The 3D Thread

[Number 28]

First the anti-scientology sentiment, now this. The forum is just one disappointment after another for you, eh?

[SuperCat]

First the anti-scientology sentiment, now this. The forum is just one disappointment after another for you, eh?

Pathetic.

[Orchid]

[Capwn]

Hmm I'm a 3D games artist! (no, really) Yeah it would be nice to have a proper 3D area but as this thread shows it doesn't seem that many are bothered about it. Only Asura! I'm currently dabbling in this 'unearthly' contest on Polycount/GamesArtistians, you can form a team of 1-3 then you choose one of their concepts and make your own environment based on that. It's one of the biggest 3D comps out there, prizes are pretty amazing but you have to come in top 50 I think.

http://www.gameartisans.org/contests/event...cepts/index.php

deadline Oct 27th

At the moment I'm blocking it out but am a bit stuck with what to do. I bet I end up quitting. Again.

[Number 28]

To say that's a tight deadline is a bit of an understatement, especially as you have a fulltime job.

Some lovely stuff on there, though. Whenever I see decent environment concepts I think, why do so few games give me that immediate sense of atmosphere, that 'wow' factor? I guess with a single image, it's a lot easier to get the message across.

Edit: Do you have a concept on there? Are you working alone? etc...

[Asura]

In my case, I've recently got a new job as a graphic designer, where my games industry training is being put to use, but I'm not in the games industry proper. Once my first week here is over though, I need to finish that GM model and quickly move onto a new project.

[Dark_soldier]

Most my 3D stuff is product / furniture based stuff (I am a product designer/developer), I will post some up when I get home... Its also all modelled in solid modelling software. I am guessing you guys use surface stuff right?

[Asura]

As for me, I took this new job in graphic design because unlike Capone, I couldn't find a job in games art

I lived quite far from major cities, so working as an unpaid intern wasn't an option I had available, and nowhere is taking juniors now - a combination of several factors, such as the economic slump, studios closing and either just shutting up shop or moving to Canada, the recent reports about England being the most expensive company to dev in (it was on Gamesindustry a month or so ago) and Sega Racing Studio's closure freeing up a load of top-flight, experienced artists means that this year is more difficult than ever to seek employment in. Naturally, also, universities like Teesside and Bournemouth churn out a couple of hundred graduates a year on degrees like "Computer Games Art", and that clogs up the junior positions further (largely because a lot of graduates' work is just shit, but academically good, and the companies get sick of looking through the rough to find the diamonds). Most of the companies have online forms, where one of the questions is "do you have industry experience? Yes/No", and you can't help but think they likely immediately bin all the "no" answers. Of course, you apply anyway, and often receive no reply whatsoever.

Even the two big agencies, Datascope and OPM both told me they'd "given up" on juniors for the time being, as apparently it's just not going to happen. They also said the days of going in QA, then transferring over to a creative position once you have a foothold are now over, because there are too many people applying for entry-level QA that only want to do QA.

The job I have now is good, and pays well, but I'm just covering someone's maternity leave and it's touch-and-go as to whether I'll still have a job when they come back in 6 months' time. As a result I need to get back to my portfolio work, in case I need to go jobhunting for the games industry again.

[Asura]

Got a new render here. I'm mid-way through unwrapping the model for texturing, so I chucked a quick metal texture on it to see how it looked. That detail on the head is normal mapping, I did a quick test with it. If the rest of the maps render out so well, they'll need a little tweaking but ought to look great.

[Gunstar]

That's looking good, Asura!

Yeah, not a great year for employment, experience is pretty much a prerequisite now .

[Asura]

That's looking good, Asura!

Thanks The plan is to have the rest of the model unwrapped either by today or tomorrow. Following that I need a full day to rejig all of the meshes into two 2048x2048 textures, then to do a once-over the high poly model and check there are no minor details I've missed that I could quickly put in. Following that, I need to render out the normal maps then do the texturing, so I hope to have it finished, or to a high state of completion, by next weekend.

