3d Chains ( is this Right?)

RaptorCWS

Ok so I have never made a 3d chain before. I am working on an art test and it says I do not have a poly limit but the final piece should be game ready. are planes with a transparency still acceptable this gen for chains or ropes??

Dan Powell

You probably wouldn't use an alpha map for a rope unless there was a tight vertices budget. You'd be able to get a decent result by baking a high poly rope to a cylinder - and depending on how tight your poly budget is you might get away with just triangulating the high poly rope until it's low enough then just baking to it - just remember that you have to unwrap it so don't let the topology go to hell.

I'm not sure about chains... Personally for current generation I would model and bake, but for mobile definitely alpha. It would depend on how far away they are from the player's view too, as well as how long/how much of a chain there is.

Use your best judgement. Compare it to the rest of the scene too - E.G. if the chains are using half the scene's vertices count then you might have gone overkill!

jfitch

What does the company's other work look like? Do they use lots of alpha planes for things like Riot does? Or do they have intense models like Naught Dog or something like that? The goal is to get something that looks like they could pop it right into their engine after you hand it to them. Of course thats tricky if they don't have a ton of other work for you to compare, but I hope this helps a little.

As far as chains go it would depend on what you're doing. If its for a character I would model out the chains with geo and make a low poly version that isn't terribly modular but if its for an environment or prop I would make sure those chains could be used in other parts of the level fairly easily.

Eric Chadwick

We have some lowpoly chain examples at the bottom here, plus a thread link.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/SphereTopology