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I could use some advice/feedback on the models I'm making for a naval combat game. I'm making them piecemeal and assembling ships out of parts (the player will be able to do this too; ship design is a core feature) so the resulting ships are going to fundamentally look a little un-cohesive. Right now, a ship might look something like this: (I need to turn off those smokestacks when in the designer mode...) I still have the better part of a thousand models to make before I'm done, I'm guessing. Before I go and make all those models: 1. Stylistically, do you think this looks reasonable? It's obviously not super-realistic, and kind of low-poly (each gun in that screenshot is ~400 tris). I don't have the kind of resources to invest in realism. 2. I'll need to do something about texturing. I have next to no experience with texturing in videogames. I know broadly how UV textures work, but I suck at making them. What kind of techniques should I be researching for improving the looks of these models? Again, I don't have the resources to invest in realism...but I don't think that just using a simple colored material for every part would work well either. I'm modeling in Blender, which I have a fair bit of experience at, albeit mostly with higher-res models. I used to do some character design and animation ~10 years ago. The models were detailed enough that I could just assign materials to different faces, in Blender, and get good-looking results, no need for texture unwrapping or any of the tricks normally used in games. Thanks in advance!
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Jul 31, 2019 18:41
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The individual elements look fine so far but the proportions are off. The guns are too big and, more importantly, too high. The superstructure elements need to be bigger and fill in the mid-ship space a bit better. Here's a 4 turret battleship 
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Jul 31, 2019 18:58
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I could use some advice/feedback on the models I'm making for a naval combat game. I'm making them piecemeal and assembling ships out of parts (the player will be able to do this too; ship design is a core feature) so the resulting ships are going to fundamentally look a little un-cohesive. Right now, a ship might look something like this: In regards to the texture stuff, you can probably do a quick and dirty angle-based unwrap and pack for your UVs. I'd probably recommend something like substance painter here for the textures. In blender you can assign your pieces different material IDs, and then in Painter assign different materials to those IDs. You can even use a prefab substance material that adds wear and weathering automatically to make it look a bit more realistic. This can be largely automatic, getting you 90% of the way there really quickly. I would do a quick Google search for Substance + Blender and you'll probably find something useful there.
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Jul 31, 2019 19:18
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Captain Splendid posted:The individual elements look fine so far but the proportions are off. Yeah, at the moment I have literally no superstructure aside from the fore/aft bridges and the smokestacks. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how I want generic superstructure to work, e.g. should you be able to build guns on top of superstructure? That's partially a game design question (what's to stop you from just stacking superstructure arbitrarily high and putting your guns on top?) and partially a modeling question (how do you make the models look decent when it's hard to predict how they'll be put onto the ship). As for the guns, good point on them being too high. Their size however is historically accurate, though putting four turrets onto a single cruiser isn't. In any case, I have to be prepared for players to put "wrong" things on their ships, e.g. if a battleship gun physically fits onto a cruiser hull then the player should be able to put it there, even if it eats up 90% of their displacement allotment. That's part of what I meant about the ships looking kind of piecemeal or un-cohesive. EDIT: fixed the gun heights:  Gearman posted:In regards to the texture stuff, you can probably do a quick and dirty angle-based unwrap and pack for your UVs. I'd probably recommend something like substance painter here for the textures. In blender you can assign your pieces different material IDs, and then in Painter assign different materials to those IDs. You can even use a prefab substance material that adds wear and weathering automatically to make it look a bit more realistic. This can be largely automatic, getting you 90% of the way there really quickly. I would do a quick Google search for Substance + Blender and you'll probably find something useful there. Thanks, I'll research that! What I'm hearing is "use Substance Painter to make a few basic materials, then assign them to meshes/mesh vertices in Unity at import or load time based on the material IDs on the mesh." Is that basically accurate? I'm already making fairly heavy use of vertex colors in Blender to indicate things to the game. For example, ships define their usable deck area with vertex colors, and the particle emitters on the smokestacks are positioned to align with specific colored vertices on the mesh. TooMuchAbstraction fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Jul 31, 2019 |
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Jul 31, 2019 19:49
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Yeah that's pretty much it. Substance had plugins for Blender and Unity making it very easy.
