I have a question! What is an easy way to paint in that "edge wear" that everyone does on every mechanical texture? Like, those white bits where the paint is wearing off on the edges? When I do it by hand, it always takes me forever to get all the right places.
Random tip from someone who has seen that type of wear regularly - don't just put it everywhere. Only put it in places that make sense, and in moderation. Sides of a backpack like Mordrek has up there? Makes sense, people have trouble judging the size of things sticking out from their actual body. On the front there? Sure, I can see someone belly crawling somewhere. But say, on top of the helmet? What's he doing, fucking cartwheeling into battle?
(I don't think mordrek has it there, though, to his credit)
If there is one thing about edge-wear in 3d modeling, I'd say that people have a habit of overusing it and putting it in nonsensical places.
It may not be realistic, but it adds visual interest and sharply defines the hard edges. Much like the 'shing!' sound effect that you always hear in movies whenever someone draws a sword ( a sound that real swords do not make) people see it so much that they expect it to be there even when it shouldn't be.
It may not be realistic, but it adds visual interest and sharply defines the hard edges. Much like the 'shing!' sound effect that you always hear in movies whenever someone draws a sword ( a sound that real swords do not make) people see it so much that they expect it to be there even when it shouldn't be.
One of the problems of these effects, I guess - If you use it really, really well, then nobody notices, because it looks utterly normal. It's only when you Over, under, or improperly use it that people take notice.
I think it's just because I know to look for it. It is a pretty good shorthand effect, but things don't actually wear that way and I know it, so it always stands out to me.
I think it's just because I know to look for it. It is a pretty good shorthand effect, but things don't actually wear that way and I know it, so it always stands out to me.
Ah, yeah, they do. Just nowhere near as much as you see people use.
Not really. I mean, stuff does chip and dent around edges, but it rarely looks like the texture effect that is used to represent it. It's not a realistic effect, it's a bit of cartooning basically; shorthand for more complex and specific forms of wear.
I don't think that's a terribly useful way to think about it. You could take, say, an old rifle that has wear like that, and say that only edge wear in 3d modeling that looks like that is correct, but that's just silly - it's pretty much always unique, only the general pattern is common. It's like a fingerprint, very few are really the same. What you're asking for is like asking for every snowflake to be rendered individual and unique, or it shouldn't be used because it's inaccurate. I'm more pointing out that you shouldn't be dumping feet of snow on Florida in July.
I think I'm just an unreasonable stickler for that kind of shit. Probably the result of learning the basics of this sort of thing with stacks of 1970s-era military diorama magazines with page after page of unique weathering details. I actually have a magazine sitting about a foot from me that is little more than fifty pages of how shells interact with armour at various thicknesses and angles, how the paint distorts in the heat of impact, etc.
It's okay, I completely understand, I'm the same way in different fields. For example, if you modeled a firearm that wouldn't work at all or makes no sense, I'd be saying something to you about it, or it didn't work the way it should. Or if I'm designing a mechanical object, if I think it could fail in a particular way, I'll do my damnedest to eliminate what I see as a flaw, when in reality, it's perfectly fine and I'm probably just overengineering it.
I know that feel exactly. The one that always gets me is spaceship design. I grew up on old-ass science fiction books and big space-aged technical documents on spaceships. When I see somebody design a spacecraft with off-axis engines or big windows or whatever my brain does a miniature pirouette off the handle and it bugs me forever.
What are you talking about, sketchbook? Stuff like the blade of an ax or any painted mechanical thing will have scratches and worn off paint around the parts that are used by human hands. I have seen many reference photos where this is the case. Hell, my coated kitchen knives are like that. Like I said, everyone uses it in every texture it sometimes seems, but it is not without merit.
Yes, but they don't wear the way people texture it. Most of these are simply overlaid layers of translucent white or light grey, without regard to the specifics of the wear. The specific technique that gets used on everything is a fairly rare pattern that, as you says, is pretty specific to parts heavily interacted with by human hands. If you are just using it on handles or the edges of thickly-painted metal (think fire axes) then yeah, it's a fair approximation of what occurs. The problem is that technique is used on everything when it is a fairly specific set of circumstances and materials that generate it, and used in excess because it makes things look "RAR RUGGED".
