lowpolycoop.com

[scotths]

Just a big planter pot. Put your own plant in it, or maybe we will make some in the future.







~shs~

[HanClinto]

Hey all!

I'm a programmer by trade, and am very excited about the possibilities in lowpolycoop -- it's something that can *really* help indie game developers like myself. So good on y'all -- it's fantastic!

I'm very new to 3d modeling (took me a long time to try and figure out how to set my view to "textured" in Blender today), but went through the tutorials on how to texture a model and decided to do this one over my lunch break today (though I went about 45 minutes over...). I wanted to start with something simple, and figured this was as good a model as any to start on. The Tavern project interests me more, but I want to see the Gilman project meet its target date, so I thought I'd at least get a start on one of the models.

Please keep in mind that this is the first model I've ever loaded into Blender, much less the first one I've ever textured. I'm very open to constructive criticism, as I'd like to understand the pipeline that my artists have to go through in order to get me (the programmer) content.

The WIP preview picture:


Here is the WIP texture file:
pot_001_tex.png

And the original WIP Gimp project file with all of my layers and everything split out nicely so that a person can change stuff quickly without having to mess with setting up their own masks:
pot_001_tex.xcf

Is this all that needs to be done to submit a texture to the Gilman project? I'm very new to all of this.

I think that something I should probably try is baking shadows into the texture with Blender -- I've seen this technique mentioned a couple of times, and it seems like it's probably a much better way to go about things than trying to hand-paint shadows in all of those frustrating (but beautiful) ridges on the top of the pot.

Thanks!

Respectfully,
clint

[Yaniv]

Yes baking the texture will get you much better results. It will look more natural and detailed.
Other than that, I think you should roughen up the model a little. It's very clean for a real-life object.

Though it's great to see more faces working on Gilman. I like what you got so far.
Thanks for joining in!
_________________
Yaniv P.
Life is like a next-gen video game. The graphics are awesome but the gameplay stinks.

[HanClinto]

Thanks for the comments/criticism, Yaniv!

I realized last night that pots that large aren't *usually* baked clay, but that they're usually large concrete things. My wife and I went biking for ice-cream last night (Ritter's Frozen Custard... yum!), and I took my camera just in case I saw a planter there. I did. Yay!

Here's the source photo I took of it:


So I took some photos of the sides, and made a tileable texture from it (1600x1200).

I then used that for the outsides of the pot, and I also made a dinky simple 512x512 tileable concrete texture for the rim/inside.

I generated the dirt with noise and a number of filters -- I'm not very happy with it -- I'd love a better source texture for potting soil.

I also got to learn about an excellent filter, color-to-alpha! Phew -- that thing is *useful*. I had known I needed such a thing, but I hadn't known where to find it (no graphics training -- I've just sortof learned this stuff as I go). Sooo... long story short, here's WIP version 2!



I think this version is much more consistent with the general look and feel of the Gilman Street project, and I really like how I was able to take advantage of the full 1024x768 texture space that I have to use for detail.

Here's the full texture for WIP #2

and

The current WIP XCF file with all of my layers, masks and whatnot.

Again, comments and criticisms are very welcome. Is this high enough quality to be submitted to the project yet? If not, what else should be done?

Cheers!

--clint

[nibbuls]

It looks much better now!

Keep in mind that the shadows/highlights should be gradients on this model, since the edges are smooth. Add more shadows and highlights... make sure that they stay consistent. Put shadows on the underside of objects.

[HanClinto]

Okay -- thanks! I'll work on that for the next version -- I really appreciate the feedback.

That shadow baking thing is pretty intimidating to me -- I think I'm going to avoid it for now and just hand-paint the first version of the shadows to see if that can come off okay.

--clint

[Funky Bunnies]

baking the lighting will do a lot of the work for you. It does indeed look a lot better. Keep it up, man.

[HanClinto]

Thanks for the feedback, Funky Bunnies.

Here's the latest update -- work in progress #3. I tried to make the shadows better (redrew them all by hand), and made it so that there are two intermingling layers of grime -- one brown, and one black. I think it adds another layer of realism so that it's not just monochrome dirt, but blended.

I wasn't sure what to do with the bottom. *shrug*. So it's just slimy concrete.

Would baking the shadows get me much better results than this? One thing I'm afraid of is that baking the shadows into such a low poly model might accentuate the vertices (when it's supposed to look round, right?). So I took a bit of time to hand-draw shadows underneath each of the ridges and tweak them 'till they looked right. I also applied a slight gradient (you can't really tell) with the shadows to make it get darker towards the bottom, to make it look like the shadows sortof "creep up" from the ground.