[Asura]

A bit hideous, that texture, but it's just for illustrative purposes. Proper texturing starts in earnest tomorrow.

[Asura]

Just another quick WIP.

This is with the normals and ambient occlusion rendered out for the lower body; going the to the upper body tonight. This render has no advanced lighting; this is how the 4k polys model would appear in-game.

There's still some work to do on the normals/ambient maps though; they come out a bit rough around the edges. You CAN spend ages with MAX's render-to-texture dialog to make it better, but it's usually just easier to tweak things in Photoshop later on.

[scribble]

Just so you know, you're not posting to yourself in here Asura. Some good stuff. I'm enjoying the WIP updates.

[Kryptonian]

Yeah Asura, good work.

I started playing with 3D Max a bit again recently after a few years away from it, I was a bit rusty at first and it was taking me a while to remember how to do some things but then it started flooding back. Hopefully I'll have a few bits and bobs worth showing.

[Asura]

Thanks

Managed to render out the normals and ambient occlusion maps for the upper body last night. Tonight I need to go over them with a fine-tooth comb, looking for errors, and deciding which can be fixed in Photoshop and which will need a re-render with tweaked projection settings. I'm hoping to be able to finally boot up Photoshop and start painting the textures by the end of the week.

[Asura]

This is where I am, as of tonight. I went through the maps and found a few that could be improved with a re-render and tweaking the projection cage. I did that today and this is the result (notice now that these are print-screen shots of the low-poly model, not renders - I've reached that point now where the difference isn't so apparent).

There are still a few errors, but I'm going to attack them with Photoshop. I'm happy with how things are so far going; it's got quite difficult to tell the high-res and low-res models apart from a distance, unless you know exactly where to look.

[Number 28]

Looks sweet Asura. You should easily be able to land a job with that.

[Asura]

Looks sweet Asura. You should easily be able to land a job with that.

Thanks There's still a fair way to go yet though. Hopefully it'll look even better once textured.

I'm a bit torn at the moment about whether to go really ultra-realistic with the textures, or stick to a more stylised look.

[Anaardvark]

Yeah I'm quite enjoying a lot of the stuff going on in here, I start my Uni course next week so it's nice to see what everything does. However I just tried turning Max on, just so I could have a play, and was COMPLETELY baffled by everything.

I was wondering if I was going to be in over my head with this, but they did well with assuring us that they're going to be showing us everything from scratch so whether you've got a good grasp of it all or a complete beginner, we'll all be at the same level by the end.

Fairly excited but at the same time terrified!

[Asura]

Yeah I'm quite enjoying a lot of the stuff going on in here, I start my Uni course next week so it's nice to see what everything does. However I just tried turning Max on, just so I could have a play, and was COMPLETELY baffled by everything.

I was wondering if I was going to be in over my head with this, but they did well with assuring us that they're going to be showing us everything from scratch so whether you've got a good grasp of it all or a complete beginner, we'll all be at the same level by the end.

Fairly excited but at the same time terrified!

It is very bewildering when you start. I was lucky, because my introduction to 3D rendering/modelling etc was with a copy of Bryce2 off the front of a PC mag years ago. Bryce is really simple to use, though really it's a landscape renderer.

MAX will be bewildering at first, just like any mainstream 3D modelling package (Maya and Softimage would be just the same). I wouldn't worry though; if your course is good, you'll start off with very simple tutorials - probably beginning with making simple shapes like boxes, spheres and prisms, then going onto box/face extrusion modelling, and so forth.

A couple of fun things for you to do early on will be to model a simple Greek temple, and Stonehenge. They're mostly made up of simple shapes you should be able to knock up quickly once you're a few weeks in.

Just work through it slowly and methodically. The main things you should try and grasp are topography, and UV unwrapping, but those will come a lot later.

(UV unwrapping is the process of flattening out the surfaces of your model onto an image, so you can texture it well later - it can be done well or poorly, try to learn how to do it right the first time.

