September 2010 CC Challenge: Pirates!

[Legacy_Eradrain]

               Looking good so far!

I wouldn't quite call the textures finished just yet, though.  They could benefit from some detail, like spots of rust, dirt on the underside of the base and the rims of the wheels, maybe some decoration or inlay or inscription on the bronze casting, or a sort of fading-into-dark-interior for the inside of the cannon itself.

More detail is always better.  A good example is Morikhan's desk that he made for the August cleric-room challenge.  Though the model was pretty solid, that desk would have been unimpressive if he had just used uniform wood and metal textures and skipped any and all detail, like the lovely carved inlay.

I think there's definitely more room for texture detailing on this cannon to take it from "Good" to "Exemplary," and you don't need to do any fancy UVMapping to accomplish it either, you can just manually paint details in photoshop onto the existing textures.

It's the difference between, for example, the default Bioware creatures and CODI's stuff - CODI really went all-out when they skinned their models.  Even moreso than the models themselves, I'd say the textures really made them stand out.

And don't worry about the poly-count.  That's still very, very low for a placeable.  Especially one as big as a cannon.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Eradrain, 19 septembre 2010 - 10:16 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_B_Harrison]

               I think it looks great! Are you using shininess/environment mapping on the metal details?

And I'd say 900 polys was quite a lot for NWN; the game can handle a lot more, but we should still endeavour to make our content efficient, if an equivalent result can be achieved with fewer polys. Though I'm guilty of going a bit overboard at times myself, and personally I wouldn't sacrifice the roundness of the cannon barrel/wheels for the sake of a few hundred polys.

Nothing to worry about in any case, especially as a nice cannon placeable would probably be something of a centerpiece in most areas.

@Dark Defiance: One suggestion I'd make is to use an alpha texture for transparency, and paint some tears and general raggedness into the flag itself. Elsewise it looks good; I wouldn't have known the texture was based on screenshots of models if you hadn't said.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par B_Harrison, 19 septembre 2010 - 10:43 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy__six]

               That cannon is looking fantabulous. I'll add my voice to the ones saying that you shouldn't worry about the poly counts for it. Where anything round is concerned its often something of a trade off where low polycounts = bad or simply strange looking, and as long as people don't decide to spam about 50 of those things in an area at a time, there shouldn't be any noticeable performance impact.



I recently created some tree placeables that have 1300 faces each, and can quite happily plonk 20 or 30 down in an area before I get any noticable lag on my 3-4 year old machine.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rubies]

               I'm going to detach the front of the cannon from the rest and make a gradient texture for it, and fiddle with the wood texture a tiny bit, and give one last stab at doing a metal texture (it's 20% alpha, so it's a little bit reflective ingame). Texturing clothes is pretty much all I'm good at, unfortunately, but it's fun trying it out.

Maybe I should stop spamming the thread until I'm done, hee hee, but the feedback's been wonderful. '>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Rubies, 19 septembre 2010 - 11:40 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Rubies]

               Redid all of the textures and put them in one file, and increased the size of the overall texture to 512x512. The wood was taken from the standard NWN textures and then altered a tiny bit. I'm actually quite pleased with how this time turned out. There's a slight shine to certain spots of the cannon, and the lower-quality trim is reflective enough for the detail not to be too noticable in-game. Unfortunately I can't take an in-game screenshot at the moment. '>


               
               

               

                     Modifié par Rubies, 20 septembre 2010 - 01:05 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_B_Harrison]

               It looks fantastic.

And don't worry about posting a lot, or a lot of images; I did too initially, but it seems the more works-in-progress we post and the more comments we get, the more interesting and positive the challenges are likely to be for everyone.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Builder_Anthony]

               Colors look nice
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Dark Defiance]

               Where's the fuse? ;-)
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_s e n]

               those cannons look awesoem!! personally i suggest you to change the wooden texture to get rid of the "planks", that way you shouldnt even need to work on the uvx to have it fit the mesh!! its a good 8 that can becoem 9
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Fester Pot]

               Rubies! You shine like the gem of the same name.

That's an amazing looking canon, perfect for a pirate ship or stranded on a beach with debris from a crashed ship scattered all over the place. Perhaps that's something else you'd consider? A canon without its mobility to be placed haphazardly after a crash?

Great work everyone and thanks to all who participate and those driving the CC challenge.

FP!
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Fester Pot, 20 septembre 2010 - 02:27 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_cervantes35]

               This is not an entry but something I whipped together with some borrowed geom from sixesthrice and nexorcist to create some newer updated skelton pirates. Just for the spirit of pirate month. This is the skeleton pirate captain and skeleton pirate first mate I plan on a couple more variations to complete a selection for a crew.





               
               

               

                     Modifié par cervantes35, 20 septembre 2010 - 04:23 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Estelindis]

               Rubies, that cannon looks amazing!  I think the wheels need UVW remapping (to give more of a radial look, so maybe cylindrical or spherical mapping), but that's pretty much it.



The skeletal pirates look good, Cervantes.  :-)  Why not make them entries - do they not meet the rules or something?



Also, I'm a bit late to the party on this front, but Six's undead pirate looks great.  Love the hat.  And great to see a wearable version of the jacket too!



This whole challenge is just forty shades of awesome.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Eradrain]

               Great stuff, everybody.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Jez_fr]

               wooo what a nice day today '>



@Rubies: really nice, I prefer your last texture, nice job. If you want to work more on this, I agree with Defiance, the fuse spot is somewhat missing. Also, the wheels would look more realistic (but who cares) if they were flat, and ironed.



@cervantes35: wot? not entries? what do you mean by that? I hope they'll be!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bard Simpson]

               I must admit that I wasn't particularly excited by the idea of a pirate theme, but you folks are really kicking butt! These projects have truly captured my interest. Please, keep up the great work.