In redoing all of the grime/shadows, I also took time to make sure that they tiled properly from left-to-right. In this screenshot, it shows the major left/right seam of the model, but ideally by looking at that render, you wouldn't be able to tell me which ridge it was located on. It was more obvious in the previous texture I made (I think it was on the backside in the previous version's screenshot). Trying to get closer to a final version, I wanted to be sure to correct it this time.




Full texture link is here.

I feel that it's getting closer to a final version, though since this is my first one, I don't know that I'll be able to pronounce it "finished". I'd like to call this one the first "release candidate". If there are other improvements I should make (such as if baking shadows really would be better than these hand-painted shadows), then I'm totally open to suggestions.

Cheers!

--clint

[Khaine]

I'm really liking how this is going Clint, good work. About the only thing I would say is to carry the pebbly texture around the top lip, at the moment I just think it looks kinda wierd. I know it's not how your reference pic has it, but I think it would look alot better.
_________________
"The good shall fall" - Khaine

[Funky Bunnies]

I agree. It looks much nicer, by the way.

Anyway, I think the main thing that makes it look wierd is that the grey area has no detail - which is a vast contrast to the pebble texture on the bottom portion. Add some small marks and dips to make it look more like cement.
The contrast in level of detail is multiplied greatly by the lack of segue between each of the two materials. As it stands, the line between the two materials is just too sharp. blending it together a bit or adding some shadow to it will help make it look more natural.

It's lookin' nice. Keep it up.

[HanClinto]

uuuugh.

*sigh*.

I just found out that I forgot to save my texture off as an .xcf when I was working on this Friday, so all I've got from my latest version is the flattened .png version of it -- all that hand-tweaking I did with the shadows and everything is gone.

Phew. I had been so careful to back my stuff up and just forgot to this time.

Ah well, I guess I learn how to do this all over again or something.

I'll try and get up the gumption to redo all of this, but man -- that's a blow.


But back on topic -- thanks for all the good enouragement and constructive criticism! It's incredibly encouraging, and I really want to redo this texture so that I can try out some of the stuff that's been suggested. I'm already thinking of how I can add some more detail to the smooth concrete.

Thanks!

Respectfully,
clint

[Funky Bunnies]

I know how it is. I've run into that all too many times. In fact I'm running into that on steroids currently. My computer's on the fritz and it freezes at completely random times and won't work with certain programs. Into this category falls 3ds max and my movie editing program. So I need to back up some 60 gigs of stuff - including current freelance work and I may need to replace some hardware if I can figure out the problem.

Anyway, no worries, I'm glad you're still motivated to work on it
I look forward to seeing version 2. Good luck.

[HanClinto]

Thanks for the great feedback and encouragement, Funky.

I spent some time last night seeing how long it would take me to redo this texture from scratch. Didn't take me quite as long as it did the first time, but it still took longer than I had hoped.

Here's the latest update:


I'm not sure what I did wrong, but I feel like I improved the model in some ways, but I feel like I backslid in other ways. Anyone have input on the matter? It was worse last night, but I touched it up some this morning. I did a fair number of sharpen filters on the dirt/gravel/concrete, and that cleaned things up a lot. I can't help feeling that the shadows were just better on the last version -- which is really frustrating because I'm not sure how to get them to turn out as good as they did last time.

One area I feel the current version is doing a lot better in is the bottom -- I took that from the texture coop (from picture texhunt_2006_05_01_033), the potting soil dirt was taken from the fuzzy background in texhunt_2006_05_01_022, shrunk, sharpened, made seamless, and heavy color tweaking. The concrete for the rim/pot inside is from texhunt_2006_05_01_015.JPG. The pebble texture is the one that I made.

In remaking this one, I also heavily experimented with masks -- I hadn't used them in the last versions, but they really help clean stuff up in certain situations.

Cheers!

--clint

[nibbuls]

The new concrete texture looks great!

I'm impartial to the red gravel, though.

[HanClinto]

okay, quick update -- I did a little more tweaking (added creep-up-from-the-ground shadows), and redid most of the moulding shadows. Also tweaked the color some. Again, comments and criticism are very welcome.



Cheers!

--clint

Edit: Whoops -- Nibbuls, didn't see your reply before I posted this. So you don't like how red the gravel looks? Yeah -- that's a little off-kilter to me too -- I tried to tweak it a little bit this time, but I'm not sure how much it helped. What would you suggest instead of being so red? More brown? Or just muting the colors maybe (that's probably what I'll try next).