Arrow 3D model

[lorddarthvik]

nope, no mail it seams. I got your PM and I sent one, but no email. lorddarthvik@hotmail.com try again please. and keep it up!

[Kilrah]

This post is just to keep the thread alive and to say that I’ve been working on the textures. As soon as there’s visible progress I’ll post it here.

[Kilrah]

Ok, here is the model, finally. It’s not perfect, actually it has a lot of “problems” in its textures, but for now I’ll consider it finished. In the future, when I learn more on the subject, perhaps I’ll try to make new and better textures.
Feel free to criticize and suggest.
Hope you like it.

[lorddarthvik]

Gotta tell u, that for a first textureing, this looks amazeing! Well done! I once worked on a longbow modell (modified the very low poly-nodetail ingame modell of it), but could never texture it! Great work! I got some ideas how to improve, try to do some of them if you have time.

First, I would add a bump map. Even adding the original map u used works (seen the arrow I posted here, it has the same map for diffuse and bump), but thats a bad solution. If you made the texture useing an object/layer based software like PS, then I hope you still got the separate layers. The thing you should do is place the panel lines on a totally white layer, the image the same sized as your diffuse map of cours. Save it as anything, then ut it into the bump slot of the material. Next, add some specularity level to it, or the bump wont show. Leave glossines around 15. That should be a nice a metal.

Second thing you can do, is add "detail" to your diffuse map. add some fine dust, rust, scratches even.
I know an arrow shouldn't rust in space, but hey, that makes it look more "realistic" for the crowds . You may also create a separate map for specularity level. That should be made from the new "dust layer", on a white sheet. This will make the light only gloss on the white places, so where theres no dust. Tip: convert the dust layer into something very dark grey. The specular map only uses grayscale value, so "color" doesn't matter there. BUT a nice rustbrown only onverts into something middle/light-gray. That would make the light gloos even there, just less. We don't want this, we want it Not to gloss at all!
It should also have the same pixel ratio as the original diffuse texture.
This is to ensure that every texture is in the same place without doing anything to them.

I'm not totally sure, but I think you don't need to have the same pixel-sized texture, jsut the ratio should be the same. Anyone know? Thanx.

So, I hope this will help a bit. If you'r really fed up with it though, I would be more than happy to practice dusting your texture for you

BTW, no point in turning a a texture into .jpg if you have the hard disk space to store larger formats. Why? cause before actuall rendering, the texture must be converted back into a the pixel based format.

[zohrath_1]

Like lorddarthvik said, you should add a bump map, dirty up the diffuse map and get some specular mapping on the ship. The model itself looks pretty solid, although there are still edges that could use some smoothing. And for some reason, the pic doesn't show for me, although I can click on some invisible link in your post. Got any more views other than the one?

[Kilrah]

First of all thanks lorddarthvik and zohrath for your comments and suggestions.

Now in order of appearance.

@lorddarthvik

This is not my first texture; the first one was the Strakha’s. That was much worst than this one.
I will try your suggestions, some now (the easier ones ) and later the rest. But I must say that some of the things you mentioned I don’t know what they are (therefore I’ll investigate at due time). You know, my scholar and professional formation are not in this field, so everything you see here is the result of tutorials from 3dsMax and the Web and of course from your and Zohrath’s help. (Which leads me to the question in the bottom of this post *.)

As soon as I can I’ll send you my texture so that you can practice dusting.
--------------------------------
@zohrath

I’ve added some more pics that I have here, some I had to zip in order to respect the maximum file size (please rename the file extension to ZIP). Hope it works for you now.
--------------------------------

I have made two wallpapers with this model and the Strakha, eventually they should be available for everybody. I have tried a few new things.

I have said this to lorddarthvik already and now I say it to everybody, if someone wishes to use my models in a project feel free to ask and I’ll give them gladly.

* Finally a small question. Does somebody know where I can find good and, preferably , simple tutorials about how to do and apply textures of this kind?

[Kilrah]

And one more (this one is in jpg format)…

[Kilrah]

Well, here are new shots, now with the bump map.

[Kilrah]

And two more…

[Maj.Striker]

Looks pretty darn good to me. I tell you texturing is a heckuva lot harder than modelling...

[lorddarthvik]

thats right! This one turned out great! Now the dust and light maps

[Magnum]

If you are still working on this, I would suggest making the bump map more subtle. It will give you a more realistic appearance. I also suggest putting some dirt/weathering on the textures. You might try referring to a site like http://hyperscale.com/ for some tips on weathering. Those scale modelers are nuts about weathering, and you can pick up a lot of useful ideas that translate pretty well over to a digital medium.

