Unit 69
For this unit I have to create one asset that is going to be a main feature of the game I am building for unit 18, it has to be below 8,000 trails, fully textured and have a high to low poly bake as well.
In this blog post I am going to evaluate my gramophone that I made for unit 69, I am going to break it down into four sections which are: What went well, what didn't go well and issues/changes along the way and a conclusion.
What went well in unit 69 Task 1 I found the research went well and came up with 5 ideas that I could create models from. I used three research methods, mind maps, mood boards and concept drawing. This helped me visualise what model I could make and how much of a challenge it would pose to me. In the end, I selected the concept that I thought would represent the level I am making in unit 18. I also found researching about modelling techniques helped me and I avoided big problems later. After I finished the research I started modelling my gramophone, I used a photograph as a reference guide which helped me a lot. I made the model into three seconds before deciding how I would connect those sections up. I was quite proud that I could connect hard and organic surfaces together and keeping the model below 8000 triangles. Task 2/3 I made sure I did research on how to UV map correctly and the different types of texture maps this helped me understand what these are for and how important they are needed for the model. When it came to the UV I manged to get all the UV shells into the 0 to 1 space and make sure when I had a checked texture overlaying it that all the squares were even. From this I was able to make a quick light map UV set. Experimenting with three different types high to low poly bakes helped me understand which works better with my workflow and how to avoid errors. I enjoyed using substance painter for making the texture maps as I found it a quick process and it was quite enjoyable using a tablet and felt like I was painting. Using masks on the layers helped my workflow and could have used less colour id maps if I did more research on the protentional of using mask in my workflow. Task 4 Even though this was a small task I was extremely with how the model looks in unreal engine when I had applied all the textures to the model. Learning about level of detail was interesting and I will be adding it to my workflow in the future as I think it is an import part of the game design process now and helps the performance of the game. Conclusion Overall I am extremely happy with how the gramophone has turned out. From the concept to the design process to the finished look. I have learned a lot about modelling techniques and how I can potential speed up my work flow, what works for my work flow and what high to low poly bakes work for me. Substance painter was a big part of my work flow for this model and I think I will be using it more in the future as part of my workflow with how easy it is to use and the high quality of texture maps it produces. What didn’t go so well in unit 9 Task 1 Even though the research went well and I came up with five concept ideas I felt I could have done more research on those ideas by getting actual reference material of my own and using that in my mood boards and I think I could have come up with more ideas for me to research. Creating the model posed a bit of a challenging creating hard and organic surfaces it left me with a few problems of floating vertices and double faces and a couple of n-gons which I wasted time on fixing but they were quick fixes and in the end the final model I produce was worth the trouble and provided me with a good learning curve. I would of also of liked to add extra geometry to the model to make it look more Edwardian but I could not as I was close to the 8000 triangles and didn’t want to go over on my low poly. Task 2/3 The UV took me a long time and felt I wasted a lot of time here that I could have been placed elsewhere. I manged to get the UV how I wanted but I still feel I could have done a better job on them, maybe placing them over two UV squares instead of one to get better texture resolution. The high to low poly bake didn’t go so well in mudbox, I kept getting baking errors where it would randomly place lines all over the model, I fixed most of the error by adding extra geometry but it has taught me that mudbox isn’t the best software to always do high to low poly bakes in. I got less errors from using Maya and substance painter by combining the two together. I had to still edit the normal maps that mudbox produced in photoshop as it created raises areas when it should have been a smooth. Creating the texture maps was relatively easy the only problems I ran into was the lack of materials in substance painter to use and the fact I had to compress my texture maps into one map via photoshop. Task 4 The only thing that didn’t go to plan in this task was I could not get the lighting correct in unreal engine, and found it hard to get the right angles for the light without casting to much shadow on the model its self or using too much light and ruin the contrast of the model. Conclusion Even though I ran into a few problems along the way with geometry and the high to low poly bake it has helped me learn how to avoid these problems in the future and that I need to start not using mudbox for all my high to low poly bakes as there are many ways of making them now. I also need to work on my UV as I felt this is the area I lost the most time on the model and slow down the workflow dramatically. Issues and changes I had along the way in unit 69 I didn’t make much changes from the research to creating the model, there was only minor changes that involved not adding detailed geometry to the model so that I did not go over the 8000 triangles and try to place that detail geometry into the high to low poly bake. I had to change what stencils I wanted to use in mudbox because I could not find one that would suit my model but I found a nice floral design that was used in wood carvings in the late 1800 so I decided to change my design to incorporated the new design. Other than this there was no other changes. The issues I had along the way was mainly with mudbox and not baking to my model correctly I found the reason to this and it was mainly down to not having enough supporting geometry lines in the model which cause the errors in mudbox. But this has taught me not to always use mudbox for my high to low poly bakes. Other issues have been noted about the time I spent on the UVs but in the end, they have worked and I will consider more research and practice more on this area in the future. Conclusion Overall I am extremely pleased with how model has turned out, I like how it looks and the textures I have created for the model. It was a learning experience for me I learned what could go wrong with high to low poly baking and what I could improve on in the future. I have enjoyed the whole experience from concept to design to the final product.