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Jul 31, 2019 20:01
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Actually, looking at them again (original image), the models you have for the turrets are about the correct height, technically. But along with the turret comes all the machinery, lifts, ammunition and charge stores, so the whole structure basically extends down to the keel, while only the turret proper sticks above the hull: If you're not going for complete accuracy that's fine but if you want it to be realistic (if not historically faithful), I wouldn't let players stick turrets on top of the superstructure; if it were a real ship that would mean you'd be putting ammunition stores right next to where all the officers were stationed. Captain Splendid fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Jul 31, 2019 |
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Jul 31, 2019 20:06
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My second art dome entry. Non retouched 3d render  *** Taffer posted:The color and brightness on the first one is much better, but you still have odd color inconsistencies. The white border of the photo is a natural tinted white based on the lighting, but the text is a pure blinding white that seems unaffected by the environment despite looking like it's supposed to be part of the photo. Wish I had seen this before turning it in. You are totally right. I feel like with the last piece I was too much of a slave to realism vs. realizing that album covers are SUPPOSED to be colorful and eye catching. Spent faaar too choosing a font and tweaking minor details like bump on the moon or bump on the wood grain. Ultimately I liked the earlier versions much better than the one I turned in mostly because the final seemed to washed out / beige. sigma 6 fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Aug 1, 2019 |
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Aug 1, 2019 07:02
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Hey been watching your stuff in progress in the gamedev thread. Looking decent so far but yea at this point you should choose what kind of style you want for your ships. You've got mostly realistic modelling for the components but the proportions seem to indicate a more cartoony scale. The former would take a little more work but that doesnt mean going less realistic is easier either. 
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Aug 1, 2019 07:42
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I was all set to get salty about the complaints about scale, and went ahead and made a mockup of the Admiral Graf Spee using the parts I modeled, so I could overlay it with the diagrams I made the models from. And when I did so, I realized y'all were 100% right: the guns are about 30% too big.  I got the scale wrong on my reference images when I set up the Blender file for the gun.So that's fixed now.  EDIT: proof: 
TooMuchAbstraction fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Aug 1, 2019 |
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Aug 1, 2019 15:51
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Ccs posted:I壇 work on those eyes a bit, try to make them more feline so you can avoid an uncanny valley effect  Eyes are hard to design, I guess. On that note, I have been modeling for years but I've been avoiding realistic human characters because of the uncanny valley issue. It's really easy to tell when something is slightly off, so it's easier to stick to simple cartoon designs. I'm starting to get over my fear and try human sculpting based on art model photos. Here are my first few attempts, if anyone wants to critique my work so far: Slightly  :   I think I'm going to do a bunch of muscle drawings and then try again.
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Aug 2, 2019 05:50
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Blender 2.80 is out. Eevee is pretty awesome. Linky: https://www.blender.org/download/
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Aug 2, 2019 06:45
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Komojo posted:On that note, I have been modeling for years but I've been avoiding realistic human characters because of the uncanny valley issue. It's really easy to tell when something is slightly off, so it's easier to stick to simple cartoon designs. I'm starting to get over my fear and try human sculpting based on art model photos. Here are my first few attempts, if anyone wants to critique my work so far: Anatomy is one of those things where you just have to practice and study heaps and make some crappy looking stuff for a while till you get it. What you've posted kind of looks like a simple base mesh that's been posed. There's no feeling of a rigid bone structure with muscles wrapping over and then fat and skin over that. As a learning exercise try blocking out the pose as a simple stick figure type armature and building up the volumes from there. Or do that with a neutrally posed human. Like an ecorche sculpt. Look at skeletal anatomy pictures (or get some 3d models) and then the muscular system and how they relate.
