The "Model/Skin" Pimpage/WIP Thread V7

[SMasters]

Has anyone here ever taken any courses or anything similar to cgworkshops? I'm considering doing this one [url]http://workshops.cgsociety.org/courseinfo.php?id=425[/url] but it's quite expensive, although manageable. I'm relatively young and I would definitely love a job in the industry one day so I feel this could pay off in the future. A worry I have though is that It says it's aimed towards beginners and I already have a decent background in highpoly/lowpoly modelling which makes me worry if it's truly worth the money > my current skilllevel [url]http://smasters.carbonmade.com/[/url] < . However I still feel like I need to really fine tune my work and solidify my workflow which is where the course would come in, plus being taught in by a professional in the industry sounds like it would be an amazing experience that could be incredibly helpful. Basically what I'm asking is if anyone has any experience in a course type environment would something like this be useful for someone at my skill level and worth the price?

tl:dr I want to enroll in a cgworkshop but I would like to know if it's truly worth it.

Sorry for the long post and any help/answers are appreciated!

[carlmcgee]

[QUOTE=surfur;41967098]Phew! Getting faster at texturing.
[t]http://i.cubeupload.com/FpslNv.jpg[/t]
[t]http://i.cubeupload.com/uREw92.jpg[/t]
[t]http://i.cubeupload.com/RFw984.jpg[/t]

EDIT:

You guys make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.[/QUOTE]

Hi Surfur, I was wondering to make all the normal maps, do you go into Zbrush or Mudbox to design the cracks and then export as a texture? And where did you learn to UV map I struggle myself because I always end up with seams that I don't want, maybe there is a setting I need to adjust but just haven't found... Anyway, Good Work & keep it up... Carl Mcgee

[Com Truise]

[QUOTE=surfur;41980724]I guess this will be the page of me

more WIP

[t]https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/1237295_577823342274927_864236542_o.jpg[/t]

Did a block out of an old competition on Polycount. It's already over and done with, but I was really inspired by the thread and I'm going to try and do it myself![/QUOTE]

Can you please link the thread? I love inspiration.

[John117]

[IMG]http://i.xomf.com/bgzpg.jpg[/IMG]

[azgag]

[QUOTE=surfur;41980724]I guess this will be the page of me

more WIP

[t]https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/1237295_577823342274927_864236542_o.jpg[/t]

Did a block out of an old competition on Polycount. It's already over and done with, but I was really inspired by the thread and I'm going to try and do it myself![/QUOTE]
That looks great man, I wish I had the time to participate in one of those Noob Challenges

[QUOTE=SMasters;41981456]Has anyone here ever taken any courses or anything similar to cgworkshops? I'm considering doing this one [url]http://workshops.cgsociety.org/courseinfo.php?id=425[/url] but it's quite expensive, although manageable. I'm relatively young and I would definitely love a job in the industry one day so I feel this could pay off in the future. A worry I have though is that It says it's aimed towards beginners and I already have a decent background in highpoly/lowpoly modelling which makes me worry if it's truly worth the money > my current skilllevel [url]http://smasters.carbonmade.com/[/url] < . However I still feel like I need to really fine tune my work and solidify my workflow which is where the course would come in, plus being taught in by a professional in the industry sounds like it would be an amazing experience that could be incredibly helpful. Basically what I'm asking is if anyone has any experience in a course type environment would something like this be useful for someone at my skill level and worth the price?

tl:dr I want to enroll in a cgworkshop but I would like to know if it's truly worth it.

Sorry for the long post and any help/answers are appreciated![/QUOTE]

CGWorkshop is well known in the industry so I don't think you have anything to lose taking this course (plus it isn't that expensive compared to a normal University course). I went to a 2-years school to learn game dev (Tribeca Flashpoint in Chicago) and all the teachers had at least 5 years of experience in the gaming industry, it's a big plus since they can teach you small tricks that can speed up your workflow. If you aren't sure about your skill level, I would say it's probably worth taking the course to get a solid knowledge base and workflow.

[Surfur]

[QUOTE=carlmcgee;41981758]Hi Surfur, I was wondering to make all the normal maps, do you go into Zbrush or Mudbox to design the cracks and then export as a texture? And where did you learn to UV map I struggle myself because I always end up with seams that I don't want, maybe there is a setting I need to adjust but just haven't found... Anyway, Good Work & keep it up... Carl Mcgee[/QUOTE]

For this project I used zBrush. I have used mudbox in the past, and I'm sure you could do this same destruction in mudbox, but personally I find it a lot easier with zBrush. I usually use mudbox for its painting tools. for the normal map I used a program called xNormal. Once I was done creating the highpoly sculpt in zbrush, I used a plugin within zbrush called Decimation Master, to reduce the amount of polygons before exporting it out as an OBJ. from there, I used my Lowpoly I created in max and within xNormal I baked out between the Lowpoly from max and the Highpoly from zBrush to create the normal and occlusion.

