[GALLERY] Dane's Boudoir

Great work, Dano, but I do have a bit of crit.

As this thing is supposed to be dilapidated, I don't think that the seams are too thick. As time goes on, structural supports wear down and oxidize, and the gaps will get bigger between panels.
On the other hand, I think that rather than one consistent lineweight going through the whole thing, some should be thinner. 3-5 different line thicknesses would've served you better and contributed to the distressed feel of the heli.
Also, I think that the paint could've benefited from the dab of a grunge brush in parts to show perhaps it worn through to the metal or something. The wear is just a bit too consistent.

Dane, mate, there's this thing called jpeg compression; I really don't like having to try differentiate between it and the texturing work on the skin. Save your renders as high a quality as you can without ridiculous filesizes and go with higher res ones at that, because quite frankly my eyesight is bad enough as it is without having to strain them to see what's what.

On the subject of the skin, and what I can see from it, a few things:

If it's meant to have been out in the open, there's a lot more you can do than straight rust and grime. Warped, dented, or loose panels; bullet/shrapnel damage and cannonshell blowouts; shattered or crazed glass panels; perished rubber on the tires; very rough normals in the rusty areas; the list goes on, but those are some of the pretty major things. Of those the first I'd go for would be the rougher normals. Right now, the normals are certainly showing off the detail as far as the panels go but the rust and grime shares (or at least seems to, I can't tell at this res) the comparatively smooth and glossy appearance of the metal in all but colour and flat texture. Axe any shine at all on the rust and really roughen the normals up there so it genuinely looks rusty. Bring out the reds and browns a little more from the colour of the metal, too. A lot of games tend to show rust as a sort of washed-out subdued brown (like most materials these days, sigh) when more often than not it ranges from flaming orange to near-black all on the one object. Add cracks and crazing to a few of the windows (not all of them, it'd ruin the effect), and make the tires look partially perished and eaten away rather than just muddy and wet. The loose panels and shit may be going a bit too neglected, but it'd certainly enhance the feel of it.

Feel free to utterly ignore any of that, just my take on it as a lover of all things derelict

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ironclad

Learn to understand context and analyze sentences Dane. Until then your not even worth arguing with.

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What the hell. When did IronClad become an arrogant twat?

Way to revive a dead argument Teek.

And a long time ago.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SnaFuBAR

Great work, Dano, but I do have a bit of crit.

As this thing is supposed to be dilapidated, I don't think that the seams are too thick. As time goes on, structural supports wear down and oxidize, and the gaps will get bigger between panels.
On the other hand, I think that rather than one consistent lineweight going through the whole thing, some should be thinner. 3-5 different line thicknesses would've served you better and contributed to the distressed feel of the heli.
Also, I think that the paint could've benefited from the dab of a grunge brush in parts to show perhaps it worn through to the metal or something. The wear is just a bit too consistent.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by rossmum

Dane, mate, there's this thing called jpeg compression; I really don't like having to try differentiate between it and the texturing work on the skin. Save your renders as high a quality as you can without ridiculous filesizes and go with higher res ones at that, because quite frankly my eyesight is bad enough as it is without having to strain them to see what's what.

On the subject of the skin, and what I can see from it, a few things:

If it's meant to have been out in the open, there's a lot more you can do than straight rust and grime. Warped, dented, or loose panels; bullet/shrapnel damage and cannonshell blowouts; shattered or crazed glass panels; perished rubber on the tires; very rough normals in the rusty areas; the list goes on, but those are some of the pretty major things. Of those the first I'd go for would be the rougher normals. Right now, the normals are certainly showing off the detail as far as the panels go but the rust and grime shares (or at least seems to, I can't tell at this res) the comparatively smooth and glossy appearance of the metal in all but colour and flat texture. Axe any shine at all on the rust and really roughen the normals up there so it genuinely looks rusty. Bring out the reds and browns a little more from the colour of the metal, too. A lot of games tend to show rust as a sort of washed-out subdued brown (like most materials these days, sigh) when more often than not it ranges from flaming orange to near-black all on the one object. Add cracks and crazing to a few of the windows (not all of them, it'd ruin the effect), and make the tires look partially perished and eaten away rather than just muddy and wet. The loose panels and shit may be going a bit too neglected, but it'd certainly enhance the feel of it.