[lorddarthvik]

@Magnum: yeah, thats what we were telling him for some time, to make it dirty Thank you for that link, I find it very usefull! Good examples for everyone.

@Kilrah: I'v been doing the "dusting", but without the ship modell I can't really test it. I'll try to apply the map to my arrow modell, just to get a fell of it, and post a render here.
oh, and one more tip: try useing at least 3 different colored omnis for lighting the scene! Place them around like 3 suns. White, red-yellow, blue-purple for example. Look at my render above, and you'll spot the lighting.

[lorddarthvik]

Oh, well, it seems like the modell I'm useing differs so much that it's almost useless. Anyway, here's the render of the new texture on my modell. Most of the detail gets lost cause of modell differences. I'll keep doing it then post it to you, sometime at the end of the week. Sorry but I got lots of things to do at the university, so can't do it earlier.

[Kilrah]

@Maj. Striker

I agree with you 100%.

@Magnum

As you probably know lorddarthvik as kindly offered help in the dirt/weathering department.

@lorddarthvik

Although your model differs from mine, it’s obvious that your new texture works very well. Good job.
Do you want me to send my model so that you can test it properly?

[lorddarthvik]

It would be much easier and faster if I could use the modell as well. If you't working with Max6 or later, than I can't use the modell. Maybe if you export it to mesh, than I can with my Max5, but still not sure.

Btw, did you know that you can make anything look more "realistic" with some more motion blur?
Oh, and forgot to mention: your texures are really great to work with, with the layers and nameing and such! learned a lot from it Thanx

[Kilrah]

Originally Posted by lorddarthvik

It would be much easier and faster if I could use the modell as well. If you't working with Max6 or later, than I can't use the modell. Maybe if you export it to mesh, than I can with my Max5, but still not sure.

I’ll try that.

Originally Posted by lorddarthvik

Btw, did you know that you can make anything look more "realistic" with some more motion blur?

“Motion blur”, right, got that. I don’t know if you have seen it but I’ve tried some of that in one of my wallpapers.

Originally Posted by lorddarthvik

Oh, and forgot to mention: your texures are really great to work with, with the layers and nameing and such! learned a lot from it Thanx

I’m very glad they were useful. And surprised that you have learned a lot from it.

Now two questions:
Could you send the textures to me so that I can try it as well?
And could you give some kind of clue on how do you did to create those engine trails?

[Quarto]

Originally Posted by lorddarthvik

Btw, did you know that you can make anything look more "realistic" with some more motion blur?

Hehe, including scenes where nothing (not even the camera) is moving?

[lorddarthvik]

I'v seen you tried the mo-blur, not bad Just a lot deends on the renderer wich makes it. The picture above was made with VRay, I like it's blurring better than default max.
Engine trails: That of course post worked in photopaint (not PS! ps sux when you need to skecth something like this fast). I just draw lots of soft white lines then blue lines on them to create the "flame" then applied motion blur effect. It was on a layer below the ships, but then I had to move em up. So I erased the unneded parts. I gave it a little transparency curve. It all took about 2 minutes. Just do it a few times for practice, then you'll get the hang of it.

The textures: I'll post em as soon as I finished em. I only need to apply the same "dirt" to the whole map.

Btw, I didn't finish cause I took some time and made some textures for my Longbow. See my Creat Anim. thread here.

[Kilrah]

The motion blur I used isn’t from Max. It’s from PS.

[lorddarthvik]

Okay, received your modell. Here's how it look with the half ready weathering of the texture: (there is some artifacting cause useing the same map as bumpmap)

[Kilrah]

Is that really my ship?
Outstanding.

[lorddarthvik]

Heh, thanx, but it was 99% your work there that made it look so good. I only messed the texture
I made a render for fun, with the material a "bit" more shiny The chhrome/polished alu arrow

[Maj.Striker]

I never have been a very big fan of motion blur...of any type.

[lorddarthvik]

I wasn't till I tried myself. Sometimes, it's a good little additon, but these days in movies and games, it's very over used, and overdone.
In moveis it helps to hide the lowdetailed/full-of-error kind scenes, like big battles with thousands of CG soldiers. They just drop in a little bit of mo-blur for the very fast camera movement, and you can't see anything more then a blur of colors, so you can't notice that every 2nd soldier uses the same modell, and has some arms and legs sticking through rocks and each other. (like in LotR)

[Kilrah]

@LDV

Hehehe, really shiny.

@Maj. Striker

I think that motion blur is something useful in some situations, and not just to hide errors. But I can think of some images seen around here that don’t have it and don’t need it, for example your wallpaper with the Raptors. I love that image; it’s a great “still” image of a beautiful model in a nice environment.