Uv mapping, that's a tricky one. There isn't one key button or adjustment that will suddenly make you better at UV's, it's time and practice. BUT there is a program that will help you out significantly, UV Layout. I would recommend this to any one and everyone, but personally I believe you should be proficient inside of Max for making UV's before learning this program, it's just a good thing to learn how to do it properly inside of the base program before moving on to UV layout. And for everything else, tutorials, tutorials, tutorials. I cant stress that enough, and I'm sure everyone else here will agree with that. Lots of research as well, I found out how to do the destruction through a few dozen posts on Polycount that weren't specifically tutorials, just people talking about the program.

oh and here's the thread for all the inspirational goodness

[url]http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=121580[/url]

[Auto Taco]

Ok, so I decided to start practicing my porting skills for the first time. So I decided (Despite not even having the original Half Life 1) to port the "Mr. Valve" model from what would have been Valve's first "Open your mind" advertisement, check out youtube if your interested in the map and model as well. Even though the model is extremely old, (1998 to be exact) the actual model made it into the game somewhat successfully. I have yet to actually give it collisions, (It shows up as an "effect" when spawned in Garry's mod.) The animations were ported successfully as well, but I have run into a slight problem, I cannot get the textures to properly appear on the model itself. I followed the valve wiki, they used vtex but I used vtfedit and saved all the .bmp textures to vtf with the proper vmt files along with it. I changed the .qc from $cdtextures to $cdmaterials and typed in my texture path, but it still will not appear. Any help on this that you experienced guys out there can get me will be greatly appreciated. Here is my .qc

/*
==============================================================================

QC script generated by Half-Life MDL Decompiler 1.2 
2003, Kratisto. Based on code from Valve's HL SDK.

mrvalve.mdl

Original internal name:
"valve/models/mrvalve.mdl"

==============================================================================
*/

$modelname "Humans\mrvalve.mdl"
$cdmaterials "models\mrvalve\"
$scale .50
$surfaceprop "flesh"



$bbox 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
$cbox 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
$eyeposition 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000


//reference mesh(es)
$body "body" "reference.smd"


