the low res version. Scroll down for some wires and maps

Urgaffel: Yeah I have decided to just model "some" of the barnacles for the low res version, see if that will work.

MikeBart: I just used good old fashioned clone and place for the barnacles, not fancy tools. :) It took a while but I like the outcome.

And to all: Here are some wires and maps... I didnt post the map for the bricks because it's not that exciting, just bricks. And the Ivy is achieved with an obvious opacity map...

Wires for Chest-High:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y150/Sursely/ChestHighWire2.jpg

And Chest-Low:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y150/Sursely/ChestLowwire.jpg

And the Maps (the super strecthed part is the bottom, not important) :

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y150/Sursely/chestmaps.jpg

And wires for the Wall:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y150/Sursely/wall_ivywires.jpg

Maps:
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y150/Sursely/IvyMaps.jpg

I'll probably get some work done on the chest tomorrow... long day today. :)

[urgaffel]

Two things really bug me about the wall and ivy: the very sharp triangular cut in one of the bricks that makes it very clear where it has been cloned and rotated and the lowpoly branches of the ivy. You could spend a few more polys to make it look better since it's opacity mapped. You're also wasting a lot of space on the texture. You could have the ivy fill up a separate sheet without any problem since I asume it's mapped on a separate plane anyway. Keep working on it and I'm sure it will turn out nice.

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