The 3D Thread

[smithstock]

Hey man,

The way I've done the lines is via floating polygons. A few UK racing studios use floating poly's to sit above the normal track which are for road markings. These can then be composited with dirt over the top or have an alpha channel to make the edges less perfect.

In texturing the pitch - it's one grass texture, overlayed three times and multiplied with a vertical and horizontal striped mask which is then tiled via three seperate mapping channels

It's possible to composite a large texture with the line markings over the top of the grass - but it would be tricky to get the shape and size accurate to realistic dimensions.

I'm not sure how FIFA/Pro Evo do it - but this is the solution I've found.

[Rossco]

Yeh I've got my heart set on the games industry but realise I won't just walk out of uni into my dream job so we'll see how it goes. I agree with everything you say there, it makes perfect sense. But I still want to get my first class honours, even if just for me, just to say I did it. So I am still sticking to the brief for my project but just twisting it as much as I can to be mainly an environment showreel. I will focus the vast majority of my time on setting it up for just stills shots though, as you say it's not worth it making it a full animated scene. The camera work will be stuck in randomly without much thought and just done for the project and that's it.

I've got my layout all set up for the now square shaped piazza while I think will be much easier to model and texture now. Halfed the amount of buildings too so can spend more time on really ramping up the detail levels.

Along with this project, I have a special effects one which I'll be using After Effects for, probably going to do the old classic lightsaber battle. Done a million times but still looks good. Throw in some rain effects which I've already been tinkering with and some kind of fire/smoke/explosions to top it off.

And the last module is to produce a 20 second advert for a compact digital camera in a team of 6 people. Going to be quite difficult as 6 people is alot for such a small project so spreading the work around equally and agreeing on ideas 100% is going to be the hard bit.

On another note,I met with a team last night for the Dare To Be Digital competition that utero mentioned earlier. We had a presentation about it a few months back and I really wanted in. Luckily I found a group from my uni looking for an artist. Meeting one more group in a few days too to see what they have on offer then I'll have to decide which one to go with. Such a great opportunity so I really want to get in to it.

How did the Frontier interview go Capwn?

smithstock, I previously done the same method for texturing a road with painted lines. As you said, if you didn't do it this way, you'd have to create a huge texture which can just be fiddly to get everything spot on.

[Anaardvark]

I have a question which I can't seem to find a good answer to... But....

How would you go about creating a texture map for a whole character from scratch. Face, body suit, the whole works.

I've unwrapped my character to the best of my ability but now need to start texturing it but have no idea how to go about it?

[smithstock]

3D.sk is a site where you can get spot on visual reference for faces/hair.

For clothing or boots etc I just looked for generic leather/fabric textures.

Most people use Zbrush/Mudbox for normal maps with fine detail but if you don't have then creating a grey scale texture map when you are finished - use that with the Nvidia Normal Map filter in Photoshop

I'm not really into character modelling but I've done one before.

[Capwn]

Thanks for the info smithstock, interesting stuff. Never dealt with racing/sports games before.

Rossco, your course sounds just as daft as mine and number 28's about 5 years ago. They just make you do EVERYTHING, maybe that makes sense in the first year to give you an idea what there is and what appeals but it continues right into the final year. Oh, good luck with dare to be digital, that's good exposure if you can get in.

Oh and got the job at Frontier! Start next week.

Anaardvark

Not really done character textures before but have a faint idea. Just not sure what you're after? It's mainly about ref collecting, arranging it into your texture over your uv's. Once everything is more or less in right place start working on top of it and use the ref as a template. Though it depends if it's supposed to be photo real or stylish.

[Rossco]

Awesome news on the job! Well done. Met with another team for Dare today and I like their ideas much better so gonna join up with them, just looking for one more artist now and we're ready to rock. Hopefully the final person is also from our uni as theres never been a full team to represent us there before which would be nice to do.