// 48 hit box(es)
$hbox 0 "MrV Pelvis" -13.420000 -10.650000 -13.230000 6.210000 12.270000 13.190000
$hbox 0 "MrV L Leg" 0.000000 -11.430000 -5.980000 39.447731 9.450000 7.450000
$hbox 0 "MrV L Leg1" 0.000000 -9.430000 -5.740000 40.130001 10.030000 6.220000
$hbox 0 "MrV L Foot" -0.260000 -5.890000 -5.280000 9.500000 18.459999 5.160000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Leg" 0.000000 -10.190000 -7.420000 39.447731 9.450000 6.020000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Leg1" 0.000000 -9.430000 -6.180000 40.130001 10.030000 5.780000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Foot" -0.260000 -5.890000 -5.120000 9.500000 18.459999 5.310000
$hbox 0 "MrV Spine" 0.000000 -7.260000 -11.710000 9.399460 11.270000 11.720000
$hbox 0 "MrV Spine1" 0.000000 -4.550000 -10.760000 8.028568 3.330000 10.880000
$hbox 0 "MrV Spine2" -3.420000 -9.980000 -12.300000 11.012538 11.130000 12.280000
$hbox 0 "MrV Spine3" -2.220000 -11.790000 -15.250000 15.530552 11.430000 14.930000
$hbox 0 "MrV Neck" -3.730000 -6.440000 -5.497438 2.734998 8.350000 5.497436
$hbox 0 "MrV L Arm" -1.150000 -5.840000 -5.140000 12.150000 8.690000 2.650000
$hbox 0 "MrV L Arm1" 0.000000 -5.630000 -4.800000 26.575500 7.530000 5.720000
$hbox 0 "MrV L Arm2" 0.000000 -3.960000 -3.220000 24.150946 5.090000 4.010000
$hbox 0 "MrV L Hand" 0.000000 -1.840000 -2.980000 11.240000 2.270000 3.800000
$hbox 0 "MrV L Finger0" -0.040000 -0.910000 -1.160000 5.100000 1.820000 2.050000
$hbox 0 "MrV L Finger01" 0.000000 -0.320000 -0.710000 3.620000 1.230000 0.970000
$hbox 0 "MrV L Finger02" 0.000000 0.000000 -0.480000 2.780000 1.160000 0.850000
$hbox 0 "MrV L Finger1" 0.000000 -0.760000 -0.840000 2.690000 0.990000 0.530000
$hbox 0 "MrV L Finger11" 0.000000 -0.720000 -0.750000 2.410000 0.740000 0.500000
$hbox 0 "MrV L Finger2" 0.000000 -0.700000 -0.980000 2.810000 1.100000 0.710000
$hbox 0 "MrV L Finger21" 0.000000 -0.640000 -0.910000 2.930000 0.940000 0.520000
$hbox 0 "MrV L Finger22" 0.000000 -0.340000 -0.790000 1.890000 0.670000 0.350000
$hbox 0 "MrV L Finger3" 0.000000 -0.810000 -0.730000 3.140000 1.140000 0.730000
$hbox 0 "MrV L Finger31" 0.000000 -0.730000 -0.650000 2.500000 0.910000 0.670000
$hbox 0 "MrV L Finger32" 0.000000 -0.420000 -0.560000 2.050000 0.610000 0.520000
$hbox 0 "MrV L Finger4" 0.000000 -0.850000 -0.780000 2.570000 1.020000 0.480000
$hbox 0 "MrV L Finger41" 0.000000 -0.760000 -0.650000 1.610000 0.750000 0.500000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Arm" -1.100000 -6.030000 -2.490000 11.920000 8.250000 5.520000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Arm1" -0.070000 -5.650000 -5.530000 25.889999 7.580000 4.970000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Arm2" 0.000000 -3.890000 -3.570000 24.875471 5.160000 3.630000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Hand" 0.000000 -1.280000 -3.890000 10.854106 2.880000 2.890000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Finger0" 0.000000 -1.010000 -1.350000 4.900000 1.730000 1.830000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Finger01" 0.000000 -0.390000 -0.250000 3.420000 1.160000 1.430000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Finger02" 0.000000 -0.070000 -0.190000 2.570000 1.080000 1.130000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Finger1" 0.000000 -0.030000 -0.620000 2.460000 1.730000 0.750000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Finger11" 0.000000 0.000000 -0.590000 2.322202 1.500000 0.660000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Finger12" 0.000000 0.000000 -0.490000 1.430000 1.310000 0.560000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Finger2" 0.000000 -0.000010 -0.810000 2.580000 1.830000 0.900000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Finger21" 0.000000 0.000000 -0.620000 2.871796 1.690000 0.820000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Finger22" 0.000000 0.000000 -0.460000 1.650000 1.440000 0.690000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Finger3" 0.000000 -0.080000 -0.820000 2.900000 1.870000 0.640000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Finger31" 0.000000 0.000000 -0.770000 2.413272 1.660000 0.550000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Finger32" 0.000000 0.000000 -0.620000 1.810000 1.370000 0.460000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Finger4" 0.000000 -0.130000 -0.560000 2.330000 1.740000 0.700000
$hbox 0 "MrV R Finger41" 0.000000 -0.030000 -0.580000 1.508298 1.490000 0.570000
$hbox 0 "MrV Head" -1.150000 -9.140000 -7.420000 20.389999 11.780000 7.430000

// 4 animation sequence(s)
$sequence "idle" "idle" fps 14 loop 
$sequence "final" "final" fps 20 {
  { event 1003 34 "lever" } 
  { event 1003 85 "handle" } 
  { event 1003 152 "handle2" } 
 }
$sequence "finalidle" "finalidle" fps 10 loop ACT_IDLE 1 
$sequence "walk" "walk" LX fps 40 loop ACT_WALK 1 

// End of QC script.

And here is what the model looks like in Model Viewer. But oddly enough in the "model" tab, it says all the .vmt's loaded. Did I miss a step in texturing?

[IMG]http://i39.tinypic.com/j78d8w.png[/IMG]

[Katra804]

Check your .VMT files and make sure they are pointing to the proper location for your .VTF files. Whenever the model viewer is saying that the .VMTs are loading fine, then the .VMTs themselves are usually looking in the wrong location for the .VTF files in instances like that.

[azgag]

[QUOTE=Auto Taco;41988211]Ok, so I decided to start practicing my porting skills for the first time. So I decided (Despite not even having the original Half Life 1) to port the "Mr. Valve" model from what would have been Valve's first "Open your mind" advertisement, check out youtube if your interested in the map and model as well. Even though the model is extremely old, (1998 to be exact) the actual model made it into the game somewhat successfully. I have yet to actually give it collisions, (It shows up as an "effect" when spawned in Garry's mod.) The animations were ported successfully as well, but I have run into a slight problem, I cannot get the textures to properly appear on the model itself. I followed the valve wiki, they used vtex but I used vtfedit and saved all the .bmp textures to vtf with the proper vmt files along with it. I changed the .qc from $cdtextures to $cdmaterials and typed in my texture path, but it still will not appear. Any help on this that you experienced guys out there can get me will be greatly appreciated. Here is my .qc

/blablabla

And here is what the model looks like in Model Viewer. But oddly enough in the "model" tab, it says all the .vmt's loaded. Did I miss a step in texturing?

