[Character] Link. Learning game art modeling and texturing

[Ramseus]

I guess it depends on what app you're using to generate the normals, but it sounds like your cage just isn't large enough to capture details of the high poly that are further away from the low poly, ie. the flat areas are outside of the cage.

And nice modelling, however the shoulders are strange looking like he's wearing shoulder pads or something.

[PrayingMantis]

I don't know if the normal map will be helpful, it is really crappy.
But here are they, for the blade of the sword, and the body.
I made the normal of the blade with 3Dsmax, and of the body with Xnormals.
I tried to import a low resolution of my High res mesh in 3dsmax from Zbrush to use it as a template for tweaking my cage, then I imported the cage in Xnormals, but it didn't works well.
And for the blade I got small little red dots/pixels that I can't get rid off. And my cage doesn't cut the mesh at these point.
Here are the pix.
http://mantis.folio.free.fr/tmb_normal_map_body01.jpg (http://mantis.folio.free.fr/normal_map_body01.jpg)http://mantis.folio.free.fr/tmb_excalibur_nm01.jpg (http://mantis.folio.free.fr/excalibur_nm01.jpg)


I agreed with you for the shoulder, they are too stiff, I will revise many little things latter, if I can handle with the normal mapping ;).

[RO]

are you trying to bake normals all in one go? you might want to seprate the objects like everything that will go on the tunic make sure to leave in the highpoly and just do a render for the tunic I think your problem could be that it is trying to get info where it should not. try seperating the objects and baking them one by one chest arms legs head.

edit

in some cases their is just the as good as it gets... that is when actually going and editing the normals come into play. But you should be able to get better results on the actual body as for ths sword I would just go over with the color around it on those spots.

[PrayingMantis]

Thx Ro.
You are totally right, that's my problem, I don't know how to manage my low poly to bake my normal maps.
I don't know if I should separate some piece, I don't know how I should separate them.
I have made this body and unwrap the UV, but after that do I have to break some part, bake the normal and then weld them together ?
I was thinking of making a part for the underneath chainmail, on the legs, making the tunic, and the little bags separetly.
And do this for the Arms.
But after that, I don't know how to manage my low poly to make it usable for games.

[Gamedev]

there are too normal mapping tutorials in my signature that might help when working w/ 3ds max.

-gameD3V

[PrayingMantis]

Thx Gamedev, the second video got some cool tips.
But the question was not, how to make a normal map, but how to build a good low poly for normal mapping.
Ro's answer helped me in this way, I will try to find it by myself and show the result.

[PrayingMantis]

I got an other problem, I have baked my normal map for my sword, tweaking it in photoshop.
But now I want to bake this normal map on an other low poly object that is only the half of the sword. I want to do that because I tweaked my uv to get a better setup.
Is it possible to do this?
And can I transfer my uv from one model to an other?
Thx.

[PrayingMantis]

It drives me crazy.
Here is an other problem.
I baked a normal map for a props, and at a groove I got some wavy edges.
The normal map is for the end of the cylinder, where there is a bulge. And the first circled area is the area where the cylinder is bended.
http://mantis.folio.free.fr/prob01.jpg

[tin-tin]

It looks like you haven't got the cage setup right, in 3ds max make sure the cage is big enough, so it catches all the parts of the hipoly. Having a big cage can also warp your normal map, like with the cylinder there in this case turn it off, try the doom3 renderbump or polybump tool in far cry sdk, I'd be happy take a look at it for you.

[PrayingMantis]

My cage doesn't cut the high poly model, I made it far enought to warp the strips on the cylinder.
And for the sdk feature, you want that I share you the models?
If that's it, do you want it in .max?

[Oliver'Raz']

Another very important point is that the unwrap of your lowpoly mesh MUST be very clean, as clean as possible for the bake (No overlaping of course, good proportion etc...) . Hope it can help you.

[PrayingMantis]

Thx for the advice.
I'm using an automatic unfolding to bake my normal map, to get the less distortion I can.
After that I re-make my uv on an other channel and bake my normal map to it.
Like that I can get a good setup of my uvs, and get enough space while I'm baking my normal map.
I don't know if it's a good workflow but that's what I'm using for the moment ;)

[Raane]

Ben Mathis has a TUTORIAL (http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/normal_workflow.htm)about normal mapping workflow. At the end of the second page is a little bit which should help you out.

[PrayingMantis]

Thx for the link, he is showing exactly my problems. I cheched it quickly , I tried to stick my cage furthermore to the mesh, I changed my Uvs but it doesn't work, I will have to review it deeper later.