[utero2001]

congrats on the job Adam

[smithstock]

Nice one matey Think I'll start applying in a month or so

[Jonathan_Kerr]

Well done, Adam! I know you were looking for quite a while so it's good that you stuck at it.

Did you have to do an art test or did they just call you in for an interview? Also, what was the gap in time between submitting your application and hearing back from them?

I went for a UI job at another company recently and missed out, which was disappointing. Just gotta keep looking.

[Capwn]

Well done, Adam! I know you were looking for quite a while so it's good that you stuck at it.

Did you have to do an art test or did they just call you in for an interview? Also, what was the gap in time between submitting your application and hearing back from them?

I went for a UI job at another company recently and missed out, which was disappointing. Just gotta keep looking.

Thanks. They said they wanted me to do an art test but then didn't bother with it, maybe it was a test to see if I was willing to go beyond the call of duty or perhaps they were going to do it but then the 5 star artist that was going to have my job dropped out. I'll never know now. I got a reply after 1 week (exactly) of sending out my application.

I had sent out 25 applications on Thursday 28th Jan. Even till this day (2 weeks later) I had only received 5 replies including that of Frontier. Pretty shocking really.

[Ran]

Aye its very much been my experience (and that of some friends way more talented than me!) that a lot of companies are pitifully bad at getting back to applicants. I'm gearing up to do a proper round of applications myself soon.

(Thats if ever get my arse in gear and get some half decent work together!)

Glad to see you got the job though dude.

[Jonathan_Kerr]

Yeah, I'm finding that out at the moment. I'll get contacted by a recruiter who I'll send them an adjusted version of my CV or whatever and then not hear back. So I don't know if it's because I'm not good enough or if there's someone better or it the recruiter is just being half arsed.

I've applied to Frontier for a GUI artist position. Lately I've been doing so much GUI stuff (complex interactive applications), I wish I could show them what I'm doing but I'm not really allowed to give away my clients competitive advantage.

Still, bloody stoked for you dude, because if I remember rightly, you were struggling for a while with the lack of responses. Good stuff, mate.

[utero2001]

Yeah, I'm finding that out at the moment. I'll get contacted by a recruiter who I'll send them an adjusted version of my CV or whatever and then not hear back. So I don't know if it's because I'm not good enough or if there's someone better or it the recruiter is just being half arsed.

Most companies prefer you contacting them directly, don't use a recruitment agency.

[Capwn]

Yeah, I have quite a lot of experience with these agencies. Of the ones that do get back in touch 95% of them seem all super positive on you at first and will ring you asking details only never to hear from them ever again (unless they are desperate to find standard level artists which these days is rare). Though I wouldn't 100% stay clear from them as they have in total got me 2 interviews. Have them in the background but don't ever depend on them.

[Jonathan_Kerr]

I tend to apply through sites like the gamesindustry.biz job section, thegamesindustry.net and try to work out what companies are looking. Sometimes I use the job site process, other times I apply myself (eg like with Frontier).

I got my interview at the BBC by spotting a job on the site and then applying to them directly.

[smithstock]

Latest render of my stadium, the 9th iteration of lighting I made. Still got exit lighting and the stadium name to light. Also needs a light fog effect and other general tweaking before I start a day rig.

[Capwn]

Nice atmosphere shot potential there. Hope you show renders that don't hide your mesh skills in the dark!

[smithstock]

This is the thing - the ambient light, was lighter. But it didn't 'look' like night-time.

When I darkened it, it made the model look more night-time but it blended into the background too much.

As I say, its v.9 and I'll still be working on it for the next 3/4 days.

[Nicky]

try a sodium-vapour yellow street light ambience added to the blue of your general ambient light at localised points around the outskirts of the stadium, and brown off the lighting on the outside top of the stadium to reflect the real world orange/brown glow the clouds will give from light polution.

[mrpranny]

Just some tutorial objects i`m working through. Any hints, shortcuts or crit welcome.