[IMG]http://i39.tinypic.com/j78d8w.png[/IMG][/QUOTE]

14 different materials on a simple model like that?

[Auto Taco]

[QUOTE=azgag;41988715]14 different materials on a simple model like that?[/QUOTE]

Well I'm not sure if Half Life 1 models are simply textured like that, but yes, there is a texture for every part of the body/clothes. Maybe this is what's wrong, I'm gonna check my texture paths again. Remember, this model is very old, so expect weird things like that.

[Dynamic]

[QUOTE=Auto Taco;41988807]Well I'm not sure if Half Life 1 models are simply textured like that, but yes, there is a texture for every part of the body/clothes. Maybe this is what's wrong, I'm gonna check my texture paths again. Remember, this model is very old, so expect weird things like that.[/QUOTE]
You could remap the UV to use a singe texture.

[John117]

[IMG]http://i.xomf.com/mmyvk.jpg[/IMG]

[kaine123]

You should probably try to incorporate red into that otherwise a player ,ight not see it in the environment or think it's a medkit.

[BMAliens]

Yeah for a possibly important game item it has a really muted color scheme.

[Fulcrum]

[QUOTE=FlyingAlien;41994707]Yeah for a possibly important game item it has a really muted color scheme.[/QUOTE]

You can still use red or white. IT would help create contrast. A muted colourscheme is boring without some contrast.

[azgag]

[QUOTE=mdeceiver79;41994884]You can still use red or white. IT would help create contrast. A muted colourscheme is boring without some contrast.[/QUOTE]

it's just that can guide the player and/or tell him what kinda of object it is, usually health kits are red to make them easier to see. (same for red/orange barrels showing that they are explosive compared to grey or blue barrels).

[krassell]

So today I decided to man up and teach myself modelling, or at least honestly attempt it.

I even managed to compile my first model, but it is spoiled by this:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/esnHB9v.png[/img]
I've tried UV-mapping(UVW Unwrap and putting edited texture on), and changing properties of the texture(changing mapping to Planar from World XYZ), but to no avail. Upon exporting smd it is still like this(and in case of UV mapping it isn't even changed in the editor). I can patch SMD by hand, but I'm sure there is quicker and more convenient way to get rid off this effect. Can someone help me with this please?

[Johnny Guitar]

[QUOTE=Snood_1990;41964677]I instantly recognised that it was ddo before I had read what you posted. It looks good, but it sort of removes the uniqueness that you'd get from doing it completely from scratch.[/QUOTE]

besides the wood looking akward I think one of the draw backs of ddo is that models that use it are eventually going to become very... not generic but a word similar to it.. just the models will feel familiar simply because of the texture maps being the same.

[Surfur]

[QUOTE=Johnny Guitar;41998357]besides the wood looking akward I think one of the draw backs of ddo is that models that use it are eventually going to become very... not generic but a word similar to it.. just the models will feel familiar simply because of the texture maps being the same.[/QUOTE]

I personally have mixed feelings about dDo. I find that, when used properly, it will save a huge amount of time, but not used properly you'll have what happened to that guys gun, it has that 'ddo' look.

dDo actually scared me quite a bit. I was using it as my designated texturing system for a few months, and I started to become frightened that I would not be able to texture without it! I got to a point where I though I was doing rather well, not making it look 'ddo' . This brass kettle was done completely in dDo.

[url]http://static.wixstatic.com/media/802bba_9c6177ba8b78762d3375f2adab253b0f.jpg_srz_1503_828_85_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_jpg_srz[/url]
bout
But I still felt really bad about using it. Recently I haven't used dDo in any of my projects, using straight photoshop and my own techniques. I did use it a month ago, but any time I use it now is to get a nice, solid base of a texture and then I take it out of dDo and start to add my own details and custom shit to it.

[A Wet Towel]

I use ddo for the base of the texture and add onto it myself, but thinking about it providing the texture actually looks good and fits whatever it's going into, I wouldn't mind if only ddo was used. I think the end results are what really matter in this case.

