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Attempt at a new safe


vozka

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Attempting to make a model of a safe for fun and practice. So far it's just hi-poly with PBR materials.

My modelling skills are quite narrow and this is outside their scope, so I'm looking for criticism, mostly:

- Is the overall style acceptable, regarding apparent time period etc? (apart from the text in the logo, that's a placeholder and I imagine I'd use some decorative victorian font plus some actual believable names)

- Would the quality be good enough like this? 

- Do you have suggestions about how to improve it?

sejf_v3.jpg

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1 hour ago, JackFarmer said:

To me this looks good.

Would it also be possible to replace the keyhole with a combination lock entity from stock?

Well if this is deemed good enough, I'm probably going to need somebody to help with the interactivity anyway - door opening and the lock/moving the handle. I'm not a map maker and I'm not sure I'll have the time to learn that (it's harder to justify than practicing modelling, which I need for other things too). 

Providing a version without the keyhole would not be a problem for me of course. I have an alternative material and handle in mind as well, it would be nice to have more than one option.

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You have to make sure that all moving parts are separate models. So you have the safe body, the door, and the handle. In case of a numberwheel/combination lock those parts need to be separate, too. If the keyhole uses his own material, it can be made invisible via skins (the eyepatch on some ai can be made invisible to create a two-eyed guard, for instance :D )

If you provide the respective model files plus the textures, I can setup the entity definition and material for you.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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1 hour ago, Obsttorte said:

You have to make sure that all moving parts are separate models. So you have the safe body, the door, and the handle. In case of a numberwheel/combination lock those parts need to be separate, too. If the keyhole uses his own material, it can be made invisible via skins (the eyepatch on some ai can be made invisible to create a two-eyed guard, for instance :D )

If you provide the respective model files plus the textures, I can setup the entity definition and material for you.

Awesome, that would be great. Regarding the separate models, that's what I assumed, so that's how I did it. I'll work on it a bit more first. 

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On 10/16/2022 at 12:28 PM, vozka said:

Attempting to make a model of a safe for fun and practice. So far it's just hi-poly with PBR materials.

My modelling skills are quite narrow and this is outside their scope, so I'm looking for criticism, mostly:

- Is the overall style acceptable, regarding apparent time period etc? (apart from the text in the logo, that's a placeholder and I imagine I'd use some decorative victorian font plus some actual believable names)

- Would the quality be good enough like this? 

- Do you have suggestions about how to improve it?

 

Heyo! So the render is coming out pretty snazzy so far. My only big criticisms would come down to just maybe adding some extra edge bevels (even if they end up being baked into the normal map), just to make the case/door edges a little more interesting. Now honestly this could be achieved via some crafty texture work, or just hard modeling the details. 

I did a safe set some time earlier for TDM and I think I went the material route to highlight the edges. Albeit, a bit more edge distressing than I might do now, this is essentially how I handled it for those...

XgkVCke.jpg

137Vwtv.jpg

So while I've tried to refine my detail masks a bit since these two were made, I'd still suggest a tad more on the grunge side. Main reason is that the assets that already exist for TDM are far from clean. While this does come down to the case usage (posh manor vs dock foreman office) is trying to match the current look of the game. I initially had a harder time making assets too clean and just had to develop my own style based on trial and error... or too many complaints :P

Also, golden inlay can really pop if you highlight it more on the specular channel vs the color itself. Or at least so I found.

Lastly, just make sure you mind the hinge alignment. I export the individual pieces from the same scene for this reason. As you've gotta remember, the mapper must reassemble the parts in Dark Radiant. So they'll have to line up on the grid somehow, else you might have gaps or little inconsistencies. Same goes for knobs and levers. My suggestion is to try and orient those pieces on your own gridsnap (in whatever app you model with) so that they just turn out this way by design. Nothing feels worse than importing a switch, just to see it clips oddly into the adjacent bezel. So basically, plotting the position of those things ahead of time saves the trouble.

ffba2fb97514393c53190165f05eac60.png


All in all I think your safe looks pretty awesome. I tend to make my stuff pretty loud but part of that is my own personal style too. Some of the things I like to go off on, are bits about how this mechanism would look with primitive casting & machining techniques. CNC machining is a pretty modern thing, so in the Dark Mod you can imagine a lot of metal details should appear to be cast iron or rolled steel plating.

Otherwise man, I'd say you're pretty close already. Maybe just some extra detail to tie the door details together a bit more and just some general (natural) wear patterns.

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Modeler galore & co-authors literally everything

 

 

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Maybe I'm just a little tired but when I opened up the thread and glanced at the image, I thought the idea was how you were going to create a new asset based off the real-life safe shown in the image. It took a bit before I realized it wasn't actually a photograph!

I got nothing to contribute except to go for it, we need more safes!

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A word of warning, Agent Denton. This was a simulated experience; real LAMs will not be so forgiving.