[mrpranny]

I made a few more things with no problems but now i`ve got to the UVing process and have created this. The texture is all over the place when i go to apply though. Have i made a big mistake a long way back or have i not pressed a tick in a box somewhere as usual. (and yes that`s meant to be a uniform checkered texture.)

[Number 28]

I'd say it needs unwrapping a bit better, but it's difficult to explain exactly how here. I would split it into sections - the palm, and the fingers. I'd delete all but one finger, detach that finger, unwrap it, sort the UVs, then duplicate it, stitch them back on and alter the sizes appropriately. You can either apply a cylindrical projection (In 'Polygons' mode click on Create UVs -> Cylindrical Mapping) or planar map each side (Create UVs-> Planar Mapping), then stitch them together in the UV Texture Editor. You can then either arrange the UVs for each finger in their own space, or leave them on top of each other to save texture space (recommended for a low poly game model).

You don't seem to have applied the chequer texture to the entire hand... the fingers wouldn't be grey? Selecting the object and re-applying it should do the trick.

I always find to use the cheque pattern, you have to bump up the repetitions like so, otherwise they won't help much -

You should see the cheque pattern a lot clearer. Also, if the cheque pattern is blurred, try turning the texture filtering off -

[mrpranny]

cheeers!! well I tried messing about with it but no joy yet.I`ve only been using maya for a few weeks so maybe i`m skipping ahead a bit. I tried reapplying the texture and upping the UV repeats but the fingers dont want to texture. I`ll move on to the next tutorials for now i think.

[smithstock]

Does Maya have a pelt mapping function? if it does, its pretty much the easiest way to unwrap a hand. You can cut a seam across the side of the hand and create a circular seam around the wrist, these are both pelted into order to give a top hand shape and bottom hand shape - similar to, but more accurate than planar mapping That's how I do it in 3ds Max anyway.

[Number 28]

Not sure tbh, I usually do things the tried and tested way. Pelt mapping is more for higher poly stuff i'd say, you could arrange the uvs of the above hand pretty easily by...hand.

I should probably ask what the hand is for exactly? I mean, have you been given any constraints? Did they ask for just a hand with one texture? Texture size? If it's just a hand with a reasonably sized texture, you needn't repeat the fingers. So much depends on the particular situation, but these universities never seem to specify anything. Then again, maybe it's personal work.

[smithstock]

Pelt mapping is more for higher poly stuff i'd say

You think?

Do you use it for character faces? I'm not really a character modeller, just curious. I've been doning test's with it to stretch out full walls of building unwraps rather than manually planar mapping polygons. It's a very cool tool I think

[Number 28]

Nah, you're right. Obviously the future for unwrapping is to only have to click a few times to have it sort itself out. I'm just a bit stuck in my ways, and would only turn to it when there are too many UVs to do it manually. Learning new stuff though, ugh.

[smithstock]

Nice, I think theres a plug-in for 3ds Max that literally has one click and it mathmetically puts UV's into 0,1 space as perfect as it can - mathematically and automatically pelt's everything. I think Modo has a similar tool, you click a button and it does the hard work for you.

I've not used Maya, think it will be my next challenge!

[Rossco]

On the subject of UVs, I use Lightwave and I don't know of anything decent for UV mapping with it. It's all done manually and I would say it's the one thing I would like to improve on a bit more.

Here are some shots of my project I've been working on. I think it's coming along quite well to be honest. There are 12 buildings to be done and I've done 7 of them now. Everything is being UV mapped as I go too so when I get to texturing I should be able to just jump straight in. Once I finish the last building I will go back over them adding another pass of detail such as pipes, cables, lights attached to the walls, chimneys, aerials and the various plants/flowers hanging from many of the windows and balconies. Then a fountain for the centre will be done last along with various tables/chairs etc if the time is available.

[Asura]

Obviously the future for unwrapping is to only have to click a few times to have it sort itself out.

How far have they gotten with that? I'm a bit behind the times on unwrapping; I have done some pelt-mapping stuff but I still used to do all of mine by hand. Has the software improved to that point yet?