[azgag]

[QUOTE=surfur;41998748]I personally have mixed feelings about dDo. I find that, when used properly, it will save a huge amount of time, but not used properly you'll have what happened to that guys gun, it has that 'ddo' look.

dDo actually scared me quite a bit. I was using it as my designated texturing system for a few months, and I started to become frightened that I would not be able to texture without it! I got to a point where I though I was doing rather well, not making it look 'ddo' . This brass kettle was done completely in dDo.

[url]http://static.wixstatic.com/media/802bba_9c6177ba8b78762d3375f2adab253b0f.jpg_srz_1503_828_85_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_jpg_srz[/url]
bout
But I still felt really bad about using it. Recently I haven't used dDo in any of my projects, using straight photoshop and my own techniques. I did use it a month ago, but any time I use it now is to get a nice, solid base of a texture and then I take it out of dDo and start to add my own details and custom shit to it.[/QUOTE]

the thing is that in order to use dDo you need good bakes, the cleaner they are, the best results you'll get with dDo. So you still need to be able to model a HP mesh, LP mesh and UV it correctly.
But yeah I get your point that people using the stock presets will have the same dDo look.

I've been using dDo on the last few props that I posted here (liquid crate, crane and drill bit), while it took me a bit of time to tweak things, at the end it saved me a lot of time.

[Johnny Guitar]

[QUOTE=a wet towel;42000277]I use ddo for the base of the texture and add onto it myself, but thinking about it providing the texture actually looks good and fits whatever it's going into, I wouldn't mind if only ddo was used. I think the end results are what really matter in this case.[/QUOTE]

That's typically what I do, it's actually really nice considering you get all of the layers in a PSD, too bad the PSD's are fucking huge

[SMasters]

[img]http://i.imgur.com/oZXLwMb.png?1[/img]
Does anyone know how to deal with these ao artifacts? I usually just fix them manually in photoshop but it's been getting to be too much lately and I have a feeling the bake should be cleaner than that.
I'm using xnormal if that helps

[Juniez]

[QUOTE=SMasters;42002070][img]http://i.imgur.com/oZXLwMb.png?1[/img]
Does anyone know how to deal with these ao artifacts? I usually just fix them manually in photoshop but it's been getting to be too much lately and I have a feeling the bake should be cleaner than that.
I'm using xnormal if that helps[/QUOTE]

explode your hp and bake your lp AO separately

or you can just ignore it it's not that big of a deal usually (especially if you have a cavity map)

[kaine123]

Also I'm not quite sure the specifics so you'll have to look it up, but you can strategically place flat planes in your high poly which would block out the parts projecting into other parts and prevent artifacts from forming that way. Though this would only really be for simpler models where it would be inefficient to break it up into multiple parts.

[Surfur]

[QUOTE=kaine123;42003382]Also I'm not quite sure the specifics so you'll have to look it up, but you can strategically place flat planes in your high poly which would block out the parts projecting into other parts and prevent artifacts from forming that way. Though this would only really be for simpler models where it would be inefficient to break it up into multiple parts.[/QUOTE]

Yea, Blocker files.

[Lt_C]

[IMG]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21161113/random/flagpole_ingame.jpg[/IMG]

It turned out ok for a static prop/cloth bake learning exercise.

I'd probably choose something less rough on the cloth bake next time though, this had a lot of deformation that even gave a high poly surface a hard time, and then there's the 'one sided' issues.

[VintageManiac]

I made a test model and here it is
[IMG]http://i43.tinypic.com/2m4rlvk.png[/IMG]
I can't compile it because I get this [URL="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1302821"]ERROR: calcblend failed in idle[/URL] and I don't know how to fix this.

[SMasters]

[QUOTE=Juniez;42002366]explode your hp and bake your lp AO separately

or you can just ignore it it's not that big of a deal usually (especially if you have a cavity map)[/QUOTE]
Thanks, that really helped a lot, especially with the normal map bake but my main issue is still there

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IS0BxcJs2M[/url]
at 7:10 the black hole part of the texture sheet is an area on a plane blocked by another object on the model, but with my bake when an object is blocking something it seems to have a slight gradient for the shadow then completely changes to white which causes bleeding, especially when the textures downscaled.
[thumb]http://i.imgur.com/kXqYo1G.png?1[/thumb]
I tried replicating the xnormal settings that he used but that didn't do anything (unless I overlooked something)
This specific bake was just the separated lowpoly so it isn't a high to lowpoly issue. Any ideas?

[Fewes]

This issue is caused by the baking software not taking backfaces into account when doing the raytracing. The white pixels can't "see" the geometry intersecting itself from behind and therefore aren't darkened. You can fix this up in Photoshop of course but depending on how complex your geometry is you might want to do an AO bake using software that take backfaces into account (such as Mental Ray).