FMP: Baking

 Here I'm just showing a hand full of the high polys that I made during the baking part of this finale vehicle. 

Initially I was baking using X-Normal. Because of this I was detaching small sections of the vehicle and working into these.

I then learnt how to bake in Substance Painter. Baking multiple object simultaneously is extremely simple when using substance. Because of this I began baking mulitiple sections of mesh at once.

Below are 3 examples of the grouping I was then baking. The only real limitation using this method is the poly count when creating the high polies in 3ds Max. The below meshes have extremely high tri counts.

I much prefered this method of baking. It's much more efficient. It's also better for design as you are now modeling in detail for multiple areas at once. 

This method does slightly alter the proces. As the geometry your baking now is allot more complex simply cutting out these areas manually before compositing in photoshop isn't really an option. This though is easily fixed by saving out the unwrap for the area your working on, and then using this to quickly fined the UV shells to then cut out.  This does now mean that you will have a file with many various UVW maps.

Another negative is that due to the poor export quality of Substance Painter exports the highest resolution map you could use is 2k. Substance painter will export at 4k but the actual quality of that export will be closer to 2k, this is why I wouldn't work at 4k with substance. X normal can export at any size so your not restricted in this way. 

FMP:Substance Crash

My substance painter file got corrupted.

 I only lost about a day’s work but then I spent all of today (Wednesday) trying to get the work back.

The substance painter file as of this morning was completely unusable. I can still rotate the model but that is all. I then tried to export all the textures, at least then I would get the work up to this point. This caused substance painter to crash, but without any visual prompts. Nearly all the crashes that I have experienced today (Which are the first for this project) were impossible to distinguish from an extremely long loading time. Only upon attempting to cancel the previous function would substance freeze and become completely unusable. This means that I had to wait long periods of time between every single input just encase it hadn’t actually crashed, more often than not it had.

At this point I feared that I had lost up to 3 days work as that is when I last backed up. With today and tomorrow being the last full days this would be disastrous.

I have spent the entirety of today trying to export as many textures as possible. After dozens of crashes and exporting some textures individually to reduce the load on substance I have managed to save some textures.

 I managed to export all the textures for Sub Object 1, except the opacity. I have also exported all the Textures for Sub Object 3. I haven’t managed to export any textures for Sub Object 2. I can’t even view any layers related to this ID they have completely Brocken.

This means that I have lost up to 3 days work on the engine parts of the car. This is what I will be doing tomorrow.

 My plan this morning was to do a dust pass on the chassi and tyres, then I was going to erase streaks where fast moving particles have removed dust. Then I would have made slight adjustment to the whole car in substance and photo shop.

I will be doing this tomorrow as well as doing an old oil pass on the engine, new fresh oil pass, then dust and finally then erasing streaks out of this engine dust

This is where the vehicle was at Tuesday Evening.

1 day to go

FMP: Replying to mentor feedback and Answering questions

Response to feedback on the rear tyres within which changing to a road tyre influenced design was advised. 

Thanks for the feedback

The tyres are based off a motor sport mud tire, as seen on the Batman Tumbler. I simply thought they looked cool, were a real life reference that proportionately fit and might have fit with the gnarly, beat up home built aesthetic I was going for.

A more road sport orientated tyre may have better described speed, fitted the cars stance and further pushed the future aspect of the vehicle. This is very true.

Currently the finale deadline is Friday the 27^th, so I have 
exactly a week including today. For now I am going to carry on texturing in substance. Post deadline I might be able to remodel a high poly rear tyre and re-bake.


Would it be possible to ask what the final poly limit became in the end, did you stick to your budget?

The budgets I set in my brief for this vehicle were simply the highest budgets I could get away with as we were told that we would not be marked down for undercutting our budgets but would for the opposite.

The briefs budget for this vehicle was 100k tries and 2x4k texture sets.

The car is currently at 90k tries, so I am well within the budget. I am using 3 x 2048 texture sets. These are Broken up into the following sub ID’s.

I’m using 3x2048 sets as this a manageable amount of work within the time, it is also a much more realistic Game ready budget, also I’m texturing the vehicle in substance painter. When Exporting from substance I have found that there is a huge loss in texture quality, because of this I always export from substance at least double the finale texture size I intend to use. I will then rescale the textures in Photoshop. 4K is the largest texture size that Substance will export, so 2k is the largest usable texture. 

Would there be any areas you’d like to reduce detail so you can add detail in other areas?

The interior is the main area where allot more geometry could be added. The interior was never going to be a focus. In hindsight I modelled the vehicle as if it was going to have side windows therefore concealing the interior. I then made the cab open, but I never really added much more detail. I may go back in and add detail to at least the top of the head rest as its silhouette is clearly visible.

The mesh that I’m using to join the exhaust manifolds to the engine block needs additional geometry. 

Also the roof line could have done with less geometry cut out when I was retopologizing the initial turbo smoothed high poly mesh. Also when retopologizing this mesh I tried not to create many tries, and general not do any drastic alteration from the turbo smooth. This is in an attempt to keep flowing geometry and not break shading/reflection. As a result there are areas where geometry lines meat creating points of relatively high poly density. I don’t know whether this can be avoided when creating complex curved forms.

Thanks for the feedback 

FMP:Texturing Day 2

FMP:Texturing day 1

FMP: Lots of baking

I've baked down every single part of the car. I made shore to add some thing to everything. A bolt a seam a vent etc. I can still sea some issues here, but I realy once again must move on.

Towards the end of baking I learnt how to bake in substance painter. This meant that I could easily bake multiple complex forms at once. This is much more efficient.

I have spent far to long baking but i'm about to start texturing in substance, so the more work I put in here the greater detail I can get out of the smart materials. This will result in a much high quality finale vehicle.

I still have 10 days to texture which is still a reasonable amount. Thus my FMP brief will still be easily met. I can still polish all the vehicles before degree show. 

I will now finally start adding materials and detail to this vehicle. 

FMP:Starting_Baking

High poly Front Tire

Rear Tyre High Poly

Baked Tyres. I've added Additional information onto the rear Tyre.

FMP: Side Window Alteration

FMP: Finished car