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Aug 2, 2019 07:27
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Komojo posted:
I feel like this helps for modeling eyes. YMMV Of course - Cat eyes have different muscles. It really depends on how stylized you want your work to be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAEEXdS9wo0 sigma 6 fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Aug 2, 2019 |
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Aug 2, 2019 16:14
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anyone here have much experience with transferring scenes from ue4 to blender or an exportable file? I壇 love to use ue4 to generate my scenes because I find its programmable nature so powerful
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Aug 2, 2019 20:27
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You can program in Blender. There are a bunch of plug-ins for node-based "programming", if that's your thing, but more importantly it has built-in python scripting which can basically do anything in Blender. Of course if you already know UE4 well I can understand not wanting to learn that in another application.
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Aug 2, 2019 23:56
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I'm slowly going through a hard surface modelling course in Blender and there are two guys tackling different aspects of it. One guy is pretty much doing everything by hand (using Booleans for two objects then doing clean up) The other guy is using a non-destructive workflow and most of the complex shapes are stacked Boolean modifiers etc (literally hundreds) and you end up with a pretty sweet-looking, complex model. My question is though, what do you do when it comes to UVs? Would you have to apply and clean up the whole model?
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Aug 3, 2019 15:57
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Taffer posted:You can program in Blender. There are a bunch of plug-ins for node-based "programming", if that's your thing, but more importantly it has built-in python scripting which can basically do anything in Blender. I haven稚 heard of those node plugins, that痴 interesting thanks. I致e known about the scripting for a while now but never taken the dive, even though I really like python. I have no excuses
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Aug 4, 2019 04:52
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Gearman posted:Just wanted to drop in to say that we (Wayfair.com) are pretty much always hiring full-time, on-site, 3D artists to create rendered 3D imagery. We use Max and Vray, and provide training to help folks that don't know those tools get up to speed on it. This is good to hear! I know some talented lookdev ppl who are getting tired of vfx so I can tell them about this. That Blender 2.8 video made me really consider learning blender. I知 amazed how far it痴 come.
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Aug 4, 2019 22:24
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Always happy to answer questions re: Wayfair. Feel free to PM me!
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Aug 4, 2019 23:40
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Gearman posted:Always happy to answer questions re: Wayfair. Feel free to PM me! Do you guys have a montreal location?
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Aug 5, 2019 00:56
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Odddzy posted:Do you guys have a montreal location? Funny enough I was just chatting with someone from the Montreal government that helps companies setup in Montreal. Unfortunately, our 3D team is still US only (Massachusetts primarily) for the time being.
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Aug 5, 2019 03:26
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anyone use image based 3d modeling tools? I was recommended Reality Capture though I know there's a bunch of options (even free)
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Aug 5, 2019 13:19
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Alan Smithee posted:anyone use image based 3d modeling tools? I was recommended Reality Capture though I know there's a bunch of options (even free) If you're talking about Photogrammetry then, yes. What kind of info are you looking for?
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Aug 5, 2019 13:24
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Gearman posted:If you're talking about Photogrammetry then, yes. What kind of info are you looking for? Recommendations based on personal experience
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Aug 5, 2019 14:02
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Reality capture is more powerful, faster, and more expensive - agisoft is slower, cheaper, but gets the job done. Good to have a spare machine for agisoft otherwise you're waiting to do it overnight. If you're mixing photogrammetry & laser scans, use reality capture. Use whatever your budget/workload demands, they present a very obvious choice. We dont make money directly from 3d scans, they just augment our work - scanning occasional accessories, stealing 3d models from google earth for pre-viz, one off tree trunks/materials etc. For that the $4,500 cost of reality capture couldn't be justified. It is insanely fast though. cubicle gangster fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Aug 5, 2019 |
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Aug 5, 2019 14:05
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Alan Smithee posted:Recommendations based on personal experience Sure, he's a quick rundown of a few. Agisoft Metashape: Formerly Agisoft Photoscan, has Python scriptability with the pro version, has some neat tools to help reduce the need for masking and it now pretty much supports turntable-based scanning. Not the fastest out of the box, but the results are good and it can be just as fast as any of the others if you know what you're doing. I've used this for about six years now both professionally and personally (example of something I scanned and processed with it: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/OyX5e6 ) and I really dig it. License for a standard version is only $180 that makes it yours forever. Reality Capture: Fastest on the block, but only because it just uses lower resolution versions of your input images for initial reconstruction which is something you can do in any other photogrammetry package. Pretty solid and reliable, and a new favorite amongst photogrammetry people. License for a standard version is $99 for 3 months. Meshroom: From Alicevision, it's pretty fast but not terribly fully featured at the moment. Pretty decent results, and it's open source making it pretty extensible. One of its biggest killer features is its Maya plugin that lets you import the mesh and aligned cameras in to Maya which makes cleanup / photo modeling really quick and easy. Price for this is $0 and it's my recommendation for anyone that just wants to noodle around with photogrammetry. There are a few others out there, but these are the three I'd recommend the most. I can provide more detail on any of them if you'd like.