[lorddarthvik]

A little bit off-topic: here's a little post about the xB-70 Valkyre, and on the same page, the F-108 RAPIER !
http://www.vectorsite.net/avxb70.html
There is only one small drawing of the plane from to view, but it deffinetly looks like the wing shape of a rapier, and wiht the dual vertial fins it's very close to the WC ship. If I would have to find a source for the rapier, then this is deffinetly the best (so far).

[Kilrah]

It does have similarities, but being a two-seat aircraft it would certainly be bigger than the WC Rapier. The drawing shows an interesting shape, would it have been done and I think it would have a nice design.

[Kilrah]

Ok, I’m back from a small vacation and here are a few experiments I did with the Arrow. Hope you like it. BTW, thanks for the news.

[gevatter Lars]

If you used bumpmapping for the plating I wouldn't make it that strong.

[Maj.Striker]

Yeah, definitely tone down the bumpmapping by at least 100%.

[lorddarthvik]

Its the problem that you use the same map for bump as the diffuse map. The edges of teh rivetlines are too soft, thus makeing wide-looking and shallow bumps. you won't achive anything with decreesing the %. Change the map itself. (create a separate bump map based on the diffuse)

[ChrisReid]

Originally Posted by Maj.Striker

Yeah, definitely tone down the bumpmapping by at least 100%.

I don't think you could physically tone it down more than 100%, as that would be completely removing all bump mapping.

[gevatter Lars]

@Lorddarthvik
You can basicly use the same map...still I would say doing a own map would be better.
Have you tried out the blur settings in the bumpmap...or taken a look under the output? Sometimes it helps a little.
If nothing helps their you won't get around doing a complete new map.

[lorddarthvik]

Blur helps a bit when you'r useing a "just-bump" map for it cause of the hard edges. But you still can't go wrong with a totally new bump map texture. Take a look at my last image, that has the separate bumpmap, just like my longbow.

[Kilrah]

Yes, all of you are right about the bump map, it’s not good. I’ve just used the same texture and replaced its “metal colour” with white. I wasn’t trying to get the “perfect” look, just wanted to have an idea of the effect. It’s true that I already got time to correct this but instead I preferred to model e few new things that sooner or later will show up in one of these threads.

Anyway, thanks for the comments and I promise that I’ll correct it, one day.

[Maj.Striker]

Originally Posted by ChrisReid

I don't think you could physically tone it down more than 100%, as that would be completely removing all bump mapping.

And in this case I think that would be a good thing. No, just kidding. If the program he is using is similar to the one I use there is a percentage slider on how strongly the bump is applied. Based on the picture it looked like the percentage used would be around 150%. Of course his 3d program could be completely different.

[Kilrah]

The software is Max 6, and I don’t recall seeing a percentage associated to the bump map, but I could be wrong so I’ll confirm it as soon as possible.

[gevatter Lars]

When you are in the map editor their is a number befor the maps name...you can see that as a percentage number....think default value is 30.

[Kilrah]

That’s right, I’ve checked Max and it’s true, there’s an “amount” value that was set to 30. I’ve tried it with 10, what do you think of the result?

[gevatter Lars]

Much better in my opinion.
Maybe you can even finetune it more by going into the material and play with the blur and output settings.
You find them here

[Kilrah]

Originally Posted by gevatter Lars

Much better in my opinion.
Maybe you can even finetune it more by going into the material and play with the blur and output settings.
You find them here

Thanks, I’ll try that.

[Maj.Striker]

Originally Posted by Kilrah

That’s right, I’ve checked Max and it’s true, there’s an “amount” value that was set to 30. I’ve tried it with 10, what do you think of the result?

Much much better! Although still a little too pronounced for my taste, playing with the blur settings like Lars suggested would probably yield some nice tweaks.

[Kilrah]

Ok, I have tried something. How about this?

[Kilrah]

Last weekend I have tried to play with the blur settings but wasn’t able to get much changes. So for now it will remain this way. Thanks for the tips anyway.

[Kilrah]

No changes in the model. Just trying new rendering settings.

[lorddarthvik]

Looking good, but a bit too much ambient lighting maybe. The shadow of the arrow looks way too light/soft. There's not enough contrast, it seems. What lighting you used?

[gevatter Lars]

I agree the lightning seams to be very soft and could use a touch into the red to fit better into to sky.

[Kilrah]

I’ve used a “Sky light” with the settings shown in the picture below.

Any other suggestions besides the touch into the red light? So that I can try it next weekend.