Gramophone for Source Engine

[ElysiumGX]

This is a project I've had in mind for a while, with the goal of placing it in the Source Engine, perhaps for use in a custom level.

Basic High and Low poly are finished. Now I begin baking and texturing.
Any crits are welcomed.
http://www.elysiumvisions.com/images/gramophone/highlow.jpg
The low poly is currently at 1351 triangles.

[moose o death]

did you count that right? that looks more like 1300 polygons.

it looks nice at the moment, be sure to post the final results, i'm keen to see the texture and what kind of artistic direction you go

[ElysiumGX]

Somewhat tricky, but I've gotten this peice normal mapped using GPUSurfaceFX2. I forgot that XSI requires the high poly to be subdivided on the mesh for this to work, not just the viewport render. I've also baked an ambient occlusion map using my own light setup to be used as a base texture. Which I'll now begin working on.

http://elysiumvisions.com/images/gramophone/mapped.jpg

[ElysiumGX]

A quick DirectX9 render to show what I'm trying for. Only a basic normal, ambient, and color map so far. No spec or texture.
http://elysiumvisions.com/images/gramophone/normal_color.jpg

[ElysiumGX]

More progress:
http://elysiumvisions.com/images/gramophone/normal_texture.jpg

[ElysiumGX]

I'm calling this finished for now. I'd rather get it in engine before going any further.
http://elysiumvisions.com/images/gramophone/final.jpg

http://elysiumvisions.com/images/gramophone/gramophone.gif

[ElysiumGX]

In TF2. Source doesn't show Specular Color texture, like I have above, but cubemap reflections are cool. Now that it uses a cubemap reflection in game, I think I'd rather the horn be all brass. My plan now is to get it animated, and playing music. http://community.softimage.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

http://elysiumvisions.com/images/gramophone/ingame.jpg

Questions, comments, advice...all welcomed.

[moose o death]

the horn being brass would be a definite improvement, everyone else seems to be staying quite on this but the mapping on the horn isn't great. streakyness didn't suit that model.

[ElysiumGX]

Thanks. I agree with you. There are some errors in the UVs i missed that are only visible due to the choice of texture. I'll make the changes soon.

[ElysiumGX]

Some final images, with improvements.

http://elysiumvisions.com/images/gramophone/XSI_final.jpg
Realtime render using one of Ben Cloward's shaders.

http://elysiumvisions.com/images/gramophone/SDK_final.jpg
Source SDK ModelViewer. Good display of how this would look in a bright outdoor environment.

http://elysiumvisions.com/images/gramophone/TF2_final.jpg
In TF2 level with cubemaps built.

For now I want to attempt an animation of the record spinning and attach a sound to it.

@moose o death: thanks for the comments.

[Cryrid]

Looking good.

The woodgrain kind of looks a bit strong/detailed compared to the rest of the textures in TF2 though.

[moose o death]

i think a chequers board would have that effect on TFII though.

i do prefer the brass, it's an easy solution to a trivial nuisance. and yeah maybe a more cartoony woodgrain would suit the scene better. but just because it's displayed in TF2 doesn't mean much with source you can open it up in counter strike without a lot of additional effort

[thefatninja]

Model looks good

Have you thought about adding some light ambient occlusion to the textures?

[moose o death]

i would agree with that but i run ambient occlusion over everything i do because the uv export looks awful and AO does half the work for you

[ElysiumGX]

Thanks guys. I agree the detail doesn't entirely fit the style. And there is a light AO bake overlayed onto the texture. I could increase its opacity some.

I was playing around with animations and triggers inside Hammer. Here's a video to wrap up this project.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9YEZrhZtHI

[moose o death]

you tube is the biggest pain in the a.. video is no longer available.

[ElysiumGX]

Youtube is annoying, but my link was wrong. Try this.

http://www.vimeo.com/1352019

[moose o death]

vimeo is working well, it wont take long for that to take over if youtube is constantly broken.

i like what you did with the disk spinning, however i would have built the specular highlights in with the normalmap alpha channel, that way they don't rotate around when the disk does, but they still reflect.

either way nice work, i never got to the stage of importing models to source well done.

[ElysiumGX]

The woodgrain kind of looks a bit strong/detailed compared to the rest of the textures in TF2 though.

I agree. I tried to fix that.
http://elysiumvisions.com/images/gramophone/TF2_final2.jpg

[Cryrid]

Much more fitting now : )