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On 10/18/2022 at 4:50 AM, Epifire said:

So while I've tried to refine my detail masks a bit since these two were made, I'd still suggest a tad more on the grunge side. Main reason is that the assets that already exist for TDM are far from clean. While this does come down to the case usage (posh manor vs dock foreman office) is trying to match the current look of the game. I initially had a harder time making assets too clean and just had to develop my own style based on trial and error... or too many complaints :P

Also, golden inlay can really pop if you highlight it more on the specular channel vs the color itself. Or at least so I found.

Grunge and distressing is definitely something I have some trouble with, but you're right. Regarding the inlay, good point - I didn't really do that because this is still PBR with metalness and everything and the materials will have to be done slightly differently for TDM anyway. 

On 10/18/2022 at 6:58 AM, Xolvix said:

Maybe I'm just a little tired but when I opened up the thread and glanced at the image, I thought the idea was how you were going to create a new asset based off the real-life safe shown in the image. It took a bit before I realized it wasn't actually a photograph!

I got nothing to contribute except to go for it, we need more safes!

While this is flattering, it's not that difficult to get a semi-photorealistic render in a path-tracing renderer using physically based materials and models with a virtually unlimited number of polygons. Adapting that into the game is another matter :)

 

 

I created two variants. First is a black paint (again, no distressing yet) that imo looks a bit better, but if I recall correctly it's possible to have models with more than one set of materials, so it would be best to have both. 

401173420_sejf_v4_blackpaint.thumb.jpg.c2d901c9d58b6aaed4f7f2771c6c9a6d.jpg

Second is a new handle what apparently was semi-common in the victorian times and I thought it was pretty funny. No idea how it will look after low-poly retopo and baking though. 

sejf_HANDle.thumb.jpg.ab5f4f9364f4a480aaca5b70d63484cb.jpg

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1 hour ago, vozka said:

While this is flattering, it's not that difficult to get a semi-photorealistic render in a path-tracing renderer using physically based materials and models with a virtually unlimited number of polygons. Adapting that into the game is another matter :)

Look I'm still trying to learn how to render donuts in Blender, it's gonna take time! :)

Anyway, I like the hand-le but to be honest, that's the kind of detail that even with a super high-poly count you're not likely to notice as a player. You'd have to get really close and be in the mindset of wanting to pay attention to the details to actually notice. Most players (including myself) would be preoccupied with the act of lock-picking and/or opening and then grabbing what's inside. It's one of the dangers of putting in a lot of detail into assets that barely get a second look by players. I do try to stop and "smell the roses" from time to time, but I also miss a lot of nice details even when trying.

A word of warning, Agent Denton. This was a simulated experience; real LAMs will not be so forgiving.

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On 10/16/2022 at 7:28 PM, vozka said:

apart from the text in the logo, that's a placeholder and I imagine I'd use some decorative victorian font plus some actual believable names

One thought regarding this. It would be nice to have a version without text (but with the logo). TDM allows adding text via decals, and by this mappers could give the safe their own branding.

8 hours ago, vozka said:

but if I recall correctly it's possible to have models with more than one set of materials, so it would be best to have both. 

Indeed. The engine supports skins. The system simple replaces one material by another. It can't differentiate between two different geometry sets or meshes if they use the same material, though. (Something to consider if you want different pieces of the safe to use the same material, but would also like to allow it to use different one. Not sure whether this is desireable here.)

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FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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18 hours ago, Xolvix said:

Anyway, I like the hand-le but to be honest, that's the kind of detail that even with a super high-poly count you're not likely to notice as a player. You'd have to get really close and be in the mindset of wanting to pay attention to the details to actually notice. Most players (including myself) would be preoccupied with the act of lock-picking and/or opening and then grabbing what's inside. It's one of the dangers of putting in a lot of detail into assets that barely get a second look by players. I do try to stop and "smell the roses" from time to time, but I also miss a lot of nice details even when trying.

If one out of ten people notice, that's good enough for me, the only issue is if I'll be able to make it low-poly enough to not strain the engine. I tried making it low-poly and bake normals in a quick & dirty way, so there are errors and I'll have to try a couple times, but so far I got the whole handle down to 170 tris. Seems like with a shadow mesh, which I guess could be half that, it would be good enough.

549520024_sejf-lowpolyhand.thumb.jpg.cd22563226c877a058fef88a10938101.jpg

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I think you could upscale that handle by another 50% without it looking disproportionate. Maybe get 2 in 10 players to notice 😉. It is definitely a fun and distinctive design, very stylish. I can see why it was popular in the Victorian times.

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Due to it beeing mainly used in indoor areas probably I guess it isn't such an issue if the poly count is a bit higher. The engine is generally not bad in handling high ones.

It would be an option to create several versions differing in poly count, so it can be setup as LOD entity. This way you would get best of both worlds, but for the price of some extra work (I am no modeler, so I dunno how much extra work exactly ;) ).

It's important to have a low poly shadow mesh, though. But I guess you are aware of that.

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FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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  • 4 weeks later...

Added some chipped paint to the painted version. I'm the type of person who hates doing things by hand so I spent about 5x more time learning how to do it procedurally (surprisingly there are a few catches), but I'm pretty happy with it and I think that makes this one worn enough. 

sejf v5_chipped paint.jpg

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