1 Comment
I decided to use substance pointer as my main Texturing tool and then use photoshop as a touch up / editing the textures when once exported. When by substance painter, I mainly used materials and smart materials for the base coats, then I used white and black masks to overlap and use a new material to add / remove the new material away from the old one. This worked brilliantly for the brass effect on the box and from scratch and line the details of the horn. I used the same process for the turntable, but this was a lot quicker as there was no defined detail that I needed to paint on compared to the main part of the gramophone. This is a time lapse video of how I painted the gramophone and how I used masks to use multiple textures. After I finished the painting of the model I needed to export the textures. After doing my research I knew there was an option for unreal engine and it would compress the AO, metallic and roughness into its own channels in the textures. So I selected that option and changed the format to target because it has an alpha channel. I then changed the common padding to dilation + transparent because I wanted to merge all the textures into one file as having 9 separate texture files for one model is not practical and can effect the performance so I decided to merge the 9 layers into one in photoshop. Once in photoshop I opened all the colour id maps and added them all into one image on their own layers. Because I selected for the background to be transparent, it has exported it as black which made it easy to select around the image and delete the background to revile all the layers underneath. I didn't need to edit any of the textures as I felt happy with how they looked. When I was painting the model I noticed that there was something wrong with the normal at the back of the model. I then waited till I could see what was happening when I photoshop and it looks like the normal map think it was raising out so I used the clone tool and removed the imperfections to make it all level. In the photos below you can see the before i edited the normals and after I did the same procedure I did with the caller id map with the remaining maps by placing each one into its own layer and removing either the background or overlaying them I wasn't happy with how the ambient occlusion map came out so I went back into substance painter and just exported an AO map and combined the 9 texture maps together in photoshop like I did with the other maps and got a better result. When it comes to connecting the texture maps in unreal engine I will just use the green and blue channel out of the compressed texture map and the so will use its own node.
After I have finished the gramophone texture maps I did the same process with the turntable by combining its texture maps into one. I then went into Maya and changed the gramohpnoe model so that it only had one lambert texture connected to it and same with the turntable. Then I applied the caller id map, normal map and AO map to the lambert and made sure the model has preview texture enable on it. I used this method to see if the textures sat correctly after being edited. For my gramophone model i wanted to create a levels of detail on the model for when it is ready to go into unreal engine. Level of detail is when the model decreases the tris of the model when the player moves away from the model, this helps performance on all platforms as there is less geometry for the graphics card and processor to process and render. The level of details has to a gradual decrease so there is no noticeable change between the normal model and the level of detail models I did some research on how to apply level of details to models in unreal engine and found this video on it, even thou they used 3D max as the 3d application it can be easy translated to Maya. I started off by duplicating my model in Maya and adding it to a new layer, i select edges that are not needed as much as the core edges in the model that would change the shape of the model In the photos above i removed the edges i placed in the model to keep the edges sharp for the high poly bake this reduced the the tris down from 7102 to 6094. i repeated the process by duplicating the level of detail model and placing it into a new layer and removed more edges from the model with out changing the shape to much. i lowered the second level of detail down to 5558 tris which is over 600 less between the level 1 and 2 this till be the furthest way level of detail and the level one will the middle distance. In total i lowered the tris by 1544 which would improve the performance of the game when far away with the model in view. After i created the models i exported them as FBX files and opened the level with my model in and open the settings of the model and went down to the LOD settings and imported the two level of detail models Each LOD has it own settings and displays how many triangles and vertices each model has and at the distance it changes to that model. the LOD1 is set to come when the normal model is 0.333 of the size of the default scale and the level 2 comes on when its 0.167 of the size of the default scale. here is a video of me scrolling out and into the model to see if the model changes to different level of details and to see if there is any major changes |
AuthorWelcome to my blog about my game design and 3D modelling work Archives
February 2017
Categories
All
|