Like, on that guy up there. He's supposed to have a WW2 inspired look, right? Well, that kind of wear doesn't actually happen to tanks or other heavy military equiptment, and similar patterns look very different very quickly due to environmental factors. That's because any military vehicle is fucking caked in paint. Four or five layers paint so heavy grade it's like armour in itself, painted over each other, because exposing bare metal to rust is unacceptable. There are so many layers of paint that even a direct penetrating hit to armour wouldn't expose it; the thick paint would curl around the edge, or melt from the energy of the interaction and coat it as it cooled. Instead what should be happening is the paint around the edges should be increasingly mottled, with short, notch-like scratches around round areas which quickly fill with dirt or rust.
It's well-executed, but not used in the right places. It's good on the neck-bits that would rub against each other in motion, and in fact should probably be there more, but makes less sense on the front portions of the mask. The fact it's present there, but not around the place where the glass portion goes in, shows the artist didn't really think about what parts would realistically wear or be prone to scraping and instead simply applied it to the leading edges.
If the edges of those parts have come under that much wear over the years, the parts which actually get used for stuff should be completely broken by now.
Because Quarian equipment is supposed to look old and worn, I'd expect more unique patterns of dents, scratches, and stains on those areas rather than the wear it would get from rubbing up against something. For the most part, it already has that, which is nice. The pattern it has might still be present in a limited amount, on the lower corners for example, but not quite as much. I mean, it's even on that little bit UNDER the mask, which is unlikely to touch much of anything at all!
It's handled very well and I wouldn't call it out without being prompted, though. It looks right, even if it breaks down a bit under inspection.
I agree on many points. I can see her banging the mouth-cover and chipping the paint, but that bit right under the chin, what in the hell did she whack that on? It's recessed from practically every direction. I can also see right around near the Faceplate - Scraping it when sticking her head close to something to get a better look, for example. But it's a little bothersome on those recessed parts.
Not meaning to bust your balls too much, son, but practice what you preach when it comes to realism in texture. This piece is okay, but if you want me to critique it in terms of the way metal actually looks with paint on it, almost nothing, especially the gun, demonstrates natural material properties. It lacks fine detail, ambient occlusion, speculiarity, detail and dirt passes, and any sort of bump mapping. I know you are working within engine constraints, but this is Unreal Engine which can handle a fair amount. You could bake some of these passes into the diffuse to get a much more detailed texture, even if you didn't do a full bump pass. That camo is super low res and the same as all across the vehicle. Vary it up. Even if it is seem from far away, you might be surprised at the difference it makes. Like I said, not to pick on you unduly, good effort, but just doing the same critique for you that you are to Mordrek.
HAY GUYZ! DAZ 3D and Bryce are for free today as a promotion. Get them here Not the top of the line software, but why not test them out, eh? Nothing to lose except a little free time.
This + Unity. I see I giant surge of games coming, brace yourselves.
Not meaning to bust your balls too much, son, but practice what you preach when it comes to realism in texture. This piece is okay, but if you want me to critique it in terms of the way metal actually looks with paint on it, almost nothing, especially the gun, demonstrates natural material properties. It lacks fine detail, ambient occlusion, speculiarity, detail and dirt passes, and any sort of bump mapping. I know you are working within engine constraints, but this is Unreal Engine which can handle a fair amount. You could bake some of these passes into the diffuse to get a much more detailed texture, even if you didn't do a full bump pass. That camo is super low res and the same as all across the vehicle. Vary it up. Even if it is seem from far away, you might be surprised at the difference it makes. Like I said, not to pick on you unduly, good effort, but just doing the same critique for you that you are to Mordrek.
Actually, it's not Unreal. It's SAGE/RNA, and in a game that is basically one step up from a cartoon. Not to mention you are looking at a half-finished diffuse texture there; there is no weathering at all on that model, though I did end up doing very little of it in the end anyway.