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Aug 5, 2019 14:28
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oooooo
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Aug 6, 2019 01:59
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Captain Splendid posted:I'm slowly going through a hard surface modelling course in Blender and there are two guys tackling different aspects of it. Mind sharing the course? I知 hoping to start a small project early next year that値l involve a good deal of hard surface modeling and am trying to learn blender for exactly that purpose
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Aug 6, 2019 02:11
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Pentecoastal Elites posted:Mind sharing the course? I知 hoping to start a small project early next year that値l involve a good deal of hard surface modeling and am trying to learn blender for exactly that purpose From OPs description it sounds like Hard Surface Modelling in Blender I have it, it's good.
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Aug 6, 2019 09:41
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edit: nvm dont want to start a storm in this thread
Kanine fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Aug 6, 2019 |
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Aug 6, 2019 17:41
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sinky posted:From OPs description it sounds like Hard Surface Modelling in Blender This looks absolutely perfect. I'll grab it after work today. Thanks!
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Aug 6, 2019 19:03
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I'm really close to switching over to Blender from 3ds max after seeing all the new 2.8 goodness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyxWDHy4ppY
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Aug 6, 2019 19:13
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Pentecoastal Elites posted:This looks absolutely perfect. I'll grab it after work today. Thanks! I do recommend it, and I ended up sending the creators an email with my question, so I was glad for the support they offer with the course. Aidy Burrows posted:Hi! Great question! Captain Splendid fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Aug 6, 2019 |
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Aug 6, 2019 19:52
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https://twitter.com/Arvydas_B/status/1158650425685549056 is there a thread on SA for level design?
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Aug 6, 2019 23:22
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Kanine posted:https://twitter.com/Arvydas_B/status/1158650425685549056 there should be, because that mashup owns In other news, designing by committee is still
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Aug 7, 2019 01:52
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Blender 2.8 is really great. Was pretty easy to pick up and go using the industry standard keymap which emulates maya. Picked up hardops, box cutter, decal machine and mesh machine and it is basically a hard surface modeling dream app now and that viewport is amazing.
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Aug 7, 2019 05:25
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keyframe posted:Blender 2.8 is really great. Was pretty easy to pick up and go using the industry standard keymap which emulates maya. I was trying to watch the video for the box cutter addon but having trouble with the stream, is this basically a boolean toolset, and can you use custom shapes to do the cutting or only box shapes?
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Aug 7, 2019 19:14
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oh man, i was just poking around simonoc's site and got a huge nostalgia trip for old level design stuff. his articles on using brushes to make stuff like rocks feels so quaint now looking back. (http://www.simonoc.com/pages/articles.htm) i cant believe we made entire levels using such basic tools. I will say that it was really nice being able to apply textures to objects in editors like hammer (or now in trenchbroom) does anyone know if there's something like probuilder but for unreal engine 4? Kanine fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Aug 7, 2019 |
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Aug 7, 2019 21:22
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Let's see if I can make a mid-poly model without loving it up this time...
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Aug 8, 2019 00:00
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oh nice, is that the y-wing from the clone wars?
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Aug 8, 2019 14:25
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