MachineGoats Work-in-progress stuff

[MachineGoat]

I'll be posting stuff I'm working on in this thread to keep myself motivated as well as to have some fresh pairs of eyes on the models I'm doing(it's easy to become blind to your own mistakes).

I started working on this weapons/ammunition crate this evening. Here's what the high polygon object looks like now:


It's roughly based on this. Comments and critique are both welcome. 

[ChromeAngel]

Looking good MG.  The re-inforcing border around the front looks kind of odd only bordering 3 sides of the face.  Would it break it up too much to scale down the eagle slightly and add a border edge along the top too?

It's not on the reference, but I think a similar (shallower?) re-inforcing border around the other sides might make it look more rugged.  Just an idea.

[MachineGoat]

I did the changes, you suggested ChromeAngel and I think it looks better now.



If nothing else needs changing I'll probably start on the lowpoly. 

[Battle Brother Arius]

Wow that looks great, much better with the changes Chrome requested though!   

[Typheron]

any chance of 2 versions of it? one open and one closed.

[MachineGoat]

any chance of 2 versions of it? one open and one closed.

I see no reason why not. I've modeled empty insides for the highpoly, so it's just a matter of putting something in and opening it up. Perhaps battery packs or something.

[ChromeAngel]

if you leave the open one empty mappers can fill it with props.  I imagine we could make the lid ragdoll, so one prop could be open or closed.

[Reaper P7]

That looks awesome 

[MachineGoat]

Some signs of life:


I made low poly models for the LODs and baked AO and normals. I'll still have to check out if I can get everything reasonably visible on  512x512 maps, since 1024x1024 feels somewhat heavy for a simple prop like this.

[Typheron]

Very nice work.

[MachineGoat]

There isn't a better way to spend an evening than trying to cobble together somewhat useful texture with almost non-existent skills.

Anyways here's current progress, texture maps are still 1024x1024:


There are some differences between the LODs in terms of texture, so it's still a WIP. Also once again there's no specular map yet, so everything's just as shiny as the next texel.

[ChromeAngel]

Coming along well, I like the worn edges effect.  Can you do us some colour variations to fit in with existing EX props?  I'm trying to colour code the teams, tyranid red, imperial blue.  We've got some oil drums in Olive green (#686D5F) and most of the imperial equipment is blue (#184A7E).

The gold on the eagle looks a bit out of place, it might look better with less yellow/orange saturation.  It might even be better in silver.  In fact can you do us an un-painted version of the whole box, so it is just bare metal too?

cheers

[MachineGoat]

Blue:


Olive green(much more suitable than the original "jungle" green):


Different eagles on both as well(both might require some tweaking, I only did some quick changes in some color layers). I'll see what I can do about that un-painted version(I'm not sure if my base metal will be good enough alone for that or will it require some additional work). Again these are viewport grabs, so the in engine version will look different(and they're still missing specular maps).

[ChromeAngel]

Fast work MG

I think I prefer the olive one.  What do you think?

Do the hi-res bolts all share the same UV mapping?  it looks a bit odd that the bolts sheltered in the inset front and side panels are as worn as the exposed bolts on the back.

[MachineGoat]

Just got an inspiration that's all.

I like them both. But I think the olive one fits in better. The blue one could work in some spaceship environment, but perhaps not on ground battles. Yes, all the bolts use the same UV space, but there's extra space in the texture maps, so I guess I could separate the ones on the side(the ones on the front pop out more,so I guess they'd still get some damage). I think with some rude copy pasting I'd get the normals to work with those as well.

BTW: Does Source support object space normal maps?