I do very little in the way of weathering or material anything on Paradox models because we need strong, simple shapes and patterns. Even on vehicles that are supposed to be heavily rusted our artists do simple filter passes and blurred shading, because less is more when the vehicles spend most of the time the size of a dime onscreen. When you play with the edges or the materials too much, the read of the unit changes drastically depending on the viewing angle. So we use light overlays, blurred noise, and neutral bases instead. We learned this the hard way; another team tried heavy material details and their units ended up being not only nearly unreadable, but completely out of place in the bright world of Red Alert.
We did a lot of tests to figure out what looked good. Our early stuff used a lot more fine detail and photo textures, but when zoomed out to playing distance became an unreadable mass of pixels which reduced the vital silhouettes of each unit and obscured details we actually wanted to pop. Actually, one of the things that came up during the design for this particular unit, and others in the faction, was making camouflage patterns that didn't actually make the unit harder to read; we found retaining symmetry was vital, as was varying the direction the camo laid over the form on different surfaces, which is the opposite of how camo is usually applied, and having large areas where no pattern was present.
Basically, I threw away all those rules for the sake of gameplay. Were I to make a cinematic version of this model, I would handle it differently.
HAY GUYZ! DAZ 3D and Bryce are for free today as a promotion. Get them here Not the top of the line software, but why not test them out, eh? Nothing to lose except a little free time.
This + Unity. I see I giant surge of games coming, brace yourselves.
Ugh, I have been waiting for a confirmation email for a while to sign up for their site so I can download those but it has not came. Amusingly enough the contact form on their site, which they say to use for this issue, requires you to be logged in to use it. I think I may have found their email so I am going to give that a shot.
Edit: It looks like they are supposed to have a page to contact them without being logged in but it keeps giving me a 404. At least their 404 page is interesting.
Oh, their site is the worst. That happened to me too. I forget what I actually did to get around it. I'm not sure if DAZ does animation. I mostly know of it as being used to make poser models.
Could you post an example of what you would accept as 'good' weathering?
The vehicles in Company of Heroes are really good.
As you can see, they do a little bit of paint wear effects, but a lot more instances of dirt that has worked it's way into scratches. That's what happens; when paint chips, dirt and rust gets up in that bad boy immediately. The wear isn't consistent on the edges because the interaction isn't consistent; rather, it's in the form of long scoring and scratches around interaction points, where rocks, branches, mechanical parts and the soles of boots have taken their toll. The paint has mottled under exposure. Most of all, everything is just filthy. Mud, dirt, dust, rust, it builds up anywhere and everywhere it can stick, and gets in all the grooves and cracks. Notice how the topmost surfaces show the most bare metal, and the lower surfaces show almost none despite that being where most of the wear would be? That's because those scratches and dents have become settling points for the filth of ages.
Most textures I see overemphasis the wear and underestimate the sheer amount of crap a piece of military equipment gets dragged through. It's the kind of filth that gets inside something, that works it way in and won't be cleaned back out. You want to make your thing look realistic? Turn down the wear, turn the dirt up to 11.
Oh, their site is the worst. That happened to me too. I forget what I actually did to get around it. I'm not sure if DAZ does animation. I mostly know of it as being used to make poser models.
I figured out one way around it, I used a different email. Seems they dislike Yahoo or something.
As per Mankoon's request, a 3D thread! Finally! Post your models, renders, animations, tutorials, scripts and other kickin' things that make girls like me happy.
I'll start. This is what I did this week, in collaboration with another artist. (I did the character design, main model, rigging and such, and he helped create the normal map) This is work stuff, so please don't post it anywhere else until the teaser trailer is up. I can't show you much, but this particular render is kosher.
I've got a bit of an ambitious project planned, but I'm having trouble.
I plan to make a bust of Admiral Horatio Nelson in zbrush, but I have always had difficulty modelling clothing. I really like your sculpt of the pilot, so any tips you could hand me would be greatly appreciated.
Comments
(I don't think mordrek has it there, though, to his credit)
If there is one thing about edge-wear in 3d modeling, I'd say that people have a habit of overusing it and putting it in nonsensical places.