Topography is a bit harder to quantify. Once you get a bit further in, you'll start modelling things from pictures and/or schematics. When first doing this, many people jump into it with gusto, expecting great results, but are surprised when their models end up looking worse than expected. Topography is the bit that is more than just tracing out a model in polygons; it's the ability of a modeller to understand the contours of a surface and model the polys relative to them. It's the difference between a good modeller and a very good one, and no-one can do it right away. Learning to sketch with shading could actually help with this, it really helped me. The main thing though is just to practice, and it'll come to you.)

Hope that didn't scare you These principles will be introduced gradually, so just work through what you're given and play around in your spare time. Try to look in magazines and on websites, and in games at the models (you'll find this hard NOT to do, eventually). Move Marcus Fenix in Gears of War backwards and forwards, rotate him, see what makes him tick; sooner or later you'll start to get it just from observation.

[Asura]

Here's tonight's WIP. I finished editing the normal and lighting maps for the upper body, and found a real-time normal map shader for MAX to make it easier to preview things. I also slapped a quick metal texture on too.

Normal maps are tricky. I'm finally getting to grips with them, but they can be awkward at times. The errors in those two sets of maps took about 3 hours to edit tonight, and I have the lower body tomorrow.

[Asura]

OK, had a look through some texture photosource today, and decided that I'm going to go realistic. I thought about sticking with stylised, perhaps even going for some cel-shading or similar, but in the end I came back to trying to make it a really battered, beat-up engine of WAR.

[Ste Pickford]

Yeah I'm quite enjoying a lot of the stuff going on in here, I start my Uni course next week so it's nice to see what everything does. However I just tried turning Max on, just so I could have a play, and was COMPLETELY baffled by everything.

I was wondering if I was going to be in over my head with this, but they did well with assuring us that they're going to be showing us everything from scratch so whether you've got a good grasp of it all or a complete beginner, we'll all be at the same level by the end.

Fairly excited but at the same time terrified!

Max is horribly unintuitive. You'll get there in the end, but don't worry about being initially bewildered. Everyone is.

There's just a hell of a lot you need to know - arcane concepts you need to understand and be familiar with - before you can get anywhere with 3D modelling.

Don't worry about it, and don't be discouraged if you don't get it all at first. There's a lot to learn.

[JLR]

Yeah I'm quite enjoying a lot of the stuff going on in here, I start my Uni course next week so it's nice to see what everything does. However I just tried turning Max on, just so I could have a play, and was COMPLETELY baffled by everything.

I was wondering if I was going to be in over my head with this, but they did well with assuring us that they're going to be showing us everything from scratch so whether you've got a good grasp of it all or a complete beginner, we'll all be at the same level by the end.

Fairly excited but at the same time terrified!

You're an incredibly capable bloke to begin with at quite a lot of things, so I'm almost certain that with time you'll pick this stuff up.

Nice work, Asura.

[Asura]

OK, normal maps are complete! Well, at least the rendered ones - I'm going to put things like dents and scratches in using Photoshop later on.

Only 3 seconds long, but you should be able to see the normals in effect. Texturing proper begins tomorrow!

[Asura]

Just finished the textures on the arms:

And that's all for today. I need a break! Going to try and do the backpack tomorrow. Following that, the head, then onto the lower body.

It's a little bright at the mo, as there is no specular mapping yet (that gets done last). Also, I'm going to incorporate all those scratches into the normal map, which will give it a far more detailed and weathered appearance.

[Number 28]

Looks sweet dude. You know how to append the scuffs/damage from the diffuse maps onto the normal maps? Nvidea filter?

[Asura]

Looks sweet dude. You know how to append the scuffs/damage from the diffuse maps onto the normal maps? Nvidea filter?

Yeah; way ahead of you - I'm even going to do two versions, one with a range of 0-10 for the actual renders, and one with a range of 0-60 for showing off (engines like the Unreal Engine for some reason like really deep normal maps from the filter, otherwise they hardly show up, whereas MAX prefers shallower ones).

[Number 28]

Ah, cool.

Btw, I meant to say NVIDIA. I always get mixed up with Nivea moisturiser...