For the moment I am texturing my sword (I need to train my texturing skill who are null ;)), and I really need crits, because that's the first texture I am doing and I got no experience at all.
I worked the more on the blade, but you can give me advice on every part. The more I will get the more it will help me :)

So here it is, a render of the sword, the diffuse and specular map, with both of these maps plus a normal map.

I used some photo reference to do some texture on the sword, I have also baked a diffuse an height map and a specular map, but because I don't know how to set it up right I'm sure I used them wrong.

I didn't use the resulting specular because it didn't give me anything helpful.
I wanted to bake the diffuse map to be able to get quick selection area, but for the strip on the handle the resulting selection were to rough to be able to use it.

To bake the diffuse map I put some material (a simple blinn) with an approximate color of what I needed, but finally I didn't use it ;)
I saw that it was a worflow use by some artist so I tried to find how it works.
So if anyone got some clues about it, let me know.

http://mantis.folio.free.fr/wip/link/excalibur_sword_wip01.jpghttp://mantis.folio.free.fr/wip/link/Excalibur_diffuse_wip02.jpghttp://mantis.folio.free.fr/wip/link/excalibur_spec_wip02.jpg

An other question, do I have to get a special setup for my lighting while I am previewing my textures in Max, or a simple 3point ligthing setup is enough?

Thx

P.S:I tried to change the title of the thread but it doesn't seems to work, only the title of the first post has been change.
http://mantis.folio.free.fr/wip/link/Excalibur_spec_wip02.jpg

[PrayingMantis]

Here is a progress of my sword, I'm slow because I'm learning ;) I'm so poor in painting I have to increase my painting skill, I don't like the top of the sword, the blue part.
I didn't added the fine details I made with photoshop on the normal map, I am focusing on the diffuse for the moment.
Here it is.

http://mantis.folio.free.fr/wip/link/excalibur_sword_wip03.jpg

[Diogenes]

That's a pretty good start! The blade looks like it's made of stone, though, and the blood is splattered in a way that it looks like the sword was off to the side while Link beat all his enemies to death instead and the blood went flying. That would be an interesting scene, but probably not what you're going for. :D

[PrayingMantis]

Thx, You're right the sword is not looking to metal, maybe I have to make it more shiny?

And for the blood, that's great because that's exactly what I am looking for ;) I want to make a Link less childish to counter Nintendo's Link.

I want to make him like he is fighting in a big battle and he had crush all his ennemy to death.
An Xbox360/PS3 Link ;) not a Nintendo one.

But maybe you are saying the blood is splattering on the sword like he was not killing is ennemy with it?
The sword laying somewhere beside him?

[rJAMc]

If you took a sword and ran it through someone and then pulled it out....or if you swiped it across their mid section with the tip slicing deep...

Would the blood on the blade look like the blood you have now? No. I think that is what Diogenes is saying.

Also you might want to decide if the blood will be fresh or more dried on. Like not cleaning the sword after a battle and the blood matts and dries to the blade.

If its fresh its gonna be more shiny and wet looking, if dried, you get the idea...You might get some splatter up near the hilt, but i don't think the splatter effect at the end of the blade is what your going for.

~RJ

[CantiCooly]

I aggree with rjmac i think if the sword has seen battle like it seems to have or even if someone just got run threw with it or hell the blade wasnt cleaned(bad sword fighter lol) then there would be more blood concentrated for one thing and the blade if not cleaned should have rust on it near the blood(blood being kinda liquidy lol) i would try applying more blood either to the tip or the blade edge that struck the baddy. Next try applying like a gausien blur or even using the blur tool i know it helps me out whenever i put blood stains toxic stains or stains in general on an object. Hope i made a little sense if not keep working man looking great overall though .

[PrayingMantis]

Thx for the comment. Just one thing, in my mind, (I'm not a sword fighter so it is probably not true ;)) I don't think you should pierce your opponent with your sword, especially in big battles. It will make you too vulnerable, you should sweep your sword like a crazy and try to kill your opponents without being strucked. That's what I was asking myself before doing the map ;) (Kinda stupid).

I totally remade the diffuse because I was not happy with it, and I tried to make the blood looking better.

I put some blood on the hilt but it is not really visible because of its color.

Here is a comparison with the last diffuse map.
http://mantis.folio.free.fr/wip/link/sword_comparison01.jpg

Crits are always welcome.

[CantiCooly]

Thats looking a lot better. I would try to give it a little shininess to the blade because it kinda looks like stone right now....but its coming along great keep it up.

[Diogenes]

This one looks a lot better (not that the last one looked bad). Another thing to consider is, how will the fresh blood run down(or up) the sword as he swings it. I would think there would be a thin collection of blood along the edges and tip. I could be wrong; I haven't really done any experiments killing things for blood references. So that may be asking to much to add, or change. But it looks good right now, just needs to be more shiney.

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