Like, on that guy up there. He's supposed to have a WW2 inspired look, right? Well, that kind of wear doesn't actually happen to tanks or other heavy military equiptment, and similar patterns look very different very quickly due to environmental factors. That's because any military vehicle is fucking caked in paint. Four or five layers paint so heavy grade it's like armour in itself, painted over each other, because exposing bare metal to rust is unacceptable. There are so many layers of paint that even a direct penetrating hit to armour wouldn't expose it; the thick paint would curl around the edge, or melt from the energy of the interaction and coat it as it cooled. Instead what should be happening is the paint around the edges should be increasingly mottled, with short, notch-like scratches around round areas which quickly fill with dirt or rust.
If the edges of those parts have come under that much wear over the years, the parts which actually get used for stuff should be completely broken by now.
Because Quarian equipment is supposed to look old and worn, I'd expect more unique patterns of dents, scratches, and stains on those areas rather than the wear it would get from rubbing up against something. For the most part, it already has that, which is nice. The pattern it has might still be present in a limited amount, on the lower corners for example, but not quite as much. I mean, it's even on that little bit UNDER the mask, which is unlikely to touch much of anything at all!
It's handled very well and I wouldn't call it out without being prompted, though. It looks right, even if it breaks down a bit under inspection.
Like I said, not to pick on you unduly, good effort, but just doing the same critique for you that you are to Mordrek.
I do very little in the way of weathering or material anything on Paradox models because we need strong, simple shapes and patterns. Even on vehicles that are supposed to be heavily rusted our artists do simple filter passes and blurred shading, because less is more when the vehicles spend most of the time the size of a dime onscreen. When you play with the edges or the materials too much, the read of the unit changes drastically depending on the viewing angle. So we use light overlays, blurred noise, and neutral bases instead. We learned this the hard way; another team tried heavy material details and their units ended up being not only nearly unreadable, but completely out of place in the bright world of Red Alert.
We did a lot of tests to figure out what looked good. Our early stuff used a lot more fine detail and photo textures, but when zoomed out to playing distance became an unreadable mass of pixels which reduced the vital silhouettes of each unit and obscured details we actually wanted to pop. Actually, one of the things that came up during the design for this particular unit, and others in the faction, was making camouflage patterns that didn't actually make the unit harder to read; we found retaining symmetry was vital, as was varying the direction the camo laid over the form on different surfaces, which is the opposite of how camo is usually applied, and having large areas where no pattern was present.
Basically, I threw away all those rules for the sake of gameplay. Were I to make a cinematic version of this model, I would handle it differently.
TL;DR I suck too much to pull it off.
Edit: It looks like they are supposed to have a page to contact them without being logged in but it keeps giving me a 404. At least their 404 page is interesting.
I'm not sure if DAZ does animation. I mostly know of it as being used to make poser models.
As you can see, they do a little bit of paint wear effects, but a lot more instances of dirt that has worked it's way into scratches. That's what happens; when paint chips, dirt and rust gets up in that bad boy immediately. The wear isn't consistent on the edges because the interaction isn't consistent; rather, it's in the form of long scoring and scratches around interaction points, where rocks, branches, mechanical parts and the soles of boots have taken their toll. The paint has mottled under exposure. Most of all, everything is just filthy. Mud, dirt, dust, rust, it builds up anywhere and everywhere it can stick, and gets in all the grooves and cracks. Notice how the topmost surfaces show the most bare metal, and the lower surfaces show almost none despite that being where most of the wear would be? That's because those scratches and dents have become settling points for the filth of ages.
Most textures I see overemphasis the wear and underestimate the sheer amount of crap a piece of military equipment gets dragged through. It's the kind of filth that gets inside something, that works it way in and won't be cleaned back out. You want to make your thing look realistic? Turn down the wear, turn the dirt up to 11.
I've got a bit of an ambitious project planned, but I'm having trouble.
I plan to make a bust of Admiral Horatio Nelson in zbrush, but I have always had difficulty modelling clothing. I really like your sculpt of the pilot, so any tips you could hand me would be greatly appreciated.