Feel free to utterly ignore any of that, just my take on it as a lover of all things derelict

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Really good crit :)

I'll be sure to do all the stuff you mentioned. I knew I needed to do those things, but I wasn't quite sure with the team on how rusty and damaged they wanted it. Their replies reflected heavily on yours, so rusty and gnarly it is :)

I might mudbox the model to get the dented and worn metal look and overlay a photoshop normal to get more fine detail, and the windows, are a bit of a problem however. Theres no cockpit inside the model, so I was a bit worried how it would look if I cracked the glass with opacity, to show the flipped normals of the inside of the model, which is why I made the glass more dirt and water streaked instead. I think I should be able to make it cracked though if I just make it cracked instead of actually broken.

Yeah, go with crazed glass rather than broken through. So riddled with cracks it's impossible to see through, and with some nice big bullseyes :P

Hey, can I ask a slightly related technical question?
You're talking about overlaying a normalmap with finer detail, do you simply use transparency to do that or do you use a different mode like overlay or multiply?

I know I'm not Dane, and I've made a whopping 2 normal maps in my entire life, but I recall a very interesting article on the subject of combining normal maps, if you want to be completely accurate and precise anal about it:
http://www.projectoffset.com/blog.php?id=74

You just copy another normal map onto an existing normal map in photoshop as a layer, set it to Overlay in the blending mode panel. It doesn't change the image at all because of the way the colours are represented, it just adds onto the one underneath it.


Btw







Diffuse, Original is 2048

Model by Tweek, the pro leet master, and textures and uvw's by me.

She's meant for UT3, a custom character Tweek concepted/modelled and I then put my own twist on it.

Ok;

First of all, shes not nude, the plate extends up underneath her vag area from the back.
Shes blueish green and bronze with silver and gold because I like that colour scheme. I wanted her armour to be scratched up enough on the hard edges to show that her armour has infact been through a trot.
Her hair has streaks through it, because I think the colour brings out the colour of her eyes.
Her eyes are lizard esque because shes a fantasy type Wyvern/Dragon Empress character.
The colour scheme is consitent throughout the whole armour because I didn't want certain pieces of it to be contrasted out and didn't want the piece to seem broken up. I wanted the armour to look as though it's a constant flowing thing.
The skin/muscle normal map isn't perfect, but how about you try painting a greyscale heightmap for muscle on a flat photoshop canvas. I tried to mudbox, but I my PC kept crashing it.
She has purple hair because I wanted her to.
She has black lipstick because I wanted something to contrast the bottom area of her face, and I just like black lipstick.
The armour does look uncomfortable, but dammit, I like the way the skin looks against the green and bronze hues of the armour. I'm going to paint an undersuit for her anyway to satisfy you logic bandwagoners.
There is a slight hazyness to everything because of the volumetric light I added.
Very few of the uv's are mirrored, but I think I managed to grab enough detail out of 2048 anyway, so it doesn't matter. I wanted her to look varied anyway.
Some uv areas are a little blurrier than others, but that was due to importance of resolution. I didn't want her skin to look blurred and blotchy, so I had to sacrifice some of the armour detail. I certainly didn't want to waste uv space on something that was pretty much obscure anyway, noticeably the rear of the shoulder plate on her left.

That should about cover it. Any errors (not design choices) you do notice is pretty much nitpicking, to be quite fair here.

I hate to type all that shit up, but I feel if I don't, I'm gunna run through a whole rigmaroll again of explaining everything to each individual person because they missed a post or two, resulting in me getting pissed off.

Wow, that looks great Dane. I'm especially loving the ass eyes. The lizard eyes works very well here. +rep