Boxes...

So my cardboard boxes are done. I tried to add a bit of interest and variation to them, using selotape, cellophane and shipping forms. This break up of repetition in the textures should make the set dressing that bit easier.

Assets galore...

So lately I've been knocking out assets for my Garage. I've now completed my cabinets, Storage Box and shelving.

Server in...

So my server's in now and I'm pleased with how it's looking, there seems to be strange lighting artifacts all over my assets, no doubt something thats going to take a bit of fiddling with...

WiP shot of my server cabinet... should be done with this by tomorrow. Diffuse, Nomal and Specular x 1024

z4

So I've pretty much finished modeling my low poly z4. It clocks in at about 18,000, leaving around 2,000 to add more detailing. This will probably go on the body, smoothing it out and adding hard edges.

Quick update

Quick update. Have been importing assets as of late. I'm still struggling with the lighting, there seems to be loads of fuzziness in all the shadows. Have also nearly completed modelling the low poly z4, will post pics up when it'd done.

Racing Rims

Here's some of my racing rims. These will be going on the z4 GT3 (the motorsport version of the z4) they clock in at 1,658 tris, thats including the tyre, so will take up 6,632 tris from the whole budget of 30,000

Rims WiP

Here's a WiP shot of my rims. they're 1,300ish in total which means the wheels will come to a tad under 6,000. It sounds quite high but they're something I've got to get detail into. We'll see...

Tyres baked...

I've pretty much finished the normal map for my tyre now. I unwrapped and baked it differently this time. I unwrapped it so I had the whole of the tread, including the bits on the curve, unwrapped together so there is no seams. only the inside circle where the text is is separate. This leads to less distortion and seams :D

Secondly I baked the tread detail from a flat geometry, my high poly tyre without the bend modifier attached. I also made the flat plane I was baking it to more high poly so that there was less distortion in the round edges of the tyre. doing this meant that the bake did not take the curvature of the tyre into account, and so it was cleaner and did not make a seam where one end would have joined the other.

Lastly I made it tileable in photoshop to get a higher resolution part. This means that half of the tyre tread is tiled.

In the picture I've shown (from right to left) the high poly, the low poly (200tris) and a more detailed low poly (350tris).

I am going to aim to use the higher detailed low version because cylinders are one object that really distort when viewed from certain angles, especially with a normal map applied. I feel that extra 150tris really make a difference.

Overall I happy with it, I will get on the diffuse and specular today, which should really make the details pop.

Tyre...

So I've been doing a high poly tyre to bake down into a low poly. My first back seem to have captured the details well, bu there is some slight issues with warping. I'm going to re-uv this in a different way so the seams are in a different place. It might require a bit of photoshop tweaking aswell. I'm going to be putting logos and text on the sidewall using photoshop, to do this in max seems pointless since the text tools in photoshop are better. I'll post my second bake when it's done...