Collab2021-WIP-notcastanza

[Ben Reichel]

Thanks!  I just finished up cleaning up the mesh on the lowpoly.  Went from 30k (I think) down to 7k faces.  Now I’m creating seams manually.  I think I’ll get a much better result on the texture map.  I’m trying to my time this round to make sure it is done correctly.

[Ben Reichel]

@spikeyxxx  @jlampel 

Finished the second baked texture and touchups.  I’m pleased with how the 1024 texture looks on the low-poly model.  I also painted the leaf texture.  I hope it fits the style.  I’m not sure what else it needs.

Multi-Light

Single-Light

Leaf Texture

Closeup of Texture

[spikeyxxx]

I think it looks great, Ben!

If anything, then the leaves are even too realistic (like a photo texture, against a hand-painted bark)…but Jonathan has the final say in this 😉

[Jonathan Lampel]

Nice work! I like the texture on the leaves – I don’t think it’s in danger of being too realistic. Overall I think there are just a couple things that could be improved:

I took a closer look at the UVs and I think this area needs to be cut like this (or similar) to minimize stretching:

Before:

After

There’s also one branch that is super squished vertically:

You could also use UV Packmaster or something to get a tighter result, but that’s not required since I don’t think there is a free alternative:

Overall though, the texture is just too low resolution for this to be directly in front of the camera. Zooming in shows individual pixels pretty quickly, as well as some serious stretching on the top left branch:

To get more resolution, in addition to just using a larger image, you could significantly scale down the UVs for any parts of the branches that are covered by leaves since those will be barely visible. 

Once the texture is the right size, I would try to add more large and small scale details. At the moment you have a good foundation of medium scale details with the voronoi-like bark, but it needs a larger overall pattern that runs up or twists around the tree and a smaller pattern similar to what you started here:

Hope that helps, sorry I didn’t catch the UV issue earlier, and keep up the great work! This is a really tough asset and you’re on the right track. 

[Ben Reichel]

@jlampel  @spikeyxxx  I haven’t had much time this week yet.  I did fix some of the UV stretching issues that you mentioned.  I picked up UVpackmaster and also hardops and boxcutter because they look fun.  They’ve been on my to-buy list for quite some time.  I’m hoping to have some time this weekend to re-sculpt and bake to the new UVs on the lowpoly.  Hopefully I won’t have as much texture painting to do with using a higher resolution texture.

Would you recommend 2k or 4k resolution?

[spikeyxxx]

2K should be enough, that is 4 times the space you had before, together with a better use of that space, you should be fine.

You’re doing great!

[Ben Reichel]

@jlampel  @spikeyxxx 

Well … I tried something new.  I tried painting with a stencil.  I created a basic wood stencil in PS.  It was a bit tricky trying not to overlap strokes, but I think I did okay for my first time.  That’s what these Colabs are for, right?  🙂  

I tried to make the grain flow up the tree better.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll have more time before Sunday to work on it.  However, I feel like I did a pretty good job keeping it low-poly even though it is a foreground asset.  Without the leaf particles it is under 7k faces.

Thanks for all the feedback and encouragement!  You guys are great and the cookie community is wonderful!

Full Tree

 Closeup Top

Closeup Bottom

[Jonathan Lampel]

Nice job @notcastanza , full points for week 4! Props for re-painting the texture several times and trying something new each time. I’d be happy to give more feedback if you want to continue refining this, but no worries if not and I can consider this final if everything is properly submitted to the google drive. 

[Kent Trammell]

@notcastanza Great job with you tree! The way you tested style is very commendable in a project like this.

It looks like your latest bark texture isn’t on Google Drive..which is OK because I actually like the previous iteration a bit better. Both are interesting and a little on the strong side in that they stick out visually compared to other trees.

I tweaked the asset in a few ways to make it integrate more cleanly into the assembly:

1.  Replaced your branch geo with a card. Cards are far less goemetry than modeled leaves and alpha-mapped cards are calculated much faster by Eevee.
2.  Diminished the bark texture. While I like the bark design, it needs to be downplayed to not stick out like a sore thumb among the rest of the trees. I mixed it with a simple gradient texture to achieve this.
3.  Introduce a slightly emissive gradient to the leaf volume. I converted your leaf particle system to real geometry to apply a spherical gradient to the whole mass (as I’ve been regularly doing to the majority of vegetation throughout the scene. This gives the whole volume of leaves a consistent coloration as the trees in the art show.

In the end it looks great in the assembly!

Thanks for joining the Collab! I hope you enjoyed and learned from the experience. It was a pleasure working with you 🤝

[Ben Reichel]

@theluthier  @jlampel  

Thanks for the feedback.  I’m sorry you had to do so much work just to make my tree fit the style.  I feel like I deviated from the design aesthetic too much.  I definitely got carried away with the texturing but this is the first time I baked textures from highres to lowres and it actually worked.  Combine that with my first time I actually understood texture painting and I was doomed.  In a good way.  🙂    I am going to keep using this asset for practicing both texturing and UV unwrapping.   I made a few changes to the unwrapping that Johnathan suggested and that helped with my later texturing, a lot.

 Even though I jumped the rails, I am thankful for the encouragement and feedback.

[Author]

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