Looking for model quality feedbak

[Percevan]

 

 

Huh that looks pretty interesting. Well good luck to your project. Looks like you're off to a good start.

Thanks! can you or anyone else see a difference in the smooth shading on my models now? I definitely could in 3ds max, I think I can here too.

(...)

 

There's definitely some improvement over the original textures. They look better.

 

That's the point actually: there are no textures yet, in this last image, just a material :wink:

(or a blank one at best, though that would not be necessary at this stage). The better the shading control, the better the textures will look, though.

 

If it helps, Windikite, here are two new screenshots... I made a quick pillar inspired by your models/references. On the left one with a sliiiggtly higher topology (less bevel towards the top, since the player will rarely look at them/be close to these parts).

 

First one, a the top, just shows how its would look like ingame without shading control of any sort; bottom, after corrections. Same topology/polycount for top and bottom which, again, illustrates well enough the importance of this modeling stage.

Basically, if you see some sort diagonal shadows across your shaded preview, then you probably have to either tweak your topology(add control edges or whatever), or put smoothing groups/hard edges at some key places.

 

 

http://i57.tinypic.com/s2fsqq.jpg

 

 

 

 

Second pic, I colored the different smoothing groups I used - not a requirement obviously, it's just so that you can better see which polygon clusters I selected and slapped SM Grps on. That should help you visualize this approach. Nothing difficult here, just be methodical...

...and economical, since as you can see you do not have to use a new smoothing group number each time you assign one. It's not a performance issue, just a good practice to make you life easier when you need to re-adjust the smoothing groups after you've edited your mesh (and believe me, you will).

 

 

http://i59.tinypic.com/2uo2qsw.jpg

 

 

 

Hope this helps,

/Fred.

[Windikite]

 

 

 

Huh that looks pretty interesting. Well good luck to your project. Looks like you're off to a good start.

Thanks! can you or anyone else see a difference in the smooth shading on my models now? I definitely could in 3ds max, I think I can here too.

(...)

 

There's definitely some improvement over the original textures. They look better.

 

That's the point actually: there are no textures yet, in this last image, just a material :wink:

(or a blank one at best, though that would not be necessary at this stage). The better the shading control, the better the textures will look, though.

 

If it helps, Windikite, here are two new screenshots... I made a quick pillar inspired by your models/references. On the left one with a sliiiggtly higher topology (less bevel towards the top, since the player will rarely look at them/be close to these parts).

 

First one, a the top, just shows how its would look like ingame without shading control of any sort; bottom, after corrections. Same topology/polycount for top and bottom which, again, illustrates well enough the importance of this modeling stage.

Basically, if you see some sort diagonal shadows across your shaded preview, then you probably have to either tweak your topology(add control edges or whatever), or put smoothing groups/hard edges at some key places.

 

 

http://i57.tinypic.com/s2fsqq.jpg

 

 

 

 

Second pic, I colored the different smoothing groups I used - not a requirement obviously, it's just so that you can better see which polygon clusters I selected and slapped SM Grps on. That should help you visualize this approach. Nothing difficult here, just be methodical...

...and economical, since as you can see you do not have to use a new smoothing group number each time you assign one. It's not a performance issue, just a good practice to make you life easier when you need to re-adjust the smoothing groups after you've edited your mesh (and believe me, you will).

 

 

http://i59.tinypic.com/2uo2qsw.jpg

 

 

 

Hope this helps,

/Fred.

 

Well now that's quite a lot of information there, thanks for the feedback and advice so far c: I'm going to mess with the models again and see what I can come up with, I would attempt to explain how I selected my smoothing groups but I am not sure I can accurately convey it without diagrams haha. I think that relatively soon I should start working on textures, but I definitely want a green light from you guys here before I commit to learning all about it and texturing a sub-par model. Also, as a side not, would you happen to know what I can;t walk under my arch way model? I suppose it's using a very basic collision and not something more appropriate for an arch.

[Percevan]

To check further examples, I would suggest googling "3DSmax smoothing groups". There's some youtube vids that might help too, I guess.

 

 

 

Also, as a side not, would you happen to know what I can;t walk under my arch way model? I suppose it's using a very basic collision and not something more appropriate for an arch.

Depends how you made your collision.

I recommend taking a look at the following tutorials...

 

http://www.darkcreations.org/forums/topic/3883-exporting-static-meshes-from-3d-studio-max-to-skyrim/

(collisions covered in the second part)

 

and this one:

http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/Skyrim/Adding_Collision_Mesh_using_ChunkMerge

 

Chunkmerge has been integrated into the NifUtilSuite, and is very easy to use - you get its UI and workflow in a couple of minutes. You can get it there:

http://niftools.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4128

[Windikite]

To check further examples, I would suggest googling "3DSmax smoothing groups". There's some youtube vids that might help too, I guess.

 

 

 

Also, as a side not, would you happen to know what I can;t walk under my arch way model? I suppose it's using a very basic collision and not something more appropriate for an arch.

Depends how you made your collision.

I recommend taking a look at the following tutorials...

 

http://www.darkcreations.org/forums/topic/3883-exporting-static-meshes-from-3d-studio-max-to-skyrim/

(collisions covered in the second part)

 

and this one:

http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/Skyrim/Adding_Collision_Mesh_using_ChunkMerge

 

Chunkmerge has been integrated into the NifUtilSuite, and is very easy to use - you get its UI and workflow in a couple of minutes. You can get it there:

http://niftools.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4128

I'll definitely go read up on this, no matter how cool my arch is I must be able to use it lol. also, I tried redoing the smoothing groups again

http://oi61.tinypic.com/1jvozn.jpg

 

[Percevan]

You still have some shading issues, as you can see from those darkish streaks, but less of them, so that's better yes.

 

- To get rid of the remaining ones, you'd need to either:

set up distinct sm groups between the faces on the side and those on the front, so as to make the corner into a sharp edged, cleaner one. This will look very sharp ingame too (though some textures can mitigate that a bit), and that's how bethesda did a lot of their vanilla meshes.

 

- option 2: look at what I did in my previous pics. I used just a few SM to essentially make clean groups from one block of stonework to the other, but for the corners (vertical edges) I instead added geometry: bevels, or 3 control edges. Hence, the bevels are not just used to adjust the profile, or silhouette of a mesh, they also help in deciding how the shading/smoothing gradient will spread over your polygons. I'm not sure if I explain this in the best possible way, I hope so.

 

Now, not that I want your to suffer more "behind the scene" information overflow about how this works ingame, but I will just add this, though, because it's important for your modeling decisions:

since distincts 3DSmax smoothing groups on adjacent faces essentially split the vertices normals, a game engine will actually split the vertices/edges when rendering your meshes - gamebryo/TESV engine is no exception to this. Which means that the _rendered_ polycount will actually be higher than your modeled polycount (at this point, I know that I just lost most beginners, but hang in there, it's worth it ;-) ).

 

This has one important implication: instead of always choosing to split the normals by the use of Smoothing groups in Max, or "Hardenned Edges" in maya (different lingo, same results), you shouldn't not always by warry of modeling actual bevels, because the rendered polycount will not be higher than what you'd get with no beveled edges+split normals. Deciding when to use split normals or bevelling edge depends of your model, your modeling preferences, also how you will unwrap your UV etc. It comes with practice, don't worry.

 

Ok, I'll shut up for now. :smile:

Edited June 29, 2014 by Percevan